Building PotLock on Web2 vs Web3

[codingshot]

Although we are Web3 natives, at the end of the day we are looking to fund public goods, help them scale, and measure impact, and we must not focus on the tech stack because we like the space, but what technology will empower us to solve this pain point for all stakeholders.

Currently there exists no Web2 quadratic funding platform, at the same time we are looking to abstract blockchain from the user experience and support all public goods using NEAR as the technology under the hood.

This forum discussion is intended to outline the the pros and cons of a Web3 platform vs building Potlock on Web2.

Benefits of Web3

• Ability to audit money and live transparency of financial reporting
• Ability to audit admins / chefs for decision making and corruption with council
• Leveraging escrow contracts for payouts like milestones
• Ability for others to build front ends and proliferate platforms
• Use existing Web3 human checks like I Am Human, instead of engaging kya providers like fractal for our own KYC provider. Can also use projects like Wormhole
• Harder for smaller payments
• Capture market of NEAR
• Less admin and custom support for account recovery (tradeoff for key management / progressive -> self custody)
• Lack of dependency on traditional payment providers, however will be using Web3 onramp aggregators
• Less dependency on middleware and database, that lives on blockchain
• Can bootstrap other platforms comparably like NEAR Horizon accelerator platform and SocialDB to rapidly prototype social features / profiles and platform external dependencies

Why Web2

• Already will be using on ramp, if they are already taking a fee, might as well just do Web2 onramps
• Onboarding to Web3 a hurdle for new users
• Can still create open source repo however