The Human Cost of Web3’s Identity Crisis
Imagine walking into a café and asking the strangers next to you to read out a 42-character hexadecimal string: 0x8e37b3c74e1ff5f3a9b6a4d64c8e934df3273. You’ll likely be met with a mix of confusion, frustration, and possibly even fear. This string of characters is what passes for an “address” in most Web3 applications, and it’s a major barrier to entry for ordinary people. The complexity and unfriendliness of these addresses can lead to mistakes, with potentially disastrous consequences – such as the investor who lost $700,000 due to “address poisoning” tactics.
The Problem with Gibberish
In the early days of the internet, domain names (DNS) revolutionized the way we access online content by replacing cumbersome IP numbers with easy-to-remember words. Google.com is far more user-friendly than 172.217.14.238, after all. Yet, despite the lessons of the past, Web3 still clings to its cryptic addresses, expecting users to adapt to a system that’s more akin to mechanical gibberish than a user-centric experience. This has to change.
The cost of this approach is clear: while the traditional web hosts over 368 million registered domain names, the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) has fewer than 1.7 million active domains. The chasm between these numbers highlights the need for a more human-friendly approach to Web3 identity. It’s not a technical problem, but a cultural one – developers and Web3 natives often prioritize the perceived security of complex addresses over usability, while potential users are put off by the sheer complexity of it all.
Adoption Without Trust
Proponents of crypto often tout adoption figures, but the reality is more nuanced. A survey from January 2025 found that 59% of people familiar with crypto still don’t trust its security, while 40% of current owners admit to being uneasy. Nearly one in five has struggled to withdraw their own money from a custody platform, and 38% of non-owners swear they’ll never touch crypto due to concerns about fraud and complexity. This paints a bleak picture, one that suggests the industry is more interested in maintaining complexity than in simplifying the user experience.
The choice is clear: either Web3 adopts pronounceable, trustworthy names, or it will continue to drive users towards “user-friendly” custody solutions that undermine the very principles of decentralization. If newcomers are already suspicious and veterans are nervous, the movement will never achieve mainstream adoption. Sensible names won’t conjure away every fear, but without them, the trust deficit will continue to grow, relegating mass adoption to the realm of fantasy.
Deepfakes Demand Signatures
As engineers debate trilemmas, generative AI is busy eating away at reality. The first quarter of 2025 saw $200 million in deepfake fraud costs, with complex, damage-prone addresses contributing to the problem. Pronounceable, permanent, self-owned names, on the other hand, can become etched in memory, making it easier for users to verify authenticity. In a world where language and cryptography collide, trust is the ultimate scaling factor.
Name It Once, Keep It Forever
Zooko Wilcox, a cryptographer and computer scientist, once claimed that only two of the three aspects – security, decentralization, and readability – could be achieved simultaneously. However, 20 years on, Web3 is proving that all three can coexist. The roadblock is not math, but rather rent: most DNS and web hosting services require users to keep up with monthly payments, lest they lose their data. A permanent name, on the other hand, can be locked to a key, with no annual bill or corporate kill switch.
As the digital world evolves, it’s essential that we prioritize names that can be passed down through generations, recorded in articles, and etched in memory. Every link that’s anchored by a word rather than a code folder leaves less room for censorship. By choosing words over hashes, we can create a more human-centric Web3, one that remembers people, not passwords.
