It’s hard to believe that Web3 has been around for more than a decade, promising to transition us towards a decentralized internet and financial system that everyone controls. But the reality is that, not only has this promise not yet materialized, it’s not even close. Even today, the vast majority of people in the world only know traditional finance and the corporate-controlled world wide web.
Web3’s road to mainstream adoption has been far from straight, with occasional bursts of excitement driven by hype and innovation beaten back by the never-ending security concerns and endless complexity. But with a surge of institutional interest driving Bitcoin to all-time highs and the emergence of transformative new concepts like real-world assets, could it be that Web3 is finally getting close to the point of no return?
It may not seem so at first glance. According to the 2025 State of Web3 Adoption report, the number of daily active crypto users worldwide stands at just over 18 million. While that’s enough to pack multiple Olympic stadiums, it’s still pretty insignificant considering there’s an estimated 8.23 billion people living in the world right now.
Simplicity Is Everything
The challenge for Web3 is that it needs to progress from being a niche technology to something considered a necessity, and it can only do that by providing benefits that are so impactful, so useful and so easy to use, that anyone who doesn’t use it becomes seriously disadvantaged.
Consider the case of digital payments, which dramatically enhance the convenience of our lives. With banking apps and direct debit, there’s no longer any need to send a check in the post or visit the utilities office to pay your bills, saving you heaps of hassle and time that can be better spent doing things you enjoy. They also eliminate the need for cash, which means no wasting time at the ATM, and less risk of being mugged.
They make our lives better, and what’s more they’re incredibly straightforward. These days, nobody is lost for words when they whip out their smartphone to scan a QR code and the payment goes directly from their bank account into the store’s. Modern banking apps have made such payments an effortless experience, and very few consumers are aware of the complexities of the infrastructure and processes that enable them to happen. All they know is that the payment usually goes through – and on the rare occasions it doesn’t they’ll curse and start scrabbling through their pockets, desperately searching for loose change.
This is where Web3 needs to be if crypto payments are to become the norm. People aren’t interested in what blockchain they’re using or granting permissions for dApps to access their wallets, and they don’t want to pfaff around making sure they have enough of a certain token to pay their gas fees. They want their payments to work seamlessly, in real time and every time.
At the same time, they also want a real reason to use Web3 technologies – some kind of advantage it provides that they cannot get when using traditional payment methods.
Money Matters
Perhaps the biggest advantage Web3 has right now is in its ability to help people make money, by simplifying the way people can invest their savings and earn rewards just by possessing crypto.
In this respect, crypto wins hands down. If you put your savings in a special, high-yield account at the bank, you’ll earn interest of around 4.3%, so long as you don’t touch it for at least 12 months. But if an emergency comes up and you need to make a withdrawal, you’ll lose whatever measly interest was offered.
Crypto, on the other hand, provides numerous options for people to earn interest on their savings, including staking, lending and liquidity farming. Each of these generally pays much higher returns, with much greater flexibility on when you can access those funds.
It’s getting easier, too. Simply go to an exchange platform like XBO.com, open an account, deposit some cash, buy some crypto, and you can immediately “stake” funds such as ETH, SOL, XLM, AVAX, TRX and POL and earn up to 15% APY for doing next to nothing.
We chose XBO.com because of its simple, intuitive user interface, which looks and feels much like any Web2 banking app. When you stake funds on XBO.com, what you’re doing is locking them up in a smart contract, where your capital helps to secure and validate blockchain transactions. But the entire process is automated – so all you have to do is click a few buttons and watch the money roll in. Moreover, there are options to increase these rewards by buying and staking the platform’s native XBO tokens, which also provide crypto trading fee discounts.
XBO.com also incentivizes crypto spending. When you apply for an XBO card, which allows you to spend crypto at any store that accepts Mastercard or Visa payments, you’ll be able to earn cashback in cryptocurrency on every single transaction, and these payouts will also increase if you hold XBO tokens.
Web3’s Winning Combination
It has been more than a decade since Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood first coined the term “Web3”, but although the technology offers so much promise, its real-world progress has failed to keep up with the hype.
But for a long time, Web3 was hampered by very real problems around usability and it struggled to offer people a compelling reason for its existence. This is what’s changing, with Web3 finally approaching the seamless interactions we find in Web2, and its compelling and flexible options for investing giving people much greater food for thought when it comes to saving. This is exactly what Web3 needs. With a winning combination of simplicity and value that goes beyond what traditional banks provide, platforms like XBO.com can make a real difference.
Web3 has already won over all of the crypto enthusiasts, and the challenge now is to reach out to those who couldn’t care less about eliminating intermediaries and being in control of their financial destinies. Such people just want a simple, easy way to spend and make money, and if Web3 can give it to them, mainstream adoption is well within its grasp.
