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Why Web3?

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Re: Why Web3?

#141

Post by quickthrower2 »

root_axis wrote: post #128
quickthrower2 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not the same thing.

I just explained why it is. A one line response of "nuh uh" is not convincing.

Its an analogy and diverts from the original point. We were talking about how you were going to solve double spends without a chain.

You point about minting another is an interesting point but its not a double spend so we veer off the topic.

If we take your point then its the same as saying anyone can create a new crypto and call it Bitcoin. If I have an OG Bitcoin and you have a fake one then you can steel my real one. No you cant.

The reason is that people discern what Bitcoin is vs. other coins.

NFT cooy/paste is a problem but it is a distinct and different problem to double spend.

Re: Why Web3?

#142

Post by lowwave »

darawk wrote: post #83
jasonzemos wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One company controls the specification and reference implementation. These gimmicks tend to be "open" so contributions can flow in from anywhere, but the company has full priority and benefits by controlling the pace and final result. Outsider contributions are submitted publicly, while features developed by the company start in secret and can remain secret as long as possible. The company's contributions are rammed…

Except all these things can be trivially forked. If you don't like how the VC one is doing things, just fork it. There are a billion forks of everything in the crypto space, for exactly this reason.

yes, when was the last time you see google chrome forked and adopted a large user base? That is event with big VC money behind it Brave for example. Open source is now days used a marketing scheme to attract developers to work for free, and attract user to think that is open.

Re: Why Web3?

#143

Post by throw_nbvc1234 »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #89
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory, these web3 platforms would still need to function as a business to continue existing. Moving the platform onto a blockchain removes the need for centralized servers, but it necessitates massive amounts of distributed compute power to keep it going. Every blockchain project knows that they need to incentivize their miners somehow. This is usually a combination of fees from users and new tokens minted via bu…

> introducing artificial tokens, quietly giving a huge number of those tokens to founders and early investors (in exchange for actual money, of course), and then hyping the platform to the moon so everyone can cash out their tokens to a new wave of speculators. In other words a Ponzi-scheme

It's a ponzi-scheme if there's no value behind the hype. it's not inherently a ponzi scheme. It's the same way in the current private equity start-up world just that only VC's and connected individuals are exposed to the all the risk and all the profit.

Re: Why Web3?

#144

Post by CiPHPerCoder »

acdha wrote: post #97
davidhariri wrote: post #84

> Frankly, it is all too much for me. Same. I've been actively unfollowing people on Twitter every day to clean my feeds of it. I'm not anti-web3 or anti-crypto, but I definitely don't need to read the same rhetoric from 100 people a day. Decentralized trust could be great, but I wonder how much time actually needs to be spent talking about it vs. actually building it...

> Decentralized trust could be great, but I wonder how much time actually needs to be spent talking about it vs. actually building it... This is the tell for me that most of the people promoting it are just trying to find buyers for their tokens: there's tons of marketing for things which either don't exist at all or offer a worse experience than the status quo, and it's very rare to find someone who clearly understa…

Their MVP is a slide deck, or a sales website.

Re: Why Web3?

#145

Post by jandrese »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #122
davidhariri wrote: post #84

> Frankly, it is all too much for me. Same. I've been actively unfollowing people on Twitter every day to clean my feeds of it. I'm not anti-web3 or anti-crypto, but I definitely don't need to read the same rhetoric from 100 people a day. Decentralized trust could be great, but I wonder how much time actually needs to be spent talking about it vs. actually building it...

Decentralized trust is another way of saying a grapevine. Grapevine communication (or trust) is only useful in specific circumstances, and is often actively detrimental. Why are so many people just going along with these concepts as if they make sense? It's like nobody's using their brain.

I thought the whole web of trust concept was proven unworkable/unscalable with PGP?

Most of crypto still seems like a solution in search of a problem. Or they are solving the problems that people don't have. The primary problem that most crypto systems seem to be trying to solve is "How can I make the founders as rich as possible?"

Re: Why Web3?

