Box CEO Aaron Levie on where web3 doesn’t make sense

It has been a rough week for the community as top token selloffs pushed some in the space to double down while leaving others to take stock of how the industry got to this point and what widely accepted truths need to be re-examined.

Box CEOAaron Levie has been more vocal than most in his criticism of the idea of a web3 internet. We had the chance to catch up with Levie on the Chain Reaction show, where we pushed him to dial in on some of the promises he was most skeptical about.

The full episode can be heard below.

The philosophy behind a lot of web3 is compelling. Levie told us that it would be hard to argue against the idea of moredecentralization innovation. There are a lot of challenges in implementing that philosophy.

Levie isn't an executive of a coin startup and he doesn't seem to be exploring a web3 pivot for Box, but he tells us that "by virtue of being a startup founder, you sort of have to comprehend where."

The recent high-profile failures of highly-centralized players in the blockchain world have shown that more organizations should be run together. Levie doesn't seem to think that collective ownership will replace the traditional structures of the startup world in the near future.

We have to decide if we want to buy the phone or not because we rely on people in Cupertino to make the decisions. Levie says that if we voted on anything it would slow down the system and make it hard to innovate. I don't think it's going to work for collective movements to replace the organizational structure of a fast- moving startup

Levie wonders how widespread some of the mechanisms that push consumers towards owning slices of the services they use are.

The reason why we might be over-estimating the consumer demand for ownership is because you get real trade-offs in products when you decide that it will be a product where you can own the items. Advertising makes products cheaper and it facilitates businesses being able to go and find consumers. Some people take the other side. The question is if the size of the market is large enough to warrant a revolution in how the internet works.

You can listen to more of Levie's interview. You can subscribe to Chain Reaction on Apple and other platforms.