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The Web3 Fraud

usenix.org

291–300 of 377 posts

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#291
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly you couldnt explain at all what could be interesting usecase and resulted to saying "its not for you". I've explained again and again in other comments. As did the parent comment of this whole thread. It's really not that hard to understand, but there's nothing I can do if you don't want to understand. > Well its TOR - its pretty clear proposition even to mainstream users it will be instantly obvious - the…

> I've explained again and again in other comments. As did the parent comment of this whole thread. It's really not that hard to understand, but there's nothing I can do if you don't want to understand. Look, we all know how MLMs work. Just say that you’re finding reasons for other people to pay money for your tokens rather than accusing people of not understanding. None of your comments have included a compelling sa…

There's no compelling sales pitch because I'm not trying to make one. I think there's already too much dumb money in it already, and I sure don't want yours either. Those of us who want or need it will continue to use it. Those of us who don't... well then, just don't.

You're looking for something that just isn't there, so you can sneer at it and show your snide superiority. Go somewhere else for that sort of validation, because you're not getting it from me.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#292
post #265
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. >…

> 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? It’s telling that you don’t know how wrong this is, but feel qualified to redesign a mature industry anyway. Banks are highly regulated and spend billions on secu…

> That irrecoverable failure mode is one of the core design flaws of cryptocurrency

No reason it has to stay that way in all cases. There are many solutions such as layered approaches, semi-custodial services, community forgiveness.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#293
post #12
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's easy-ish (far harder than using a credit card), but it's also: - 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

If I transfer from my Coinbase account to yours, the transaction is not subject to the vagaries of the blockchain. It’s more or less like transferring from my PayPal account to yours.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#294
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, it's about censorship-free finance vs censorable finance. If not for AML, KYC and basically the fact you just can't really use cash any more in significant sums for anything we wouldn't have had to bother. I have 200,000 bitcoin, or maybe I have 0.2, no-one knows other than me. Good.

How is it censorship free? The government could decide to make Bitcoin illegal. Sure, you could move it to another country without these laws or do things illegally, but that's no different for cash and the issues you mention.

It is censorship free because I can send you a million bitcoin and no-one can stop us without physical force.

The same is far from being true via other means such as the legacy banking system or cash. I mean, you can try and send a briefcase full of notes in the post cross-border, it might work, I wouldn't know or care to try.

Obviously the Government can attempt to, or pass laws, to censor anything at any time for any reason. In my country it was illegal for me to visit family for about 6 months this/last year, there's nothing special about Bitcoin, power will attempt to fuck with you simply because they can.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#295
post #265
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. >…

> 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? It’s telling that you don’t know how wrong this is, but feel qualified to redesign a mature industry anyway. Banks are highly regulated and spend billions on secu…

> the major breaches which are routine in the cryptocurrency world don’t have an analog in the real financial system.

You're either ignorant or joking.

Just because FDIC has taken care of the blunders that couldn't be sorted out internally between the banks does not mean there haven't been huge privacy and security hacks on these systems since the 90s.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#296
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've explained again and again in other comments. As did the parent comment of this whole thread. It's really not that hard to understand, but there's nothing I can do if you don't want to understand. Look, we all know how MLMs work. Just say that you’re finding reasons for other people to pay money for your tokens rather than accusing people of not understanding. None of your comments have included a compelling sa…

There's no compelling sales pitch because I'm not trying to make one. I think there's already too much dumb money in it already, and I sure don't want yours either. Those of us who want or need it will continue to use it. Those of us who don't... well then, just don't. You're looking for something that just isn't there, so you can sneer at it and show your snide superiority. Go somewhere else for that sort of validat…

I’m looking for something useful, not validation. It’d be great if there was something to show for all of that money and time.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#297
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? It’s telling that you don’t know how wrong this is, but feel qualified to redesign a mature industry anyway. Banks are highly regulated and spend billions on secu…

> That irrecoverable failure mode is one of the core design flaws of cryptocurrency No reason it has to stay that way in all cases. There are many solutions such as layered approaches, semi-custodial services, community forgiveness.

It’s designed in at the base level — that immutability is a feature for most proponents: if you don’t have it, you’ve just paid a lot more for a very slow database.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#298
post #70
post #10

This article misses the point, it sees web3 decentralization as purely technical and makes performance comparisons with existing systems. The power of web3 decentralization is about control, not more powerful computing. Yes your raspberry pi runs faster than the EVM, but can you give me any guarantee about what code it runs?

The comparison between Raspberry Pi and EVM is off by many, many orders of magnitude. What Ethereum marketing likes to call a “global supercomputer” is slower than a 1950s computer built out of vacuum tubes, and running programs is more expensive than it was in 1955. (Programming ergonomics are also nearly punch card level.) There are very few applications you’d actually want to execute on a platform like that. And e…

Your comment is flawed from the start: no one actually working on Ethereum ever claimed the EVM itself would be a 'super computer.' Thats's day 1 shit.

If instead of focusing on the flaws and then writing off blockchains, you searched for solutions or for the people more intelligent than yourself working on those solutions, you may have stumbled across ingenious proposals like the TrueBit protocol which can perform efficient computation trustlessy, or its competitors like the very well known Internet Computer, which surely deserves some criticism but doesn't waiver to your simplistic, narrow, and misplaced argument.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#299
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a perfectly reasonable use case, but also completely infeasible right now due to transaction costs - it could cost hundreds of dollars just to mint and transfer the NFT. Ticketmaster charges outrageous fees, but they’re nothing compared to eth transaction costs.

This is true for Ethereum, but if you look at other top 10 chains like Cardano the fees are much smaller! And proof-of-stake so it's not destroying the planet (I know Eth is going that way soon too).

> This is true for Ethereum, but if you look at other top 10 chains like Cardano the fees are much smaller!

Isn't this a temporary state of affairs? As a chain gets more popular, the fees will necessarily go up. A Dapp that must continually migrate to newer chains to provide a similar value proposition is vulnerable to being shut down, is it not?

For technologies that have gatekeepers, popularity eventually drives down costs. The tradeoff for these gatekeeper-less platforms is that popularity must drive costs up for them to work.

While it is possible to imagine use cases whose value equals or exceeds the cost at any point in time, it is difficult to imagine a use-case that scales in value at a rate equal to or exceeding the rate at which the costs do. Blockchains must continually find new higher value use cases or collapse in value. This isn't exactly the greater fool dynamic, but instead a 'greater foolishness'.

> And proof-of-stake so it's not destroying the planet (I know Eth is going that way soon too).

Proof-of-stake substitutes assets under management for transaction costs, but there is still an adverse selection problem that only gets worse over time.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#300
post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no compelling sales pitch because I'm not trying to make one. I think there's already too much dumb money in it already, and I sure don't want yours either. Those of us who want or need it will continue to use it. Those of us who don't... well then, just don't. You're looking for something that just isn't there, so you can sneer at it and show your snide superiority. Go somewhere else for that sort of validat…

I’m looking for something useful, not validation. It’d be great if there was something to show for all of that money and time.

And this is something very useful. There's been a lot to show for the last decade of crypto development.

It's just not useful for you. Which I understand. Not everything is for everyone. But you seem incapable of understanding that it's useful for many who are not you.

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