Web3 means Freedom Software

The article argues that web3 has largely failed to deliver the self-sovereign, freedom-preserving software it was meant to enable, blaming venture funding and the embedded growth obligations (EGOs) it creates for pushing startups away from their founding principles. It proposes the Ethereum Foundation's CROPS principles (censorship resistance, open source, privacy, security) as a starting point and highlights existing tools that meet them. Examples include The Pirate Bay, Sci-Hub, Library Genesis, Anna's Archive, Kiwix, Linux, Immich, OwnCloud and self-hosted LLM chat interfaces like Open WebUI. The author also describes using ENS to store website fingerprints and backend URL lists, with a proposed ENSIP called DService.