[zaguios]

The author is confused. The point isn't to have every little thing decentralized (though there are plenty of tools in the space to do this if you desire). The point is so that different centralized entities can build on top on the decentralized data in a way that can be trusted.

If I want to build my own decentralized exchange allowing people to trade their tokens I can without the permission of anyone. If I want to create my own NFT marketplace to compete with Opensea I can without the permission of anyone.

Yes, it costs money to do things on chain. That's the part you sacrifice, the benefit you receive is the fact there is no single point of failure. If a crypto exchange goes down it doesn't make the price of cryptos go to 0. Even if they were all taken down simultaneously you could easily spin one back up pretty quickly. Web3 is simply a tradeoff of cost vs openness & robustness. Most things have no need for Web3, but it certainly has it's place for certain types of projects.