Web 3 is not ready for mass adoption and it's a good thing
Thoughts on digital paper
1Bear with me this is my first Web 3 article. While I was writing this, I figured it might be a touch too long. So, I’ve decided to turn this article into a series. I’ll add to it as time goes or I’m just a serial procrastinator, your choice. Enjoy ! Please feel free to leave a comment. Love always, Toch
IF I read one more time, that crypto is a great avenue for money laundering, fraud or tax evasion I might pluck out my own eyes. Trust me, there couldn’t be a better field day for an investigator tracking down funds on a publicly available database. However, how many times have you bought into a Rug? How many stories of drained wallets have you heard? How many times have you paid ridiculous gas fees just to swap a couple shitcoins? How many times have you had a mini heart attack degening a free mint with a loaded wallet ? (btw never do that ffs) . I could go on forever, point being pretty much everyone in the space has their pet peeve or deals with something particularly annoying on a regular basis. The only reason we deal with this is that at the end of the day we truly believe in the potential of Web 3 in shaping future society and we’ll be here ready for it in the future or, we’re all just bloody idiots.
From the perspective of a first-time user it’s a whole different story. Imagine opening your first wallet and having it drained because you fell on a scammy discord server link. Be it your fault or not, if that were me I’d probably say “f*ck this” and never come back. Events as such are true barriers of entry. The lack of security, insurance, education can prove to be problematic. Nonetheless, the presence of these shortcomings at this early stage is also an indicator on what needs to be built efficiently in order to accommodate the masses and achieve social progress.
In this article I’ll share my thoughts on Web 3 with a specific focus on areas such as: the need for contemporary regulation, transition between Web 2 and Web 3, the subconscious need for decentralisation and finally, achieving true interoperability. I hope you enjoy the read.
Web 3 is an extremely broad term that honestly is still being defined as we speak, it incorporates DeFI instruments, to decentralised exchanges all the way to Cryptodickbutts. The one thing they have in common for me, apart from blockchain obviously, is a need for regulation. Now, regulation ESPECIALLY in the decentralised space is often frowned upon but this is mostly due to the kind of regulation we are subject to nowadays. It’s a process that is governed by a central authority usually a government. It aims to protect a system and especially its users from all kinds of negative externalities. On the down side, this body can quickly become judge, jury and executioner. In the last few months we have seen the crash of high market cap crypto firms such as Terra or 3AC. The big issue here is that thousands of people lost savings and hard earned money in the blink of an eye. One can easily jump to the DYOR argument, which I agree with in most cases where users must do thorough research before investing their money in any sort of protocol. Here’s the issue, UST for example claimed to be a stablecoin - crypto that is pegged to a currency, USD in this case. It allows people to keep their funds in crypto without exposing themselves to the daily volatility of everyday cryptocurrencies and tokens – but it didn’t even have any actual backed collateral. It was built on an automated protocol to uphold its peg, users were rewarded with up to 20% returns for staking. Whether or not this information could be found easily, a coin as such should not be allowed to label itself as a stable coin. We can all look up this information but not everyone has basic economic understanding and if the space wants to embrace mass adoption it needs to look out for EVERYONE. I’m not a dev, but the sort of measures the space needs is regulation that is automated. This is where information is transparent and easily available. This then makes it a safer and fairer playing field. If Tom decides to take the risk and park his money at *ShitcoinsandStable* offering him a 25 % return, in the event it fails there wouldn’t be much ground to complain. On top of this, if we are able to build some kind of self-regulation it opens grounds for decentralised insurance companies to grow. At the moment no one in their right mind should be offering non-collateral backed insurance as the space is just too uncertain and volatile. One wrong click and the contents of your wallet can vanish. I would like to end this section by saying we should not look at regulation as control but as ways to spread the acceptance of Crypto and blockchain as a technology. With the millions of giga brains out there someone will figure it out sooner rather than later but I’ll tell you one thing: That’s not me hehe.