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Web3 is going just great

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Re: Web3 is going just great

#81

Post by mempko »

paulgb wrote: post #61
mempko wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the math and incentives are there. Cui bono as they say. Crypto won't fail because of the group that is driving most of the demand. It's a small group of people with lots of money. If it was a big group of people with little money, you could make the case that cryptocurrencies will fail. It's success has little to do with the math and quality of the technology.

You could have said the same thing about the ~2017 ICO bubble, which had a bunch of smart money VC involvement. As far as I can tell, the big VCs did just fine, because they liquidated enough of their tokens on the little guy before the market crashed.

Exactly. Unfortunately the little guys don't decide the winners and losers so they suffer as they must. You saw it in the end of the 90s with the tech bubble, and in the 1980s with personal computing. I doubt anyone would agree the best technology won during any of those periods. I mean, would anyone consider Windows, for example, the pinnacle of OS tech? Or even today, bitcoin and ethereum the pinnacle of blockchain tech? When a small group drives most of the investment and decision making, you end up with a lot of collateral damage. It's actually sad since there are likely really technically great blockchain systems out there that will just die in the wind, and it will have nothing to do with the system's quality.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#82

Post by ATsch »

ShamelessC wrote: post #4

The decision to call all of this "web 3.0" without actually consulting any developers (that don't own/trade cryptocurrencies) was such a mistake. No - I don't want to write inherently buggy smart contracts for your scam. If I wanted to do that, I would have gone into fintech awhile ago.

I don't think it was a mistake at all, it's just a simple marketing tactic. You just add a version number to a thing and then everyone who was part of the old thing will feel like they're missing out.

Most of cryptocurrency marketing works that way, throwing jargon at you until you feel stupid for not understanding why it is supposedly so revolutionary. And once the thousands of marks who have already been roped into the scheme discover your comment, they'll be all over it to protect their investment and you'll feel very alone.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#83

Post by exdsq »

pcwalton wrote: post #54
DantesKite wrote: post #13

All the Web3 criticisms remind me of my experiences with Star Trek. For context, I never watched Star Trek. I'd read stories about fans and it always struck me as the dorkiest possible show, with unabashed nerdiness making something like the Big Bang Theory look like a sophisticated work of art. But one day, I listened to a podcast about strength training and a question came up about which Star Trek leader the host l…

> It would hard for me to make a case that eventually cryptocurrency will fail. It's easy for me to make that case. Ransomware aside, there's no underlying value in cryptocurrency, unlike currencies which have the full faith and credit of governments. This is a fundamental problem that I see no way around.

I’d argue there’s an underlying value in tokens like Ether that is similar to paying for compute power and storage on AWS. I’m not saying the price right now is correct, but that there is an intrinsic value.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#84

Post by beachy »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #57
DantesKite wrote: post #13

All the Web3 criticisms remind me of my experiences with Star Trek. For context, I never watched Star Trek. I'd read stories about fans and it always struck me as the dorkiest possible show, with unabashed nerdiness making something like the Big Bang Theory look like a sophisticated work of art. But one day, I listened to a podcast about strength training and a question came up about which Star Trek leader the host l…

> But the math and incentives are there. It would hard for me to make a case that eventually cryptocurrency will fail. This strikes at one of my primary complaints with crypto/web3 discussions: Advocates switch between specific cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency in general, and the concept of a blockchain in general as convenient for their arguments. The concept of a cryptocurrency will always exist, but that doesn't m…

> What people are really excited about is the exchanges and the on-ramps and off-ramps, which have nothing to do with the blockchain or cryptography.

Isn't that like saying that what gets people really exciting about beer is the euphoric feeling after consuming it, which has nothing to do with the liquid itself?

If it wasn't for the exchanges and on- and off-ramps then cryptocurrencies wouldn't exist at all. Potentially spending it one day is the only thing that makes the crypto world go around.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#85

Post by dkarl »

awwstn wrote: post #28

web3 is so loosely defined that both the haters and the believers will be able to claim victory in a few years.

