Jack Dorsey's tweet sparks uproar: “You don't own ‘web3.’ The VCs and their LPs do. It will never escape their incentives. It's ultimately a centralized entity”
Welcome to the mesha tribe. A biweekly newsletter by Mesha … Suprita Anupam / Inc42 Media : Is Web 3.0 Centralised? Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey Spark A New Debate The Signal : Four day week next year Kevin Helms / Bitcoin News : Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk Raise Concerns Over Web3 as Skepticism About Ownership Grows Maria Merano / TESLARATI : Elon Musk talks “wokeness,” Elizabeth Warren, the Metaverse, and more in Babylon Bee interview Adrian Zmudzinski / Benzinga : Why Jack Dorsey Says Bitcoin Will Replace The Dollar, Ethereum Is No Good Arijit Sarkar / Cointelegraph : Elon Musk thinks Neuralink is better than the metaverse in long term Tweets: Jack⚡️ / @jack : The VCs are the problem *not the people Mike Solana / @micsolana : ffs hundreds of millions of small businesses using fb tools. over half of amazon products come from small / medium-sized businesses. ride-sharing. home-sharing. an entire new media ecosystem. the list is endless. we don't need to nuke reality for the new thing to also be cool. https://twitter.com/... @cobie : I think ICO era was much fairer than current web3, which mirrors web2 incentive structures. Current founders' need for balancing reg risk w execution velocity means they raise privately from VCs & retail is late, similarly to web2. ICO era gave fairer terms to all but more risk. Tomiwa / @alephile : Almost no Nigerian enjoyed the VC tech boom (Google, Facebook IPOs). Random middle class Nigerians got thousands of dollars in ENS tokens because they valued ENS names and were early adopters. Web 3's economic incentives are different! https://twitter.com/... @cobie : I know hundreds of normal people financially free thanks to web3. Not VCs. Not founders. Just people that farmed airdrops and bought some tokens. Don't know anyone that is financially free thanks to web2 except founding teams and financiers. Tyler Winklevoss / @tyler : Oh the irony of the web3 debate raging on a web2 platform. Reminder: you don't own or control the tweets that you are tweeting. I support any technology that has a chance at changing this. Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : I can't wait to see examples of web3 apps supporting millions of new jobs and businesses instead of trotting out examples of people getting in early on a token then getting rich when others FOMO in. Until then, we're celebrating zero sum transfers of income not new value created https://twitter.com/... Alex Svanevik / @asvanevik : Blessed to be on this community-owned website. https://twitter.com/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : The misguided rhetoric of web3 is that the purpose of projects and companies is to enrich insiders. So web3 is better than Web 2.0 because the circle of insiders is expanded to include early adopters. This is a bleak and zero sum view of the world encouraged by VC culture. Alex Danco / @alex_danco : Web3 kings of A16Z Bring us gifts of rare NFTs Holding tokens, quite outspoken Yet I can't see their tweets Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : The repeated mantra of web3 is that it's egalitarian because earlier adopters get get shares (tokens) but in traditional startups only insiders do. The incentive of a Facebook or Google is to build useful products that lots of people use. For web3, it's getting tokens pre-FOMO. https://twitter.com/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : Selling shares is a means to an end, funding & motivating employees building world changing software. Web3 people are enamored with tokens as a faster way to mint shares and get to financial liquidity, independent of the software's impact. That's why VCs love it. Skip to the end Jack⚡️ / @jack : @samkazemian ... I care only about decentralized, secure, private foundations without single points of failure. And I'm focused on that. @petermccormack : Slow down @jack, you'll be banned from Twitter next https://twitter.com/... @maxkeiser : Join the club! https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Sam Williams / @samecwilliams : The problem is not VCs or ‘the people’. It is the universal, inevitable corruption of vision that emerges in web2 companies. Companies exist simply and distinctly to make money for their shareholders. The solution is simple. Protocols: immutable, incorruptible services. https://twitter.com/... Marcus Hutchins / @malwaretechblog : Honestly loving the new Jack. The cryptocurrency community went from “giving control back to the people” to just worshipping a bunch of douchebro VCs whilst they get fleece everyone under the guise of “web3”. https://twitter.com/... Matthew Graham / @mattysino : so who wants to tell Jack the percentage of bitcoin supply owned by whales https://twitter.com/... @zachweinberg : @cdixon Technically with most crypto startups, it's: first you sell tokens then speculators mark them up 👈 we are here then you buy a giant mansion in the Bahamas then people like me fight you then you search for use cases beyond speculation then some tiny subset of the ideas win Kara Swisher / @karaswisher : Welcome to the other BLOCK chain @jack — some of us have been living here a while already. (That said, we all use this feature you made, so there's that.) https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Tuur Demeester / @tuurdemeester : Venture Capital is crucial to any healthy society and one of the bedrocks of capitalism. However, modern, hype driven, growth obsessed, exit focused attention deficit Venture Capital is an economic sarcoma caused by chronic inflationism. https://twitter.com/... Preston Byrne / @prestonjbyrne : First they ignore you Then they laugh at you Then you quote Gandhi Then you get rekt by Jack Dorsey Aaron Levie / @levie : How about the future of the web is just: * more interoperability * more open standards & new protocols * richer, more immersive apps * multiplayer everything * more APIs to leverage * more open source contribution * more monetization options * more voice, video, and media Tyler Winklevoss / @tyler : Brought to you by web3 https://twitter.com/... Nischal / @nischalshetty : I started my first startup by building on top of Twitter, FB and Insta APIs (they invited us to build on their APIs) When these platforms grew & wanted to monetise, each of these platforms REVOKED API access No VC or founder can do that to another developer on Web3 ✌️ #WEB3 https://twitter.com/... Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : Twitter arguments about what web3 & crypto might be, the ways the internet evolved in the past, and how to think about how new technologies evolve, are all very interesting... but sometimes feel like displacement from the scarcity of any actual fucking products to argue about. Aaron Levie / @levie : Oh the irony of listening to someone who's actually built a platform. https://twitter.com/... @cobie : But still not possible to ignore that regular people could become millionaires this year by doing nothing except using new products and receiving airdrops. No investment required, just using new things. Users were rewarded with ownership for being users. @cobie : Web3 gives us the tools to build a new way. The state attempts to keep the balance of power the same as it has always been. The SEC is a lobbying firm for VCs; fighting for privatising profits and maintaining the house edge against retail participants. @cobie : Web2 shovels advertisements down the throats of regular people in exchange for storing their photos & private messages. They take $100 per active user from ppl selling whatever and you get fuck all. They sell private fundraising to VCs for a decade before you can own any. Tim Griffin / @timgriffin77 : I dont have a huge following, but if I can impart some advice to first time founders ... don't let VC hype sway you from building what you believe in. Web3 may be hot right now, but there are so many industries where even basic software can have an outsized impact. Matt Huang / @matthuang : Raise your hand if you like both Web2 and Web3 Doug Colkitt / @0xdoug : 1/ Been thinking a lot about the relationship between web2 and web3. Feels a lot like the first vs. second industrial revolutions. The second industrial revolution wasn't successful because it rejected the first. It was a force multiplier on stacked *on top* of the first https://twitter.com/... Sam Kazemian / @samkazemian : Irony of @jack's web3=VC comment is projects feel coerced to sell to VCs out of SEC fear of releasing tokens publicly before decentralization. Then maxi messiah Saylor shouts for more regulation on all non-BTC tokens everyday while Jack piles the web3=VC hate from the back. Sad! Sam Shead / @sam_l_shead : Fun to watch @jack unfollowing people promoting Web3 and any crypto that isn't bitcoin https://twitter.com/... Edward Ongweso Jr / @bigblackjacobin : The capitalists are the problem (but especially the venture capitalists) https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Dorsey’s criticism followed an earlier public challenge to Web3’s ownership claims and quickly became a broader dispute among tech figures and users. The confrontation sharpened when Marc Andreessen blocked Dorsey after the criticism of a16z and Web3, turning an argument about governance into a visible conflict between a prominent founder and a leading investor.
The importance is not merely the exchange itself: Dorsey frames venture backing and limited-partner incentives as incompatible with Web3’s decentralization pitch, putting ownership structure at the center of the debate.
First-order effects
- Dorsey’s post forces Web3 advocates and venture investors to defend whether projects financed by VCs can credibly claim decentralized ownership.
- The dispute immediately raises the reputational stakes for a16z and other Web3 investors, while Dorsey becomes a high-profile critic of the sector’s investor-led model.
Second-order effects
- Web3 projects seeking users or contributors face greater pressure to explain token, governance, and investor ownership rather than relying on decentralization as a blanket claim.
- Investor–founder disagreements become part of the product narrative: Andreessen’s public break with Dorsey gives the ownership debate a prominent social-media venue.
Third-order effects
- If challenges to investor control persist, decentralized-network legitimacy will increasingly hinge on demonstrable governance and ownership distribution, not on Web3 branding alone.
- The episode points to a structural tension in crypto: venture capital can fund network development while also concentrating influence that decentralized systems are meant to diffuse.
The trend: Web3 is entering a legitimacy test in which the distribution of capital and control matters as much as the technology’s decentralized design.