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Is Web3 anything?

chris-granger.com

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Re: Is Web3 anything?

#131

Post by infinityplus1 »

GVRV wrote: post #72
bushbaba wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk. I get my direct deposit into my account from my employer for free. I can transfer funds to pay bills for free. And I can go anywhere in the world and withdraw money for less than a 5$ fee in less than a minute. Try doing that with crypto.

You must live in a developed nation. I'm from one of the tier-2 cities in India. I cannot hold stable, diversified collection of global currencies in my bank account and cannot invest in global markets without going to a branch in a bigger town and without significant paperwork. I cannot legally accept money from around the world for my software development skills without being a part of the existing banking system.…

You can invest in mutual funds which invest in foreign companies. Creating online accounts for direct mutual funds investments is fully digital using Video KYC.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#132

Post by dools »

vmception wrote: post #98
dools wrote: post #78

What’s missing from this discussion is that you are trusting a blockchain. So if someone goes around and raises money from a bunch of people they are exchanging currency for some crypto asset. How do they know that crypto asset is actually genuine Etherium and not Etheriumm?

…. Easily? The signature and state. It’s the same technology as PGP signers use in their email for proving which relies on the impossibility of collisions.

Oh cool, how many people in your community do you know who are comfortable using PGP in their email?

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#133

Post by derefr »

jayd16 wrote: post #119
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…

In the thought experiment of a true anarchy, how do you ultimately enforce the off-chain part of a transaction? If BTC is traded for goods or services, how do you enforce that the goods and services have been sufficiently provided?

Presuming this is a fancy sci-fi kind of anarchy: multi-sig escrow wallet requiring a 2-of-3 quorum of oracle triggers from observation cubesats owned by both parties plus some disinterested third party.

(People are already doing the virtual equivalent for prediction markets: everyone who cares runs their own oracle agent to forward result data from web2 sources into web3. You “just” need computer vision + good optics to bring that paradigm into the physical world.)

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#134

Post by berkes »

hansonkd13 wrote: post #71
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…

I’m not satisfied by the standard quo and want something better. But the current state of trustless web3 is not it. My bank account is great. If I die there are clear procedures for getting my assets to my spouse. Even if I forget my account number or my password, my lifetime of earnings does not simply disappear. This can’t happen in crypto unless I trust a third party, in which case just using a bank in US dollars…

There are middle grounds here. Sovereignty, like security, is not binary, it's a spectrum.

You could use a scheme where two of three signatures allow transactions : you, your 'bank' and a notary. Or have such schemes for anything above a value. Or allow transactions by and to a list of whitelisted addresses after a certain date or event (such as a missed canary).

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#135

Post by meheleventyone »

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…

You can agree with most or all of that and still think the the tokenisation of everything with over expensive compute and storage and infinite middlemen isn’t the win their advocates think it is.

You can own your own data, log in using a cryptographic secure identity and do many other awesome decentralised things through that without needing a blockchain. The latter I think does have value if you want to transfer funds without the government stopping you at the time (retrospectively though they might). That’s not very useful for normal people though.

The problem is that there is little thought outside of crypto for this digital self-sovereignty when the digital world is effectively post-scarcity. Which makes me think that most care more about the money to be made than the ideals they claim to hold.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#136

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

jayd16 wrote: post #119
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…

In the thought experiment of a true anarchy, how do you ultimately enforce the off-chain part of a transaction? If BTC is traded for goods or services, how do you enforce that the goods and services have been sufficiently provided?

If your argument is that decentralized ledger technologies cannot in their current state or perhaps ever entirely replace governments then I guess any reasonable person will just have to give that to you. And I doubt as many "crypto evangelicals" would actually argue with you on this.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#137

Post by cormacrelf »

tsimionescu wrote: post #126
cormacrelf wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree, but as we speak Russia has amassed 150k+ troops on the Ukrainian border and Putin is waiting to see whether the West can apply enough sanctions to make the whole effort a net loss before he gives the green light on an invasion.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#139

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

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…

Have you ever heard of a better use case for clamped down functional languages? The only issue with crypto right now is how infantile it is - that's what most critiques boil down to (especially on this site). Any long term speculator is happy to see it, so long as they see the same problems the forever skeptics see but with a dash of optimism rather than arrogance.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#140

Post by eru »

derefr wrote: post #101
cormacrelf wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy solves the Byzantine agreement problem just fine already. I like the aspects of decentralisation that help you preserve democracy, but beyond that it’s not necessary to replace every single aspect of a functioning democracy with a cryptographic commitment scheme. It would be worse if you did. That vision of society sounds terrible. (I can’t comment on this without noting that of all the interpretations of t…

> 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…

> 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?

You should look into actual historical examples here!

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