The Web3 Fraud
Many criticisms of blockchain apps, comparing their use cases to conventional technologies (databases, conventional separation of services such as that described in the article, etc) all seem to miss a major point: Dapps running on the blockchain are immutable and highly resistant to being shutdown.<p>Immutability is important because it&#x27;s guaranteed that no matter how many times you interact with a contract address, you can be assured that at no point has the code in that contract ever changed. This is not an assurance you can typically get, as backend code for traditional endpoints can change at any time.<p>Even more important IMO is the difficulty in shutting down a contract that&#x27;s deployed to the blockchain. In the case of this article, the reliance on external services such as AWS opens up possibilities for your app to be shut down, whether it&#x27;s through non-payment to your AWS account, AWS decides you&#x27;ve violated their terms of service, or legal action compels AWS to shut down your app.<p>In the case of dapps deployed to the blockchain (combined optionally with frontends deployed to a service like IPFS, but this isn&#x27;t a requirement, as one can always interact directly with contracts), the ability to shutdown these apps would rely on somehow breaking the blockchain itself.<p>Whether or not you see these aspects as bugs or features is a matter of opinion. Yes, blockchains are slower and more expensive. This is the current cost of enabling the two facets above. If we&#x27;re not comparing blockchain dapps to other systems that offer the same assurances, then we&#x27;re comparing apples and oranges.