Noel Tock invited me to join a Twitter Space he was hosting about Web3 and WordPress in mid-September 2022. Noel’s a partner at Human Made – one of the premier WordPress agencies – and a tech enthusiast deeply invested in the intersection of AI, web technologies, and blockchain.
\nThis was part of a series he was running, exploring where decentralized technologies might intersect with the WordPress ecosystem. The format – a one-hour audio conversation on Twitter – created a different dynamic than a conference talk or traditional podcast. More casual, more conversational, more reactive to audience questions.
\nSo yeh. Let me walk you through what we likely discussed.
\nBy September 2022, I’d been at Automattic as Web3 Lead for about six months. I’d given my WCEU talk in June, done the WP Tavern podcast in July. The WordPress community had heard the arguments, seen the possibilities, expressed the skepticism.
\nBut Noel’s audience was different – Human Made’s clients are enterprise organizations running complex WordPress installations. Fortune 500 companies, universities, media organizations. Not crypto-native startups.
\nThe question for them isn’t "What’s Web3?" but "Is there a business case for integrating these technologies into our WordPress infrastructure?"
\nThat’s a harder question. And more important.
\nContext matters. By mid-September 2022:
\nThe market was down. Crypto winter was in full effect. Ethereum had dropped 70% from its peak. NFT trading volume was way down. The "number go up" crowd had gone quiet.
\nBut building continued. Ethereum’s merge to proof-of-stake was happening (literally that same week). Infrastructure was maturing. Real projects solving real problems kept shipping.
\nWordPress remained curious but cautious. Some enthusiasm from creators and developers. Lots of skepticism from the broader community. Automattic exploring possibilities but not making grand pronouncements.
\nThis wasn’t the time for hype. It was the time for honest assessment.
\nI would have focused on practical use cases that were working (or close to working):
\nNFTs for content creators: WordPress bloggers could mint articles as NFTs. Not speculation – actual collectibles for fans who want to support and own a piece of their favorite creator’s work.
\nToken-gated memberships: Premium content accessible only to NFT holders. More flexible than traditional subscription models. Transferable if the holder wants to sell their membership.
\nCrypto tips and patronage: Direct wallet-to-wallet payments. No platform fees, no payment processor cuts. Especially valuable for international creators dealing with expensive transaction costs.
\nThis wasn’t theoretical. Creators were doing this, though the UX was still clunky.
\nCryptocurrency payments: Accept Bitcoin, Ethereum, stablecoins. Lower fees than credit cards. Faster settlement for international transactions.
\nNFT-based loyalty programs: Instead of points in a database, issue NFT rewards. Transferable, tradeable, provably scarce. Actually owned by customers.
\nDigital collectibles as products: Sports teams, artists, brands – selling NFTs alongside physical products. New revenue streams.
\nToken-gating for exclusive products: Limit access to drops or special editions based on token ownership. Community rewards that are provable and programmable.
\nWooCommerce plugins were emerging to enable this. Not perfect, but functional.
\nWordProof integration: Blockchain timestamping to prove when content was published. Combat plagiarism. Establish copyright claims.
\nDecentralized storage: IPFS integration for media files. Content that can’t be censored or taken down by hosting providers.
\nLess exciting than "make money with NFTs" but solving real problems for publishers and journalists.
\nI wouldn’t have sugarcoated the problems:
\nUser experience remains terrible: Wallets, private keys, gas fees, transaction failures. Most people don’t want to deal with this complexity.
\nScams are everywhere: Rug pulls, fake projects, phishing attacks. WordPress’s reputation for security would be at risk if we made it easy for users to get scammed.
\nRegulatory uncertainty: What happens when governments start cracking down on cryptocurrency or NFTs? WordPress operates globally – how do you build features that are legal in some jurisdictions but not others?
\nEnvironmental concerns: Pre-merge, Ethereum’s proof-of-work consensus was environmentally costly. Even post-merge, the perception problem remained.
\nThe speculation overshadows utility: Most people hear "NFT" and think "million-dollar monkey JPEGs," not "practical membership tokens."
\nWhat made this conversation interesting was Noel’s position. Human Made serves enterprise clients. They’re not going to implement something because it’s trendy. They need business cases, risk assessments, security guarantees.
\nI imagine Noel pushed on questions like:
\n"How do we explain this to our clients?"
\nEnterprise clients don’t want to be early adopters of unproven technology that could damage their brand.
"What’s the support burden?"
\nIf a customer’s crypto payment fails, who handles that support ticket? The complexity ripples through the entire organization.
"Is the WordPress core team supportive?"
\nWordPress is a community project. Major feature additions need community buy-in. Was that there for Web3 integration?
"What about our agency’s liability?"
\nIf we build Web3 features and users lose money due to hacks or scams, what’s our exposure?
These are the right questions. And I hope I gave honest answers rather than dismissive "you’ll see" tech-bro responses.
\nTwitter Spaces are ephemeral (at least they were in 2022 – recording features were limited). Audio-only. Often casual and reactive rather than heavily structured.
\nThat format suited this kind of conversation. Less "presenting arguments" and more "thinking through problems together."
\nThe audience could jump in with questions. Noel could steer toward topics his community cared about. I could respond to skepticism in real-time rather than delivering a one-way talk.
\nIt’s also why Twitter Spaces are hard to preserve or reference later. The conversation happened, people who attended got value from it, and then it’s mostly gone except for impressions and notes.
\nThat’s both a feature and a bug.
\nConversations like this with Noel reinforced something important: Enterprise adoption of Web3 requires dramatically better tooling and risk management than enthusiast adoption.
\nCrypto-native users will tolerate clunky UX, accept personal responsibility for security, and navigate regulatory gray areas. They’re opting into that.
\nEnterprise organizations won’t. They need:
\nWordPress serving enterprise clients through agencies like Human Made means thinking about Web3 integration through that lens.
\nIt’s not enough for the technology to work. It has to work reliably, at scale, with support infrastructure, in a legally defensible way.
\nThat’s a much higher bar. And one that Web3 infrastructure wasn’t (and arguably still isn’t) fully meeting.
\nBy late 2022, I’d been having versions of this conversation dozens of times. WordPress contributors, WooCommerce merchants, agency partners, enterprise clients, individual creators.
\nThe pattern was consistent:
\nAll valid. All important.
\nThe conversations worth having aren’t "Web3 is the future, get on board" or "Web3 is a scam, ignore it." They’re "Here’s what works, here’s what doesn’t, here’s what’s uncertain, let’s figure out together if there’s something valuable here."
\nThat’s what I hope Noel’s Twitter Space provided – a space (ha) to think through these questions without hype or dismissal, just honest exploration.
\nThanks to Noel for hosting and to everyone who joined the conversation.
\nEvent: Twitter Space – Web3 & WordPress
\nHost: Noel Tock (Partner at Human Made)
\nDate: September 16, 2022
\nDuration: 1 hour
\nFormat: Audio conversation on Twitter Spaces
\nFind Noel: @noeltock, noeltock.com
\nFind me: Contact form, @divydovy, hi@divydovy.com
Note: Twitter Spaces are ephemeral audio conversations. This writeup is based on my recollection of typical discussion topics from that period. I was having similar conversations repeatedly in mid-2022, so the themes here reflect the questions and concerns that were top-of-mind across the WordPress community at that time.
\nSources:
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