According to @Nefarii — Sui Move Africa Builder
The biggest lesson from Tusky is this: cost and user experience matter more than ideology. In reality, Tusky was 10–16× more expensive per GB than Google One and iCloud.
Tusky charged $5 for 50GB, while Google charges $0.99 for 100GB; Tusky’s 2TB plan cost $80, compared to $9.99 for iCloud+.
Most users are simply not willing to pay a “decentralization tax”, even though Web3 often assumes people who care about data ownership will accept higher prices. In practice, most users prioritize convenience first, privacy second (if at all), and Google and Apple already occupy the default position in their digital lives.
The core difference lies in product intuition. Google and Apple turn storage into a near-thoughtless behavior: one-click purchase, automatic sync, instant access across devices, easy recovery, and zero learning curve.
In contrast, many Web3 products — including Tusky — still require users to understand why they’re different, why decentralization and encryption models matter. This cognitive burden is friction, and friction is the fastest way to kill adoption.
Web2 doesn’t sell technology — it sells outcomes. Users don’t want ideology, whitepapers, or technical sermons; they just want to store files, access them anywhere, and never think about it again. Google Photos silently backs up personal data; iCloud quietly syncs entire device ecosystems. That invisibility is the product. Web3 often tries to educate users, while Web2 removes the need to think altogether.
Therefore, Tusky’s core problem wasn’t whether it was decentralized or not — it was that it wasn’t clearly better than Web2 for mainstream users, while being significantly more expensive. When the price gap (10–16×) and UX gap remain unresolved, products like Tusky are structurally confined to niche markets.
Web3 only starts to win when it can compete on price, outperform on UX, sell outcomes instead of technology, and make Web3 invisible to users. In the end, you don’t win users with belief — you win them with convenience, especially when you’re charging them money.$SUI
