Comment by aeneas_ory

OAuth2 is complex and often not the right tool. I wrote Ory Hydra and also a blog post when OAuth2 is/is not a good idea: https://www.ory.com/blog/oauth2-openid-connect-do-you-need-u...

For API Keys we just launched Ory Talos (https://github.com/ory/talos) - a perfect alternative for when OAuth2 is too much for the use case.

There are use cases and security concerns that legitimize using OAuth2 - with specs like DPoP you can make these flows more secure. In my view the use cases presented here is a good one for OAuth2, but it certainly doesn’t make sense everywhere - complexity makes system harder to secure.