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Without DV certs, much of the web might not be encrypted at all.

I think few independent site owners would go through the more costly and complicated EV process.

Bingo... that was muchly the case prior to Let's Encrypt's introduction. They single handily changed prevailing practices outside of big tech.

That's a bit of an exaggeration. Domain-validated certificates already existed, and were fairly commonplace, before Let's Encrypt. What was different about LE was that their certificates were free.

Let's not forget that it was mostly a manual process for most of us. Someone would obtain a cert, and email it to you, along with the private key. I'm sure old JIRA tickets would have so many "encrypted" zip files containing RSA 2048 keys and leaf certificates valid from 2008 to 2011.

Most independent site owners couldn't obtain an EV certificate even if they wanted to - the process effectively requires that the applicant be a business.

Business registration is cheap or free in many places. A sole proprietor is a business just because they say so.

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