HYPE CEMETERY The unfulfilled promises
An archive of overhyped future stories — what was promised, what really happened, and why the narrative lost the reality check.
4 entries in the archive
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Metaverse as the next internet layer
- Promised
- In 2021 Mark Zuckerberg promised the metaverse as the successor to mobile internet — billions of users and immersive workplaces by 2025.
- Reality
- Reality Labs has burned over USD 50B since 2021; Horizon Worlds remains under 200k monthly users. Meta visibly pivoted toward AI starting 2024.
- Why overhyped
- A platform bet placed before any killer application existed. Hardware (Quest) and social adoption (VR meetings) lagged far behind market assumptions.
-
Fully self-driving robotaxis by 2020
- Promised
- Between 2017 and 2019 Tesla, Waymo and Cruise pledged a city-wide robotaxi fleet by end of 2020 — no safety drivers.
- Reality
- Cruise lost its San Francisco licence in 2023. Waymo operates in 4 US cities with a tight geofence. Tesla FSD remains SAE Level 2.
- Why overhyped
- Long-tail edge cases were underestimated. Sensor stacks too costly; regulation slower than the demo videos. Investor expectation != engineering reality.
-
Graphene battery revolutionises storage
- Promised
- Between 2012 and 2016 dozens of startups promised graphene batteries with ten-fold capacity, five-minute charging and market readiness by 2018.
- Reality
- No mass-market battery contains structural graphene today. Lithium iron phosphate dominates; solid-state is the real frontier, not graphene.
- Why overhyped
- Scaling illusion: lab samples != industrial manufacturing. A material-only story convinced press, not OEMs.
-
Blockchain replaces databases
- Promised
- In 2017/18 consultancies promised blockchain solutions for supply chains, citizen IDs, voting and health records — with "end-to-end trust" as the stock phrase.
- Reality
- Most pilot projects were shut down or replaced with classical databases. Use cases narrowed to crypto settlement and a few asset tokenisations.
- Why overhyped
- A tooling hammer searching for nails. Latency, governance and UX were better solved by every existing database.
