The other week, Ryan Sean Adams, investor and co-founder of Bankless, asked, ‘Why hasn’t web3 social taken off?’ This question set off a wave of conversation in the following days, with reasons ranging from hyperfinancialization and poor UX to web3 products copying their web2 counterparts and not engaging creators and cultural tastemakers. What I found interesting is that many of these problems aren’t unique to crypto but emblematic of the issues within the broader tech ecosystem.

Tech is a bubble. The ecosystem has often been compared to a city - with distinct cultural norms, public figures, and software use cases as far as your imagination will take you. Educational metaverses? Raised a few years ago. Delivery robots? We have that. 3D printed rockets? There’s a startup for that, too. The positives don’t end there. Tech’s pay-it-forward culture makes leaders and other public figures more accessible than in other industries, creating opportunities and a strong knowledge base for those just starting out. The tech community cultivated a camaraderie that most people only experience in college, making testing and launching new products easier and collaboration opportunities more plentiful, making it easier to reach product market fit. 

However, there are negatives. The tight-knit nature of the tech community can produce myopia among builders and investors, leading to products designed with other tech workers in mind. Remember Juicero? If you weren’t following tech in the 2010s, Juicero was a $700 Wi-Fi-enabled juicer (back then, everything was Wi-Fi-enabled). You make juice by putting Juicero’s proprietary packets, costing from $5 to $7 per packet, into the machine, and it would make juice. The company’s downfall came when it was found that the packets could be squeezed by hands, rendering the machine a useless symbol of “Silicon Valley stupidity.”

Adding to the blind spots, paternalistic attitudes towards the humanities, the arts, and other non-STEM fields run rampant in tech circles - obvious to anyone with a Twitter account. This sentiment doesn’t just show up in Twitter shitposts but also in how products are built. Traditionally, designers aren’t hired until later because founders, often with technical or business backgrounds, commonly see design as aesthetics only and not as an additional way to reach their user base, resulting in horrific first iterations. To be fair, it was the 2000s, and social media was new, so consumers were more willing to put up with bad UI/UX for the chance to use a cool product. However, in 2024, consumer tech is an attention game, and bad UI/UX will easily lose that attention. Designers who create additive user experiences can help consumer tech products differentiate from their competitors. 

Crypto is a bubble within a bubble. As much as the crypto community wants to distinguish itself from web2, the issues that plague the broader tech ecosystem are amplified here. I see notes of these issues in the current wave of crypto-social projects. It lives in the difficult UI/UX, the hyperfinancialzation, and the lack of engaging content, all of which will deter the average consumer. This outcome is not surprising, given that some people in crypto still feel comfortable denigrating creative pursuits - the tweet about how “high IQ” people don’t listen to music regularly being an example. Most people use social media to entertain and inform themselves, and, as a result, creatives and cultural tastemakers are the lifeblood of social apps. Now is a pivotal time for consumer crypto and the web3 community; cultivating an environment that tolerates open disrespecting creatives and their work will only create more barriers to mass adoption.

Legacy media is dying. Bootstrapped, digitally native content creators and media companies will inherit the future. However, creators depend on centralized social media platforms for distribution, leaving them vulnerable to demonetization, shadow banning, sudden algorithm changes, revenue pools favoring large creators, and lack of organic reach, making it hard to make a living while fully expressing themselves online. Consumer crypto platforms can capture disgruntled content creators by offering ownership and control over their work, allowing them to dictate how, when, and where their content is used. With 54% of consumers indicating they would follow their favorite creators to a new platform, the potential for mainstream adoption is clear. Onchain social can solve consumers’ real frustrations and concerns, but that won’t happen if crypto goes full Juicero.

Consumer crypto needs to touch grass. Too many builders understand the benefits of decentralized social while not understanding why consumers fell in love with social in the first place. To create that magic onchain, builders need to think more like user researchers by going into the world, building meaningful relationships with people outside of tech, and observing their lives. Find common interactions and activities that can be made better with blockchain and use those insights to create digital experiences that resonate with everyone, not just degens. For example, 0xDesigner’s Design Everydays series excellently shows how blockchain can improve everyday problems and translates them into fun user experiences. Projects prioritizing content and user experience will have the best chance at mainstream adoption, with creative roles like designers, marketers, and storytellers playing a crucial role in making the tech relatable to everyday consumers. Given the media industry’s consistent early adoption of technology, its embrace of consumer crypto will further drive blockchain adoption across other sectors. Ultimately, the future of blockchain depends on whether consumer crypto can create meaningful, accessible experiences that connect with the wider world.