If multi-chain theory wasn’t nebulous enough for you, just wait. They might not have Alaskan Thunderfuck up here in the Mile High City, but they do have Girl Scout Cookies shilled on every corner, and they’re just kicking in. So, allow me to high-splain why the inevitable need for wallet/profile managers to help users navigate fakakta technological hurdles between different blockchain environments empirically supports my own personal theory of the blockchain.
In short: web3 is not worth the hype. Not because I don’t buy into the promise of the core technology, which, given the hours of my life I’ve dedicated to hyperbolizing it in this little thing of ours, like… obviously. But web3 in and of itself is nothing special. It’s merely a symptom of a pattern in technological advancement I’ve observed time and again.
When mass adoption of cryptographic technology finally comes, it’ll be because intermediary companies will have taken on the risk of navigating these chains on behalf of their users and are paid to assume the financial risk for doing so. HTTP will likely still be the front door to the Internet. The only way that users will recognize the shift from web2 to web3 will be in the financial rewards they all of a sudden stand to receive for their online activity — and, in an ideal world, the single profile and password they need to log into anything. DAOs and rugpulls and Solana Sluts aside, these marginal life improvements for average Internet users are the real innovation offered by web3, and when it arrives, they might not even know it.
In essence, web3 is simply a new database technology — one that combines various technology innovations into a novel concept for a common data infrastructure that is both highly secure and censorship-resistant simultaneously. But if you try to explain to an everyday user of the Internet the databases that run their favorite websites, apps, and social media platforms, you’ll just get turned into a meme.
Sure, self-custody and personal management will absolutely exist. But the users who possess the technical knowledge and shits to give about actual blockchain technology have likely adopted it already. And, when the web3 system is one in which you stand to lose thousands of dollars with a simple typo, the perennial web2 assumption — ‘all users are stupid’ — will likely prove true in the end.
Which is why I believe web3 will not be some paradigm shift or evergreen replacement for Silicon Valley, as so many evangelists hype it up to be. It’s just the latest iteration in the cycle of technology, pendulum swinging from centralization to decentralization, indirectly proving out the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The early Internet was glorious, unusable chaos. Tech monopolies arrived to force it into vaguely manageable order and/or propagate fascism, whichever came first. But we got sick of it, so now we’re back to romanticizing the Wild West, boats beating on against the current, borne ceaselessly into the Metaverse.
New authorities will soon emerge to try to wrangle it back into a controllable form, until they, too, are unbundled, as is the way of the world. And so it will continue, on and on, even like our heartbeats, which, damn, mine’s going pretty fast now, so it’s probably time to log off. Come @3lPr0f on Twitter if you disagree, but I will die on this highdea, considering I am justifying the building of our company on it entirely.