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Is Web3 anything?

chris-granger.com

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Re: Is Web3 anything?

#121

Post by can16358p »

fatbird wrote: post #47
EGreg wrote: post #31

[flagged]

Ethereum has twice hard forked the blockchain to revert the results of "code is law", clearly saying that code is only law when a quorum of powerful individuals accept the outcome. Code isn't law, "code is law" is a slogan with as much veracity as slogans usually have.

Can we actually restate this as a 51% attack on Ethereum. But by the community itself, with powerful (yet not code-level enforcing) influence of Ethereum Foundation and rich people who has invested in The DAO (and lost money on the hack)?

How is this really different than a 51% attack?

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#122

Post by berkes »

newaccount74 wrote: post #54
jen729w wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t it the visibility thing? Yeah a centralised database can do this. Good luck getting access to it. “Security” says you can’t. I think that one of the allures of the blockchain is that it’s publicly visible. This may or may not be a fallacy of reasoning but hey, we’re human.

A lot of government databases are publicly accessible. For example, in Austria we have the "Grundbuch", a register of land ownership. Everyone can inspect the Grundbuch database. Authenticity is guaranteed by requiring a public notary or a court to confirm any changes in the database, and there is a paper trail for every change to a record. It's boring old tech, but it works, and doesn't have all the gotchas of block…

Many people complain about transaction fees and limited throughput of a blockchain.

I can only imagine this ancient system to be a magnitude worse in those regards.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#123

Post by monkeydust »

latenightcoding wrote: post #94
aardvarkr wrote: post #18

I have yet to see a good example of what “web3” is useful for… honestly this just smells like it’s going to be the next major hype train of 2022. Just like VR/AR and ML/AI of yesteryear. Note that both of these examples are wonderful pieces of tech but they were blown wildly out of proportion by everyone.

"Just like VR/AR and ML/AI of yesteryear." More like the same silly blockchain ideas that didnt work X years ago, getting recycled with a new buzzwords.

Yes, feel people have forgotten about the Blockchain-for-x period but I suspect it will now make a comeback for the wrong reasons.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#124

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

> But I think it’s a mistake to see the current mechanisms and lose sight of the actual capability they’re attempting to provide.

This is magnitudes wiser than the typical sentiment of crypto here or in other skeptical communities. When the potential is first recognized, the criticisms then build toward that potential rather than simply having the purpose of tearing something down. Thanks for the piece, Chris.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#125

Post by nprz »

CurrentB wrote: post #43

Nice read. What I don't get about all the crypto haters, who will probably make up the majority of replies here, are they really just happy with the status quo? Do they really think the current financial system is great and their online bank account is perfect and nothing radical is worth trying? That usernames and passwords given to each of a million different companies are so great, why would people want to manage…

HN readers love to pretend the status quo needs changing, but when anyone puts forth a concrete idea on how to make that change (like the crypto community), they'll agree there's an issue, but say that this solution isn't the right one. They will endlessly repeat this cycle and proclaim frustration when nothing ever changes.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#126

Post by tsimionescu »

cormacrelf wrote: post #109
derefr wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Democracy solves the Byzantine agreement problem just fine already. That’s nice when you and your counterparty are part of the same democracy, or potentially allied ones. But how do you enforce contracts when your government and their government are at war? (The governments say “you shouldn’t; they’re the enemy.” Well, screw the governments, I want to make positive-sum trades in the hopes of increasing global GDP a…

If that’s what you want web3 for, I’m actually quite happy for you to record your treachery on a public ledger. There is a reason the government doesn’t want you to do it, and that’s that sanctions are one of the only reasonable deterrents to war that we have. I can’t believe you would advocate for interfering with that on a public forum, in 2021 when western democracies are already struggling to make economic sancti…

While I think the stated use case is bizarre and useless, I will note that economic sanctions are almost universally bad, used to hurt the populace of countries like Iran, North Korea, Cuba and others without doing anything to hurt the ruling elites. That said, the problem with such sanctions and trade embargoes is usually the flow of goods, which Bitcoin does less than nothing to solve of course.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#127