Yep, just like the dot-com era. Were 95% of the funded ideas complete bullshit? Yes. Did a bunch of them make craploads of money and create a world that nobody imagined fifteen years before? Also yes.

I wouldn't be surprised if blockchain/defi/other web3 blah fails at 95% of what people are trying to use it for, and destroys 95% of the wealth that people gamble on it, and still changes the world and makes a bunch of people rich. I also wouldn't be surprised if people find uses for it in the plumbing of the conventional financial world in some invisible-but-consequential way.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#86

Post by danlugo92 »

mdoms wrote: post #79
danlugo92 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is a new thing, new things can exist that didn't exist before, and just because any old terms don't fit it, doesn't stop it from being its own real separate thing.

Bitcoin is well over a decade old.

Fiat money is thousands of years old, your point being?

Re: Web3 is going just great

#87

Post by dvt »

I'm not a Web3 shill, but this is so insanely disingenuous it's not even funny. First of all, the argument that web3 is the biggest ecological problem of our time -- when essentially all of Asia is contributing 80% of ocean pollution, and the supply chain contributes to more than 50% of greenhouse gas emissions, is just straight-up delusional.

The claim that Web3 is rife with hacks, when you have daily hacks of Web2 (are we just ignoring Log4j, which is a huge deal and happened 2 days ago), including egregious privacy leaks (Cambridge Analytica), and comical wrist-slaps (Equifax anyone?) is just silly. I could make the same argument about technology in general and it would be wrong (you'd still have snake-oil salesmen roaming the streets).

Finally, the idea that rug pulls don't happen in other markets is also just such a jejune interpretation of markets. I take it author is not familiar with SPACs and IPOs? It's just clueless posturing. Look at what happened with Nikola just earlier this year. Is that not a rug pull?

Re: Web3 is going just great

#88

Post by hwers »

As a side note, I love the way this was presented. Seeing news in chronological order and well summarized like this really organized in my mind a lot of random pieces of news I'd heard tangentially over the months.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#89

Post by PragmaticPulp »

dumbfoundded wrote: post #72

As someone building in web3, I'll give an example. When I sold my first business, escrow.com wanted >$20K for the domain transfer from godaddy. If you sell a domain on ethereum (ENS), the escrow requires only a smart contract and fees scale with the network so like $50 right now. I'm working on connecting the two. Intermediaries are a huge reason the web is the way it is. If we can eliminate them, the internet looks…

> As someone building in web3, I'll give an example. When I sold my first business, escrow.com wanted >$20K for the domain transfer from godaddy. If you sell a domain on ethereum (ENS), the escrow requires only a smart contract and fees scale with the network so like $50 right now. I'm working on connecting the two.

A quick look at https://www.escrow.com/fee-calculator shows that fees only reach $20K if you're selling a $2.2 million domain name. At that level, lawyers should be involved on both sides anyway and your $20K fee is better spent on proper legal services to get it done. Escrow.com is notoriously expensive.

ENS domains may allow for smart contract transfers, but the downside of this is that anyone who gets access to your keys can now permanently own your domain name for that same $50 (likely higher) transfer fee. For companies, this means that a single security slip-up or even a single disgruntled employee with the right access can forever destroy your company's internet presence with no recourse. The current domain name system isn't perfect, but there is recourse for hijacked and stolen domain names.

Nothing comparable exists in the blockchain space, specifically because people don't want it to. Sounds great if you're sitting on the sidelines, criticizing other people for their poor OpSec when things go wrong. Doesn't sound great when you're trying to secure a business and realize that loss or theft of the domain keys means irreversible destruction of your domain name.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#90

Post by endisneigh »

Don’t see how web3 can succeed. Are we not all posting here because it’s centralized and moderated?

No decentralized service has ever succeeded. The closest is email which is federated at this point and even though most people use five providers.

Curious of a solid use case for web3 that surpasses in performance or in usability a trusted “web2” site.

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