The Future of Web3 May Not Belong to Blockchain
Blockchain was once considered the cornerstone of Web3, but its limitations are gradually becoming apparent. While it solves the double-spending problem, the strict global ordering mechanism hampers efficiency, making high throughput and flexibility a luxury. Today, new technologies are proving that the decentralized future may not necessarily require traditional blockchain.
The Tyranny of Total Ordering
Blockchain requires every transaction to be processed in a fixed order, which ensured security in the early days but has become a shackle for the development of Web3. Complex applications need faster speeds and lower costs, but the architecture of traditional blockchain struggles to meet these demands. The outages of Solana and the congestion management cycles of Ethereum Layer 2 have exposed the bottlenecks of this model.
Another Possibility: Insights from FastPay
The mobile payment system FastPay demonstrates a different path—it avoids global ordering while still preventing double-spending. This idea has inspired new protocols like Linera and Sui, which adopt local ordering while maintaining global verifiability. If similar technologies had emerged before Bitcoin, blockchain might not have become today’s “default option.”
Verifiability is More Important than Ordering
The core of decentralization is not the total ordered ledger but the verifiability of transactions. Modular blockchains (like Celestia) are attempting to separate data verification from execution, while off-chain computation and sharding technologies are also driving more efficient architectures. In the future, blockchain may no longer be the main ledger but a more flexible decentralized verification layer.
Pressure to Evolve
Although many capital and projects are still tied to the traditional blockchain narrative, history shows that technological iterations never wait for the conservatives. Just as the internet broke through the early closed ecosystems, Web3 will ultimately transcend the rigid model of blockchain ordering. The next wave of innovation will belong to those builders who embrace efficient, verifiable systems—regardless of whether they are based on blockchain.