#146

Post by epistasis »

Kiro wrote: post #106

I don't like how the extreme hatred toward Web3 has spiraled into "I see no practical application for decentralization". Crypto and blockchain aside, how can you not see the utility in an open firehose database/API without gate keepers? Don't conflate decentralization with blockchain.

There's an easy counter to "I see no practical application for decentralization," which is to provide an example of that application.

I'm not convinced that Bitcoin or currencies are a practical application that results in net gain (economic or otherwise) to humanity. The internet was obvious from day 1, even if the actual end applications ended up quite a bit different.

> how can you not see the utility in an open firehose database/API without gate keepers?

This is what I don't see. The "gate keepers" are often a positive, not a negative. And it's hard for me to imagine what sort of database is being held back because of gatekeepers.

Re: Why Web3?

#147

Post by Traubenfuchs »

Kiro wrote: post #106

I don't like how the extreme hatred toward Web3 has spiraled into "I see no practical application for decentralization". Crypto and blockchain aside, how can you not see the utility in an open firehose database/API without gate keepers? Don't conflate decentralization with blockchain.

Because they keep talking and talking and all we get is get rich quick schemes involving blockchains and crypto.

Where are the applications?

Re: Why Web3?

#148

Post by leifg »

runako wrote: post #127

This argument is simple, but forgets that the Internet has essentially had permission-less databases before, notably in IRC, XMPP, and email. Anyone can run an IRC or XMPP node, anyone can run email. The protocols are open and free (as in money) to use. But time and again the masses of Internet users choose centralized alternatives. It's interesting to see this already playing out in the Web 3 space. Users concentrat…

I think the argument made implicitly is that with web3 you could actually monetize your contribution. If you run an IRC server you (usually) only have cost. One part of web3 is tokens so you can actually earn some fake money by running an IRC server.

I think if you look at the economics of that though I don't think it will turn out in your favor. You are either making 10ct a month from it or you'll have to heavily invest in hardware to (potentially) turn a profit.

The reason some of that works now is because we have an inflated price of tokens and people are speculating on it going up. But that makes it not an appealing service for you to pay for.

And all of that forgets that the vast majority of people is not willing to pay anything to use a service. No matter how often web3 people will yell "If you don't pay for it, you're the product".

Re: Why Web3?

#149

Post by krrrh »

indigochill wrote: post #90
davidhariri wrote: post #84

> Frankly, it is all too much for me. Same. I've been actively unfollowing people on Twitter every day to clean my feeds of it. I'm not anti-web3 or anti-crypto, but I definitely don't need to read the same rhetoric from 100 people a day. Decentralized trust could be great, but I wonder how much time actually needs to be spent talking about it vs. actually building it...

> Decentralized trust could be great, but I wonder how much time actually needs to be spent talking about it vs. actually building it... And the order of operations. Traditionally, you build something great (or an MVP) and market it. The crypto community has been putting the marketing before the building. It's probably uncontroversial to say although cryptocurrency -could- do great things, right now the bulk of trade…

This is such a good point. "Web 2.0" didn't really emerge as a term of art until there was a need to describe the widespread adoption of UGC, REST, & AJAX and blockbuster web applications like gmail replacing desktop applications.

Re: Why Web3?

#150

Post by throw_nbvc1234 »

drawkbox wrote: post #42
Apocryphon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t an open database lead to loads of ACID issues or is the point of blockchain to prevent that

Further, open databases will potentially make it harder for iterative change on that data. Structures and versioning become harder when that is distributed at the protocol/standard level. Right now the web is already distributed, the protocols/standards are open and versioning data/content/apps/endpoints on top of that is easy, but updating protocols/standards takes time. Apps are a second layer to that, versioning i…

> In a way with cryptocurrency, the real goal of the investors of web3 is recreating the web with a sort of toll system, that can be good and bad but their aim is collecting on actions on new protocols/standards.

One could argue that today's web is a combination of ad-based revenue and tolls run by (near?) monopolies: app stores, marketplaces, ect... The crypto-like alternatives such as substack and patreon are growing though and will likely have a niche even if/when crypto fails. The centralization of those crypto-like alternatives is a risk though. I recall one substack author giving email-export as a rationale to choose substack but that's a feature that presumably could just be turned off whenever.

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