Enhancing Web2 - The Daily Gwei #313
Bridging the web2 and web3 experiences.
Last week I wrote about how Ethereum could enable the next version of the web - commonly referred to as web3 - and how we need to be building these things from the ground-up rather than tacking on “crypto features” to existing products. Though, upon further thought over the weekend, I actually think there’s a middle-ground where we can enhance popular web2 tools with crypto features even if its not completely native or not even decentralized.
If you click through to the tweet above you’ll see a thread from ChopChop going over all the features that Discord could add to better support DAOs. Things such as integrating Snapshot voting directly into Discord channels, showing real-time DAO balance sheets, integrating Discourse forum software - the list goes on - there’s so much that Discord could do to enhance DAOs. Expanding on Snapshot integration as an example - I bet that on-chain governance voter apathy would go down a lot if it was super easy for anyone to simply vote on proposals directly in the chat. Imagine that once a Snapshot vote was created it was automatically posted to the Discord’s announcement’s channel and users could read over it and vote without ever having to leave Discord - it may seem like something small but I believe the impact would be large.
Discord isn’t the only web2 app that benefits from the addition of crypto features - I think it extends to basically all of the social web. For example, there’s already a project called Mask that has a browser extension which adds features like a DEX interface directly into the Twitter home feed. By using this feature, you can essentially trade tokens on Uniswap while still browsing Twitter - no need to change tabs or have multiple windows/monitors open - perfect for people who use a laptop or a small screen as their daily driver. Though the drawback here is that this feature is tied to a centralized extension and not built directly into a decentralized Twitter so I’d consider it a solid proof of concept for now!
In addition to the above, I think that NFTs and ENS names are perfect features to add to any social app. As ChopChop mentioned above, imagine having your CryptoPunk set as your profile picture on Discord and then whenever someone clicks on it, your ENS name pops up and there’s a link to your OpenSea account to verify the authenticity. Or imagine assigning roles to users based on their NFT collection such as if they had a special POAP or if they had a rare piece of digital art. I think that making all of this stuff ubiquitous for the end-user is how we bridge the gap between web2 and web3 without having to reinvent the wheel completely (we can do that later as we decentralize everything).
I really hope to see this ‘web3 meets web2’ trend continue over the coming months whether that be via native integrations from the products/apps themselves or developers building on top of them. Though the issue with developers building on top is that usually the APIs that various products/services offer to developers is limited and centralized (which means developers can be cut off at any time). That’s why I still believe that the long-term goal should be to rebuild these existing applications in a decentralized way so that we can give developers the ability to build whatever they want without the risk of that ability being taken away at a moment’s notice.
Have a great day everyone,
Anthony Sassano
Enjoyed today’s piece? I send out a fresh one every week day - be sure to subscribe to receive it in your inbox!
Join the Daily Gwei Ecosystem
All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.