Will the popularity of wallets lead users to a Web3 world, or will current web apps move more quickly in that direction by first incorporating built-in wallet functionality?

Not only is this a chicken-and-egg situation, neither approach is without its problems.

On the one hand, the standalone crypto wallet aspires to be that bridge to the blockchain, just as the browser was to the web, but most wallet user experiences are far from ideal for mainstream consumers. On the other hand, todays web/mobile applications also face a steep adoption curve because so few are incorporating wallets.

The wallet-first strategy is complicated because most of them are too geekythey demand a certain amount of technical proficiency, a barrier to adoption.

Despite having around a hundred crypto wallets to select from today, that segments growth rate has not been impressive, increasing from 40 million users globally in 2019 to about 80 million at the end of 2022. By comparison, TikTok grew from 381 million to 1.6 billion users over the same period. At the current pace, and with only 6 million daily active users, well be waiting a long time to reach a tipping point in large-scale adoption by, potentially, billions.

The small number of application cases for these crypto wallets outside of decentralized finance and a few decentralized apps is another obstacle. These standalone wallets shine for moving money around, but once you start connecting them to other apps or websites, they start to fall short due to another barrier: switching back and forth between the app and the wallet exacerbates an already subpar user experience. And the abandonment rate increases when you add them to fresh apps that havent yet demonstrated market viability.

One benefit of the app-first strategy is that, before a user learns about any wallet functionality, theyre already familiar with the app. In these circumstances, the wallet is often a tuck-in feature that extends a given use case with cryptocurrency, but too few apps are adding levers for crypto or tokens.

The wallet-first approach is represented by the wide range of wallet-browser extensions available, such as those from MetaMask, Phantom, and Wallet Connect. The user then links to a given website or app, and navigates back and forth in a disconnected fashion, hoping that nothing breaks in the process. There is also the case of branded wallets from crypto exchanges. They offer a tight integration with trading of course, and to some Web3 apps, but these are the exceptions.

The popular NBA Top Shot app is an example of an app-first situation in which users are initially presented with exciting options for purchasing NFT collections. Later, the wallet appears in the background as a safe deposit box for these digital assets.

Advocates of the wallet-first approach are adamant that it is the browsers clone. Their logic is in believing that these wallets will be the conduit to the new wave of apps. Undoubtedly, the wallet is a strong contender to draw the general public into the blockchain, much as the popularity of the browser led to the rise of the web.

The wallet is still not at the same status as the browser, though. Markets for wallets and blockchains are too fragmented. Regrettably, the blockchain industry is constrained by a shortage of interoperability standards and riddled with incompatible chains all vying to be the primary entrance point. Until thats resolved, crypto users effectively are being asked to use different browsers for different sitesa problem the Mosaic browser elegantly solved in harmonizing ones web experience.

Standards drive adoption.

Think of the wallet as a passport. Because its a recognized worldwide standard, a passport is accepted everywhere. But without airports, a passport would sit in a drawer, vastly underutilized. And without enough apps that incorporate wallets, theyll similarly lie dormant in browser extensions or apps.

Although the two paths outlined require further growth and development, I believe both will triumph because theyre not mutually incompatible. For transferring digital assets and navigating decentralized apps, we can use standalone wallets, and for in-app interactions, we can engage with built-in app wallets.

Having two parallel directions for the evolution of wallets in our digital assets future is not such a bad thing, and foretells a bright future for Web3.

William Mougayar has four decades of tech industry experience and is the author of The Business Blockchain. The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

Given the declinesseen in developing economies around the worldhaving people do routine tasks that A.I. could do is not an option, he said. We are going to need technology to do some of the mundane work so that people can do higher-value work. He added that ultimately there is going to be job creation with A.I., as jobs will also be added in areas with more value creation.

His remarks, made in a Nikkei interview published on Saturday, resemble ones offered this week by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who spoke at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit in London on Wednesday.

Here are the facts, Schmidt said. We are not having enough childrenall the demographics say theres going to be a shortage of humans for jobs. Literally too many jobs and not enough people for at least the next 30 years.

Jobs lost to A.I.

Schmidt argued that while job losses in the near term might be inevitable, A.I. will have an overall positive impact because of enhanced efficiency and its ability to replace professions already getting harder to fill in shrinking labor markets.

Goldman Sachs estimated in March that while A.I. might lead to new jobs and a productivity boom, it could soon replace the equivalent of 300 million jobs in the U.S. and Europe.

If A.I. does ultimately help society in the long term while creating hardship for many in the nearer term, it wouldnt be a first for technological innovation.

MIT economics professor Daron Acemoglu told the Financial Times this week that while the Industrial Revolution did lead to progress, you also had costs that were huge and very long-lasting. A hundred years of much harsher conditions for working people, lower real wages, much worse health and living conditions, less autonomy, greater hierarchy.

With A.I. threatening many white-collar jobs today, he believes the U.S. needs a strong labor relations movement. We need to create an environment in which workers have a voice, he said, suggesting something more like Germanys systemwhere the public and private sectors and labor work togetherthan Americas more contentious company-by-company approach.

