Grow Your Own Services encourages people to make their own online services and help decentralise the internet. This is in the traditional sense of the word “decentralise”, where a network is made up of lots of independent providers connected together. Traditional decentralisation is a proven, sustainable and sensible structure, and we know it works because it’s been used for centuries: postal services, telegraphs, telephones, email and the world wide web are all based on traditional decentralised networks.
Unfortunately, in recent years some people have been using the word decentralisation to promote really dodgy get-rich-quick schemes ⧉ using buzzwords like “web3”, “blockchain”, “NFT”, “cryptocurrency”, “tokens”, “coins” or “DeFi”. They are essentially just different names for the same thing: ponzi/pyramid schemes using a corruptive technology that has nothing to do with traditional decentralisation.
These “web3” schemes are snake oil which everyone should avoid. They make a small number of people richer while simultaneously destroying the environment, assisting criminals and making the rest of us poorer. They will never be featured on this site.
(If you want to know more, one of the founders of dogecoin has written a clear, unequivocal and severe warning against using cryptocurrency ⧉. If you want even more depth, here’s a very long and technical talk given at Stanford University about the problems with cryptocurrency/tokens/coins ⧉. For news about all the latest scams, disasters and snake oil in this field, check out Web3 is going just great ⧉. For a really good deep dive into all the problems with these schemes,watch the video Line Goes Up ⧉. The video’s title mentions NFTs but it covers all of these schemes.)
As well as helping crooks and destroying the planet, “web3” is also corrupting good people into doing terrible things.
Many people who bought into cryptocurrencies/tokens/coins/NFTs have lost lots of money and want to get out, but cannot find someone to buy them out. They then desperately try to promote the cryptocurrency (or token/coin/NFT etc) that they are trapped in, in the hope of convincing someone else to buy them out and take their place. They don’t care that someone else gets trapped, as long as they can escape.
“Web3” is the financial equivalent of the cursed videotape from the Ring movies ⧉. In case you haven’t seen the series: the tape kills people who watch it, unless a victim can quickly find someone new to watch it, but then that person has to find someone new as well. The tape ends up passing through a chain of newly-corrupted people desperate to find someone else to pass their curse onto. The only good solution is for no one to watch the tape at all.
This is why this site rejects anything to do with “web3”.