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Mass adoption is the elusive “Holy Grail” of any consumer technology and something that has been widely written and thought about in the context of the emerging Web 3.0 industry.
But how do you measure something like “mass acceptance”? Would it be based on the number of users? Or the revenues of the industries that developed the technology?
Perhaps it is better to measure the mass adoption of consumer technologies by something else. Albert Einstein famously said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
Perhaps the best way to measure the mass adoption of Web 3.0 is to ask whether it has become so simple that your grandmother can explain it and, more importantly, use it.
Grandma knows what’s going on
My grandmother is as sharp as a bridle. She has a university degree, reads voraciously and is proficient in many subjects. However, information technology is not their forte.
Like many of her generation, she believes that “newfangled” computer technologies are unnecessarily opaque, difficult, dangerous to navigate, and constantly changing.
Which, I have to admit, is a valid criticism even for a technologist like me, especially when it comes to Web 3.0.
When you get right down to it, crypto, blockchain, and Web 3.0 in general are complicated. It’s a world full of prototypes competing for attention and funding.
Almost everything is still in beta. In most major jurisdictions there is almost no regulatory clarity, let alone approval.
And when it comes to the most important part of consumer technology adoption, it leaves a lot to be desired, to say the least.
It’s hard to measure exactly how many Web 3.0 users there are, but JP Morgan recently highlighted the drop in ETH transactions following the much-hyped Shanghai upgrade, calling it “disappointing.”
Bitcoin also shows some disappointing realities. According to a recent report from Chainalysis, there are now over 460 million Bitcoin addresses But over 288 million of these have no balance or have only been used once, and of the wallets identified by Chainalysis as “economically relevant,” only 27 million actually hold Bitcoin.
It is estimated that although almost 90% of people have heard of Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies, only 2.7% of the world’s population actually owns cryptocurrencies.
The hashrate for Bitcoin reached a new all-time high in September 2023, indicating that more miners than ever are trying to mine new Bitcoins However, only about $7 billion worth of Bitcoin transactions were processed on centralized exchanges this year, significantly less than $13.8 billion and $11 billion in 2021 and 2022, respectively.
In other words, almost everyone has heard of crypto and Web 3.0, but most users who try it leave and don’t come back.
Doesn’t seem like the kind of technology Grandma will be going out of her way to learn to use any time soon.
A bigger problem than lack of acceptance People on the run
But why are so many people leaving Web 3.0? Well, the most obvious answer to me is that it’s just too difficult to use. DeFi, DEXs, swaps, temporary loss, yield farming, dollar cost averaging, complicated tax compliance and the list goes on.
I’ve been into cryptocurrencies for a long time, but to this day, every time I set up a new wallet, I have an unshakable feeling that one day I will lose my 24-word seed phrase and be locked out of my wallet forever.
Imagine Grandma trying to keep track. I get tired just thinking about explaining what to me is a “seed phrase.”
Another problem is language. Mempool, Halving, Forking, Airdrops, Consensus, Byzantine Fault Tolerance, HODL and DAO.
If you let grandma use these words without a Web 3.0 dictionary, she will definitely end up getting “rekt”.
Even crypto natives have difficulty with some of these terms. I know die-hard Bitcoin maximalists who disagree about whether the reduction in Bitcoin mining rewards should be called a “halving” or a “halving.”
Regardless of which of the two you prefer, Grandma will stay out of Web 3.0 until we find a language she can understand.
Something else that scares many users about Web 3.0 is the fact that there is no going back.
Transactions are final even if you make a mistake. Didn’t you want to send all your ETH in this transaction? A pity. Are you missing a step while trying to bridge some assets to layer two? That’s gone.
In November 2022, Crypto.com accidentally sent 320,000 ETH or about $400,000,000 to the wrong recipient.
Just last September, Paxos accidentally paid $500,000 in Bitcoin transaction fees and had to ask the Bitcoin miners who processed the transaction to refund the money.
In both cases, the funds were recovered, but if grandma makes such a mistake, she will simply be out of luck and out of cryptocurrency.
Grandma won’t join Web 3.0 until it’s safe
This is related to what I believe is still the biggest problem with Web 3.0 today it is dangerous. Even big companies like Paxos and Crypto.com make mistakes.
It seems like almost every day we hear about Mark Cuban’s crypto wallet being hacked and losing $870,000, or that Hong Kong is welcoming back Web 3.0, only to be immediately followed by news of a DeFi hack worth of 200 million US dollars.
As much as people on Web 3.0 like to joke about mistakes like this, the rest of the world isn’t laughing. You are scared.
No one wants to press the wrong button or click on a suspicious link and then watch helplessly as all their money disappears.
Web 3.0 is intended to provide a trustworthy alternative to centralized legacy finance, but currently it appears to offer only a series of pitfalls, with no safety nets and no way to get out if you fall into one.
Combined with the still fresh reputational damage of companies like FTX, Terra Luna and many others, this is more than enough to deter even the most tech-savvy investors and users let alone grandma.
If Mark Cuban can’t keep his hot wallet safe, you can bet Grandma won’t feel comfortable using one any time soon.
That said, it’s not all doom and gloom. It’s still early days, and Web 3.0 has already made great strides and will continue to do so, both in terms of technical advancement and user adoption.
I have faith in the promise of Web 3.0 and the ingenuity of this industry, but I think we would all do well to keep Grandma in mind as we discuss mass adoption and especially when designing new applications and user experiences.
Until Grandma uses Web 3.0 without ever knowing who Satoshi Nakamoto is, we haven’t done our job, Web 3.0 hasn’t succeeded, and we’ll never truly reach that elusive Holy Grail.
Mariana Krym, COO of VSC, a HealthFi ecosystem that leverages Web 3.0 technology to promote positive lifestyle habits through anonymized health data monetization. Mariana has also been trading cryptocurrencies for several years and is an experienced media consultant who has worked with such well-known companies as Waze (now Google), Twitter (now X), Spotify, Snapchat and LinkedIn.
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