[spinaltap]

I'm a 10-year web developer and I failed in trying to understand how web3 works. For instance, will there be servers? How do you host databases without servers? Who pays for hard drives for sites like youtube?

If I can't understand it, I doubt more than 1% of people can.

[Hendrikto]

It just sounds like you did not do much research. Answers to all of your questions are neither complex nor hard to find.

> will there be servers?

Yes, both practically and conceptually. Practically, there are servers acting as network nodes. Conceptually, your code runs on VMs like the EVM, which can be thought of as a distributed server.

> How do you host databases without servers?

By adding transactions to the immutable ledger, in an append-only fashion. To index the data, you could use your own node, or defer to something like The Graph.

> Who pays for hard drives for sites like youtube?

There are different models for that. Essentially the uploader, the downloader, or both.

Take Arweave, for example. There you get indefinite storage for a one-time fixed fee. This is based on the extremely conservative assumption that storage prices will decrease by 0.5% pa on average. Over the last 50 years, it was something like 30% pa.

[shkkmo]

> Take Arweave, for example. There you get indefinite storage for a one-time fixed fee. This is based on the extremely conservative assumption that storage prices will decrease by 0.5% pa on average. Over the last 50 years, it was something like 30% pa.

It's based on a lot more than that. The fact that you can go through their entire webpage without them even trying to explain the risks to their potential users is downright shady.