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Is Web3 anything?

chris-granger.com

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Re: Is Web3 anything?

#411

Post by GVRV »

soco wrote: post #228
GVRV wrote: 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…

The dark web is a good thing – it's a good utility. Whether someone uses it for a good thing or a bad thing, it's up to the individual, but I'm glad that an investment was made to come up with a more secure, privacy-focused protocols was made (and continuing work is being done to improve it).

I'm also glad other protocols exist and the market will ultimately determine adoption based on utility. We mostly used HTTP until FireSheep happened and now use HTTPS very widely and someday, if governments and organisations continue to pry on online activity, we might move to the protocols powering the dark web.

It's the same with crypto. I, too, feel a lot of the use cases being talked about right now are just words – but at the same time, I'm glad that people with the skills and the resources are making investments into coming up with these experiments and the experiments that will offer the most utility might get widely adopted in the future.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#412

Post by GVRV »

pkd wrote: post #382
GVRV wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

India Post offers savings accounts services through its post offices. Non-profit public enterprise and a post office is available in every PIN code. There is probably one within walking distance of your relatives in your native village. Cross border transactions are heavily regulated precisely because they cross jurisdictional boundaries - without regulation it becomes trivially easy to commit fraud and make the mone…

I know options exist, but better, more inclusive options can be possible.

Take for example messaging – Jeff Bezos uses (used?) WhatsApp, I use it, you probably use it and my relatives use it as well. No matter what the geography or your social/financial standing, you probably have access to a world-class messaging product easily.

The same is true for a lot of things: Wikipedia, Linux, Bicycles.

Why should the same not be true for wealth protection and growth? If it is possible to come up with a such a system, shouldn't we at least give it a shot?

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#413

Post by pennaMan »

ogogmad wrote: post #267
pennaMan wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s the whole complex web of laws and regulations that created these policies that make them real, and the people (your fellow citizens) who have collectively decided to run society by these rules. Don't forget the whole violent kidnapping thing your fellow citizens let governments do. The mythology of laws running society is cute but laws are made real by constant threats of violence and caging.

Your comment is a kind of virtue signalling. What is your alternative? To not jail murderers or thieves? [edit] Just to check if you're serious or not, would you be happy to move next to a prison and then have all the inmates released?

What virtue am I signalling? Are objective observations about how the world and society functions considered some kind of virtue now?

I was responding to the argument that "courts" and "fellow citizens" make the legal system work, when in fact courts are just proxies for use of force. Use of force makes the legal system work, everything else around it is just the cushy stories about law, order and justice we cooked up for ourselves to collectively agree with.

And this is in stark contrast to how a contract running on the Ethereum VM gets enforced.

I am certainly not suggesting we should implement laws against violence like the murderers you mention on a blockchain. I am talking about laws governing financial transactions, companies, and other economic related activities between nonviolent but nonetheless potentially fraudulent actors.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#414

Post by drdeca »

tracyhenry wrote: post #410
iamwil wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A centralized database is not observable by default. It’s usually not directly connected to the internet accessible by anyone. Databases as they’re usually designed today are updated in-place so they have no provenance of the data. Blockchain data one written will exist in the history and cannot be changed. Unless specifically designed this way centralized db doesn’t work this way.

> no provenance of the data This is hardly true. It's easy to keep a history of query logs, which is enough to figure out 90% of data lineage. The rest 10% probably correspond to operations not even runnable on a blockchain. I can mock a web3 application by opening a database to the entire internet. All edits logs will be visible, although edits will be access controlled. Now I'll claim this is observable. Some peopl…

I still think it could be potentially useful to, with a centralized database, use a similar kind of authentication scheme, in a way that allows for succinct demonstrations of any kinds of rule violations (compared to the rules that were set), as well as efficient to check proofs that state changes are in accordance with the rules which were set.

(I wonder if a network of such centralized DBs run by different parties might be enough to produce incentives among the different DB owners to behave in accordance to rules which they initially publish for themselves, etc. )

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#415

Post by pennaMan »

mattsahr wrote: post #316
ogogmad wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is a kind of virtue signalling. What is your alternative? To not jail murderers or thieves? [edit] Just to check if you're serious or not, would you be happy to move next to a prison and then have all the inmates released?

