having to deal with any blockchain is going to alienate a huge part of the target audience though. I agree that there will likely be thriving communities sometime in the future for which a blockchain related identity will be required, but for stuff like kbin / lemmy, I think a more likely solution will be paying an instance for the privilege of having an account there, with the associated privacy nightmare.

Or rather, if I were to run a kbin/lemmy instance, I’d setup a donation portal to a whitelist of charities, and you’d get to register with my instance only after I get proof that you donated to one of those charities. I figure I could get away with storing almost no personally identifiable information that way, while severely restricting new account numbers and dodging any complaints / legal issues since I’m not getting any money. Many people would scoff at such a requirement (just like they would with anything blockchain related) but I could see it work out fine anyway