A couple of weeks ago I was at a roundtable discussion on the future of crypto. Everyone seems to agree that the next wave is about companies figuring out how to make products that are friendly, and products where the benefits of crypto are felt but the technology underneath it is invisible.

It was in that frame of mind that I found Fred Wilson's post about moving from a blog platform to Paragraph, and decided to try it out myself. We are getting much closer! It's been obvious for quite some time that Web3 technology offers a better alternative for social platforms by removing the platform incentives that put users and owners at odds.

But it's very tricky to do it right, and regular people have little patience for weirdness. I'll give you an example. As I was setting up my account here on Paragraph (did you realize you were reading something that was published on Web3 rails?), I had to go figure out which wallet I had attached to my jasonpreston.eth domain, and use that to log in. That wallet is in MetaMask.

Always in Web3 you have to be a little wary of things you don't understand and what permissions they have on your account. So when MetaMask threw this dialog up during the process, it gave me pause:

What do you mean switch the network? What's the difference between Ethereum Mainnet and Base? Why do I need to switch in order to create an account with Paragraph? None of this makes any sense to me, and although I'm admittedly not very sophisticated in crypto, I'm way beyond most social media users.

After setting up my Paragraph account, I realized that it would let me connect to Farcaster. A while ago I set up an account through Warpcast, so I do have an account there. But I can't remember or figure out if I connected it to a wallet or not, and in any case, if I go to try to connect my Warpcast account to a wallet, it only gives me two wallet options: Coinbase Wallet and Rainbow.

I don't have a wallet on either of those services, and of course I just finished setting up a Paragraph account using a wallet on MetaMask! Can I have a wallet in multiple places (e.g. MetaMask and Coinbase wallet?)? Can I move a wallet from MetaMask to Rainbow or Coinbase wallet? Can a hosted wallet become a self-hosted wallet?

I don't know the answer to any of these questions. But you get the point: although we are a lot closer than we were to user-friendly platforms powered by Web3, we are still a long ways away.

A couple of weeks ago I was at a roundtable discussion on the future of crypto. Everyone seems to agree that the next wave is about companies figuring out how to make products that are friendly, and products where the benefits of crypto are felt but the technology underneath it is invisible.

It was in that frame of mind that I found Fred Wilson's post about moving from a blog platform to Paragraph, and decided to try it out myself. We are getting much closer! It's been obvious for quite some time that Web3 technology offers a better alternative for social platforms by removing the platform incentives that put users and owners at odds.

But it's very tricky to do it right, and regular people have little patience for weirdness. I'll give you an example. As I was setting up my account here on Paragraph (did you realize you were reading something that was published on Web3 rails?), I had to go figure out which wallet I had attached to my jasonpreston.eth domain, and use that to log in. That wallet is in MetaMask.

Always in Web3 you have to be a little wary of things you don't understand and what permissions they have on your account. So when MetaMask threw this dialog up during the process, it gave me pause:

What do you mean switch the network? What's the difference between Ethereum Mainnet and Base? Why do I need to switch in order to create an account with Paragraph? None of this makes any sense to me, and although I'm admittedly not very sophisticated in crypto, I'm way beyond most social media users.

After setting up my Paragraph account, I realized that it would let me connect to Farcaster. A while ago I set up an account through Warpcast, so I do have an account there. But I can't remember or figure out if I connected it to a wallet or not, and in any case, if I go to try to connect my Warpcast account to a wallet, it only gives me two wallet options: Coinbase Wallet and Rainbow.

I don't have a wallet on either of those services, and of course I just finished setting up a Paragraph account using a wallet on MetaMask! Can I have a wallet in multiple places (e.g. MetaMask and Coinbase wallet?)? Can I move a wallet from MetaMask to Rainbow or Coinbase wallet? Can a hosted wallet become a self-hosted wallet?

I don't know the answer to any of these questions. But you get the point: although we are a lot closer than we were to user-friendly platforms powered by Web3, we are still a long ways away.