Web3 is going just great • Hacker News Board

Re: Web3 is going just great

#341

Post by adam_arthur » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

orange8 wrote: post #316

adam_arthur wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you create a project where the primary motivation is to enrich yourself, and you recognize that money shuffling in crypto is zero sum, it's pretty apparent that these "founders" are borderline scamming people. In most other spaces the idea has real world utility. Not like, invent virtual land and sell it to people. Oh but no use for it for now. It could be worth lots later!

You do realize there are almost 100 000 coins out there. How many of those have you actually researched about and come to the conclusion that they lacked "real world utility". Does a casino provide "real world utility"? What about a boxing match.. is there any "real world utility" in that?

100,000 coins is a perfect example of why it's all a scam. These things are created out of thin air and sold as if they have any real value.

You fork a project, put up a webpage with aspirational talking points, and dump your premined coins onto the rubes that buy in.

Gambling has real value, and that's about all the value crypto provides. Which is the hot pyramid scheme of the month so I can make money off less intelligent people who don't understand it's all a scam veiled by perfectly valid technology?

It will all inevitably implode the next time any risk off sentiment takes hold.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#342

Post by lawtalkinghuman » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

fab1an wrote: post #221

valeness wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What net-beneficial applications of crypto would you suggest I look at if I wanted to re-evaluate my perspective on crypto? I was a very early crypto fan, loved talking about decentralized trustless networks, legal smart contracts, that kind of thing. But after years and years of just getting burned by the space being taken over by financial people spouting cultist rhetoric, the space has lost it's shimmer to me. Ask…

Take a look at Loot project by Dom Hof (the creator of vine, but now mostly known for Loot...:) It is exactly how you describe, but so so much more: why limit your Halo / skyrim character to one game world when you could take it into any other format and play with it there? NFT composability is a huge topic and extremely exciting in terms of these optionalities. Again: https://www.lootproject.com/ Also see my comment…

I can totally see Nintendo wanting to enable you to bring your collection of fancy, rare high-powered guns from Borderlands, carried by your favourite shiny Pokémon, into a no-holds-barred Mario Kart match so you could turn a fun all-ages racing game into an absolute bloodbath. Totally fits with their brand image etc.

Despite the likely bad PR, fiddly intellectual property issues, and the fact auctioning off high value gameplay items to the highest bidder turns games into tremendously boring pay2win experiences, the value in NFTs is that a game company might let players use assets bought or acquired in one game in a different game, even though they could do that already do that by just making private contractual relationships between existing game companies.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#343

Post by baby » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

xchaotic wrote: post #311

baby wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's GP's conclusion. GP's conclusion is that crypto is rooted in real innovation and the noise surrounding it gives the false impression that the tech is just a scam.

and what is that 'real innovation' exactly? Writing checksums of everything in multiple copies, very slowly? Databases had these features for decades.

I don’t know you could, like, read about it?

A few keywords: threshold signatures, zk-snarks, consensusless protocols, byzantine fault tolerant protocols, vrf, vdf, starks, bls

Re: Web3 is going just great

#344

Post by danlugo92 » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 8:08 PM UTC

1ark wrote: post #302

aeonflux wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some 25 years ago I've read some funny Windows vs Linux arguments. "Windows is better because there is tons of software (Windows 95) and Windows is better, because it is very stable mature system, with Unix-based kernel (NT)". Somehow people missed they tried to merge two systems into one for the sake of argument. Bitcoin is consuming tons of power for no reason, development is stale. Fluctuations and speculation pre…

Bitcoin is consuming power to secure the integrity of the blockchain, that is the reason. It is not "no reason". If you could suggest another permissionless consensus mechanism, then Bitcoiners are open ears, it has been discussed many times at bitcoin-dev. Bitcoin survived an attack from its own wealthy proponents, miners tried to increase the blocksize for speed, which resulted in the fork Bitcoin Cash. Possibly th…

Disnosaurs gonna dinosaur, bitcoin and web3 will eat the world and they will be left holding their bags. Can't see past their own little bubble.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#345

Post by basch » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

bcrosby95 wrote: post #149

deltarholamda wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decentralized proof of ownership is the core merit, as I see it. That has some value, and NFTs are kind of the perfect vehicle to use the technology. But does it have any practical use? That's the question. NFTs are hot right now as an investment vehicle, or as a way for artists to sell unique creations (leading to investment vehicles, I suppose). I'm not sold on the utility, long term.

Decentralized proof of ownership only matters if people with guns think it matters. I saw a short video of Keanu Reeves laughing at NFTs because they had value but are easy to copy. Which I found somewhat funny. Keanu gets paid a lot because he acts in things that have value but are easy to copy (movies). The reason why those have a high value is because of copyright. The people that financed the film have control ov…

>NFTs cannot have actual value unless people with the ability to enforce that scarcity cares about them.

You're confusing the hyperlink with the destination. The hyperlink has scarcity and is impossible to copy. You can make a new near identical hyperlink, but it's not the same as the original, the community says so and will ignore the imposter. The hyperlink are what people are buying and flipping. It has whatever market value other participants agree it has.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#346

Post by haswell » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

danlugo92 wrote: post #336

haswell wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mechanics of buying have very little to do with market dynamics. It doesn't matter if I can acquire bitcoin telepathically if the market is such that early adopters hold all of the power.

