Web3 is going just great • Hacker News Board

Re: Web3 is going just great

#351

Post by shiohime » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 2:05 AM UTC

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #115

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 is the core merit > But does it have any practical use? That's the question. Sounds like a solution searching for a problem.

You can use the technology to make products that are quite unique. I used a game engine to generate art and also provide a bunch of ways to interact with the art, and tokenized the generated pieces. Owners of the pieces will be able to load their art into this game and interact with it directly. Yes, I could have done this with traditional web infra, however it would rely on me managing certs to prove ownership, and there is not an easy way to transfer ownership to other users on a secondary market. There's a lot of parts of the web3 tech that I've been interested in and think it's just a pretty unique ecosystem.

The way I look at it is that this is a tool. The way it is used is up to the creativity of the engineer(s) working with it. I think that using NFTs in this manner is a lot easier for me to manage than other approaches, and it's pretty fun. Practical use? Idk it's a fun art project that I hope people enjoy, but yeah I do think it was easier for me to implement in this method than a traditional web app.

But I do think there are plenty of practical use cases that you could leverage this technology for in terms of access based on ownership of the digital assets.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#352

Post by nanobyte » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 10:14 AM UTC

orange8 wrote: post #332

Yizahi wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lolno. You are completely mistaken about what ownership means. I don't own my bank account (it's complicated), I don't own my HN account. Password is only used to authenticate and authorize me on the digital property owned by someone else - PG or bank corporation.

You do own your hacker news account. If someone hacks into your computer, and makes stupid comments while pretending to be you, you have every right to seek compensation. Because you actually OWN your hacker news account, in the very same way you OWN the house you are renting. Your landlord cannot just rock up to your house tomorrow, walk in and sit in your yard for an hour because they "own" the house. So yes, you a…

This simply isn't accurate.

Blockchain isn't new. Guess what? People were implementing distributed ledger technology way back in the 2000s. By the early 2010s, this was already mainstream. I implemented tracking and tracing for a Japanese multinational pharmaceutical company over a decade ago--which allowed for traceability throughout every step in the supply chain, from manufacturing to consumer. Other friends and acquaintances did the same for the agricultural industry, facilitating rapid and immediate tracing of contamination events (e.g. E. coli outbreaks). And they made a fortune doing so.

NFTs are somewhat comically reminiscent of Windows install CDs. If you're not familiar, find a tech-savvy millennial (or anyone of a prior generation), and ask them what the coveted CDs were like. They were carefully wrapped in plastic, surrounded with multiple folds of high-quality heavy duty paper. And once unfurled, buyers were presented with a holographic rainbow explosion of colors. All of which was intended to connote "ownership", and to carefully shroud the all mighty "Product Key" (aka crypto token).

Such elaborate technology. And yet, how many people actually payed for Windows? NFTs appear to be the modern equivalent. iOS will happy record what's on my screen, no matter the purported DRM, and at high resolution nonetheless. What's to stop someone from sharing a photograph of the Mona Lisa NFT?

I'm only suggesting to take a step back, and zoom out from the hype. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Everything old is new again, my friend.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#353

Post by ShamelessC » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

carlosdp wrote: post #340

ShamelessC wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem knowledgeable so maybe you can help me with this. So you said: > Smart contracts eliminate the intermediary. Whether you are selling for $2 or $2M, it's gunna cost the same small fee (and the fee is going to be negligible within a year). Okay, fair enough intermediaries suck. Let's replace them with smart contracts. But what happens if there was a bug in the smart contract? What happens when a situation such…

That's entirely fair, but the perspective of those in web3 is that this property exists on a spectrum. The present day incumbent side of that spectrum is that the DNS registrar could decide one day to just take your domain from you, and there's not much you could do about it. Sure, you could sue, but that takes time and meanwhile your business could be ruined. A more concrete example of this is social handles. Earlie…

> Our contention is that shouldn't be possible.

Trust me, this will always be possible, "web3" or not. The proper solution here is maybe something federated like Matrix and definitely has to do with encouraging more people to self-host their own services, possible with "web1" tech.

I think it would serve this initiative a lot better if you just completely left the notion of currency, value, and markets _all_ the way out of it.

Focus on IPFS, IPNS, federation, BitTorrent, etc. if you want this to succeed. Leave money out of it. Money is invariably going to be loved by the winners and hated by the losers. It also makes it incredibly challenging to trust incumbents as they have everything-to-gain (and potentially alot-to-lose) by shilling that which increases the value of the coin they hold.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#354

Post by ShamelessC » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 3:49 PM UTC

carlosdp wrote: post #338

ShamelessC wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The crypto community co-opted "Web 3.0" as "requires crypto to use the web" but didnt realize how tonedeaf they were being because of the echo chamber they put themselves in. The reality is that programming work surrounding payments and/or finance is going to be deeply unappealing to most devs as it is incredibly dry and extremely tedious.

I'm a dev/CTO full-time in Web3, we work on smart contracts and all that, we spend 0 time thinking about payments and finance. You're talking about DeFi, there's a LOT more stuff in web3 now that can only be classified as finance as much as any startup that uses Stripe to collect money can be classified as "finance".

> I'm a dev/CTO full-time in Web3, we work on smart contracts and all that, we spend 0 time thinking about payments and finance. You're talking about DeFi, there's a LOT more stuff in web3 now that can only be classified as finance as much as any startup that uses Stripe to collect money can be classified as "finance".

Apologies, as an outsider I'm sure I have used some conflated terms. To clarify, I was explicitly referring to smart contracts (and the like). These programmed arrangements carry with them the minutiae and stress of what I imagine programming at a bank or large financial institution would be like. Coding a bug in a smart contract or at a bank can have very severe consequences. It should be done with the utmost care by highly skilled persons, not your average web programmer (which is the position you are taking by calling this stuff Web 3 and when, for instance, Ethereum decides to base its smart contract language on JavaScript).

While this is true for some specific segments of the current internet, it is not inherently true. Or rather, as a programmer, I can choose to avoid such fraught tasks.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#355

Post by lawtalkinghuman » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 10:16 AM UTC

guntars wrote: post #268

stevebmark wrote: post #97

I find it both sad and funny watching folks discard efficient, regulated, centralized financial systems, and turn to a decentralized one and deal with the constant scams that such a system would obviously produce. Irreversible transactions, 90% wash trading, the hilariously bad idea of "smart contracts," and surprisingly inefficient core technology designed to become more wasteful as it scales. Who knows what the fut…

To the proponents of the "efficient, regulated, centralized financial systems" I want to ask - why can't I pay $0.10 to a random paywalled site to access a single article?

Insufficient consumer demand, and the economics of it don't work for publishers/creators. There've been plenty of attempts - Flattr, Coil, Dropp. If people want it, it could be built but there doesn't seem to be much market demand.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#356

Post by orange8 » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 3:11 PM UTC

Aicy wrote: post #349

orange8 wrote: post #250

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. 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.

So someone enticing you to BUY "sugar water" is not financial advice, but being enticed to buy fake internet money somehow is? How exactly did you reach that conclusion?

Re: Web3 is going just great

#357

Post by mathnmusic » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 5:48 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.

So we agree that Bitcoin is more like a stock than a currency. Nobody calls Apple stock "most democratic type of currency/money/property in the world". There's a reason why SEC heavily regulates issues of security which promise future upside - regulations that Bitcoin circumvented.