**7. Challenges in Web3 adoption**

Analysis of currently available details of development and deployment of Web3 based applications highlights few major challenges that may impact adoption of these technologies. Even though not exhaustive some of the known challenges are listed below based on the author's experience working on Web3 projects and available online/expert sources.

### **7.1 Evolving standards**

Smart contracts are the backbone of Web3 based applications. There are multiple standards for representing ownership of fungible and non-fungible tokens on blockchains. There are multiple organizations and individuals working to improve, optimize, and reduce transaction fees (gas fees). We can evaluate changes to a few of the standards over the past few years. Ethereum Request for Comment 20 (ERC 20) refers to a scripting standard within Ethereum blockchain for fungible tokens (like currencies) and ERC 721 is a standard for non-fungible tokens. ERC 721A is an extension which allows multiple minting at the same time (an extension of ERC 721) to reduce gas fees. There are multiple other processes and standards evolving to optimize this space, such as lazy minting where the creator pays the gas fees and makes the artwork an NFT only when there is agreed seller and so on. The uncertainties and changing technological infrastructure would impact eCommerce platforms and users would expect the latest standards to be implemented and there are multiple studies calling for standardization of standards for the ease of use [15]. Web3 programming and standard adoption would be an ongoing requirement for all eCommerce initiatives in this space.

### **7.2 Centralization in the decentralized world**

Even though the governing principle of all Web3 platforms is decentralization, the eCommerce platforms tend to still act as a centralized platform. For example, NFT
