Live data from Hacker News

Web3 is centralized

blog.wesleyac.com

51–60 of 497 posts

Re: Web3 is centralized

#51
post #28

Crypto market is really sad. It's a novel technical solution. But it can't find a problem where it fits as a good alternative. It's not a good alternative to banks, art collections or web hosting. But Bitcoin is still worth billions, NFT are all the rage and Web3 went from new concept to "trend" in the span of what feels like a week. But even with all the success they don't seem to be convincing many they have any in…

Yes, completely glossing over the usefulness of digital-native money: instant, verifiable transactions from anywhere in the world, programmable money and low fees.

Oh, and how it disrupts the remittances industry, something extremely useful to vulnerable communities with families abroad.

I agree that Web3 is mostly a grift, but cryptocurrencies are quite useful already.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#54
post #4

I don't know, seems kind of a stretch to say crypto is decentralized because everybody uses the same protocol. Is the IP protocol centralized too by that standard? On the other side yeah, most of the goals of decentralization could be achieved by looking at things like the Bittorrent / Pirate / Scihub projects which have been delivering content consistently in a distributed way for decades. A blockchain is only neces…

I felt the same way… it’s arguing that cryptocurrency is not decentralized because there’s a general consensus on the protocol?

By that measure, parent comment is right, IP isn’t decentralized either because we agreed on it?

Re: Web3 is centralized

#55
post #48

I like to login web-apps using my wallet. I like to see things that I own in my wallet. I think we should give a chance to web3.

This is all possible today, no web3 required. Logins with client certificates were solved decades ago and "owning" items digitally is something many services can do for you, see Steam, Amazon Video, Apple iTunes etc. To get those services to give up control and put all their things into web3 is a pipedream.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#56
The author doesn't understand the primary goal. It's precisely to have global consensus that proceeds according to its logic - so if you own something it can't be taken away from you. Everyone running their own private blockchains isn't decentralization, it's federalization. In the internet context, we know exactly how it would look like - initially an ecosystem of independent forums, each a fiefdom of the moderating caste, or subreddits on an alternative reddit that doesn't have global administration.

Network effects would inevitably concentrate most activity to few hubs (which is how we ended with facebook, reddit, and twitter consuming the old internet of phpbb forums). Except instead of posts, now the new powers-that-be would have absolute control over people's wealth. What he in effect, unintentionally, proposes, is to give the equivalent of facebook absolute control over people's wealth.

In fact facebook itself tried exactly that with Libra - but fortunately got shut down by governments.

Honestly, I would prefer a state-run blockchain over the inevitable final form of his proposal. At least it would be regulated by actual laws instead of T&C that give the company near absolute power.

There were crypto experiments of this type, most notably EOS. They had their own 'court' that ended up blacklisting dozens of addresses based on weak claims of theft. Eventually all DPoS networks are going to decay to something like that - because with just few publicly known validators escaping legal liability for not enforcing confiscation and freeze orders from real world courts is impossible.

The scalability argument is true in isolation - everyone agrees it's currently a problem, but has nothing to do with centralization or not.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#57
Vitalik Buterin on different axes of centralization:

https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentrali...

>>Ethereum is only decentralized in the way that doesn't matter — you're free to join the decentralized system, under the condition that you act in the exact same way as every other actor in that system.

This is centralization of logic, that establishes uniformity of the protocol, but it is a decentralized configuration of power, where every party is subject to the same rules for accessing the blockchain.

Fees are a limiting factor, but all data is treated the same with respect to fee calculation, irrespective of who submits it for inclusion in the blockchain.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#58
post #33

Web3 is less centralized in that the user data is exposed and freely available to be composed upon. For example, when someone makes a deposit (say of ERC20 USDC to earn interest, around 3.0% currently) on https://compound.finance , that data is freely available and the "receipt" becomes another token (the ERC20 USDC cToken). [1] This token can now be used for other things, on any other protocol, without the involveme…

That is not exclusiv to web3 and is not new.

If I buy a house, I can take a credit on that house.

If I bought some stock, banks will let me take a loan on them afaik.

I can also borrow some money and choose something expensive that I own for a collateral.

Maybe crypto makes the last one easier, but then it will lead to a lot of fraud, because veryifing that the item I set as collateral is the difficult and expensive part.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I don't trust Big Tech, I'm somehow supposed to trust groups of sketchy people who do things like give up their US citizenship (as an immigrant to the USA - the privilege is real) to move to {insert sketchy country or a known haven for certain activities - its legal there!} so they can now facilitate millions of dollars moving each day outside of any government jurisdiction.

I mean, yeah. There is a privilege associated with that. The US is a great starting point, but you can outgrow it, especially when it comes to financial services if you aren't interested in the incumbents. People with money in stable economies aren't clamoring for US citizenship, some are interested in it but its just an option. The whole continent is populated by people that lost consensus wherever they came from. L…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN