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Web3 Is Bullshit

stephendiehl.com

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Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#41

Post by blablabla123 »

throwaheyy wrote: post #5

Good, someone finally put it into words. It’s only crypto-bros who are trying to push “web3” as even a “thing”. Kind of like Zuckerberg and the metaverse. Their delusions of grandeur are so great as to warrant an increment in the web’s metaphorical major version number, but nobody else gives a shit.

It's like when years ago it was speculated that web 3.0 might be a semantic web or some IoT web. I guess both technologies have some strong niches now but what drives everything is still web 2.0 and native apps that wrap any extra features. But I'm sure the crypto-everything hype will still be there for some time.

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#42

Post by leifg »

shiohime wrote: post #34

I wish that people writing articles talking about how horrible web3 is tried something other than Ethereum lol. I'm fairly certain that if people's first web3 experience is something that actually works and doesn't cost hundreds of dollars for minor transactions they won't be as put off. I get downvoted everytime here I bring it up but seriously if people tried something like Solana today compared to Ethereum I'm fai…

Genuine question: what has private key authentication to do with blockchain? I've been using this for my ssh connections for almost 15 years now.

And the second question: what happens if you use your private key? Every website that uses password has a mechanism to reset your password. Take that feature away you'll lock out millions of users.

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#43

Post by ThalesX »

mrkramer wrote: post #18
streamofdigits wrote: post #13

if Web2 became a dystopic Zuckerbergia and Web3 is a disguised Cryptobrosia is there maybe a chance for a Web 2.5 that doesn't suck? Like something that isn't fake techno-solutionism on steroids? What would be its building blocks? IFPS, Activitypub, XMPP, Matrix? but more importantly what would be the governance and incentives that would prevent it from rapidly degenerating as with all other versions

>if Web2 became a dystopic Zuckerbergia and Web3 is a disguised Cryptobrosia is there maybe a chance for a Web 2.5 that doesn't suck? Nobody is forcing people to use Facebook or any of Facebook's family of apps. I personally don't use FB or any of its apps for the last 10 years and I'm totally fine. >What would be its building blocks? IFPS, Activitypub, XMPP, Matrix? IP, TCP and HTTP are not going away anytime soon.…

> IP, TCP and HTTP are not going away anytime soon. Nobody really knows how would next stage of WWW look like therefore you can't even think about candidate protocols and standards.

IPFS is supposed to also be able to replace HTTP in the stack. Whether that'll succeed or not is a different discussion, but turns out people are thinking about candidate protocols and standards.

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#44

Post by leifg »

yannoninator wrote: post #26
triactual wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an opinion piece. Write a rebuttal and post it.

What rebuttal? I agree with the post? I just want the common man to see crypto for what it really is with a balanced debate or interview, not just a blog post that only 'nerds' reads as Diehl states. > It’s almost only nerds who read my blog... After all, it would be more credible coming from him than me.

> I just want the common man to see crypto for what it really is with a balanced debate or interview, not just a blog post that only 'nerds' reads as Diehl states.

I've been following this space for a while and honestly I don't see how a counterpart would actually look like. We had blockchains/crypto for almost 13 years and the only thing that came out of it is a speculative semi-unregulated asset market. Still Forbes, NYT etc... always write articles like "Cryptocurrencies are volatile asset that is doomed to crash, but the underlying blockchain technology is here to say". Without offering any kind of proof for the second part of the statement.

Show me one blockchain application that has nothing to do with virtual assets that not only turns a profit but is provably more efficient than a database based solution.

Whenever I bring this up, the response is usually: "We're just at the beginning, this will take a while". For a space that is claiming the disruption of everything it's moving pretty slow.

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#45

Post by shiohime »

leifg wrote: post #42
shiohime wrote: post #34

I wish that people writing articles talking about how horrible web3 is tried something other than Ethereum lol. I'm fairly certain that if people's first web3 experience is something that actually works and doesn't cost hundreds of dollars for minor transactions they won't be as put off. I get downvoted everytime here I bring it up but seriously if people tried something like Solana today compared to Ethereum I'm fai…

Genuine question: what has private key authentication to do with blockchain? I've been using this for my ssh connections for almost 15 years now. And the second question: what happens if you use your private key? Every website that uses password has a mechanism to reset your password. Take that feature away you'll lock out millions of users.

Yeah PKI has been around of course for a long time and is a core facet to how the web functions today. The private key authentication I'm referring to is because wallet extensions allow for users to connect their wallet to applications, as a method of authentication. You don't even have to have funds in your wallet to perform this authentication, you just need a wallet.

