Comment by ranger207

As other comments have pointed out, there are other technical solutions to decentralized identity. The blockchain doesn't solve this problem any better than private keys or Persona or whatever. The article acknowledges this. The problem with existing solutions is not the technical problem, it's the social problem: making the new solution easy to use, fixing bugs and covering edge cases, and getting it deployed widely. The author claims that the social problem is what Web3 solves; that Web3 is the social solution counterpart to the blockchain technical solution.

Web3 is indeed a social solution to this social problem, but the real problem with Web3 is that it's a terrible social solution. Web3 (aka blockchain enthusiasts, aka cryptobros) is a community comprised of on one end by true believers who believe they're smarter than anyone else in the room and that anyone who brings up complaints are only mad because they didn't get in when the cryptocoin was cheap, and on the other end by grifters and scammers who fully acknowledge that they're only in it for a quick buck off the back of unsuspecting rubes.

This is the core problem with most crypto projects. Most blockchain projects have technical problems [0], but even for the few things that blockchain uniquely solves [1] the general scummyness of everyone involved means that anyone advertising they're solving problems with a blockchain is not someone to trust your money with [2].

Of course, the blockchain isn't the only technology to suffer this problem. Blockchain's at the top of the hype cycle right now so of course it's filled with scammers. But even though Pets.com may not have the most competent business, the technology behind ecommerce was generally sound. Blockchain on the other hand has so few useful niches that the only thing left are the hype-men.

[0] Eg you could use NFTs to prove ownership of IRL property, but why? You're just storing a deed in a different place. It used to be in a SQL server somewhere, now it's on a blockchain instead.

[1] That is, decentralized databases where you don't trust all parties not to modify the data. But uh, with whom do you need to share data that you don't trust, and how do you guarantee they're not just feeding false data into it in the first place?

[2] I'm not implying all blockchain enthusiasts are pretentious and/or scammers. Just that there's a much higher proportion of them in the Web3 community than elsewhere.