> see PGP, encrypted email, OpenID, etc etc..

Yeah, but this actually works.

Like it or not, people are already using their wallets as their username. And they're trading cryptographic assets. And everyone can see it because it's public.

This isn't theoretical.

I've been to PGP key-signing parties. I can assure you that this is not that.

> Yeah, but this actually works.

I can't use blockchain to pay pretty much any vendor I buy things from without an intermediary - the intermediary requires me to log in to a website and unless I'm willing to go through a lot of trouble (more trouble than dealing with PGP) an intermediary will also be storing my wallet and have "physical" control of all my "coins." Blockchain works to the extent that you aren't really using blockchain but simply a trusted intermediary.

If you're actually personally managing your wallet keys it's worse than PGP. With PGP if you lose your key you just say so and people figure it out, you have to go to some key signing parties. With Bitcoin if you lose your key you have no money, end of story, no recourse.

> Yeah, but this actually works.

Exchanging public keys worked for decades before blorkchains were even a word.

This depends what you mean "works", if it's meant on the technical conceptual level that yes, of course, I think no one would disagree. If it's taken to mean had widespread and growing usage at the social level, then I think that's hard to argue.

People don't exchange public keys on the blorkchain, they use username/password to access their wallets, and these have a public key. That in itself doesn't authenticate anyone to anything, the only guarantee is that it is unique.

How do we know who is behind a hash? Because there is a server (aka. a "centralized authority") that has that information.

So how exactly is that different from using my google account to login to some webservice?

> server (aka. a "centralized authority")

that's a very very liberal equivalence to make. decentralized authority in practice is just a collection of servers in aggregate that come to consensus according to a certain protocol.

this is a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of non-custodial private key management. what you are describing is a custodial wallet.

This is not true. Your key serves as proof you own something and nobody else without your key can claim to it. There is no central poin involved. You can connect to any chain node, yours including, and assert control over it. There is no central authority, that's the whole point. If you're referring to an NFT being a url hosted somewhere other tha. IPFS, nobody is arguing that.

> Your key serves as proof you own something and nobody else without your key can claim to it.

Yes, and what maps that to your physical identity? How is that any different from showing someone a public key you just generated with GPG?

For what it’s worth, I recently read Moxie Marlinspike’s essay on web3, and I think he crystallised one of the most interesting insights I’ve ever heard on that topic:

> We should accept the premise that people will not run their own servers by designing systems that can distribute trust without having to distribute infrastructure. This means architecture that anticipates and accepts the inevitable outcome of relatively centralized client/server relationships, but uses cryptography (rather than infrastructure) to distribute trust.

I think he’s correct, and the cryptocurrency of the future – the one which actually takes off as a medium of exchange – will do exactly what we’re arguing about here. It will use purely cryptography as its mechanism, instead of large groups of servers acting as the gatekeeper. You’ll be able to send money to someone with purely a public key, no servers required, just you and them as peer-to-peer. And, as a corollary, you’ll be able to prove your balance with only a key and the encrypted data of your past transactions. I’ve barely stopped thinking about my envisioned implementation for the past couple of weeks.

I like your vision. Definitely sounds easier to use than what we have here amd now.

I would say web3 works to the same level

Most people don't care about X, so clearly anyone trying to build a product to address X is just a scam.

those are ideas on a shelf. even stackexchange dropped openid years ago