If you lose your private key, you're probably out of luck, but there may be some wallets / platforms that have strategies to mitigate risk, but idk to be honest. So yes, for sensitive applications it is a risk vector, however for users that are already familiar with crypto, it's not really a new risk. If you ever lose your private key or it's compromised you can lose whatever money is in that wallet.

The thing that I like about the infra personally as a solo dev is that using this for authentication for small scale applications on whatever chain I chose is really easy to set up and is a great user experience, and I'm not worried about this as an app developer as my target audience already should be vaguely familiar with how this works.

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#46

Post by jtsiskin »

The author seems to have no knowledge of Eth 2 sharding, zero-knowledge proofs, or ZK rollups. Or even basic encryption. “Who’s servers will have custody of your private family photos and who get’s to determine those access controls?” - I can send them to you using your public key. Or store then encrypted and selectively give out the decoding key. Or selectively choose one server to trust (or self host) with my unencrypted photos and let them handle it for me. The author is still picturing web2

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#47

Post by diveanon »

scottiebarnes wrote: post #40
Barrin92 wrote: post #12

"The Ethereum virtual machine has the equivalent computational power of an Atari 2600 from the 1970s except it runs on casino chips that cost $500 a pop and every few minutes we have to reload it like a slot machine to buy a few more cycles. That anyone could consider this to be the computational backbone to the new global internet is beyond laughable. We’ve gone from the world of abundance in cloud computing where t…

To me this is rhetoric that conveniently ignores the sole advantages of blockchain and distributed computing. Blockchains don't exist to be fast, efficient, or scalable. They exist to be decentralized, permissionless, and censorship resistant. > People are trying to move from a world in which compute resources are efficient and almost limitless to a world of scarcity because they want to build an economic system wher…

Yeah most of these posts start with a straw man and try to work their way backwards from there.

What I think it really boils down to is that web3 represents a shift away from the centralized dystopian organizations that employ most of the people in this community.

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#48

Post by initialized »

crocodiletears wrote: post #30
diveanon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly this community is just an echo chamber of bad takes when it comes to web3. Kind of hard to recognize a problem when your salary is dependent on propagating it.

What are the best resources for learning about the current state of web3 projects? Most of what I encounter with respect to it seems like marketing copy, without good summaries of the pros and cons that come with the different technologies and their roadmap. There's clearly a lot going on in the space. But for someone who's at best adjacent to it, it's hard to sort the wheat from the chaffe.

The status blog has some good posts covering daos+communities/wallets/zkproofs/clients => https://our.status.im/

https://www.youtube.com/c/ETHGlobal has lots of recordings of talks from their hackathons, their playlists split into different topics

https://www.radicalxchange.org/# is full of interesting discussions, organises meetups, more big picture discussions of the stuff web3/crypto is playing with

I enjoyed this conversation with Stuart Brand (of Whole Earth Catalogue) from a few years ago, it lays the ground of what then became NFTs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLGZdLpHl1w

https://ethereum-magicians.org/ is a more technical forum to discuss eips

https://interdependence.fm/ is a good podcast from some musicians interviewing people in the space.

https://twitter.com/dhof Dom (creator of Vine) is constantly pushing novel toys on chain, i enjoy his playful approach to making stuff less serious.

really though its a "get involved to understand" scene/subculture. if you can ignore the noise of markets/speculation/capitalism its a fun crowd poking around. Theres all sorts from content/identity/scaling/money stuff/games. it feels like playing an mmorpg. at some point it'll hit its eternal september moment but its been really great the past few years.

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#49

Post by initialized »

Barrin92 wrote: post #12

"The Ethereum virtual machine has the equivalent computational power of an Atari 2600 from the 1970s except it runs on casino chips that cost $500 a pop and every few minutes we have to reload it like a slot machine to buy a few more cycles. That anyone could consider this to be the computational backbone to the new global internet is beyond laughable. We’ve gone from the world of abundance in cloud computing where t…

Show me the Atari 2600 that people are happy to store billions of $ on.

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#50

Post by dragonwriter »

initialized wrote: post #49
Barrin92 wrote: post #12

"The Ethereum virtual machine has the equivalent computational power of an Atari 2600 from the 1970s except it runs on casino chips that cost $500 a pop and every few minutes we have to reload it like a slot machine to buy a few more cycles. That anyone could consider this to be the computational backbone to the new global internet is beyond laughable. We’ve gone from the world of abundance in cloud computing where t…

Show me the Atari 2600 that people are happy to store billions of $ on.

> Show me the Atari 2600 that people are happy to store billions of $ on.

Uh, they just did.

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