To someone with a hammer, every problem is a nail. Web3 seems like it's primarily a horde of crypto-maxis running around hitting every damn thing with a smart contract, and see what sticks. This is, arguably, going to be better than violently caging people, in some circumstances. I take the GF comment to be maybe virtue-signally, but mostly pointing out that our legacy law system has an awwwwwful lot of people in jai…

What is the virtue that I am signaling? Is the ability to have objective opinions outside of the socio-cultural mythology a virtue?

To give another perspective on my "the current legal system exclusively works via the use of force" argument, look how effective the legal system is against banks, Google, Facebook, etc where use of forceful caging is not applied.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#416

Post by peoplefromibiza »

throwaway405769 wrote: post #377
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to raise a dispute and get it settled, to decide whether Bob gets the money. who decides? and how? and what are the consequences for Bob and Alice? and what happens if Alice or Bob are not happy with the verdict? > Alice is not available for some reason and just disappears, Bob will still get his paycheck it's fun you don't see any problem and think of this as an acceptable solution, even if it fails in its most ba…

>who decides? and how I was talking about Kleros at the beginning of the discussion, but it's just one possible option. >You can only hire someone for a job if you have the money. No, you can only hire someone for a job using this specific method if you have the money beforehand. This means that Bob can be 100% sure that his employer is capable of paying him. >In reality many people hire someone for a job and thanks…

> I was talking about Kleros

so a private service that need people to invest money in ether to participate...

Is this your idea of justice?

Some faceless arbiter, subject to nobody?

Why I am not surprised that your ideas closely match how authoritarian system (and dystopian cyber punk worlds) work?

> This means that Bob can be 100% sure that his employer is capable of paying him.

But he's not sure he's going to actually pay and he's not even sure who the employer is.

> If Bob murders Alice this is handled the same way as any other murder.

You're avoiding the answer, and I understand you, it's hard to come with an answer when your design have bugs.

But smart contracts are immutable pieces of code that act on their own.

If Alice dies Bob get his money.

There no way to stop it from happening.

the chain is a useless tinsel in this example of yours, it makes things more complex and guarantees no one.

The law already encodes tons of conditions that a smart contract could never comply with.

What if Bob is a minor or the employer is a minor?

That would make the contract void in real life.

Should people publish their personal info on the public blockchain so that the smart contract can exclude them from proposing or accepting a job?

And how do you check that the informations are correct?

What if Bob is an immigrant running from a regime and has no way to prove who he is, but needs the job to survive?

etc etc

you'd need to basically recreate what government do today, without the enforcement of the law capability.

who would trust a system like that, except outlaws and scammers?

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#417

Post by pennaMan »

immibis wrote: post #284
pennaMan wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s the whole complex web of laws and regulations that created these policies that make them real, and the people (your fellow citizens) who have collectively decided to run society by these rules. Don't forget the whole violent kidnapping thing your fellow citizens let governments do. The mythology of laws running society is cute but laws are made real by constant threats of violence and caging.

what other enforcement mechanism do you suggest? The smart contract method call where Alice murders Bob should not validate unless signed by Bob's private key?

Are you argumenting in good faith that somehow I said that violent crimes should be solved by mathematics?

I said that the legal system works not because of it's complexities or how authoritative the costumes of law enforcement or judges look, but exclusively by the threat of having your liberty taken away from you.

Violent offenders should still be dealt with violence.

But voting? Public policy? Public spending tracking? Economic activity between two private entities? There is no longer need for the threat of a central authority with a monopoly on violence to ensure the proper functioning of those things. Satoshi showed we can have decentralized proof of trust.

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#418

Post by pennaMan »

ogogmad wrote: post #294
immibis wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what other enforcement mechanism do you suggest? The smart contract method call where Alice murders Bob should not validate unless signed by Bob's private key?

Yes, and this will stop people from harming each other. Something something private keys. Bring on the century of techno utopianism.

If you really want to mock novel technology, at least show some basic understanding first.

It's "something something decentralized proof of trust" ;)

Re: Is Web3 anything?

#420

Post by d0gbread »

Griffinsauce wrote: post #64
westoncb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's also a substantial subset of cases that are simple/common/clear enough to have managed through an automated contract, and being able to cut out the cost of depending on the legal system would be game-changing for many people/projects/etc. So it seems like a good complement, not a replacement.

Can you give a practical example?

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