That's like saying don't buy Apple stock because you didn't get in in the 80s lol.

This is unrelated to the point I was making.

The reality of market dynamics has nothing to do with whether you should or should not buy Apple stock. The point is that the ease of buying something doesn't necessarily change the fundamental concentration of power, which is still concentrated among earlier adopters. You may still choose to invest regardless, and that may be perfectly acceptable.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#347

Post by shiohime » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 1:45 AM UTC

Yizahi wrote: post #198

fab1an wrote: post #48

I'm flabberghasted at the amount of hate this space is getting from parts of the dev community and in particular HN. Web3 has its fair share of issues, but there's community and energy in the space that I haven't seen online since the early days of the world wide web. Consider this: if you are absolutely, 100% convinced that all of this is bogus, is going to go nowhere (despite the high number of talented individuals…

Why do you thing HN and for example /r/programming communities are united in telling visitors that Web3 is scam, cryptocurrencies is a scam and so on? Maybe it's a time to stop and reflect on their opinion, instead of blindly listening to blatant lies? (before anyone writes indignant answer to me - for example "NFT facilitates decentralized proof of ownership" is a complete and utter lie in our face, "like "black is…

You can use NFTs for proof of digital ownership though? Not sure what you're even saying lol. I've heard more lies from people claiming everything in the space is a scam (when their own knowledge is obviously lacking) than scammers in the space trying to get rich quick.

You can literally make a project that has tokenized assets in the form of NFTs, and provide services based on ownership of that collection. It's trivial to detect whether an NFT is a forgery, and also trivial to detect if a user actually owns the NFT they claim to own. So when you are making claims that this is a lie, I have no idea where you are even coming from. It's literally proof of digital ownership for essentially a ticket/token into a service.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#348

Post by Aicy » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 1:48 AM UTC

fab1an wrote: post #217

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said, my entire "consumption" of web2 communities like Reddit (AND HN!) has honestly been replaced with the amazing and kind communities I met "on" web3 (a misnomer in that context, as the entire comms stack is Twitter and Discord). So your "web3" consumption happens entirely on web 2.0? And its existence doesn't actually require anything web3 related? What makes it web3, other than the fact that maybe someone…

A bunch of things, which also define what web3 means to me: - Yes, NFTs: just like most websites are crap, so are most NFTs, and the tulip bubble that has formed around them will eventually bust (but return in different ways...). What will IMO almost certainly remain is the significant paradigm shift on two aspects: 1. indisputable ownership of digital goods that unlock other things: logins to apps, usage of software…

>It's mindblowing how fast the space moves

Your post almost reminds me of how "mind-blowing the space moves" pre-2008, the space being the mortgage debt derivatives matket.

More and more complex derivatives that provide seemingly no value but allow the creators to make a lot of short term money by selling them.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#349

Post by Aicy » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 1:51 AM UTC

orange8 wrote: post #250

AlexandrB wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a vacuum, nothing. But it's generally good to disclose to others when the investment advice you're offering will also materially benefit you. It's funny that cryptocurrency proponents will often lambast the traditional banking system for being corrupt and self-serving but then ask a question like this. Is cryptocurrency supposed to be a more fair way to invest/bank/move money or not?

> In a vacuum, nothing. But it's generally good to disclose to others when the investment advice you're offering will also materially benefit you. This should be obvious. When was the last time you saw a coca-cola add? Did it say "please buy this because we are vested in it" or did it say "coca-cola tastes great". > Is cryptocurrency supposed to be a more fair way to invest/bank/move money or not? I honestly don't th…

There is obviously a difference between an ad which doesn't pretend to be anything else and financial "advice" which is pretending to be advice.

Pretending otherwise is disingenuous.

The thing that is wrong with it is that you are intentionally deceiving people.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#350

Post by shiohime » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 1:57 AM UTC

bcrosby95 wrote: post #149

deltarholamda wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decentralized proof of ownership is the core merit, as I see it. That has some value, and NFTs are kind of the perfect vehicle to use the technology. But does it have any practical use? That's the question. NFTs are hot right now as an investment vehicle, or as a way for artists to sell unique creations (leading to investment vehicles, I suppose). I'm not sold on the utility, long term.

Decentralized proof of ownership only matters if people with guns think it matters. I saw a short video of Keanu Reeves laughing at NFTs because they had value but are easy to copy. Which I found somewhat funny. Keanu gets paid a lot because he acts in things that have value but are easy to copy (movies). The reason why those have a high value is because of copyright. The people that financed the film have control ov…

NFTs do not have to be links to pictures on cloud / decentralized storage. That is just their primary implementation right now, but they can quite literally be a token to represent anything, not simply a jpg. But even in this case, yeah it's easy to make copies of the pictures. However, there is intrinsic value in owning something that is legitimate.

However, I want to focus on the other possibilities for NFTs - I am making an NFT project that does have the art aspect, however the tokens also provide access to unique services like hooking into a video game engine to allow users to interact with their art. Since it's trivial to detect forgeries and ownership, even if someone was to create an NFT pointing to even the exact same piece of art, they would be denied access to the service as it is a forgery.

Right now proof of ownership is usually in the form of discord bots allowing access to servers, but there's much more you can actually do with this concept than we are seeing now, like the example above.