Comment by InitialBP
3 years ago
Standards are for people who are not experts in the field or don't have the time and energy to research the existing crypto and actually sift through them to try and decide what to trust and what not to trust.
Lack of standardization might just make it harder for Joe to filter through the google searches and figure out what algorithm to use. He may just pick the first result on Google, which is an ad for the highest bidder on some keywords which may or may not be good.
Standards are also essential for the interoperability of systems.
Formal standards aren't essential for interoperability.
Maybe not "essential" but I'm willing to guess that a huge percentage of the modern web communicates over HTTP or HTTPS.
"Essential" is interesting because you could definitely argue that HTTP isn't essential, but I don't think there is any feasible way of denying that the formalization and acceptance of early internet protocols (UDP, TCP, HTTP, FTP, etc) have played a significant role in shaping our modern technology world.
In a similar way, having reasonable standards makes it easier for everyone that isn't an expert in a particular field to just use something that is likely to work reasonably well while they worry about some other special part of their idea.