Web3 Stack: How does web3 provide a better user experience than web2?

Author: Polynya

Compiled by: Alex Zhang

Many web3 skeptics quickly criticize the user experience as terrible after using web3-related products. Even web3 advocates often admit that the user experience may not be that great, but the good features brought by decentralization can compensate for this flaw.

It turns out that the conditions for building a better user experience than web2 do exist. In this article, I will attempt to compare web2 and web3, providing a clearer vision of a future where the user experience of web3 surpasses that of web2.

The Stack of web3

Users

Although the web3 stack shown above appears overly simplified, it is actually quite complex. For users, they only need to care about web3 applications and interfaces, which operate similarly to web2.

Interface

Users can use a variety of interfaces on web3 and view them as a new "operating system" or "browser."

The preferred solution for user interfaces is social recovery smart contract wallets like Argent. Social recovery offers a better user experience than web2 account recovery. For users, managing passwords is a chore, and once forgotten, they have to rely on central banks or related web2 companies to recover their passwords, a process that is often tedious.

With social recovery, users do not need to manage any passwords. If users cannot access their accounts, they can quickly recover them with the help of friends, family, or trusted entities.

Social recovery will become central to web3, and these wallets will eventually resemble browsers and app stores, where people will find and use the applications they want.

Two key components of this puzzle are account abstraction and pooling technology. Solving these two issues will achieve a seamless user experience. Terms like fees, blockchains, bridges, etc., will be completely abstracted away from the user, and the interface will cleverly handle all of this behind the scenes.

Of course, there could be a "simple mode" where users do not even have to choose applications but only select actual functionalities. For example, someone may just want to earn interest from their savings; they would simply deposit their fiat currency and earn interest, that’s it. Users may not know what Aave, StarkNet, or Ethereum are, but they will indirectly use these solutions.

There will also be web2-like scenarios specific to applications. Indeed, these already exist. For example, users can simply deposit fiat currency into Sorare and play their fantasy sports game just like they would in a web2 fantasy sports game. Users do not know that NFTs are minted on Sorare's aggregation or that they are settled on Ethereum.

With account abstraction, seamless bridging, pooling, social recovery, and validity aggregation, we have all the underlying building blocks to achieve an elegant user experience. Therefore, interfaces that provide the best user experience will become the focus of intense competition.

Applications

Ultimately, having a better application experience than web2 is a key factor for users to adopt web3. Without web3, these experiences would be impossible, and it all depends on the innovation of application developers. I believe that so far, the industry has been somewhat overly obsessed with blockchain and tokens, but I hope that over time, all activities, capital, and innovation will shift towards web3.

Execution

Applications will exist on the execution layer, and the interface will interact directly with the execution layer. I expect Rollups & Volitions to become the primary execution layer, where over 90% of activities will occur, but we can also have centralized, hybrid, and sovereign monolithic chains. With the Volition setup, we can have a hybrid scenario.

Let’s take Facebook as an example. Their Libra/Diem project was paralyzed due to regulatory issues—data liability concerns. Worldcoin and Reddit were smarter—they chose zero data liability to build Rollups. Thus, by processing all data on a publicly trusted neutral layer, they are not accountable to regulators like Facebook. By renaming to Meta, it is clear they are building their own execution layer. But Meta will never build Rollups, right? Instead, what they can do is create something similar to hybrid Volitions, where most of it is a centralized database, but they can choose to settle specific transactions on a public settlement/DA layer—for interoperability and to limit data liability. There are many possibilities in the world of blockchain Lego blocks and modular blockchains.

Settlement

Security, consensus, or settlement—whatever you call it, this is the problem the execution layer needs to solve. With the mass adoption of web3, the security layer will sink to the bottom. Of course, this layer will provide security assurances, and solid monetary assets are crucial to supporting the economy. The fat protocol argument is applicable, but as we reach a global scale, I hope to capture more value at the application layer.

Data

The web3 execution layer will use two types of data: available data and retrievable data. Data availability may be on the settlement layer or outside of it, but the key criterion here is that they have data availability guarantees. Here, all valuable transactions will be "saved" for future use.

However, low-value data will be needed, where strict availability guarantees are not required, and a retrievability guarantee is sufficient.

Take social media as an example. If you want to ensure that rewards, transactions, and content headers are secure and available, Volition can address these issues at the DA layer. However, the cost of storing all content (videos, photos, etc.) at the DA layer is prohibitively high. Therefore, both DA layers (like Ethereum data sharding, Celestia, Polygon Avail) and non-DA data layers (like Filecoin, Arweave, Swarm) can play complementary roles.

Social

The final layer is the social layer, but it is not the least important. It gives value to the settlement layer, building the entire web3 infrastructure on its foundation. In reality, we will have a social layer at every step, and each layer will have a vibrant community governance ecosystem.

Outlook

I am very clear that this technology can push web3 to a global scale; it is just a matter of implementation and maturity, which will certainly take years, but this path is feasible.

With modular blockchain architecture, we will have all the scalability and instant confirmation needed for the coming years. Now, web3 just needs to wait for interface and application developers to create elegant and compelling user experiences, and web2 users will flock to it.