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The web3 industry is undermining its own future. It claims to remove gatekeepers, yet has become one itself. By excluding users, builders, and talent through artificial credentialism, it jeopardizes the ecosystem’s chances for mainstream success.
Summary
- Web3 advocates for decentralization but enforces gatekeeping through jargon, insider culture, complicated user experiences, and biased hiring practices that exclude users and talent, impeding adoption and growth.
- This insular mentality has created a market designed for insiders, not the general public, despite proof that accessible designs (e.g., SheFi, Pudgy Penguins) scale significantly faster without sacrificing quality.
- The industry’s true potential will only be realized if it embraces accessibility as a strategic priority rather than a compromise, dismantling cultural and technical barriers that contradict blockchain’s fundamental promise of open participation.
The blockchain sector espouses decentralization while engaging in exclusion. Initiatives aimed at abolishing gatekeepers have unintentionally birthed new ones influenced by cultural factors. Technical jargon has become a status marker, insider credentials have supplanted merit, and accessibility is often dismissed as a dilution of quality.
This exclusion permeates every level. Centralized exchanges determine which projects reach users, creating barriers that conflict with the permissionless framework of blockchain. User interfaces remain purposefully complex, with 70% of users surveyed confessing they do not grasp what web3 entails. Job markets prioritize “crypto-native” experience over transferable skills, systematically sidelining qualified professionals who could help drive adoption.
Consequently, an industry that claims to cater to everyone is, in fact, only serving insiders. Web3’s market value is anticipated to reach $81.5 billion by 2030, but realizing this potential necessitates a departure from the fortress mentality that currently pervades the space.
What’s at stake
When platforms make complexity the norm instead of the exception, they ensure that adoption remains limited. Gatekeeping undermines the financial viability and philosophical foundations of blockchain. A poor user experience is the single greatest barrier to mainstream acceptance. Complicated wallet interactions, multi-chain confusion, unpredictable transaction fees, and technical error messages create friction that deters mainstream users.
The hiring crisis exacerbates this issue. Organizations often reject candidates with relevant fintech, compliance, or UX skills for lacking crypto-specific knowledge, artificially restricting access to the very talent the industry needs. Entry-level positions now constitute just one in every ten roles, even though 34% of crypto holders are aged 24-35. This talent drain directly affects product design, user experience, and mainstream attractiveness. Users don’t fail web3; web3 fails users by perceiving accessibility as a liability rather than as a strategic advantage that determines project survival.
Cypherpunk or bust
The cypherpunk ethos that inspired Ethereum (ETH) was rooted in accessibility and permissionless participation, not in technical exclusion. Defenders argue that gatekeeping ensures quality and prevents speculation. They maintain that complexity has the role of filtering out bad actors, technical precision demands specialized knowledge, and oversimplification risks eroding legitimacy.
Nonetheless, gatekeeping has not shielded web3 from scams, exploits, or detrimental speculation. Instead, it has concentrated these risks within a smaller, less diverse group of participants while alienating new potential users, builders, and capital essential for scaling the industry.
Breaking down barriers works
The argument that gatekeeping equals quality falters when looking at projects that emphasize accessibility without sacrificing substance.
SheFi runs an 8-week web3 education program that requires no prior blockchain knowledge. It has grown to over 3,000 members across 90 countries, demonstrating that meeting users where they are accelerates adoption. Participants gain technical skills, command industry language, and forge professional networks that facilitate career transitions into blockchain roles—precisely the talent the industry claims to seek while simultaneously gatekeeping against.
Pudgy Penguins generated over $10 million in retail sales by introducing NFTs into 3,100 Walmart stores. They achieved success by rejecting the “rarity equals value” exclusivity mentality that renders most crypto incomprehensible to everyday users. Their hybrid physical-to-digital model created a self-sustaining cycle: toy sales fueled token adoption while NFT scarcity elevated demand, pushing their market cap above $1.2 billion.
These instances illustrate that accessible designs promote faster growth than elite credentialism. Projects that dismantle both technical and cultural barriers achieve mainstream acceptance that exclusivity-focused competitors fail to reach. Moving forward, the industry must make a conscious decision not to compromise on accessibility but to embrace it as a strategic imperative.
This doesn’t imply simplifying blockchain or sacrificing rigor. SheFi demonstrates that technical depth and a welcoming onboarding experience can coexist, while Pudgy Penguins shows that mass appeal and blockchain functionality can successfully work together. Both succeed precisely because they refused to accept the false dichotomy between quality and accessibility.
The blockchain industry possesses the technology to facilitate permissionless participation. What it currently lacks is the cultural will to do so. Every project prioritizing insider jargon over user clarity is making a deliberate choice.
Establishing a hiring process that requires crypto experience instead of evaluating transferable skills, and creating user interfaces that treat complexity as an asset rather than a challenge, is also a conscious decision. These choices contribute to the fortress mentality prevalent in web3 today, but they can just as easily be undone.
What comes next
The blockchain industry is at a pivotal moment. Projects that treat accessibility as a central strategy rather than an afterthought will thrive in the coming decade. Those that justify gatekeeping as a means of quality control will find themselves ensnared in echo chambers, discussing revolution while perpetuating elitism.
Web3 was created to eliminate intermediaries and democratize participation. Unless the industry applies those principles within its own culture, the contradiction will continue to erode the fundamental ideals of blockchain. Gatekeeping serves ego, and until that changes, blockchain will remain an exclusive club engaged in self-referential debates on decentralization.
