An attempt to describe Web3 stack, the many component parts of crypto ecosystem being built by hundreds of teams all over the world
I have yet to see an actual illustration of the Web3 stack. So this is an attempt. Given how expansive the Web3 ecosystem is, this diagram …
Context & Ripple Effects
Multicoin Capital's 2018 diagram was an early attempt to impose order on a crypto ecosystem being built by hundreds of loosely coordinated teams — a map of layers before anyone agreed on what the layers were. It matters because every later argument about Web3 has been, implicitly, an argument about this stack: which parts are real, which are aspirational, and who actually controls them.
The related coverage reads as a five-year audit of that map. Moxie Marlinspike found that apps and wallets sit on centralized services like OpenSea, Infura, and Alchemy that don't even provide authenticated responses (the centralized substrate under Web3 apps); Read Max split the debate into a technical question and a 'will it win' question (two distinct 'is Web3 bullshit?' questions); VICE likened the ideology-driven pivot to a collective Theranos (the 'collective Theranos' critique); and a16z's State of Crypto 2023 tried to settle it with data on market versus product cycles (a16z's market/product cycle dichotomy).
First-order effects
- For the hundreds of teams building crypto components, the diagram supplies a shared vocabulary for where each project sits in the stack — useful primarily to allocators like Multicoin deciding which layer deserves capital.
Second-order effects
- Subsequent scrutiny of the stack exposed that its decentralized layers depend on centralized intermediaries without authenticated responses, forcing advocates to defend the architecture rather than just describe it.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, evaluation of the ecosystem shifts from stack diagrams toward measurable signals — a16z's product-development index is one such attempt — while skeptics insist the technical-versus-adoption questions stay separate, keeping the legitimacy debate unresolved.
The trend: The Web3 stack keeps getting redrawn as its builders map ambition and its critics audit reality, with the gap between the two diagrams defining the ecosystem's credibility.