I signed up and paid for an analytics tool subscription by simply clicking “connect with metamask”. Another two clicks to send the payment and I was done.

No email accounts, no sign up forms, no credit card info, nothing.

I’m a lifelong convert to this tech now. I can’t ever imagine going back to sign up forms or sharing my personal data.

I can’t see how anyone who cares about their privacy isn’t hyper bullish about this.

Yeah. I started really digging in earlier this year and what I realized was that web3 offers true ownership over the important parts of your online identity.

For the average user, it’s not exceptionally helpful yet, but for power users like celebrities, politicians and executives, it is extremely valuable.

Where they go everyone else will go. Web3 has a massive future

Why would these types of people want all their data available on a public chain?

They want their public data public, but owned. It won’t be ‘on chain’ it will be off chain but the ownership token will be ‘on chain’.

As an example, they may have their public photos in IPFS, served from their server (or shared pointers), but will have ownership rights of those photos on chain.

That is different than Instagram where Facebook owns the images.

They cannot be deplatformed which is valuable. The question is whether it’s value exceeds the value of Instagram distribution.

Celebrities wouldn't care who owns the photos, all that matters is whether exposure leads to jobs.

The photos are valuable only to the photographer, who has the right to license it to Getty and others.

Keep in mind that you can have a "public" (doxxed) address that you use for certain activities, as well as other addresses that you use for other private activities. It can be tricky to "break the chain" between addresses if you send/receive between them, but it's entirely possible.

Celebrities, politicians, and executives and the farthest thing from a power user as is possible in this universe.

Did you mean people with a lot at stake in regards to their public image?

Power users in terms of social media

These people rarely, if ever, manage their own profiles. Not sure how something like Web3 would help their use case. Thoughts?

Yes - completely agree. it is refreshing to go to a website, hit connect, and boom there is all my data! I think we are only brushing the surface of what is possible with web3. Cant wait for login support to sign up for social media sites.

I do hope existing websites eventually support web3 login, but eventually there will be a web3-native/decentralized social network that actually succeeds. there have been a few attempts over the years but nothing has gained much traction.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/16/22627435/twitter-bluesky-...

do you mean the hackers dream of how easy it is to, uh, hack unsuspecting users? because thats basically what the article points out that web3 basically is shadowed by non transparent and opaque processes and if it wants to do anything of value it needs to drop the hackers dream, cause thats not how the web gerew up.

anonymous and my data in the same sentence ? No thanks.

Pardon my ignorance. Couldn’t those websites use other data (IP/geo) with your wallet address to figure out who you are?

Nearly all are open source and tracking free.

I hope it remains that way.

Some do of course throw unnecessary signup pages before allowing you to connect your wallet. I immediately close the tab if I see that. They are the minority.

It's the web, obviously there aren't firm rules. The point is that most of the builders in the space are hackers that want a free and open web void of that nonsense.

And most of the protocols/services are profitable, so the builders have no incentive to track users or sell data.

If "web2" companies start moving into the space, I'm sure they will track and sell data like they do now. The goal is to create free and open alternatives of those products so you aren't forced to endure those tactics.

But with web3 + a VPN or Private Relay, you can probably do a fairly good job staying mostly anon.

> Nearly all are open source and tracking free.

Just checked OpenSea - Google Analytics, Amplitude, DoubleClick, Cloudflare insights, plus error tracking from Sentry.

Zapper has Google Analytics and Amplitude. Click through to 'connect wallet' and you're now sending data to DoubleClick

Zerion has Google Analytics, plus Plausible Analytics for good measure. Then when you click through to "connect wallet", you get some bonus trackers: Cloudflare Insights, Amplitude of course, you get Rollbar for error tracking (which can leak data if misconfigured). There's also Intercom on the page, which collects a little bit of analytics while it's doing its thing.

---

Diving in a little bit more:

- I can confirm that Zerion sends your wallet address to Amplitude, Sentry, and Plausible Analytics. It also sends the current value of your wallet to Amplitude, when you hit "Buy crypto" or "Send"

That's very important information (and disgusting)

Huh, a crypto thread on HN that's not 95% sour grapes? Well, color me surprised. Did a larger part of the usual HN crowd manage to get in at the start of the bull run this time?

Not really, the comment is describing an actual use case and unique value proposition of cryptocurrency, rather than talking about market price.

Yeah, it was about the thread in general. Apologies.

I'm also happily surprised about the nice discussions on this branch of the discussion!