The general thesis from Why Web3 Matters - a16z crypto:
…web1 was decentralized, web2 centralized everything into platforms, and that web3 will decentralize everything again. web3 should give us the richness of web2, but decentralized.
Moxie Marlinspike >> Blog >> My first impressions of web3: Why people want a centralized service?
- People don’t want to run their own servers, and never will.
- Examples: gmail, AWS, etc.
- A protocol moves much more slowly than a platform.
- If something is truly decentralized, it becomes very difficult to change, and often remains stuck in time (see https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/).
- (counter) example: ETH upgrade
- A sure recipe for success has been to take a 90's protocol that was stuck in time, centralize it, and iterate quickly.
- IRC → Slack
- Email → Facebook (?)
- XMPP → WhatsApp
- If something is truly decentralized, it becomes very difficult to change, and often remains stuck in time (see https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/).
To make these technologies usable, the space is consolidating around… platforms. Again. People who will run servers for you, and iterate on the new functionality that emerges. Infura, OpenSea, Coinbase, Etherscan. … Almost all dApps use either Infura or Alchemy in order to interact with the blockchain. In fact, even when you connect a wallet like MetaMask to a dApp, and the dApp interacts with the blockchain via your wallet, MetaMask is just making calls to Infura!