Since 2017 I’ve been captivated (and at times a bit repulsed) by Web3 tools and networks — blockchains, smart contracts, p2p data systems, cryptocurrencies, and the communities that are building them. What even is Web3? It’s become such an emotionally loaded term, I’ve intentionally avoided using it, or only bashfully use it in private settings. But I still find it useful, and want to lay my thinking out, as framing for my current research (which I’m sharing more of soon).

I’ve come to view Web3 as a set of design principles.

Web3 systems are durable: The digital systems that connect us should behave reliably. This includes both technical and behavioral design patterns — stack + stewards should all be deeply predictable.
Web3 systems are open: Our digital platforms shouldn’t be gatekept or exclusionary, and they should be extensible (or “composable”) meaning others can plug in and expand on or remix things.
Web3 systems are consensual: People should be empowered to give informed consent about everything they do, with a credible way to switch providers without huge sacrifice. (This is rarely done well — dark patterns are all too common and lucrative.)

There are very real technical advantages to systems that successfully embody these design principles, but many of the benefits have more to do with the ethics of these systems than their functionality.

Life on a spectrum

These values sit on a spectrum, often in tension with each other — nothing is “100%” durable, open and opt-in. But I’ve found this heuristic to be very useful in making an otherwise inscrutable ecosystem easier to parse. Now I can ask — how does this { product, service, network, protocol or community } adhere to these design principles? How do I know? Is it an appropriate place to apply those principles? … and so on.

I’ve found that these principles show up in nuanced ways. For example, in Web3 systems, users authenticate themselves with digital signatures, created with private keys they alone control. This subtle but consequential architectural pattern empowers them to switch clients without losing their accounts (enhancing how “opt-in” a system is) — but it also introduces the risk of lost keys, a problem the Ethereum ecosystem has expended real resources to solve.

These principles offer real value to end users, but designing apps and products that surface those benefits in experiential, tangible ways is really tricky. Very few have succeeded, which explains why there are so few successful Web3 consumer apps that don’t rely on greed as their growth mechanism.

Blockchains are a social innovation

One overarching observation worth making: I’ve come to view blockchains as a social innovation, rather than a technical one. This is because despite all the complicated engineering, blockchains serve to redefine the trust relationships we form around the digital infrastructure that connects us. Because changing trust relationships depends on humans adjusting their beliefs, I suspect it will take a fair bit longer for smart contracts to “rewire” our economy — despite many clear technical advantages public ledgers offer, and even with the recent passing of the GENIUS Act, and imminent passing of the CLARITY and CBDC Anti-Surveillance State acts in the US providing some regulatory clarification.

I recently saw quite a strong explanation of why blockchains are valuable — as “public digital payments infrastructure”. And with smart contracts, “payments” can be dropped — Ethereum goes beyond Bitcoin and expands what blockchains can be used for beyond payments, to any digital application. Tying this back to Web3 design principles — public: open, opt-in. And payments systems must be reliable to be useful: durable.

Still interested

Despite many mounting concerns, I’m still drawn to Web3 — in some ways, more than ever. As AI changes the internet in unforeseeable ways, the importance of these principles is becoming clearer. I’ve spent a lot of time working out how to apply Web3 design principles to an unusual domain — geospatial data technologies. More on that soon.