Or are you suggesting every browser will contact many of its personal web-of-trust sources on every secure-connection?
For Hacker News? No.
For my bank? Yes, absolutely.
The implementation of a fast and scalable lookup is not exactly rocket science (cf. DNSBLs). It's a political problem, not a technology problem.
Or are you suggesting every browser will contact many of its personal web-of-trust sources on every secure-connection? Without additional innovation, that seems just as prone to the performance bottlenecks or soft-failure (on stale data or blocked connections) as the current system.