Web3 keeps telling itself a comforting story. That decentralization equals empowerment. That users are “early” rather than confused. That complexity is a feature, not a failure. After covering this space long enough, it’s hard to ignore the gap between what Web3 claims to fix and what users actually experience. Web3 promised to give users control over speech and commerce, rather than having corporations manage them. Decentralized Finance (DeFi) would make finance programmable and open. Cryptocurrencies would reduce reliance on banks. NFTs would formalize ownership. Decentralized social platforms would weaken platform censorship. And a lot more with smart contracts. However, a small number of private companies still exert significant influence over the Web3 services that interact with decentralized blockchains, and this consolidated industry undermines the promise of empowering individuals. According to cryptographer Matthew Rosenfeld , virtually all clients who wish to access the trustless, distributed consensus mechanism must place their unquestioning trust in these companies’ outputs without further verification. Blockchain-based apps are heavily reliant on APIs, which allow software to communicate with other software, and many decentralized apps use them to connect to Ethereum and other blockchains rather than connecting directly. Centralized exchanges continue to dominate crypto trading. Many current decentralized applications (dApps) monetization models are opaque and overly complex for non-tech-savvy users to comprehend. What’s more, Web3 companies are not making enough effort to publish tutorials in languages apart from English or in everyday English. This lack of proper guidance is an obstacle to understanding Web3 and deters its adoption. Lack of awareness makes the case for education The rising prevalence of NPC behavior is an additional challenge to delivering on Web3’s promises of empowerment. Digital life today revolves around a simulated world typified by “NPC behavior,” or “non-player character,” video game characters that perform the same actions without awareness of their environments. In a world now dominated by online interactions, we bear witness to a departure from the 20th-century virtue of rationality, which identified the use of reason as fundamentally positive and involved a commitment to act accordingly. Closely related to that is the virtue of honesty, or being committed to awareness of the facts, given how knowing and acting in accordance with them impacts our everyday interactions. According to 20th-century philosopher Ayn Rand, these virtues and the self-interest ethic are integral to the standpoint that people should be free to pursue their interests. The individualist refuses to let anyone run their life and does not wish to control anyone else's. The number of people who struggle with independent thinking is conceivably higher now than in the 20th century. Technology is handling more and more thinking tasks, and skills like critical thinking, creativity, and complex problem-solving are deteriorating from disuse. Research reveals that basic cognitive load has declined over the past 15 years, and skills in evaluating arguments, deductive reasoning, forming individual conclusions, and making inferences have decreased by 10-15% in the general population over the past three decades. The Awakening Protocol: A return to reason No NPC Society positions itself as a response to these structural and cultural failures in Web3. Framed as a movement for individual agency, the project is developing toward a fully decentralized system grounded in individualism, with education and clarity treated as prerequisites rather than afterthoughts. The goal is not merely technical decentralization, but the cultivation of awareness in an ecosystem increasingly shaped by passive participation. The protocol combines transparent treasury design with a scalable narrative and identity framework intended to support independent, identity-based products and collaborations. Rather than imposing a single use case, it invites contributors and partners to build distinct projects within a shared philosophical and infrastructural foundation. At the center of the ecosystem is its coin, $NONPC, which is being developed without a central market operator. Instead of relying on opaque mechanisms or discretionary control, long-term sustainability is designed to emerge from open market dynamics and the stewardship of core contributors. Transparency measures, including DAO multisig governance, public vaults, published allocation wallets, and founder disclosure—are intended to reduce informational asymmetry and rebuild trust. Community engagement extends beyond messaging. Gamified missions designed to “awaken the simulation” are paired with plans for DAO-led governance, identity tooling, and awareness-focused systems, including AI-driven NPC detection and simulation tools. Over time, the project envisions stewardship of $NONPC resembling that of open-source infrastructure, where contributors maintain and support the system without owning or directing it. Education and clarity are not all that Web3 is missing Even a project with excellent tokenomics and solid tech will remain invisible if people can’t quickly understand what it does, for whom, and why it’s important. Tutorials and transparency make the real difference to adoption. A few years ago, people would sign up for Metamask, get a seed phrase, and then receive no reminder to buy Ether, undermining their user journey. Uniswap would throw around terms like “slippage” and “liquidity pools” without context. Project founders encourage onboarding but often focus on speed, hype a coin, and leave patches for later. They tend to build ecosystems for other builders rather than end users. Web3 can’t deliver on empowerment without education, clarity, and trust, but even transparent projects with rich educational resources can fail to gain traction. Trust is the missing link, and a sense of belonging can inspire it. A community of aware, mindful individuals is a ray of hope in a hostile sea of NPCs.
