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OpenSea was popularized because the NFT minting functionality cost nothing for the artist. So all costs for the blockchain part was passed to the consumer. I believe this was the largest reason it became popular. Blockchain still doesn’t scale well, layer 2 is getting pretty mature though and with Eth Merge happening hopefully things will get significantly better in the next few years.

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The problem with web3 is that the projects still rely on centralized indexes/distribution (OpenSea, Rarible, etc) for discoverability.

"We have had decentralised ownership and distribution of our own content since the early 90s. I own my own domain, but that doesn’t get me traffic. The question is in the networks that sort, filter and organise that, and those aren’t our tokens that we can move." – Benedict Evans [0]

web3 can't deliver on its promise of "freedom from the big platforms" as long as we're beholden to big platforms (Google, OpenSea, Twitter, YouTube, etc) for distribution/discoverability.

The web3 world still hasn't figured out how to decentralize discoverability.

0: https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/1476285185557774337

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