Web3 is weird.

Its biggest supporters spend their time advocating for their favorite cryptocurrencies on Twitter and in Discord chat rooms, and proudly use cartoon NFT avatars (from Bored Apes to CryptoPunks to Cool Cats) as their profile pictures – before they flip them for profit and buy another one instead. Many of them proudly identify as members of token-specific camps, from “Bitcoin maximalists” to “Ethereans” to “LINK marines” to the “XRP army.” They identify each other with in-crowd lingo like “gm,” “WAGMI,” “NGMI,” “HODL,” “down bad,” and “rekt.”

And yet, to dismiss Web3 as a passing fad (or, as crypto skeptics like to insist, a fraud or scam or Ponzi scheme) would be extremely short-sighted. It has already proven its staying power: Bitcoin has been trading for more than 13 years, and Ethereum for seven years, and neither blockchain has ever been hacked, nor has either coin ever gone to zero.

And after crypto had its biggest mainstream bull run yet in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic, riding the retail investor revolution and Reddit-fueled meme stock wave, more big names are Web3 believers than ever before – both individuals and companies. Wall Street hedge fund titans changed their tune on crypto as an investment; publicly traded companies like Tesla and Square bought Bitcoin for their balance sheets; fintech giants like PayPal and Robinhood rolled out crypto buying features; consumer brands from Budweiser to Visa to Tiffany’s to Gucci embraced NFTs.

All of this adds up to a very clear directive: Web3 is here to stay, and while it’s still early days, the time to build is right now.

Coinbase was started in 2012 by a former Airbnb engineer and former Goldman Sachs trader; now it’s publicly traded and a household name in the United States. Crypto exchange names and logos adorn the arenas of the LA Lakers and Miami Heat, and every MLB umpire’s shirt. The CEO of DraftKings, the scrappy Boston startup that survived years of legal battles with state regulators to become a $10 billion sports betting behemoth, is a huge believer in crypto and told Decrypt this year: “Early in the internet days, there weren’t a lot of mainstream ways to consume the internet… but everything eventually centered around the world wide web, all the underlying technology was built around that. And then all of a sudden things like video, and other things that are more mainstream and easier to consume for the average person, came about.”

The economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman infamously wrote in 1998 that “the growth of the internet will slow drastically… By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.” He was very, very wrong, and the quote resurfaces every few years to get roasted by denizens of the Web.

But to ensure that the same skeptics who now dismiss blockchain technology are wrong, entrepreneurs building Web3 startups will need to build tools that have real use cases, address a need, and demonstrate what decentralized tech can do.

Many are already doing it, applying blockchain to areas like decentralized data storage and video hosting, peer-to-peer payments, lightning-fast international remittances, faster and more private charitable donations, and fairer voting for group projects. But there are also many scams and fly-by-night money grabs – like in any new tech industry. To avoid the failures of the past (remember the ICO boom of 2018?) and to onboard the next million people into Web3, entrepreneurs in the space need to be honest, patient, strategic, and above all else, build products that matter.