Comment by iskander
4 years ago
A lot of these "this is not very different from X, you could do Y" replies remind me of the original Dropbox news.yc thread.
What everyone seems to be missing is that the web3 apps and UI conventions already have broad adoption among millions of only mildly techy users. They don't know what SSH is but they do know how to sign things with their in-browser wallet app. Of course, they also seem to not always know that giving away your private keys is quite bad...
But any "solution" that requires e.g. using the terminal is not really competing in the same space.
Do they really? Or did they follow some guide somewhere hoping to cash in on a gold rush?
If a huge number of people were using cryptocurrency to pay for things every day, I would agree with you. But I think a huge number of people just make one purchase and then sit. What percent of them could actually make a purchase without having to go look up how to do it?
> But any "solution" that requires e.g. using the terminal is not really competing in the same space.
The UI required for that is something that can be done in a couple minutes. The heavy lifting is done by libraries provided with the OS.
And Dropbox was trivially just rsync...
Yet, crypto wallets remain the only cryptographic signature UI that normal people interact with.
Dropbox was “just rsync“ but WAY easier to use for normal people. The iPod was JUST a normal MP3 player with a very easy interface everyone could understand.
Ease of use is EVERYTHING.
At no point does anything described about how web3 works or solves problems sound easier to use than the current system. Logging in with email and a password is easy. Using a Google to sign in is even easier. Apple’s sign in system is ridiculously simple and frictionless.
“Start by finding a chain you like and creating a wallet” is not easy. Do you have to buy coins on the chain? I’ve been seeing a lot of these web3 articles and I truly don’t know. Buying coins is another huge hassle.
“Oh but they’ll already have a wallet.” How? At some point they have to create them. Even if it was easier once they’ve created it (which I dispute), how is that supposed to happen?
If you have an iPhone, you have an Apple account, can do sign in with Apple trivially. If you have an android phone, you have a Google account, you can do sign in with Google trivially. Either way you have an email address, that’s quite easy.
How can you EVER make something simpler than those? I think best case scenario you would be able to match them.
But then you’re back to the problem of why I should switch to the new thing when the current thing works just as well.
I just have a very hard time seeing normal users ever buy into any of this.
I hate all this "web3" stuff by default, but this is so important to remember so you don't miss out on what actually makes it through the hype cycle.