11–20 of 377 posts
I don’t understand what problem web3 can solve that a trusted entity cannot. And let’s keep in mind your reply to this comment will be using a trusted entity. In fact in the history of the internet I cannot find a single example of any technology working better in a decentralized fashion compared to centralized for the end user
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Better in what sense? Its extremely difficult to actually use cryptocurrency for selling things beyond cryptocurrency related instruments. You need both your vendors and your customers to be able to easily transfer money in and out, and as things stand, that's an absolutely massive pain in the ass compared to using USD, and approximately nobody does it. But that is only the start of the problems, not factoring in thi…
But it’s fairly easy to use “cryptocurrency” to pay for things, e.g. if you have a cryptocurrency-denominated account at the same provider as your vendor. This is, of course, not open finance in any meaningful respect.
- possible the transaction won't happen immediately or happen at all
- extremely expensive
- stupid (if you expect your particular cryptocurrency to increase in value over time)
- missing all the protections and benefits of a credit card
Immutability is important because it's guaranteed that no matter how many times you interact with a contract address, you can be assured that at no point has the code in that contract ever changed. This is not an assurance you can typically get, as backend code for traditional endpoints can change at any time.
Even more important IMO is the difficulty in shutting down a contract that's deployed to the blockchain. In the case of this article, the reliance on external services such as AWS opens up possibilities for your app to be shut down, whether it's through non-payment to your AWS account, AWS decides you've violated their terms of service, or legal action compels AWS to shut down your app.
In the case of dapps deployed to the blockchain (combined optionally with frontends deployed to a service like IPFS, but this isn't a requirement, as one can always interact directly with contracts), the ability to shutdown these apps would rely on somehow breaking the blockchain itself.
Whether or not you see these aspects as bugs or features is a matter of opinion. Yes, blockchains are slower and more expensive. This is the current cost of enabling the two facets above. If we're not comparing blockchain dapps to other systems that offer the same assurances, then we're comparing apples and oranges.
I don’t understand what problem web3 can solve that a trusted entity cannot. And let’s keep in mind your reply to this comment will be using a trusted entity. In fact in the history of the internet I cannot find a single example of any technology working better in a decentralized fashion compared to centralized for the end user
It’s not about “open finance” versus “centralized finance”, it’s about “our finance” vs “their finance”, our ledgers versus their databases. This is no different than Silicon Valley starting as David and turning into West Coast Goliath, wrestling with the East Coast Hegemony for status and power.
I get the sentiment, but code doesn’t fix people problems. I am not without curiosity, but web3 still has much work to do to show both novel and meaningful use cases.
To some degree, the author is not wrong. Some of these so-called 'defi' apps were still sitting on AWS, GCP, and Azure and were affected by the outage underlying the decentralization illusion they created. The same thing with NFTs stored on OpenSea and not even being tied to the blockchain itself.
Right now, the only reason that Ethereum is hyped for this is because the defi hype squad has their investments in the cryptocurrency; even when it is not the best cryptocurrency to use for this. Not even I can use it to pay for my groceries without over paying for the fees just for it to go faster.
This all proves that web3 is not ready. (yet)
I don’t understand what problem web3 can solve that a trusted entity cannot. And let’s keep in mind your reply to this comment will be using a trusted entity. In fact in the history of the internet I cannot find a single example of any technology working better in a decentralized fashion compared to centralized for the end user
I tend to think its not worth the trade off (and the "decentralization" is questionable in practise), but this line of criticism is basically begging the question.
Ethereum Name Service (ENS) https://forkast.news/what-is-ens-ethereum-name-service-how-d...
> After all, a programmer doing the most basic test of a web3 prototype is going to need to get the cryptocurrency, spend the cryptocurrency, and any application will require all users to get the cryptocurrency as well. If this gets abandoned quickly due to the inevitable technical failure “web3” still accomplished its goal of getting more suckers in and extracting their money.
Hard to take serious the rest of the blog when he doesn't seem to be aware of development testnets that exist for exactly the above reason. Or familiar with scaling efforts, or some of the long term ethos of the crypto developer community.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Better in what sense? Its extremely difficult to actually use cryptocurrency for selling things beyond cryptocurrency related instruments. You need both your vendors and your customers to be able to easily transfer money in and out, and as things stand, that's an absolutely massive pain in the ass compared to using USD, and approximately nobody does it. But that is only the start of the problems, not factoring in thi…
But it’s fairly easy to use “cryptocurrency” to pay for things, e.g. if you have a cryptocurrency-denominated account at the same provider as your vendor. This is, of course, not open finance in any meaningful respect.
I just noticed I read that wrong. I missed the same provider as your vendor part.
So I guess the solution for using cryptocurrency to buy things at Amazon is “if you already bought cryptocurrency at Amazon…”.
But I’m trying to buy something. So how does the intermediatory step help at all?
This post may sound somewhat hostile. I TRUELY don’t understand how cryptocurrency helps any of this. It only seems to help cryptocurrency people.
The author nailed my feelings 100%.
> So I still need a DNS name, Ethereum Name Service (ENS) https://forkast.news/what-is-ens-ethereum-name-service-how-d... > After all, a programmer doing the most basic test of a web3 prototype is going to need to get the cryptocurrency, spend the cryptocurrency, and any application will require all users to get the cryptocurrency as well. If this gets abandoned quickly due to the inevitable technical failure “web3”…