Were we wrong about Web3?

A "blockchain" as a database structure is all right. It's perfectly appropriate for a handful of traders who trade only with each other underneath a buttonwood tree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttonwood_Agreement

It's the "permissionless blockchain" that's toxic.

When Bitcoin first got attention my first thought was: the distributed systems community never invented this because they saw the whole point of distributed systems as "add more nodes and handle a bigger workload". If you were not at least trying to do that they'd never accept your paper for a conference.

The point of Bitcoin is to add nodes so you can add more nodes, not to be scalable. That's what makes it planet roasting and noncompetitive with rent seekers like Visa and Mastercard that only charge 3% for a transaction.