Ask HN: Do you think web3 is a hype or a real thing about to happen?
Disclaimer: I&#x27;m working on a project in this space. So take what I say with a grain of salt.<p>There are very few projects doing anything interesting with web3 outside of speculation or &quot;grifter&quot; quasi-MLMs (NFTs). Until that changes, web3 won&#x27;t be interesting. But, we are on the cusp of that change. Soon, there will be interesting applications on web3, and they will change the web permanently.<p>Two things stand in the way::<p>- web3 requires specialized browser plugin or even worse, a special app. You cannot do web3 inside a web2 browser.<p>- transaction costs and throughput<p>web3 requires a browser plugin (meaning not on mobile) AND education on how to use it. Those are blockers for 99% of the people, so you only have 1% of the people who will use it, and in that small population, most of them are there to get rich quick or die trying.<p>And, transaction costs are high for the web3 (I&#x27;m equating web3 with Ethereum). It only makes sense to participate for people who are trying to get rich.<p>BUT: if transaction costs go down, and people can participate in web3 WITHOUT a browser plugin, then people will start building interesting projects OUTSIDE of speculation and MLMs.<p>That will be the moment really exciting things start to happen.<p>When will that be?<p>If you don&#x27;t know what L2 is, here is why it is important: L2 is a way to scale transaction throughput outside of the mainnet Ethereum. There are many ways to do it, but generally they involve rollups, either optimistic or ZK-proofs.<p>What&#x27;s a rollup? A rollup is a way to do lots of smaller transactions off the main Ethereum network, and then roll them all up into a single main Ethereum transaction. You amortize all the small transactions across one single mainnet transaction.<p>L2 products are still in their infancy, don&#x27;t work great, and have poor UI. But, they are one of many solutions to solving the transaction cost and throughput problem.<p>If you are rolling your eyes at ZK-proofs and saying &quot;Oh, those crypto guys, more snake oil!&quot; You should know that Google is using ZK-proofs to guarantee the information they pull from Android devices and processed in ML is has a guarantee of anonymity when shared into Google. There is a lot of interesting research happening despite all the grifting in crypto, so don&#x27;t miss the good stuff. If you are excited about hard math, crypto has some fun work.<p>So, L2 will solve the &quot;transaction cost and throughput problem.&quot;<p>The only other barrier is browser plugins, IMHO. The exciting thing is that L2 solutions have their own API. When one of them finallly offers a great UX for interacting with their network, you can interact with it using web2 and not with MetaMask.<p>Then, everything will open up. It&#x27;s going to be soon.