Web3 Is Bullshit • Hacker News Board

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#101

Post by md2020 » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 12:40 PM UTC

salawat wrote: post #81

md2020 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand how a post-scarcity society would even be desirable. For things like art and music, their creators need to be able to command a price on their creations. The digitization of these things removes their scarcity and essentially makes them function as a public good, making it impossible to set a price on them that will support the artist. If there’s no way for digital artists to support themselves, th…

>making it impossible to set a price on them that will support the artist. What part of post-scarcity don't you understand? Money doesn't matter. Post-scarcity.

> Money doesn’t matter.

That would be a pretty huge departure from how we currently create and transact anything of value, so I’d say I don’t understand that.

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#102

Post by UncleMeat » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 1:05 PM UTC

shiohime wrote: post #88

UncleMeat wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't even have to have funds in your wallet to perform this authentication, you just need a wallet. OK. This was literally 100% possible and functioned in 100% the same way a decade ago. A wallet address is just a public key for which you control the private key. Literally nothing about this requires blockchains. When you sign up for a service you say "here is my public key" and then you sign a message providi…

It's just really easy to use and easier authentication than any scheme I've worked with before. If you want to try it out yourself, it's easy and only takes a few minutes to try out, I recommend it if you're really curious. Just download metamask and connect your wallet to opensea or some other nft marketplace. Once you connect that's registering for the site and you can play around with the functionality on the site…

> It's just really easy to use and easier authentication than any scheme I've worked with before.

But this is literally the same as just "connecting my pgp public key" to some authentication service that manages this. This is no more convenient than the stuff that happens the first time I ssh into a service.

And surprise, passwords crushed this and virtually nobody uses this for consumer applications.

> but most apps using this approach are going to natively interact with the blockchain, whether it's a financial app, gaming app, whatever.

Now the story is very different. You led with "a good use of web3 technologies is auth." Now you say "yeah, auth isn't any better but you might as well do it this way given that your web3 service is using ETH for whatever other hypothetical thing."

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#103

Post by captainbland » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 1:23 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #17

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…

Is this what the struggles of the transition from scarcity to post scarcity looks like? Building systems that simulate scarcity to generate the illusion of value and to front run that value?

Of course. It's even more clear with NFTs: people aren't spending thousands of dollars on low-quality NFT sprites because they think they're sound investments or artworks that are that unique and enjoyable in and of themselves. It's people with serious wealth, people who have benefited from scarcity in other domains, trying to promote a system of artificial scarcity in the digital art world. Artificial scarcity that they will later profit off of. This is why they attach huge prizes to what is really worthless crap in order to generate hype and adoption.

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#104

Post by Traster » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 1:56 PM UTC

drdeca wrote: post #32

okareaman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the author doesn't understand the technology they are criticizing I've been following Stephen Diehl and he seems to have a greater understanding than most, even if he is consistently bearish on the technology and I'm not always in agreement. I don't see the issue you are having: adjective: plutocratic relating to or characterized by government by the wealthy. Proof of stake (PoS) protocols are a class of consensus…

>> On a compute basis, blockchain networks don’t scale except by becoming the very same plutocratic [...] > The word "plutocratic" is linked to the Wikipedia definition for Proof of Stake. > PoS is not meant to increase scalability carlosdp isn't saying "because PoS isn't plutocratic, the claim 'can only scale by becoming plutocratic by using PoS' doesn't hold", Rather, carlosdp is saying that "because PoS isn't the…

I don't see how increasing efficiency is seriously distinct from increasing scalability? It seems to me that efficiency is a solution to scalability.

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#105

Post by dmitriid » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 2:44 PM UTC

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 only crypto-bros who are trying to push “web3” as even a “thing”.

I keep saying that there are only two kinds of people peddling crypto: scammers, and gullible fools with tenuous grasp of reality.

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#106

Post by mk81 » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #102

shiohime wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just really easy to use and easier authentication than any scheme I've worked with before. If you want to try it out yourself, it's easy and only takes a few minutes to try out, I recommend it if you're really curious. Just download metamask and connect your wallet to opensea or some other nft marketplace. Once you connect that's registering for the site and you can play around with the functionality on the site…

> It's just really easy to use and easier authentication than any scheme I've worked with before. But this is literally the same as just "connecting my pgp public key" to some authentication service that manages this. This is no more convenient than the stuff that happens the first time I ssh into a service. And surprise, passwords crushed this and virtually nobody uses this for consumer applications. > but most apps…

Has any crypto argument ever not depended on circular reasoning?

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#107

Post by scottiebarnes » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 3:05 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #86

scottiebarnes wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Netflix and Youtube aren't moving their hosting to the blockchain. I see people claim, basically constantly, that the blockchain will be the source of all such content in the future and that this will free people from youtube's tyranny or whatever.

That's not practical, but decentralized sources like IPFS, BitTorrent, etc will be useful sources of hosting for videos/creators who don't want to face censorship from Youtube etc.

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#108

Post by dmitriid » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

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 article that @diveanon and @dannypovolotski are berating is a good learning resource.

Also, these two evergreen articles:

- "Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain", https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-...

- And the sequel, "Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future", https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustle...

Any other "learning resource" about web3 are either thinly veiled scams, or can be solved with literally any other tech with none of the problems inherent in blockchains.

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#109

Post by smileybarry » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 3:25 PM UTC

maccolgan wrote: post #75

pornel wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebAuthn is based on public key cryptography. U2F signs website's challenge ("transaction") with your private key that sits in the key fob ("wallet"). SSH and TLS client certs work the same (I can take your public ssh key, and I'll know when you try to log in to my server, obviously). You don't need a blockchain for identity. The unique feature that Blockchains provide is protection against double spending (without r…

The root of identity is still not a public key. To perform essential actions on such a website doesn't need your public key. You are only proving that you have access the private key correspondent to the public key stored in the database entry, and nothing else. Authz is still database records and not inherently trustless akin to cryptographic authentication. Imagine I had a entirely PGP-based comment system, where t…

> Furthermore, comments could also be embedded as a transaction to a hash of the URL (or something akin to that), where anyone with an access to a ethereum node, public or private can access a global comments system.

Why not just sign content with a private key? Buy a YubiKey for $50, generate a key, announce it to the world via an account you control, continue to host content on non-blockchain servers. Your content can be verified with the same public key and no one can forge it.

I guess I just don't see the benefit of blockchain-distributing your public key, and how that helps protect from forgery. What's to stop me from publishing a 2nd message impersonating you with a new key saying "oops I lost the first key"? Or, conversely, what if you needed to generate a new key with no way of signing it with the older key? Or much worse: what if you haven't posted your key yet and I publish a key for @somebody first? Whatever medium you then use to announce "this person isn't me" can also be used by an attacker to discredit the real public key, or by you to announce your public key.

Re: Web3 Is Bullshit

#110

Post by lern_too_spel » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 4:03 PM UTC

mattdesl wrote: post #94

lern_too_spel wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A centralized database can handle the escrow too, and far more efficiently. The only reason decentralized crypto solutions have a head start is that people who work in crypto tend not to care about what is legal.

Yet there is a key difference in trust - that a centralized actor (say, Kickstarter) will not mutate their private database, will not go under, and will not fail to meet its promises in how the funds are managed. There is also an ease of use (for developers building these applications), particularly in terms of finances: say, an escrow that holds $1M worth of value and may need to return those funds to 100K donors ac…

Trust works because of legal frameworks. You have to have the same trust that Ethereum won't do another fork, and you have to trust that the smart contract isn't fraudulent. In exactly the same way, the law is what keeps the average person from being fleeced.

A central database has far better ease of use for developers than a distributed ledger.