Is Web3 too Fragmented?

Web3 has an issue. It isn’t the consumer expertise, the shortage of regulation, and even the prevalence of bots and scammers attempting to steal folks’s crypto and NFTs. It is the fragmentation. As soon as upon a time, there was bitcoin, the world’s first digital foreign money. Issues have been easier, for those who needed to personal a real, native digital asset, you got bitcoin. Within the subsequent years, some bitcoin alternate options emerged, however actually there was simply bitcoin and never a lot else.

Consolidation wants to come back sooner somewhat than later to fulfil the potential of web3

Half a decade later, one thing new got here alongside a model new blockchain, which was a lot greater than a digital foreign money. It was a massively decentralised pc. Named Ethereum, it was a decentralised software platform. With the facility of good contracts, it enabled you not simply to create your personal new digital property, however solely new forms of monetary functions in addition to techniques utilizing a brand new decentralised governance mannequin. 

Each Bitcoin and Ethereum thrived within the years following their launch, with proponents and customers of those networks embracing their narratives of digital money and decentralised computation respectively. 

These supporters focussed their energies on constructing communities and helpful merchandise and functions utilising these platforms. Others focussed on creating new abstractions to simplify their adoption, thus offering better utility for his or her current customers and serving to to onboard new customers. 

While the recognition of those applied sciences has grown, some felt that these platforms offered too many shortcomings and that they might create a superior platform. This resulted in a variety of new blockchain networks rising within the years following bitcoin and Ethereum, all with a view to offering a quicker/extra scalable/and many others various. This has been notably acute with respect to Ethereum. The bitcoin rivals have usually been derivatives of bitcoin, with a couple of adjustments made by their creators. 

Whereas within the case of the decentralised functions platforms, you’ve a variety of various layer one networks (alt-layer1s) attempting to place themselves as superior to Ethereum. This consists of Binance Sensible Chain, Cardano, Polkadot and Solana. 

There are a selection of nice minds engaged on these alt-layer1 platforms, and they’re very real with their intentions. The difficulty is the way it fragments the web3 panorama, with the potential to decelerate the general adoption of blockchain and associated applied sciences, and in some instances tarnish society’s broader notion of web3. 

In hindsight, it was extremely lucky that the U.S. Authorities created the Web. Initially focussed on linking army and educational networks within the Nineteen Seventies. By the point it was made obtainable for personal sector and public consumption, there was a community in place with confirmed applied sciences similar to TCP/IP and DNS serving as its spine. The limitations to entry for creating an alternative choice to the web have been too excessive, so entrepreneurs and companies labored with this as their platform for innovation, which resulted within the creation of the world vast net, and all the subsequent improvements and companies that have been constructed on prime of it. 

Up to now couple of a long time, we have seen software program consuming the world, with virtually limitless funding for corporations from well-capitalised VCs. These funds have been used to create new internet-scale software program platforms servicing an ever-increasing variety of customers and companies (AWS, Google, and many others). 

What this has meant is within the context of web3, when a brand new founding crew comes alongside and says they imagine they’ll construct a superior community to Ethereum, there are many traders keen to throw cash within the ring as a result of:

• The founding crew has a singular angle and monitor file

• Their enterprise mannequin is predicated on taking bets — they settle for that solely 7.5% of their investments will truly repay

• They see it as a chance to generate a possible 100-1000x return based mostly on the return early crypto traders had

Because of this, we’re now in an setting the place there are a number of public blockchain networks all vying for customers, the place equal infrastructure is being ported or rebuilt on all of those completely different networks.

Interoperability can also be restricted, the place the switch of property between completely different platforms is clunky and comes with a variety of dangers — most of the main exploits in web3 have been by way of bridges between blockchains, which could be thought of the Achilles heel of a lot of the general public infrastructure. 

We see it time and time once more in software program with technologists reinventing software program frameworks, so this behaviour just isn’t unusual. However given the work required to create and run a public blockchain community efficiently, plus the community impact required for it to succeed. The pragmatist inside me believes that we might be higher served by groups focussing on the layers and abstractions that may be created on prime of an current base community as an alternative of making alternate options. 

This may allow web3 to evolve far quicker than it’s at current. So many sources are being spent investing in alternate options and attempting to bridge completely different platforms, that the notion of many onlookers is just that web3 has turn out to be too fragmented to double down on one platform.

This harms innovation, because it leaves many watching from the sidelines to conclude that they need to wait till the panorama consolidates earlier than doubling down on one community or know-how. 

We’re lucky that Ethereum’s Digital Machine has turn out to be standardised throughout a lot of web3, which is fostering plenty of innovation within the house. However this isn’t sufficient. Think about if when the web was created as an alternative of a single international community, you had a number of non-public entities competing to create their very own international networks, every of them positioning themselves as superior to what had come earlier than. 

As an alternative of personal enterprise focussing on constructing browsers and engines like google, we might have been caught within the trenches with all of them creating their very own model of TCP/IP, or HTML and HTTP, with a scarcity of interoperability plaguing the broader adoptions of the know-how.

That is the purpose it looks as if we’re in web3. There may be an inevitability that we’ll see better consolidation of platforms and protocols over time. Maybe it is too optimistic to imagine that we might standardise on only one public blockchain community with Ethereum as the first settlement layer for web3, and Bitcoin retaining its place as digital gold. 

This may permit different networks to stay in existence as layer two networks, that inherit the safety ensures of Ethereum. This strategy can be helpful for customers of web3 who would have a constant base platform throughout the board, and be sure that the first focus of the layers that exist on prime is so as to add ever-increasing capabilities and worth for its customers. Thus servicing the tip consumer much better than we do presently, and serving to web3 evolve quicker to succeed in its true potential. 

Historical past is suffering from examples of the place one of the best know-how did not win, and we have to attain a degree the place we decide to constructing on prime of what we have got. In spite of everything, what is the level in frequently optimising one thing that has but to succeed in its full potential?