> This is how "web1" operated all the time: People have a cool idea and fire up a webserver to host it. Self-Custody in its purest form.
Web1 assets are not scarce, that's the difference.
> Sure, others could copy it, but they can also do that with whatever someone generates an NFT for "digital assets" (the certificate cannot be copied, the thing it certifies ownership for can).
Forget NFTs. Go print yourself $1000 USDC and try to exchange it for dollars. The thing that prevents you from doing that - that's decentralized digital scarcity. There is no equivalent on web1.
Of course there is. If the service offered is not just access to some data, but things like computational power, access to a game server, food delivered, etc. I put up a payment system, and unless its used there is no access to the asset.
What form that payment system has, and what tokens it accepts USD, EUR, BTC, Seashells or Sliced Bread, is completely irrelevant.
All of the web1 equivalents are centralized systems, where the assets in question cannot be traded independently of the central authority. That is the difference.
Every system in a "web3" environment is still hosted on some server or cluster.
And someone, somewhere, has the root pwd for that server. There is still a central authority.
That someone decides if the server is up, what code it runs, and how it interacts with voting, contracts, tokens, etc. on the ledger. The only thing in such an environment that is "dezentralized", is the public ledger (aka. the "Blockchain"), where the current state of the tokens, settings, etc. are stored.
If the people running the service decide that whatever is written in that ledger no longer applies to them, it no longer applies, period.
Web1 assets are not scarce, that's the difference.
> Sure, others could copy it, but they can also do that with whatever someone generates an NFT for "digital assets" (the certificate cannot be copied, the thing it certifies ownership for can).
Forget NFTs. Go print yourself $1000 USDC and try to exchange it for dollars. The thing that prevents you from doing that - that's decentralized digital scarcity. There is no equivalent on web1.