I sold my startup to Airbnb and went all in on developing web3 — here’s why
When we talk about web3, I suspect most people in tech instantly think about NFTs, cryptocurrency, or DeFi. I can’t blame them there: judging by Twitter activity, that’s mostly what it is.
But as a developer, it’s not really the NFTs, cryptocurrency, or DeFi that I’m interested in. In fact, I’d estimate that 95% of these projects are highly risky at best, and scams at worst — and definitely not ready for consumer adoption.
At the same time, I also think the remaining 5% is worth advocating for. And I say that as someone who should be a booster of Web 2.0: My developer-focused startup was acqui-hired by Airbnb a few years ago, and my career options within a traditional Silicon Valley framework are quite nice, if I chose to go that way.
Instead, I’ve devoted my creative and professional energies over the last 6 months to creating free, open source tools for web3 developers: Studio 721
I’m optimistic about the future of web3 as a developer platform. Because despite numerous shortcomings with the platform as a whole, several web3 features already work shockingly, excitingly well for developers. Here are three of those features as they apply specifically to Ethereum-based projects:
Sign-in with Ethereum
Creating a sign-up process for an app on the Ethereum blockchain is as simple and as instantaneous as adding a wallet connection option. The system is built so that sign-ins are core to its architecture. From a privacy and security perspective, the very idea of leaking personal data doesn’t exist, since apps can only access data that the consumer themselves has already made public.
Contrast this with creating an app that incorporates Facebook as a sign-in option. For a developer, it’s a time-consuming hassle. You first have to set up a dev account, agree to Facebook’s Terms of Service, then integrate the official SDK. This process takes a few days at least, and realistically, you also want to add log-in options for Apple, Google, Twitter, etc. After all that work, if Facebook or another platform giant doesn’t approve of your app — and the rules around that are pretty fuzzy — they can shut it down immediately.
Despite this, we effectively have no choice but to use Facebook and other social networks. In practical terms, they’re already gatekeepers to much of our activity in modern society. This despite the fact that Facebook not only “owns” all of your data, but can (and often has!) accidentally leaked it with little or no recourse. Ethereum offers a viable alternative to all this.
Which takes me to my next point:
Global test networks
Another frustration with Web 2.0 is the lack of simple, safe, and interoperable testing networks. Say you’re starting an online retail business, and you want to make a Twitter app that tweets a hot deal of the day. You probably want to test your app as you build it. However, there’s no way to create dummy Twitter accounts or fake tweets. And if your app has a bug, it’s extremely easy to start spamming nonsense tweets with potentially sensitive business data. The stakes in this example are low, since your new business probably doesn’t have any Twitter followers. But the risks get quite serious once your business collects personal data, or is linked to a payment processor; then a bug can threaten people’s finances or privacy.
These sorts of data leaks already happen so often, even at Facebook and other tech giants, that many people assume it’s just an inevitable part of software development. Some platforms do support test accounts, especially when the stakes are high. But many don’t, or even when they do, they often have restrictions preventing full interoperability between (for instance), Facebook test accounts and Stripe test accounts.
Here again, Ethereum shines by comparison, offering a single global network where all software on the blockchain can communicate seamlessly. As a natural outcome of this architecture, it’s possible to launch a test version of the entire network, including every single application on it. Now all of the outcomes (including any externalities caused by a bug) can be simulated, and safely tested. That power simply doesn’t exist outside of web3. It enables fearless development.
Built-in payment processing
Finally, payments: As a developer, collecting IAPs and other revenue has always been a key friction point. In theory it should be easy to integrate a processor like Stripe, but that also means setting up an account, signing the platform’s Terms of Service, learning its API, and dealing with its compliance requirements. In exchange for jumping through these hoops, you as a developer must then wait for payments to be processed — but only after the platform has first taken a cut of your revenue.
With Ethereum, by contrast, there are still transaction fees, but as a developer you typically receive payments in under a minute. And while many payment processors don’t support every country, Ethereum is automatically supported around the world. Yes, transaction fees can currently be quite high. But as a developer, I believe this scalability problem is solvable, rather than a fundamental flaw of web3. Realistic solutions are in the works, and in the case of L2s, have already become innovative platforms of their own.
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For all these reasons and more, it’s been incredibly exciting as a developer to shift from a Web 2.0 stack and experiment with this new environment. I can feel that same energy from fellow devs working in web3; I’ll tweet about a fun little app I made in my spare time, and the very next day, find 800 people in my Discord excitedly talking about it.
None of this is to say web3 is perfect — far from it. The user experience is simply not ready for the average consumer, and the speculative hype over NFTs and cryptocurrency have only compounded that problem, creating unrealistic expectations around consumer adoption.
Ultimately, it’s really the infrastructure of web3 for developers that matters to me.
Think of this way: During Web 2.0, hardly any consumer adopted Linux as an operating system for their own direct personal use. But Linux is still indispensable to the background architecture of the consumer web and the developer tools we all now take for granted. It’s why I’m investing the next few years of my career on the belief that web3 will evolve along a similar path.
