It should give crypto folks something to think about. The %-age of people who know Merkle trees is probably higher on HN than among crypto users. Personally, I

It should give crypto folks something to think about. The %-age of people who know Merkle trees is probably higher on HN than among crypto users. Personally, I went from curious to skeptical twice already - once for plain blockchains, then for web3. I still find the idea of decentralizing web services interesting it just seems to me that most projects heavily rely on their front end and not seldom on a centralized backend too (eg OpenSea, the platform for NFTs, which themselves in most cases are just links to centrally hosted resources, contrary to what most seem to believe). At that point, you just have a normal web app with horrendous UX. The idea that you can create protocols as sort of a public good is interesting in theory, but effectively it's still whoever owns the domain name (+ usually Discord server, Twitter handle,...) that effectively controls everything. But there are some interesting approaches to mitigate that. I believe Aave hosts their app on IPFS now, Liquity has an incentive mechanism for front end hosters for their protocol. And there are some interesting aspects beyond decentralization, the ability to make binding promises to anyone is powerful.