My primary concern, right now, is that Web3 is inaccessible to the majority of people, because its very architecture makes a "free" version of it impossible.
[1] https://docs.ipfs.io/concepts/faq/#what-is-ipfs [2] https://web3-technology-stack.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
Free versions of things are often impractical. Good things take time and effort. How many users host their own email servers or have their own mastodon instance for example? Most people prefer to pay (in fees or in ad attention) for premium versions of these services that are built/maintained by private companies in a closed/centralized manner.
At its best, Web3’s marriage of economics and technology allows for a hybrid model where people pay for premium versions of these products built by people/companies in an open manner. The closed vs. open is key here. Without Web3 you can build something open/decentralized for free or something closed/centralized for profit. Web3 allows building services that are open/for profit.
Imagine the power of capitalism harnessed by open projects. Maybe I’m crazy, but that’s what excites me about Web3.
And nothing is stopping anyone, today, from building open things, while making money.
Here it is, people are just confused because there is a strong incentive on this forum to trash anything cryptocurrency related.
Web3 is by far the easiest way to provide auth to a web app right now, if you haven’t experimented with it I highly recommend giving it a try. The react library is a decent place to start.
Easiest by what measure? As I understand it, few browsers (read: only one or two) have built in wallets and outside of that the UX for this auth isn’t great. It’s hard to see how this is better/easier to use than existing OIDC/"Sign In With X" solutions.
Agreed, it’s much the same as OIDC.
Tho personally, beyond GitHub for dev related sites, I won’t use them.
If anything it enables “websites” to be simpler, smaller.
A UI atop a single function.
Without the bloat. Without the “we must do enough to show value to get users to sign up”.
I just auth, use it, and move on with my life.
Sometimes there’s a fee per use. Sometimes that value is exchanged somewhere else in the transaction. But either way, I got what I needed and I’m done.
Web3 is everything we wanted out of auth for the last decade or so.
I don't disagree that having a keypair on the client for authentication is a cool idea, but it's hardly specific to "Web3" (e.g. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/authenticationserv...).
I do see the value in being able to bring an identity around and store it in a blockchain, but... extreme fragmentation is a bummer.
If that's your basis, then I don't think you're inspired by anything other than pecuniary interest, which is the crux of the issue by the OP.
It's pretty well-known that Bitcoin is likely the worst way to digitally send micropayments. The fees are way too high. Bitcoin does not scale.
Yeah, the Lightning Network exists, but that doesn't really solve the problem for one-off microtransactions.
What's expensive is storage and meaningful actions.
In terms of "easy way to provide auth" … for who? Certainly not end users.
Also, the people who want a "pay per use" web are, shockingly, generally people for whom "pay per use" is financially feasible. That is not the majority of people.