Why Web3? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Web3?

#401

Post by nfw2 » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 2:25 AM UTC

girvo wrote: post #382

nfw2 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stopp…

Skepticism was a poor choice of words on my part. I think skepticism is absolutely the right response for both sneakers and NFTs.

What I should have said is that it seems a lot of people dismiss NFTs with a certainty that doesn't seem justified considering there are other collectibles like baseball cards without any inherently valuable physical properties that have retained their value long-term.

I honestly don't know anything about the sneaker world besides that it exists, so that shouldn't have been my example.

Re: Why Web3?

#402

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 2:27 AM UTC

ShamelessC wrote: post #400

everfree wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like something or other cryptocurrency related floats on the front page of Hacker News every other day, and discussion about it is welcomed. I would call that the opposite of "please leave".

edit: whoops - misread. [original] That simply isn't true. There has been consistent and widespread criticism of crypto enthusiasm on the majority of stories posted here recently.

[deleted]

Re: Why Web3?

#403

Post by ChicagoDave » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 2:27 AM UTC

The current state of web3 reminds me of people building new game engines well before any reasonable game could be built on the platform. This happened a lot in the 90's/2000's in the Interactive Fiction community. Smart people would find IF, play a bunch of games, build a game or two, then decide the existing platforms "didn't fit their style or the kinds of features they wanted" and start discussing how _they_ would do it differently.

None of those platforms ever saw the light of day. The few platforms that _did_ see success were the ones that were built quietly, the platform designer also became its first author and created a viable, interesting game in the platform to prove its value.

I think the proponents of web3 need to stop marketing/pushing it and just go build something. If/when you have something clearly viable, then the rest of us will take a more serious look at what you've invented.

And your users/customers can't just be crypto adherents. That's always going to be a limited subset of Internet users. You have to build something _easy to access_ with _clear benefits_.

Until then, it's just more vaporware.

Re: Why Web3?

#404

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 2:27 AM UTC

numbsafari wrote: post #182

arbuge wrote: post #23

I read this as yet another article stating how great web3 is going to be and how important the decentralization aspect is, without making it clear exactly why this is the case, and what concrete examples of things we'll be able to do with it (that we're unable to do today) are. Web3 sounds to me like one of those soap opera startups PG talks about. They sound like a great idea when you propose them, but do people rea…

With web3, there is no deplatforming, no moderation, no accountability. There is no responsibility. That’s what they really want. They want a system that, in their minds, won’t be subject to regulation or social pressure. They are still mad that Reddit blocked certain groups. That parler got banned from public clouds. Those are the things that made them “wake up” to the need for web3. Deleting data and social account…

[deleted]

Re: Why Web3?

#405

Post by everfree » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 2:29 AM UTC

ShamelessC wrote: post #400

everfree wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like something or other cryptocurrency related floats on the front page of Hacker News every other day, and discussion about it is welcomed. I would call that the opposite of "please leave".

edit: whoops - misread. [original] That simply isn't true. There has been consistent and widespread criticism of crypto enthusiasm on the majority of stories posted here recently.

What simply isn't true? I said discussion about it is welcomed here, and you're telling me that critical discussion is "consistent and widespread". It sounds like we agree.

Re: Why Web3?

#406

Post by ShamelessC » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 2:29 AM UTC

christopherwxyz wrote: post #56

endisneigh wrote: post #16

Let's say all crypto goes down in value 10% year after year in 2022 indefinitely. This shouldn't necessarily affect the value or necessity (or lack thereof) of Web3. Can Web3 practically succeed under these conditions? Unfortunately after engaging with many in person and on this forum, I've yet to hear a coherent strategy or purpose for Web3 that doesn't rely on centralized entities at any part of the chain, or rely…

Consider that lots of companies have relatively small market caps relative to their profit mandate, and yet they still provide a crucial value to their customers. GE with a workforce of over 174,000 employees sells 75 billion dollars in goods and services, yet has a price to sales ratio of 1.37.

> Unfortunately after engaging with many in person and on this forum, I've yet to hear a coherent strategy or purpose for Web3 that doesn't rely on centralized entities at any part of the chain, or rely on crypto going up.

Did you want to respond to the person? Or just chime in with a random anecdote about GE.

Re: Why Web3?

#407

Post by nfw2 » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 2:30 AM UTC

nfw2 wrote: post #401

girvo wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 stopp…

Skepticism was a poor choice of words on my part. I think skepticism is absolutely the right response for both sneakers and NFTs. What I should have said is that it seems a lot of people dismiss NFTs with a certainty that doesn't seem justified considering there are other collectibles like baseball cards without any inherently valuable physical properties that have retained their value long-term. I honestly don't kno…

I actually think there is an interesting and nuanced conversation to be had on what fundamentally is different between an NFT and a baseball card. But that doesn't seem to be the conversation anyone is having.

Re: Why Web3?

#408

Post by mendyberger » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 2:31 AM UTC

Jetrel wrote: post #271

mendyberger wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It blows my mind how many people keep dismissing decentralization because of problems in the NFT space.

We're not. We don't need blockchain for decentralization. That's what we're dismissing. Blockchain is a set of cancer cells that have metastasized into the existing zeitgeist surrounding decentralization efforts. It offers nothing, and just poisons our existing work.

If you're not than I haven't referred to you :)

Re: Why Web3?

#409

Post by shagie » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 2:33 AM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #200

epistasis wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

I'm still not clear how this would work.

In a web 3 twitter clone that prevents one from ever being "restricted, limited or shut down", where does the crypto-tweet live?

Where is it stored?

How well does this scale?

What does it take to crypto-tweet (do you have to pay some crypto currency to have it be out there)?

What happens if you want to redact it later?

What is the energy cost of putting a crypto-tweet out there?

What would be the overall energy and storage costs be across all devices for a single crypto-tweet?

What would the costs be if this was to scale to 1% of Twitter (Twitter is 6k tweets/s so this would be 60 crypto-tweets/second)?

If the above doesn't reflect the proper design of a crypto-twitter, what would that look like? One of the classic system design questions is "how would you implement twitter" and so that's something that nearly every software developer has thought about at one point or another... and so if I've got the wrong questions fro crypto-twitter, how is it designed and what are the right questions to ask about such a design?

Re: Why Web3?

#410

Post by shagie » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 2:36 AM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #243

jandrese wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal spam control has its own issues. Managing the filter can end up consuming all of your time on the platform and that effort has to be replicated for every user. Worse, public perception will be that your platform is unusable because the horrendous first impression it makes. So maybe you decided to make public filter lists, but then the people making the filters end up being the defacto operators of the platfo…

I mostly meant the app you're using to access the data doing the moderation for you. I don't think we would be back to square 1. We would still have the possibility to create new clients and build whatever applications we want without being under the mercy of Big Tech holding the data hostage. Sure, maybe one such app talking to the open platform would become dominant and the de facto operator but at least it wouldn'…

> We would still have the possibility to create new clients and build whatever applications we want without being under the mercy of Big Tech holding the data hostage.

How does this improve on a self hosted blog with RSS feeds and associated aggregators?