Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Web3?

avc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 706 posts

Re: Why Web3?

#191

Post by cercatrova »

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…

> Traditionally, you build something great (or an MVP) and market it.

I don't like the Web3 hype either but generally people say one should market their product first then build it if there's enough demand, through a landing page capturing emails or pre-payments, or other such ways of gauging demand.

It just seems that Web3 fanatics took the marketing side too far that they've forgotten they actually have to build a product (that solves an actual problem, not yet another coin) for which the marketing will be used.

Re: Why Web3?

#192

Post by closetnerd »

tehjoker wrote: post #155
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...

It's just a grift that people want you to buy into. That's why they're so invested in talking about it. If the technology was good, it'd practically sell itself.

This is often not necessarily the case. For web3 - I'm still waiting to figure out what problem it can solve meaningfully.

Re: Why Web3?

#193

Post by tome »

xrd wrote: post #129
simonw wrote: post #125

> If, on the other hand, the database is an open public database that is not controlled and administered by a single company, but instead is a truly open system available to all, then that kind of market power cannot be built up around a data asset. But it's a crap database. It's incredibly slow and incredibly expensive. The benefits we get from using a slow, expensive database need to be absolutely enormous for this…

If you read the post he recommends from his partner, that is covered in detail by comparing it to the PC, which compared poorly to mainframes, but was cheap. And, that Clayton Christenson remarked that having a singular facet that is unique and very different, is a good starting point for a revolution.

This is not very convincing though, because the cheap, but otherwise poorly-specced PC could do something useful, e.g., run spreadsheets. "Web3" can't do anything useful yet that's not already predicated on its own value, that is, sure you can "transfer value" with Bitcoin or Etherium, but that's predicated on those "tokens" actually having value. Its value is built on itself. The PC on the other hand had fundamental value.

Re: Why Web3?

#194

Post by intrasight »

evan_ wrote: post #136
intrasight wrote: post #101

In fiction, Hiro Protagonist got in early and bought some prime real-estate in the metaverse. Many IRL did the same with Bitcoin and made a killing. If you think all the lucrative web2 properties have already been claimed, then it makes sense to create virgin territory in web3 and stake a claim.

Hiro delivered pizzas and lived in a storage unit with a roommate. His metaverse "wealth" was essentially worthless to him in real life. Real-life real estate is valuable because they're not making more land. Virtual real estate does not have that limitation. (Also IIRC he helped create the Metaverse, he didn't simply buy in early.)

"bought in early" by investing his time.

Web3 will succeed if it succeeds in creating artificial scarcity - just as Bitcoin has succeeded in doing. I am pessimistic, but there are lots of people who think otherwise. I do think that it will have a "real-estate" aspect to it soas to have scarcity of place.

Here's a thought: can we repurpose all the Bitcoin computation to doing something useful like rendering the metaverse?

Re: Why Web3?

#195

Post by k-kr »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #111
root_axis wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NFT would contain "$doomrobo_public_key owns $k as of $date" signed with the minter's private key. When you decide to sell someone the NFT you append "$new_owner_public_key owns $k as of $date" to the NFT and sign it with your private key: this establishes a secure and verifiable chain of ownership.

You can send two of those assignment signatures to two different parties simultaneously. Is there a way in your system to avoid the double send?

You can require edition number / total copies in the original signed claim. Beyond that, you take it to the courts, which is the same thing you would need to do if the same resource was reminded on blockchain. The blockchain may only make it easier to detect a double mint.

Re: Why Web3?

#196

Post by tome »

capableweb wrote: post #65
pg_bot wrote: post #60

I think the VCs are stuck between a rock and a hard place. It makes sense to invest in "web3" because of the potential power law returns if someone figures out how to make something useful. However, I think we've had enough time to evaluate enough of these technologies to claim that the emperor has no clothes. It may take a few years but I think every single web3 investment will have to be written off as a complete l…

> However, I think we've had enough time to evaluate enough of these technologies "We" (humanity) started working on networking/the foundations of the internet in the 1970s, and it wasn't until late 1990s that it actually became mainstream and started providing a solution to "real" problems we had at that time. What makes you confident we can judge cryptocurrencies in just ~12 years instead of ~20 years it took for t…

Computer networking already had value in the 1970s (and before)!

Re: Why Web3?

#197

Post by ThomPete »

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…

The crypto community does what every startup should do. They find the customers before they start building i.e. they build community first and in effect build products.

To say that things aren't being build in the crypto community is simply flat out false.

It's one of the fastest developing industries and more and more talent are leaving their previous jobs or industries.

Re: Why Web3?

#198

Post by root_axis »

saurik wrote: post #189
root_axis wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We were talking about how you were going to solve double spends without a chain. "Double spend" is a cryptocurrency problem, NFTs do not have this problem since unlike "currencies" the goal is to create a "non fungible" record of ownership for an off-chain asset; a chain of digital signatures satisfies this need, the double spend issue is not relevant to the stated use-case.

The only difference between a fungible token and a non-fungible token is its fungibility: everything else is the same. The stated use case for both is "I want to know for certain who owns something". A chain of digital signatures fails to satisfy that need. Please stop being so assertive about something you clearly don't know anything about: there are tons of useful complaints about how people are using NFTs, but thi…

A semantic distinction without an actual difference. At the end of the day all an NFT does is state "author X gives ownership of Y to Z", if you trust the public key of X a signed text file stating "author X gives ownership of Y to Z" gives you identical guarantees to a blockchain NFT stating the same thing. Nothing stops author X from minting a blockchain NFT that states "author X gives ownership of Y to Z" and also an additional blockchain NFT stating "author X gives ownership of Y to Q"... it's literally just a digitally signed string.

Re: Why Web3?

#199

Post by shafyy »

m_ke wrote: post #70
qaq wrote: post #3

One thing that is confusing most loud supporters of Web3 are VCs and yet: "It all comes down to the database that sits behind an application. If that database is controlled by a single entity (think company, think big tech), then enormous market power accrues to the owner/administrator of that database. If, on the other hand, the database is an open public database that is not controlled and administered by a single…

1. Because it's a ponzi scheme and they get to get in on the ground floor. See: https://mobile.twitter.com/intangiblecoins/status/1473302581... 2. Because they're rich libertarians who see crypto as a way to protect their assets from the government

Perfectly summarized.

Re: Why Web3?

#200

Post by Kiro »

epistasis wrote: post #146
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 f…

The gate keepers are preventing me from building the kind of apps I want. Just the other day people here reminisced about the days when Twitter used to have an open API and how bad it is that they shut it down.

I want to build apps without having to worry about ever being restricted, limited or shut down.

Post reply on HN