Are the Metaverse and Web3 democratic?… probably not
Let’s be clear: they are probably not democratic because they cannot, or at least not yet, be used safely by everyone.
It is said that web3 devolves and restores responsibility to each of us, with all the consequences. Responsibility is freedom, even to make mistakes, here potentially catastrophic.
It’s not so much a problem of making things work, this is the easy part, but above all of security management.
In the Metaverse, or Web3 to use the term that is taking over, security must be thought of first, or it is too late. Security must be inherent (built-in), because it is difficult, if not impossible, to remedy an event that has occurred.
This applies to everyone, to the technicians who build the applications, smart contracts in particular, but also, and above all, to the end users. That is, for all those who in one way or another come into contact with the elements of the Metaverse, blockchain and crypto among all. Here too, as almost invariably happens, the human factor is crucial. Transporting us to another context, you can have the front door with maximum armor, but if you then leave it open or if you leave the side window open, everything is ruined.
The Metaverse/Web3 is based on the concept of blockchain and related cryptocurrency. The fundamental security element is the private key, i.e. a very long sequence of alphanumeric characters (impossible to keep in memory) and some of its related elements (seeds).
Well, having understood that everything revolves around the private key and that we are moving in a decentralized environment, i.e. without a central manager (it seems obvious but it is better to reiterate it), let’s take the next step. If I lose your wallet’s private key I lose everything. Lost is lost. There is no way, no way, to recover a lost key. There is no forgotten password function, no bank manager to beg, no lawyer to contact. None of this. Lost is lost. You can have €1 or a million € in your wallet but there is no way to recover it. Lost is lost.
[As this week’s “The corner of generative artificial intelligence” highlights, in fact, under some conditions one can try, let it be clear without any guarantee of success, but with extremely high costs certainly not within the reach of “normal” crypto-wallets]
But how many times have we seen people desperate because they have lost their ATM card (perhaps with a pin written on the back), not to mention the times they can’t remember a password… but anyway there is a recovery function, at most the system manager or application. Not here. Lost is lost. And do we want to give serial password losers, chronically disordered people, the incurable optimists that always think to remember everything … total control and responsibility? … better not… NO, definitely not, the Metaverse/web3 is not yet for everyone, it is not democratic (yet).
This week’s question to Generative AI, on the home page, is about the possibility of recovering the crypto wallet private key: if you loose your wallet private key can you recover it?