Vitalik Buterin was interviewed for Time Magazine. These two paragraphs capture an important concern of mine:

Buterin hopes Ethereum will become the launchpad for all sorts of sociopolitical experimentation: fairer voting systems, urban planning, universal basic income, public-works projects. Above all, he wants the platform to be a counterweight to authoritarian governments and to upend Silicon Valley’s stranglehold over our digital lives. But he acknowledges that his vision for the transformative power of Ethereum is at risk of being overtaken by greed. And so he has reluctantly begun to take on a bigger public role in shaping its future. “If we don’t exercise our voice, the only things that get built are the things that are immediately profitable,” he says, reedy voice rising and falling as he fidgets his hands and sticks his toes between the cushions of a lumpy gray couch. “And those are often far from what’s actually the best for the world.”

The irony is that despite all of Buterin’s cachet, he may not have the ability to prevent Ethereum from veering off course. That’s because he designed it as a decentralized platform, responsive not only to his own vision but also to the will of its builders, investors, and ever sprawling community. Buterin is not the formal leader of Ethereum. And he fundamentally rejects the idea that anyone should hold unilateral power over its future.

Vitalik Buterin – 2022-03-18 – Time Magazine

There is a lot of naive idealism in Web3. Many believe crypto and decentralization will magically stop the oligarchs. Many of those with the highest ideals don’t think they have to fight, or don’t believe in fighting, for what they believe in.

Sociopaths, by their nature, are not hindered by such ethics. They are limited by nothing but our anemic regulatory mechanisms. Given the opportunity, they will herd the masses – who are completely unconscious to the threat – into the same shearing chutes they built in Web2.

We have a powerful current of ideals among those who are capable of building Web3. If we make it a primary objective to defend those core principles it will be a difficult road that will lead to limiting the cancer we have seen grow in Web2.