Awaken Beauty Podcast

Do people really have to understand web 3 and as early adoption excitement takes storm - do we really need to know?

Today, Web3 has yet to “cross the chasm”—we’re in the “early adopters” phase of the technology adoption lifecycle.

The reason for this is that while Web2 was a frontend revolution, Web3 is a backend revolution.

In other words, Web2 reinvented the things that people interact with,

while Web3 reinvents the plumbing behind the scenes.

To go mainstream, Web3 needs to become accessible to the everyday person.

One way to achieve this is through easily-understood metaphors that abstract away complexity.

I’ll give two examples that I often use, both from the excellent book Token Economy.

💳 Metaphor #1: Web3 wallets are like, well, wallets.

Your Web3 wallet is your portal into the world of Web3. At its simplest, your wallet is a piece of software that lets you send and receive crypto securely, without relying on a third party.

You might use MetaMask on Ethereum, Phantom on Solana, or Terra Station on Terra.

To access the Web3 world, people will need wallets.

A MetaMask wallet

Thankfully, a “wallet” is a familiar concept—and Web3 wallets act in familiar ways.

Just as your physical wallet contains your driver’s license, your gym membership, your Costco card, and other signifiers of your identity, your digital wallet contains your digital identity.

Just as you open your physical wallet to show your identity when you’re carded at a bar, you open your digital wallet to reveal your digital credentials online.

For instance, I flash my MetaMask wallet when I buy something on OpenSea.

Your wallet contains two types of keys: a public key and a private key.

Public keys are comparable to an account number; they can be freely shared with anyone.

Private keys, though, are (surprise!) private—you can think of them as a PIN that you and you alone should know.

Here's another analogy I prefer—this brings us to our second metaphor:

🔐 Metaphor #2: Public keys are like a padlock.

Imagine I want to send you a message, but I don’t want anyone to intercept it.

I ask you to send over a padlock (unlocked) and for you to keep the key.

I put my letter in a box, lock it with your padlock, and send it back to you.

Only you, with your key to the padlock, can open it and receive the message. The padlock is the public key; your key to the padlock is the private key.

But do we really need to know the rest of it? Maybe not, but you do need to protect yourself.

Onward, keep learning! LOVE, Kassandra