A few months ago, Acemoglu joined Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak in signing an open letter calling for a pause on A.I. tools more powerful than OpenAIs GPT-4. The letter read in part:

Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders. Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable. 

Meanwhile OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, on a tour meeting with European leaders, said Friday: This idea that A.I. is going to progress to a point where humans dont have any work to do or dont have any purpose has never resonated with me. 

Power will shift

Then again, in March 2021before most people were aware of OpenAI or ChatGPTAltman wrote in a lengthy blog post:

My work at OpenAI reminds me every day about the magnitude of the socioeconomic change that is coming sooner than most people believe. Software that can think and learn will do more and more of the work that people now do. Even more power will shift from labor to capital. If public policy doesnt adapt accordingly, most people will end up worse off than they are today.

In 2019, Altman cofounded Worldcoin, a crypto startup involving eyeball scans for identification. If A.I. takes too many jobs and governments decide that a universal basic income is needed, Worldcoin wants to be the distribution mechanism for those payments. For now its aiming to be the way people prove they are actual humans and not A.I. bots online. The company announced a $115 million Series C funding round this week.

Krishna recently said that IBM would slow or suspend hiring in non-customer-facing roles that currently amount to about 26,000 workers. He added, I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by A.I. and automation over a five-year period.

The deal would avert a catastrophic U.S. default, but it also risks angering both Democratic and Republican sides with the concessions made to reach it. Negotiators agreed to some Republican demands for enhanced work requirements on recipients of food stamps that had sparked an uproar from House Democrats as a nonstarter.

Support from both parties will be needed to win congressional approval.

The Democratic president and Republican speaker reached the agreement after the two spoke earlier Saturday evening by phone, said McCarthy. The country and the world have been watching and waiting for a resolution to a political standoff that threatened the U.S. and global economies.

With the outlines of a deal in place, the legislative package could be drafted and shared with lawmakers in time for votes early next week in the House and later in the Senate.

Central to the package is a two-year budget deal that would hold spending flat for 2024 and impose limits for 2025 in exchange for raising the debt limit for two years, pushing the volatile political issue past the next presidential election.

Biden also spoke earlier in the day with Democratic leaders in Congress to discuss the status of the talks, according to three people familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The Republican House speaker had gathered top allies behind closed doors at the Capitol as negotiators pushed for a deal that would raise the nations borrowing limit and avoid a first-ever default on the federal debt, while also making spending cuts that House Republicans are demanding.

As he arrived at the Capitol early in the day, McCarthy said that Republican negotiators were closer to an agreement.

McCarthys comments had echoed the latest public assessment from Biden, who said Friday evening that bargainers were very close. Biden and McCarthy last met face-to-face on the matter Monday.

Their new discussion Saturday by phone came after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress that the United States could default on its debt obligations by June 5  four days later than previously estimated if lawmakers do not act in time to raise the federal debt ceiling. The extended X-date gives the two sides a bit of extra time as they scramble for a deal.

But as another day dragged on with financial disaster looming closer, it had appeared some of the problems over policy issues that dogged talks all week remained unresolved.

Both sides have suggested one of the main holdups is a GOP effort to expand existing work requirements for recipients of food stamps and other federal aid programs, a longtime Republican goal that Democrats have strenuously opposed. The White House said the Republican proposals were cruel and senseless.

They also had appeared to still be laboring over a compromise on federal permitting changes that would ease regulations for developing oil, gas and renewable energy projects and foster new transmission line connections.

McCarthy, who dashed out before the lunch hour Saturday and arrived back at the Capitol with a big box of takeout, declined to elaborate on those discussions. One of his negotiators, Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves, said there was not a chance that Republicans might relent on the work requirements issue.

Americans and the world were uneasily watching the negotiating brinkmanship that could throw the U.S. economy into chaos and sap world confidence in the nations leadership. House negotiators left the Capitol at 2 a.m. the night before, only to return hours later.

Failure to lift the borrowing limit, now $31 trillion, to pay the nations incurred bills, would send shockwaves through the U.S. and global economy. Yellen said failure to act by the new date would cause severe hardship to American families, harm our global leadership position and raise questions about our ability to defend our national security interests.

Anxious retirees and others were already making contingency plans for missed checks, with the next Social Security payments due next week.

The president, spending part of the weekend at Camp David, continued to talk with his negotiating team multiple times a day, signing off on offers and counteroffers. Biden was upbeat as he departed the White House on Friday evening, saying: Its very close, and Im optimistic.

All sides also are hearing from other lawmakers, including Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the independent from Arizona, who has been in the center of big policy debates, and Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.

Biden and McCarthy have seemed to be narrowing on a two-year budget-cutting deal that would also extend the debt limit into 2025 past the next presidential election. The contours of the deal have been taking shape to cut spending for 2024 and impose a 1% cap on spending growth for 2025.

Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the Republican whip who is in charge of counting the votes from McCarthys slim majority to ensure passage of any deal, said he is telling rank-and-file lawmakers not to believe what theyre hearing until party leaders deliver the news about any deal.

