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  "title": "Reputation in Web3: Ships Built on the Great Flood",
  "note": "This is a great essay. First let me start though by saying that I would define Web2 and Web3 differently than the author. I tend to want to define those terms as technical things. The way this essay defines them is more common though. I also don't think that Web2 and Web3 are _versus_ each other, but can live together. However, the main point of this article is about digital identities and I accept there may be more versus in that context. \n\nI also love that significant context is presented.\n\n> Social apps or content with just the right combination of uniqueness, design genius and luck had hit the jackpot and acquired millions of customers within hours. And so they poured their ideas, talent and cash into these platforms, adding even more appealing media and interactivity, fostering even deeper engagement without any additional cost to the network. And despite the grumbles about unfair practices or addictive behaviors, all this just made the networks more essential. The flood of users kept pouring in.\n\nThere are seven primary benefits that are highlighted for Web3.\n\n- Platform wealth and economic sharing\n- Content ownership and rights\n- The happy accident of NFTs\n- Lies, hype and bots\n- Governance, individual influence and moderation\n- Permissionless development and composability\n- New models of work and collaboration\n\nThe primary punchline is that decentralization is not enough. Use X instead of Y because it is \"decentralized\" is not going to succeed. The vast majority of people don't care. It sounds like technobabble. While that decentralization may be the critical difference, it will have to show up as value in ease-of-use, durability, something that people can associate value with. \n\nThe essay leaves us with this interesting question (emphasis mine).\n\n> Right now, and for the foreseeable future, follower graphs on centralized social networks are a source of significant and enduring value. We see in every dimension of our society how efficiently that influence can be translated into financial, political and cultural gain. So to ask our question another way: **Will there be a time when most users’ on-chain identities and reputations are more valuable to them than their centralized social network follower count and composition?**\n\nThis is a great way to prompt this question, and gets to the root of the matter. Your digital identity is a core aspect of _you_. Speaking for myself, and I don't always like this, but I for sure am willing to put up with more frustration the closer a platform is to my digital identity. I have many concerns with Twitter, but because I made it part of my digital identity, getting rid of it is much more difficult than say [deleting my Reddit account](https://www.thingelstad.com/2015/07/12/see-ya-reddit.html).\n\nThe other thing this made me think of is [OpenID](https://openid.net). OpenID suggests that a user should sign in with their website. I think for many people this is broken from the beginning, because they don't have their own websites. There are ways around that, like making Twitter or Github an OpenID provider. But still the thesis is a niche. However, even in that niche I think it is weird. I've had my own website for over two decades, but I don't think of my website as my identity. It is where I publish my blog. The same as I don't think of my house as my identity. These are things that provide value to me, and sometimes others. \n\nAnd this is where my \"aha\" was with the question.\n\n> Will there be a time when most users’ on-chain identities and reputations are more valuable to them than their centralized social network follower count and composition?\n\nMaybe. \n\nI've _felt_ this first-hand with the use of Ethereum Name Service. ENS is very different from DNS in many ways, even though they are only one letter apart. DNS allows a name like thingelstad.com to point to some server on the Internet and give you my website. ENS allows a name like thingelstad.eth to point to some account ID on a blockchain and connect to me, or some entity. That last part is the difference, and it is big. thingelstad.com is my website. thingelstad.eth is really, me. And in it I can publish my name, email, my website, a profile photo. I can publish my addresses on multiple platforms and let you know \"Hey, I’m over on Solana too!\", or \"Check out my Tezos adderess\". You can also see my collection of NFTs, including my POAPs that tell a whole story. \n\nSo, can this usurp the centralized Twitter profile? Maybe. Is it part of my digital identity, for sure. But digital identity is a big surface area and _no one_ technology or solution will likely ever be the whole thing. Oh, and to compare to OpenID, connecting with thingelstad.eth and authenticating in my wallet _feels_ totally normal, simple and easy.\n",
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