There’s a lot of hype about web3, so much so that the New York Times recently ran a profile on the many tech executives leaving their posts to join the space. The article focuses on the financial leverage that cryptocurrencies offer and less so on why web3 matters as the next wave of computing. As a software engineer, and someone who recently joined the web3 space, I wanted to share my view of the excitement and challenges facing web3.

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Let’s start with the exciting stuff :)

• The Technology. Achieving consensus in an untrusted network is a technological breakthrough that the Bitcoin blockchain pioneered. It’s a real breakthrough, unlocking the digital ability to create scarcity, make guarantees in the future, and create the first resilient, real-world applicable version of digital money. Also, all of these protocols rely on some major advancements in the field of cryptography (i.e. zero knowledge proofs), which is super cool if you’re into computer security.

• The Principles. As software continues to be ingrained in our lives, it is imperative to give the user more control over the services they use, the assets they own, and the data they share. Centralized services, like Facebook, have too much power in making those choices for their users and exerting undue influence for the benefit of itself, not its users. Web3’s principles of decentralization, ownership, and self-certifying protocols shift the power back to the user.

• The Openness - It’s not just open source software, it’s all out in the open: whitepapers, improvement proposals, new ideas, airdrops, security vulnerabilities, governance mechanisms, and the state of the blockchains themselves are out there for everyone to see. This creates accountability, builds trust, and helps accelerate innovation.

• The Community - This is a movement that spans the globe, with projects blooming everywhere. You literally can’t go down a crypto rabbit hole without uncovering ten more holes to dig into. Plus, there’s an amazing level of support within the community that provides resources and help. But most importantly, the community brings people in - as evidenced by traditionally late tech adopters, i.e. banks and artists, already becoming integral parts of web3, through Defi and NFTs respectively.

• It’s Early - A lot of the technology is nascent with a lot of product left to build and many more users to come. So there’s a lot of room for impact.

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But all of these exciting properties have their challenges*

• The blockchain consensus mechanisms are groundbreaking, but they are notoriously slow. Scalability is a major challenge over the next few years.

• Decentralization is a great ideal, but it makes systems more complex to build and gain adoption. In reality, there is a spectrum and web3 projects need to balance purist ideals with pragmatism to build useful products and compete with web2. 

• The accountability of open source is high stakes. You make a mistake, have a bug, get hacked, or make a change that goes against the network ethos and you risk people leaving, or forking the project anew.

• A community with big principles can spread itself too thin. It’s hard to build one scalable service for the world. It’s hard enough for people in web3 to keep track of everything going on in web3! A little more focus and a little less FOMO will go a long way.

• The multitude of projects combined with financial speculation, lends itself to fraud, scams, vaporware, pyramid schemes, and more. It’s hard to know what’s real. So the onus falls on the individual to secure their keys, perform due diligence, know who to trust, and invest their time and money responsibly.

• It’s early days, so a lot of the software is not yet mature. As a developer, you have to prepare yourself for lag, broken builds, bugs, downtime, etc. You have to be technically savvy to actually participate (i.e. mine/validate) in many blockchains. And the end-user experience leaves a lot to be desired, even for technical experts. It’s no coincidence that the most popular NFTs are pixelated.

*Recommended reading for more full-length criticisms of web3:

• Moxie's critique surrounding the challenges of making web3 decentralized

• Taleb’s paper arguing Bitcoin cannot be a currency

• The Case Against Crypto

• Cryptocurrency Is a Giant Ponzi Scheme

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So why get into this craze? For one, all of these challenges, and there are some major technical, product, and distribution challenges, are surmountable. Oh, and disrupting some of the world’s major central players… that’s hard… check.

Two, web3 is one of the most fast-paced, talented, innovative, and invested in areas in tech. Not to mention the hype, politics, and, of course, the volatility. It has the feeling of being in a startup rollercoaster for a whole industry. It’s fun… check.

But most of all, the mission. web3 aims to build a better internet for its users, aligning incentives to benefit the entire network, not singular entities. You can see the early promise, with web3 making headway in finance (don’t forget Bitcoin was a response to the 2008 financial crisis), supporting creators, providing alternatives to corrupt governments, and building services to rival the great monopolies of our time. And much like past internet and mobile trends transformed society, I’m hard pressed to find an industry that will not be disrupted by a web3 alternative. It’s a techno-optimist future that’s worth fighting for.