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Why Web3?

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Re: Why Web3?

#381

Post by everfree »

chii wrote: post #372
everfree wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For many people, NFTs are also a hobby not an investment. You just hear about the investors because they are the loudest.

> NFTs are also a hobby not an investment. You just hear about the investors because they are the loudest. Or the only voice, because no one else is interested in looking at a hash for fun. The real artwork is easily digitally duplicated and so if your hobby was to look at the art, you do not need to purchase the NFT.

Spending a few dollars on NFT "ownership" is worth it to me to have my name next to something, just like spending $10 on a League of Legends skin is worth it to some people to have their name next to a piece of artwork in a video game.

I am literally interested in looking at a hash for fun, since it shows up online in NFT viewers with a little picture of it in my account. $10 is such a small amount of money to me, if I didn't spend it on an NFT then I may have bought a CS:GO skin or hypothetically some Candy Crush lollipop hammers, spent it at the arcade or put it into a slot machine or something. The NFT sparks better conversation.

That's before getting into the fact that if I buy an independently drawn NFT, that $10 doubles as a donation to help support the artist's work, and the NFT becomes public proof that I helped financially support the artist.

Re: Why Web3?

#382

Post by girvo »

nfw2 wrote: post #282
root_axis wrote: post #68

I'm not convinced. People talk grand about "permissionless data" but I fail to see any practical applications. NFTs are a scam and are retroactively obsoleted by digital signatures. All of the ideas about logistics tracking, deed tracking, etc etc are all rendered pointless by the oracle problem, you can get identical guarantees with digital signatures minus the blockchain. DeFi is DOA. Gas fees are insane, "layer 2"…

Do digital signatures really make the blockchain obsolete if they fill the same niche? Even if blockchain are technically equivalent to digital signatures, it seems like it has some real advantages from a business perspective: - it is capturing the market of people who want to buy "official" digital assets and is becoming the de facto way to do so - the market is one that should have strong network effects - gaining…

> I still think NFTs are a bubble that will come back down to Earth eventually. But I also find sneaker and stamp collectors equally perplexing, and people don't discuss these phenomena with the same sort of skepticism.

While I agree with basically all of your comment, I'd like to point out that plenty of people in the online space look at the sneaker market with the same skepticism... but that skepticism isn't stopping teenagers with rented bots from making some serious money buying and flipping new releases.

Re: Why Web3?

#383

Post by TimJRobinson »

cercatrova wrote: post #191
indigochill wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It makes more sense if you think of these token sales as Angel/Seed rounds that are fully open to the public.

Non investors never got access to these rounds before and never saw just how many companies are raising them.

This environment is foreign to most but would be familiar to well known angel investors constantly getting pitched new opportunities.

Re: Why Web3?

#384

Post by girvo »

aquateen wrote: post #224
cercatrova wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> generally people say one should market their product first then build it if there's enough demand I don't agree this is the common wisdom, and it's kind of a surprising take to see on this website specifically.

Really? Some parts of this website used to push that hard back in the "MVP" phase. And I've been here nearly as long as you (I made an account much later after lurking for years) -- what was that start-up that was a website that literally fed into an excel spreadsheet, to fake having a real product?

The growth hacking stuff took that idea even further, and for quite a while was all over this website.

That said, I disagree with said "wisdom", I just find it interesting that we've got diametrically opposed views on how this website perceived it!

Re: Why Web3?

#385

Post by FridgeSeal »

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.

> Don't conflate decentralization with blockchain.

Well it’d be easier if crypto wasn’t every second word out of someone’s mouth when they talk about “web3”. The technology to do pretty much everything “web3” promises already exists, and works better than it’s crypto-equivalent. The Local-First software movement is a good example of this.

If the proponents of “web3”actually cared about decentralisation/federation/user controlled data/etc they’d be pushing *actual solutions” instead of recruiting for yet another crypto Ponzi scheme.

Worth noting, however, that I’m not saying there aren’t improvements to be made, but I have yet to see any demonstration that the crypto space can contribute anything actually meaningful to this space.

Re: Why Web3?

#386

Post by tshaddox »

boomlinde wrote: post #377
tshaddox wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What prevents a musical artist from publishing a bunch of unoriginal filler after having a major hit? Is this really a serious threat to the concept of publishing music?

Copies of music recordings aren't typically sold under the pretense that they're unique. If your favorite artist produced a record and sold you a copy, guaranteeing that it the only copy that'll ever be made, you might be inclined to pay more for it. Let's say you buy it, because you believe this might be the only opportunity to own this music. If your favorite artist then proceeded to sell other records with the sam…

> Copies of music recordings aren't typically sold under the pretense that they're unique.

My point is that if you buy a new record from an artist you generally expect it to be original music that’s the product of creativity. But a lot of artists release things that are perceived by many to be very derivative, unoriginal, and not creative.

Re: Why Web3?

#387

Post by IX-103 »

lowwave wrote: post #137
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…

>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. Google Chrome for example

Google doesn't control the w3c. And Google Chrome is severely limited in what they can push due to threatened/actual anti-trust litigation. Their whole "privacy sandbox" thing is being done under the scrutiny of quite a few governments in addition to practically every digital advertising association on earth.

Re: Why Web3?

#388

Post by FridgeSeal »

stathibus wrote: post #183
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.

Web3 is like a solution in search of a problem, except worse, because the solution does not actually solve the problem.

If the proponents could catalyse their solution into anything more concrete than “Something something crypto currency” we might even be able to figure out what their proposed solution actually is lol.

Re: Why Web3?

#389

Post by discardedrefuse »

dylkil wrote: post #371
discardedrefuse wrote: post #330

I've been noticing this web3 buzzword picking up steam on here for months now. And it all feels very manufactured (much how metaverse has been co-opted and tainted by Facebook). I suspect this web3 push is just cryptobros shoehorning their schemes into relevance. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=web3 On the other hand, if you're paying attention, you might have noticed a push back to web1 and even older tec…

what you are noticing is increased interest in permissionless data. But sure, reframe everything you think of as bad thought as manufactured.

Federation, Tor, IPFS, DAT, CDJS, BATMAN, etc are all technologies that are tackling the problem of data/network ownership in some form or another and have been doing it for years. The current and specific uptick in "web3" references appears to come from blockchain projects all vying to be the next big thing.

From the article: "...the most developed areas of web3, like decentralized finance (aka DeFi) where literally hundreds of financial applications have been built on top of Ethereum..."

There's web3 in a nutshell. Hundreds of applications built with the sole purpose of extracting wealth.

Re: Why Web3?

#390

Post by nfw2 »

aquateen wrote: post #333
nfw2 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know multiple people personally who have been through YC, and I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. Not every company that goes through YC are at the same stage. I've heard of companies joining YC despite already having over a million in ARR because of how valuable the YC network is. YC invests 125k in each team, which is certainly enough to last more than a few months eating ramen if you are building the…

The point is that YC's model contradicts what you said. It's relatively inexpensive to build an initial version of a product. Build something as quickly as possible, get user feedback, and keep iterating. I can guarantee you won't find anything Paul Graham has written about doing a bunch of marketing analysis as a first step.

I said market research, not marketing analysis. I don't mean focus groups and A-B tests and ad words.

No YC company is literally in stage 1 of its existence. First you need to get into YC, and you probably won't if you don't know anything about the market you are trying to reach.

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