The problem with Web 3 is that it is too damn difficult for anyone with the slightest bit of tech phobia to use…which is most people. Most people can quite rightly wonder if the “d” in dApp stands for “difficult”. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My first contact with what was to become “Web 3” was in March 2013 when I bought my first bitcoin for the handsome sum of $40. I was immediately convinced that blockchain was the future. Shortly thereafter I bought ether during the Ethereum ICO, for 25c per ether. Go figure. Since those early days of bitcoin and ether, I have watched with delight as the altcoin, DeFi, crypto, smart contract, Web 3 space was born. And it’s really fantastic and wonderful and all that, but…

I have noticed a tendency among adopters, and especially among developers, of Web 3 to take a mutually-exclusive stance towards Web 2 – “Web 2 for the stupid muggles, Web 3 for us clever wizards and witches”. This kind of thinking is flawed in the same way as the thinking of an anti-evolutionist, who asks, “What is the use of half an eye?” The eye began its evolution as a cluster of light-sensitive cells, capable only of distinguishing between light and dark. Only over much time did it evolve into the complex system it is today. It was not an “out with blindness, let there be seeing” revolutionary throwing out of what was (light-sensitive cells) and replacing it with a far more advanced something else (the eye as we know it today).

While I understand, and even share some of the revolutionary “Web 2 is dead, long live Web 3” fervour, the truth is that just like with the eye, and just like the evolution from Web 1 to Web 2, there will be an evolutionary transition from Web 2 to Web 3, and as with the eye, and also as it was with Web 1/Web 2, it will take time.  Nor will Web 2 be discarded completely, just as Web 1’s underlying technology is still with us, as are the light-sensitive cells that were the beginning of the eye.

Currently almost all developers’ eyes are focused on the development of Web 3 applications, frameworks and platforms – i.e. the eye as we know it today.  Very little of the vast pool of brainpower is focused on the next evolutionary step from Web 2 to Web 3.

As a consequence you hear Web 3 champions calling for the “first great dApp” that will successfully challenge and vanquish the great Web 2 apps. What I do not hear is many Web 3 champions calling for “the first great dApp that CONNECTS Web 2 to Web 3; that allows the billions of Web 2 “muggles” to access the magical benefits of Web 3.

What I would like to see are developers focused on the building of applications that allow Web 2 users to have the benefit of Web 3 tech without ever having to download a wallet(or whatever a wallet will be called one day) or safeguard 12 key words or sign-up with an exchange to buy crypto or squint at a hash or ever hear the word smart contract. 

Until Web 3 is as easy, or more easy to use than Web 2 applications, Web 3 and its wizards and witches will remain in Hogwarts doing magic for each other. And that’s fine if that’s your thing. But it’s not the real world out there, because the real world is Web 2 world, where using apps is as easy as entering your name and a password. It is also where the billions of muggles, and their money, are. They’ll gladly pay for the magic, but not if they have to learn the spells.