Pretty impressed with the rhetoric and lucid thought that has gone into this. I have a couple comments that are criticisms that I hope might contribute to even greater lucidity.
"Human error is a very real thing and it's something smart contracts can clearly
eliminatereduce."
I doubt there's anything that can eliminate human error, and there's no need for hubris.
"...although DWEB is a distributed and decentralized web protocol, it is not anonymous."
This is a dealbreaker for me. I have kids. I protect my kids from the repercussions of my speech via pseudonymity. I live under threat of death. Saturday an assailant pulled a knife on me. Thursday my brakeline turned out to be severed. The local law enforcement have not been useful, although my neighbors and community have dissuaded the assailant, used their resources to surveil the attempted assault, and evicted them from the neighborhood.
I probably cannot speak the truth freely and be safe. While I am willing to speak freely anyway, I am unwilling to subject others to that same risk just because I have a big mouth, particularly not my beloved sons. There are actors that will undertake to oppress, corrupt, and even kill those that do not comply with their wishes. If we cannot speak freely and anonymously, no one will be safe from such violent oppression, and meat thugs will render any internet freedoms null and void.
I have been beaten, shot at, run off the road, subjected to various legal and financial assaults, and threatened with every indignity and harm you can imagine, and have still lived by my words.
Some years ago I was on a Grand Jury, and we saw voluminous evidence of corruption. The mere whiff of a threat to my children rendered me silent. Had I been anonymous in that position, I could not have been silenced, and people being harmed would have at least had their stories told, if only by me.
While anonymity has shown to have been taken advantage of by bad actors, I submit that the mere hinging of rewards on speech on Steemit has proved that the vast majority of bad acts are eliminated simply by dangling the carrot of emuneration in front of potential trolls.
Despite occasional appearances of illegal speech, such as prurient pics of children (I have not seen any actual porno involving kids on Steemit), doxing, and threats, the community has shown to quickly rally to flag such things to dust, making any account that speaks thusly useless.
If you can show me how I can speak freely about. say, corrupt local law enforcement, on dWeb without undertaking risk of assassination by bad actors even though my RL identity is revealed on dWeb, I will change my mind.
I don't think that's possible. I believe the principle espoused by America's founding fathers, that it is better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent man go to jail, is a better solution - if no better can be found. The data shows that ~25% of captives of the state are innocent of the crimes of which they have been convicted, and absent better protections than the Constitution actually afforded free Americans, we must expect such horrific abuse to be repeated via whatever means may be undertaken.
I strongly urge you to reconsider this.
Thanks!