Post by Longwelwind »

meheleventyone wrote: post #108
Longwelwind wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understood Web3 correctly, it would be exactly like traditional web, except that: * The source code of all websites would be open-source, and accessible to anyone. It could still be changed, but it could not be done secretly. * All the actions of the users of the websites would be public. If we take social forums, for example Hacker News, it would mean that: * The algorithm behind the front page of social forums…

I’d also put the moderators and administrators having no way of skewing things as a negative. They do lots of good things for the community like removing flags on topics, merging topics and reupping topics that are interesting for a second chance. It’s a good demonstration that pure algorithmic feeds still need gardening. And the fee thing is why none of this will work in practice so it’s a really big negative. Who o…

All those moderator actions you described would still be possible in web3. Moderators would still be able to up a topic, merge a topic, delete topics, ...

But:

  * The fact that the moderators have access to these mechanisms would be known by all users
  * The use of these mechanisms by moderators would be public. If a topic is upped by a moderator, it would be logged in the blockchain. No moderator would be able to do it secretly.
Regarding the fee, it's true that it's a big downside. To get a feasible use case, the devs would need to find a blockchain that reduces them.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#128

Post by hansonkd13 »

EGreg wrote: post #66
fatbird wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum has twice hard forked the blockchain to revert the results of "code is law", clearly saying that code is only law when a quorum of powerful individuals accept the outcome. Code isn't law, "code is law" is a slogan with as much veracity as slogans usually have.

I will quote from an article I wrote in CoinDesk last year: https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/03/12/in-defense-of-block... For every technology we use today, there was a time it was laughably inadequate as a replacement for what came before. Code isn’t law, code is better than law. I wondered what I would have done 300 years agi before computers, and realized I’d probably be an architect or one of those lawmaker guy…

All of 1/2/3 could be or gamed or hacked if not EXTREME measures are taken. As proven repeatedly by the hundreds millions in dollars in smart contract hacks and losses that have happened and continue to happen.

People can’t trust the code to do what they want, because when you read it you might mistake a 0 or a O. You trust someone else or machine to audit the code tell you the code will do what you want.

US court systems take into account the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. Its a feature not a bug.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#129

Post by lmm »

nathias wrote: post #102
lmm wrote: post #7

But is there any case where you'd actually trust a pile of blockchains more than an existing trust mechanism (whether that's neighbourliness, contract law, or something else)? If you're not a programmer, getting a programmer to review your smart contract probably costs more than getting a lawyer to review your regular contract. If you are a programmer, you probably know better than to rely on some code being bug-free…

In the case of smart-contracts you at least have the possibility of knowing, with existing trust mechanisms this is impossible.

You can't ever be 100% certain - even if you analysed the smart contract completely correctly, there's always the possibility of an ethereum-style hard fork to change what your contract means. So you have to ask how confident you can actually be in whichever style of contract in practice.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#130

Post by nefitty »

infogulch wrote: post #41
jolux wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but the government is not just some unaccountable third party that sits between you and the rest of society. It is meant to embody the society, and, in a democracy, represent its interests effectively.

Yes in theory. In practice, justice is expensive to procure even when you're in the right, and sometimes even then you can lose just by being out-monied. This leads to a more nuanced view of web3 and smart contracts: a way to acquire law-like order in business dealings at a vastly lower cost. Or put yet another way, if lawyers and the government got their act together and used technology to reduce the cost of their s…

So like, if you don't deliver those shipping containers of hot sauce, I just click the "I was scammed" checkbox on my smart contract dashboard?

Where exactly does the leverage of smart contracts come into play?

The biggest reason libertarianism is a nonstarter is that it outright rejects the state monopoly on violence. Without a lone arbiter, societies fragment due to intragroup competition and violence. As a society fragments, the size of the monolithic projects it can engage in become smaller and smaller.

International trade is already so fragile that a stuck tanker threatens swaths of the entire thing. Now picture how infinitely improbable a system like that is if there's no physical enforcement mechanisms backing contracts up.

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