Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO thinks that Web3 is “not normal” compared to other industries, but is on the right track.
During a fireside chat with Chainlink Labs Co-Founder Sergey Nazarov at the SmartCon conference in New York City, Schmidt shared how he thought about the current state of crypto and Web3 and his concerns. Schmidt admitted that he was “historically a skeptic”.
But seeing the Ethereum Merge happening earlier this month, where Ethereum changed its consensus mechanism from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake, he says that it is “as sign that your industry is getting its act together”.
Despite admitting that progress is made, he still has some gripes about Web3. His first argument was that smart contracts which are used to execute instructions on blockchains like Ethereum are poor in their capabilities and think the marketing strategies are ungrounded and “got ahead of reality”.
It is fair to say that the reality for Schmidt were grounded projects with real life applications, one of which he raised was Chainlink, which uses data from oracles and node networks to provide blockchain-based information. In an official tweet by Chainlink back on 7 December 2021, they announced that Schmidt would be an advisor to help build Chainlink.
“Chainlink is a secret ingredient to help unlocking the potential of smart contract platforms and revolutionizing business and society,” says Schmidt.
The two were on the same page when they talked about faith in the protocol. “At the end of the day, people’s faith in mathematics is going to end up being stronger than their faith in institutions and brands and other people,” claimed Nazarov.
Zero Knowledge Proofs were also an emerging technology that Schmidt was advocating for, which has the potential of changing the experience for crypto transactions.
What about Crypto Regulations? Schmidt said that it was too early to ask for regulation. With the continuing development and evolution of blockchain technologies, the full spectrum of problems that might stem from crypto might still be the tip of the iceberg at the moment.
