You Say You Want a Revolution: Essays on the Promise and Betrayal of Web3

Web 3.0 promised a revolution—decentralized finance, trustless systems, power returned to the people. For a brief, electric moment, it felt inevitable. Then came the speculation, the scams, the billionaires. The revolution got complicated. In this collection of essays spanning a decade of building, questioning, and bearing witness, Thomas Jay Rush examines what went right, what went sideways, and what the path forward might look like. Writing from inside the machine—as a developer who built tools for blockchain transparency—he offers neither the breathless hype of true believers nor the smug dismissal of skeptics. These essays ask the harder questions: Why do revolutionary technologies so often drift toward the systems they're meant to replace? Can decentralization survive contact with human nature? And what would it actually take to get this right? The revolution isn't over. It's just getting started.