[pudo]

That sounds a lot like, you know, web 2.0. Let's scheme this out: Facebook (and its corporate policies) is often named a motivating factor for web3. If I wanted to make a web3 replacement (let's call it MastoCoin), how would the economics of that actually work? People would still want to upload lots of posts and pictures and stuff, and that would presumably continue to live on S3 (etc.). Somebody needs to pay the bills for that monthly. So even if I had to pay $3 bucks in gas to post my sarcastic tweet, someone else would incur an indefinite expenditure on it, no? I really cannot think of a non-pyramid model here.

[onion2k]

Society should certainly protect people from being scammed by others, but I don't think that's what web3 is. It's not a "pyramid scheme" in the traditional sense because it's not a scheme. It's just a pyramid. It's a collective delusion. If people believe in it, great. If they think they can profit from it then they should try. If they win, cool. If they lose, also cool.

I definitely don't think web3 should be 'stopped' on moral grounds. Maybe it should on environment grounds, or on the grounds of how annoying web3 evangelists are, but stopping it to protect people from investing in something silly is not a good idea. Let people learn from their mistakes (or maybe I'll learn to be less cynical when NFTs turn out to be the next BTC, which I also regret not buying, or Amazon stock that I didn't buy, or Apple, or Pixar, or MSFT... this is a long list.)

[chrisco255]

Filecoin, Sia, and Arweave are three of the bigger chains involved in decentralized file storage. A combination of IPFS for data verification and one of these services for storage is typically enough. Many apps will store both on S3 and on Filecoin and link the IPFS hash for redundance. It's not a pyramid model, the native tokens are used to purchase storage and incentivize the bootstrapping of the storage network build out. Arweave has created an endowment like structure to guarantee data storage for 200 years.