Any deal would need to be a political compromise in a divided Congress. Many of the hard-right Trump-aligned Republicans in Congress have long been skeptical of the Treasurys projections, and they are pressing McCarthy to hold out.

Were constantly in touch with our members, letting them know that what is being reported, you should not accept that, Emmer said. If theres an agreement, we will let them know.

The Republican proposal on work requirements would save $11 billion over 10 years by raising the maximum age for existing standards that require able-bodied adults who do not live with dependents to work or attend training programs.

Current law applies those standards to recipients under the age of 50. The GOP plan would raise the age to include adults 55 and under. It would lower the number of exemptions that states can grant to some recipients subject to those requirements.

Biden has said the work requirements for Medicaid would be a nonstarter. He initially seemed potentially open to negotiating minor changes on food stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, but his position has appeared to harden.

Lawmakers are not expected to return to work from the Memorial Day weekend before Tuesday, at the earliest, and McCarthy has promised lawmakers he will abide by the rule to post any bill for 72 hours before voting.

The Democratic-held Senate has largely stayed out of the negotiations, leaving the talks to Biden and McCarthy. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has pledged to move quickly to send a compromise package to Bidens desk.

Weeks of talks have failed to produce a deal in part because the Biden administration resisted for months on negotiating with McCarthy, arguing that the countrys full faith and credit should not be used as leverage to extract other partisan priorities.

But House Republicans united behind a plan to cut spending, narrowly passing legislation in late April that would raise the debt ceiling in exchange for the spending reductions.

___

Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Stephen Groves, Fatima Hussein, Farnoush Amiri, Seung Min Kim and videojournalist Rick Gentilo contributed to this report.

The veil is off. 

In the days following his announcement that he would challenge Trump for the Republican nomination for president, DeSantis has accused him of running to the left. 

Hes drawing contrasts with the former president on a range of issues including abortion, immigration and the economy. 

And in a move DeSantis portrayed as the ultimate betrayal of conservative values he says Trump was siding with Disney in the governors feud with the massive corporation and cultural touchstone thats also one of the states largest taxpayers and employers.

I dont know what happened to Donald Trump, he told WWTN radio in Nashville. This is a different guy today than when he was running in 2015 and 2016. And I think, I think the direction that hes going with his campaign is the wrong direction.

It was one of more than a dozen interviews with friendly media outlets since filing paperwork to run for president Wednesday. The first, with Twitter Inc. owner Elon Musk, was overshadowed by technical glitches that marred DeSantiss long-awaited entry into the race.

But his newfound willingness to take on Trump directly is clarifying the contours of the Republican nomination fight. With DeSantis largely holding his tongue, his challenge to Trump was largely a debate over personalities and temperament. 

Now, with DeSantis formally in the race and trailing Trump by 33 points, the governor is staking out harder-line positions on policy issues. 

On spending, DeSantis said Trump shares responsibility for the nations $31 trillion in debt. He added almost $8 trillion in debt in just four years as president, he said. I was right on those issues and he wasnt.

On abortion, DeSantis defended Floridas newly enacted six-week abortion ban against Trump criticism that it was too harsh and that DeSantis didnt know what he was doing. 

Hes running to the left, DeSantis said. But he also stopped short of endorsing the national abortion ban favored by other Republican candidates. I think at the end of the day, were going to save more lives with a bottom-up approach, he told conservative talk radio host Dana Loesch. 

On immigration, DeSantis accused Trump of supporting amnesty for undocumented immigrants as part of a 2018 immigration bill. To hit me for taking the America First position I think is pretty strange, DeSantis said. 

The Trump campaign responded that as a congressman, DeSantis voted for a bill that gave legal status to some undocumented minors as part of a package of tougher immigration restrictions, before opposing a similar plan. 

On crime, DeSantis criticized the First Step Act, Trumps signature criminal justice bill, telling conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro Friday that it was basically a jailbreak bill. DeSantis voted for an early version of the bill but resigned from Congress before the final bill passed the House.

And DeSantis repeatedly expressed bewilderment over Trumps criticism of his handling of the Walt Disney Co. DeSantis has moved to strip the company of its self-governing status over Disneys objections to legislation prohibiting teaching on subjects of race and sexual identity. Disney canceled plans this month to move 2,000 employees to the state.

What a mess it is, Trump said Thursday. He could have worked out an easy settlement, but no he wanted to show the fake news how tough a guy he is. Hes not.

DeSantis clapped back. 

Hes going left on culture. Hes even sided with Disney against me, the Florida governor told WWTN. He is siding with Disney and saying that I was wrong for standing up with them. So, you know, people have to make their decisions about which way they go.

But at other times, DeSantis hewed closely to the Trump line. Asked about Trumps insistence in a CNN interview that he could resolve Russias war against Ukraine in one day, 24 hours, DeSantis backed the former president. 

I dont know that he can get it done in 24 hours. I mean, hes prone to rhetorical flourishes, he told Newsmax. But I do think his instinct of trying to get a settlement rather than have this thing become a war of attrition or heaven forbid, escalate, with Russia having the largest nuclear arsenal in the world I do think thats the right instinct.