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The Web3 Fraud

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Re: The Web3 Fraud

#241

Post by rank0 »

exdsq wrote: post #207
paxys wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that I have been hearing about all these amazing use cases for crypto/blockchain for over a decade now, and not a single one has materialized that is useful for me or any other common user who is not involved in the community. The entire ecosystem is circular. All web3 apps are about web3. And what point does it start adding value outside of pushing itself?

This is fair, I wish more teams were working on the boring useful use-cases. One I particularly like is gig tickets. Represent them as NFTs, prove ownership of the ticket as it is in your wallet, trade them for USD with anyone around the world in a single atomic transaction, use third party tools to verify a ticket is authentic (either manually copying an NFT address onto a bands website or programatically). Suddenly…

The tickets are already in closed ecosystems like Ticketmaster. It would be orders if magnitudes more efficient for them to just add resale functionality to their platform. Problem is they don’t want third party resellers.

And herein lies the problem. At some point cyrpto tokens have to come back into the real world. If you can’t get $centralized_authority onboard you’re screwed. And if it’s not “decentralized” just make a freaking web app.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#242

Post by root_axis »

zer01 wrote: post #240
paxys wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no money or smart contracts involved in my scenario. I just want to host a random site. Put another way – is there a use case for Web3 which doesn't involve touting Web3? What is the "killer app" for the average user who isn't obsessed with crypto/blockchain?

If you just want to store and host files like a website, there's a few projects in that vein that I know of - Arweave ( https://www.arweave.org/ ), IPFS ( https://ipfs.io/ ), and Filecoin ( https://filecoin.io/ ). IMO these projects are aiming at a new form of sovereignty on the internet that doesn't/can't exist currently - the ability to have your data be permanently stored and accessible on the web. Google can deci…

But it's not on the internet permanently, it will disappear eventually at an unknown point in the future, like a dead torrent due to the lack of seeders.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#243

Post by zer01 »

Misdicorl wrote: post #59
v64 wrote: post #13

Many criticisms of blockchain apps, comparing their use cases to conventional technologies (databases, conventional separation of services such as that described in the article, etc) all seem to miss a major point: Dapps running on the blockchain are immutable and highly resistant to being shutdown. Immutability is important because it's guaranteed that no matter how many times you interact with a contract address, y…

Unless there is a killer feature it enables, it's an implementation detail and I don't care. And I will gladly compare other solutions against blockchain despite not having the same implementation detail you claim puts it above comparison. And so will everyone else that isn't blinded by fanaticism.

Right, so what's happening right now is much more akin to the early days of the internet than anything else IMO. In the same ways we couldn't have ever predicted Facebook, Google, iPhones, etc, in the 90s it's hard to say exactly what impact crypto/web3 will have on the modern world.

There's actually something truly new and tangible that crypto has spurred - the ability to drive consensus in a trustless manner automatically and the ability to execute computer programs that are deterministic, immutable, and will run forever. With those new tools in the global toolbox I suspect that some iteration of them will be in use somewhere in our future, but no-one exactly where. Are NFT game assets the ultimate expression of crypto? No, but Friendster and HotOrNot weren't the ultimate expression of the internet either.

The ability to network 2 computers together was also new and tangible thing that the internet as a concept brought, but it wasn't before a huge amount of foundational work in the form of IETF protocols, router hardware design & production, software network stacks, and wireless communications before it really took off. Mass adoption was one of the last phases, and I still remember a day when people would call you crazy for putting your credit card anywhere near the internet.

IMO that's the phase we're at, so for most people it's just not ready yet, but it doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of people out there trying new and novel things with these tools ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#244

Post by miracle2k »

y4mi wrote: post #219
miracle2k wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really; it is the server that tells all clients what the state is. I know "there is nothing new that blockchain does" has become a meme among sceptics, but with respect, I am getting a bit tired of it. It's just not accurate. You can argue that what the way blockchain allows for shared state is useless all they long, or that the financial use cases are undesirable, and that's all fine. But you simple cannot run t…

> Not really; it is the server that tells all clients what the state is. Not with realtime action games, nope. The server hopefully verifies, but not even that is a given... Just look at New Worlds immortality bug from a few weeks back for a pretty large budget game that forgot to do that to a sufficient degree.

Thanks for the heads-up. Sounds like I don't know enough about how those games are made.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#245

Post by miracle2k »

Nursie wrote: post #180
miracle2k wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legislation requiring a backdoor in e2e encryption, such as WhatsApp, is also considered a positive by most people even now, but wait after it's been in place for 10 years, it will be as universally unquestioned as KYC or AML policies.

I don't think that's an argument against KYC and AML, personally.

Yes, it's more not an argument, merely an invitation to consider the parallels. It is of course possible to embrace both e2e encryption and KYC.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#246

Post by root_axis »

exdsq wrote: post #207
paxys wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that I have been hearing about all these amazing use cases for crypto/blockchain for over a decade now, and not a single one has materialized that is useful for me or any other common user who is not involved in the community. The entire ecosystem is circular. All web3 apps are about web3. And what point does it start adding value outside of pushing itself?

