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Is Web3 anything?

chris-granger.com

301–310 of 442 posts

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting all the data in the world into the blockchain and coding smart contracts to infer judgement from it would be too complex and expensive. A more practical approach is to transfer the funds to Bob once he clicks on the checkbox and have some lock-up period, so that Alice has the opportunity to trigger a dispute if she needs to. Then the dispute can be resolved by a private court (composed of humans) that both Al…

Ok, but this isn’t purely a smart contract anymore. You’re describing a typical escrow (running on a blockchain, because ______) with human judges, conceptually identical to what goes on behind the scenes at EBay. What necessitates a blockchain here?

No, it's running completely on smart contracts. You get the regular advantages of running on blockchain: permissionless and trustless access to finance.

You don't have to trust the escrow holder, you don't have to worry about getting banned from Ebay.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#302

I'm tired of circular web3 discussions. All I see is people arguing for "but, maybe you shouldn't trust the government, maybe you should trust some math that works like a government in this limited scope". All I see is markets which sidestep all the rules enforced by governments to keep them fair (which prevent things like trading with yourself to create fake transactions), and none of the "park renovation" or "enabl…

More than 2 billions of people live in authoritarian regimes where the government rules exist only to oppress the population and make it more easily controlled. Bitcoin gives them the option to maintain their property rights, avoid financial surveillance and money controls. Saying that crypto is only used for ponzi schemes is simply false and disingenuous.

This is crypto equivalent of think of the children.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#303
post #58

> what if the neighbors collude and vote that you failed to improve the park despite having done what was specified. The contract could further specify that some neutral third party acts as an arbiter in that case. If there's anything that shows that Web3.0, smart contracts and so on are a bad solution in search of a non-existent problem, it's this. The ``problem'' is apparently that we don't trust each other and our…

I think the bigger problem (which the example conveniently sidesteps) is that smart contracts don’t involve people. They involve _wallets_. I can have as many wallets as I want. Unless there is some external (centralized, trusted) unique identity mechanism, there’s no way to ensure the vote isn’t rigged. It also means that I could make a smart contract where I’m on all sides of the contract (e.g. say I’m trying to pump the market value of park-improvement projects…).

Outside of “a few neighbors who all know/trust each other and the public key for each other’s wallets” example, this all falls apart.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#304
> The government issues you a deed declaring that some parcel of land and whatever is on it is yours.

Small nitpick but this is not how deeds work, at least not in the US. In the US the seller provides you with a deed. The government simply records it, and the title company insures it based on their research of the chain of title. The government doesn't issue deeds unless they are the seller or grantor of the land.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#305
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…. 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?

Thats kinda the point, PGP had 25 years to get any use and failed, this form of crypto reached accelerated saturation very quickly

You thought you had a rebuttal and walked right into why its working

Those users can learn not to get taken advantage of

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#306
post #228
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I'm aware of that. However, I need to go through a mutual fund and rely on their stock picking strategy and fees (we've had mutual funds default very recently). I want to enter into a position in a specific stock according to my strategy at a price I'm comfortable at. This again leads to the same point: why are we so _comfortable_ with the status quo? I want to think about what could be possible, not what sub-pa…

Just for the sake of argument, the same can be said about dark web: it offers freedom to do whatever business one pleases, with minor government interference. Is that a great alternative? For some, yes. Could it sell also cancer treatments for people unable to obtain them otherwise? Yes it could, but that doesn't make the dark web a good thing. My point is that what "could be" is very different from what "is". And fr…

>I beg the crypto advocates to make those possibilities reality It's up to people to start utilizing the technology. But some need it more than others, for you it might not be necessary but millions of people are already using cryptocurrencies in countries where government caused hyperinflation of their currencies.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#307
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than 2 billions of people live in authoritarian regimes where the government rules exist only to oppress the population and make it more easily controlled. Bitcoin gives them the option to maintain their property rights, avoid financial surveillance and money controls. Saying that crypto is only used for ponzi schemes is simply false and disingenuous.

This is crypto equivalent of think of the children.

The crypto equivalent of "think of the children" are the people who scream money laundering and ransomware. Sort of similar to people who used to oppose end-to-end encryption and TOR.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting all the data in the world into the blockchain and coding smart contracts to infer judgement from it would be too complex and expensive. A more practical approach is to transfer the funds to Bob once he clicks on the checkbox and have some lock-up period, so that Alice has the opportunity to trigger a dispute if she needs to. Then the dispute can be resolved by a private court (composed of humans) that both Al…

what's the advantage for Bob here?

He can work for Alice or anyone else in the world without having to deal with intermediaries and bureaucracy.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#309
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you hit the nail on the head. In my experience, if both parties are happy payment isn't really a problem anyway. Trouble always comes up when there is disagreement e.g. buyer claims that the hot sauce is not spicy enough and the seller says it's exactly as spicy as ordered. Now what?

You take the issue to a crypto court which controls the escrowed funds. If the crypto court makes an unfair ruling, you tell everyone to never trust their judgement. Now they’ve lost credibility and nobody will want to escrow funds with them in the future. Whichever court provides the most consistent fair rulings attains the best reputation and becomes the most utilized. By contrast, if government courts make an unfa…

This sounds awfully naive. I have a very small company that sometimes deals with large corporations. Large corporations already want to push a jurisdiction onto you in their contracts. Usually the jurisdiction of where they are headquartered, which makes sense because they have lawyers that are allowed to work at those courts and know how to deal with that specific jurisdiction. So now you want them to be able to choose some big-corp-friendly-private-crypto-court? Sorry, no thank you. In a world where everyone has exactly the same power this scheme might work, but I would hate to have to negotiate with big clients which crypto court to choose.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#310
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 optic…

So, the only thing required is corrupting/intimidating a single party ? You're just straight up making things easier to be problematic.

And we see this in defi already - taking out a flash loan to rig a thin market that an oracle depends upon is a standard exploit.
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