This is written with the idea in mind that a lot of HN users are both informed about and highly skeptical of crypto/web3 (my impression). I actually understand

This is written with the idea in mind that a lot of HN users are both informed about and highly skeptical of crypto/web3 (my impression). I actually understand much of the critique, but I think it's not giving credit for a few things that are cool about smart contracts: a) You can enter arbitrary (computable) binding commitments with strangers. This is powerful, it makes all the difference between non-cooperative and cooperative game theory. b) You can separate the creation of web services from their upkeep. You can deploy a smart contract as a weekend project and it'll stay available for the community to use without you having to spend further resources. A plain smart contract without a web front-end is admittedly not user-friendly to access, but there are already several projects trying to provide a front end in a similar fashion (eg blockchains meant for hosting web apps, or uploading apps to IPFS). Is any of that strictly needed, in a developed country with trustworthy institutions? Well, we could argue. But I think hackers agree that those are at least cool things to tinker with. (And to those worried about environmental impact: the above doesn't apply to Bitcoin, and once Ethereum has switched to PoS, none of the relevant smart-contract-enabled chains will have that problem anymore)