This is fair, I wish more teams were working on the boring useful use-cases. One I particularly like is gig tickets. Represent them as NFTs, prove ownership of the ticket as it is in your wallet, trade them for USD with anyone around the world in a single atomic transaction, use third party tools to verify a ticket is authentic (either manually copying an NFT address onto a bands website or programatically). Suddenly…

The NFT and blockchain are totally pointless in this scenario, you could achieve the exact same thing using public key cryptography alone.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#247

Post by zer01 »

esjeon wrote: post #75
v64 wrote: post #13

Many criticisms of blockchain apps, comparing their use cases to conventional technologies (databases, conventional separation of services such as that described in the article, etc) all seem to miss a major point: Dapps running on the blockchain are immutable and highly resistant to being shutdown. Immutability is important because it's guaranteed that no matter how many times you interact with a contract address, y…

> Dapps running on the blockchain are immutable and highly resistant to being shutdown. Yeah, and that's why we have Ethereum Classic , a remnant of its own shameful history. Dapps are still man-made, so can be faulty, but Ethereum doesn't have any recovery scenario for faulty dapps other than forking out. No one can save you from your own deadly mistakes. This simply can't scale.

The eth classic fork was because of the first high profile hack of a smart contract leading to massive loss of funds (way way back in 2016 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization)). The Ethereum community back then was a fraction of a fraction of a percent of what it is compared to the size today, and that early on in the network I don't think it was a detrimental thing to do like it would be today.

> No one can save you from your own deadly mistakes.

Alternatively, "You really really have to give a shit about your own security". Imagine if banks had some skin in the game in terms of their security story. Why was I able to have 2 factor on my world of warcraft account many years before my bank account?

You're right in that crypto is a cold world of immutability, but in the same way that exposing servers and data to the internet (along with all the hacks, identity theft, etc that came with it) ultimately led to better security protections like ASLR, DEP, Yubikeys, etc, I posit we'll see rise of new technologies to help combat these issues as well to help offset the risks as much as possible. Hardware wallets, multi-sig contracts, and now multi-party computation are promising new tools to help make the blockchain space more operationally safe, which enables the whole thing to scale.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#248

Post by rank0 »

RichardHeart wrote: post #235

I did an debate with the author 6/4/2018. He lost. https://youtu.be/I9Pxv1i9W7M?list=PLN0RF11rNdP0kkklAiif2pBLv... By the way Bitcoin was at $2530. Ethereum was at $590. Bitcoin went up $69,000 since then. Ethereum went to $5000. But pundits and critics seem to be immune to educate from years of progress, and now history. Quote from his article: "So why this hype? Because the cryptocurrency space, at heart, is simply…

> By the way Bitcoin was at $2530. Ethereum was at $590. Bitcoin went up $69,000 since then. Ethereum went to $5000.

This is not a convincing argument to me. It tells me that the real utility is just speculation.

Shiba Inu has a market cap of 10B. But you’re an idiot if you think Elon musk dog money is valuable to society. If I make a 1000000% return selling magic beans, does that mean the beans have actual utility?

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#249

Post by [deleted] »

RichardHeart wrote: post #235

I did an debate with the author 6/4/2018. He lost. https://youtu.be/I9Pxv1i9W7M?list=PLN0RF11rNdP0kkklAiif2pBLv... By the way Bitcoin was at $2530. Ethereum was at $590. Bitcoin went up $69,000 since then. Ethereum went to $5000. But pundits and critics seem to be immune to educate from years of progress, and now history. Quote from his article: "So why this hype? Because the cryptocurrency space, at heart, is simply…

[deleted]

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#250

Post by zer01 »

H8crilA wrote: post #37
v64 wrote: post #13

Many criticisms of blockchain apps, comparing their use cases to conventional technologies (databases, conventional separation of services such as that described in the article, etc) all seem to miss a major point: Dapps running on the blockchain are immutable and highly resistant to being shutdown. Immutability is important because it's guaranteed that no matter how many times you interact with a contract address, y…

This is great, but I don't need it at 10^9 times the cost. Imagine if a single red apple costed about $100M, yet it had rather unique qualities such as indisputable, provable lack of contamination. That's the kind of cost difference we're talking about here.

What did the first cell phone cost? The first laptop? Every new piece of technology goes through a cycle where things are wildly inefficient and barely operable, but over time they're refined in a loop of iteration and improvement.

Vacuum tubes gave way to the silicon transistor, which immediately moved the idea of "personal computing" from a complete impossibility to something that was a pipedream that was technically possible to do. From there things like the Apple II made paths to make personal computing actually usable and affordable. The iteration cycle continues, drives demand for new things to do, which drives demand for the internet. Eventually we arrive at the iPhone where I can now have a low-latency, high definition, video call for (basically) free with anyone in the world. Try explaining that vision to someone in the 90's who has a pager, pays for long distance, and buys stamps and they'll tell you it's impossible or a pipedream.

The crypto/web3 industry is just finding its feet with some new tools in the proverbial toolbox (distributed consensus and smart contracts). There's a lot of people building on it and iterating every day, but in the same way that the IETF were unsung heros of bringing everyone Youtube, there are a lot of folks hard at work at making things usable and practical for mass adoption. Mass adoption just comes last.

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