It's funny. Web2 got so many things right, but early Web3 often tried so hard to abandon it all that it made for a lot of unnecessary pains. We've tried to take a more balanced approach. Decentralized where it makes sense (user data ownership, interoperable data models, data storage) and hosted/curated nodes where it makes sense (app resources, trustless services/gateways, relay services). We think we've come up with something compelling and pretty simple.

A couple of details:

- ThreadsDB is a database and protocol. A lot of our work on Threads (particularly Follower or Service keys was aimed at the problems you bring up exactly). https://blog.textile.io/introducing-textiles-threads-protoco...

- We love the 3box team and product and its probably come a long way since if you haven't poked around recently. We are also working with them to make sure our things are interoperable with theirs. So look out for more updates in this area soon.

Still want to know the answer to the original question "Is the Textile toolkit able to operate directly 'on chain' via a standard web browser?"

There is no chain. It uses a set of protocols that have no consensus. They run in the browser. Here is a relevant merged feature in the ThreadsDB library today, https://github.com/textileio/js-threads/pull/136

This makes me wonder how a decentralized system can grow if nobody shares their resources.

That is a problem indeed. Everyone expects to not have to install anything and just freeload off of someone else's gateway and still have all the benefits.

If you don't install the client, it's not a decentralized system, you might as well run WordPress and call it a day.

The "FileCoin Problem".