I've built consumer apps in the space since 2016. (See lab.dns.xyz for context).

At the end of the day, even if you gave the average person a venmo like UX that paid in any currency, instantly, for nearly zero fees, I still don't expect them to prefer it to a dollar bill or gold.

While the counterpoints regarding UX are very significant (lose all your money in one click, no undo, lack of support, difficult concepts that don't map to common consumer use cases), they can be solved through sheer effort. We did that on dns.xyz. Social login, gasless minting, rollup for fast interactions, all doable.

There is no escaping the fact that blockchains are slow databases. That they aren't particularly good at storing data. Much less private than one might think.

You do get consensus and attribution. You can use it as a sort of open standard or api where the items you've bought or the things you're written are open enough to be reused in the future.

None of these problems are pains that need solving. And they are inferior solutions compared with alternatives.

It is great tech. It is great intellectual exploration. It is a fun stack. It has made people money through unregulated speculation.

But it is tarnished, clunky, and not necessary.