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Web3 is centralized

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Re: Web3 is centralized

#101

Post by root_axis »

chrisco255 wrote: post #77
mattlondon wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Web3 has decentralization, freedom of speech, anti-gatekeeping, permissionlessness and inclusiveness, at its core. We already have all of that in the existing web infrastructure, and have had it since the very beginning. I can spin up a HTTP server on a raspberry pi running in my basement right now and anyone on the internet can access it for free and without any hinderence. With web3 there is gatekeeping and centr…

> With web3 there is gatekeeping and centralisation as I cannot spin up my own server any more without buying crypto and then paying someone on a centralised database just so that I can do everything I could do before for free on my own. Web3 includes all of the previous web technologies and adds optional layers on top. It is a superset of all web tech. You can totally setup an HTTP server on a Raspberry Pi, that's t…

> allow someone to login with their Ethereum wallet and use their ENS domain name as a username in your chat app rather than adding Google Auth

You're basically describing OpenID, which predates cryptocurrency by several years.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#102

Post by chrisco255 »

systemsignal wrote: post #25
chrisco255 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The existing internet is dominated by trillion dollar monopolies. How do you reconcile that Web3 is less democratic than a megacorp oligopoly than can unperson people at will? Web3 has decentralization, freedom of speech, anti-gatekeeping, permissionlessness and inclusiveness, at its core.

Are you using any decentralized social networks significantly?

I've tried Mastadon and Matrix (using Element). I think they're two of the best examples. But I think for none of these have quite nailed the UX of existing social networks (Mastadon's not quite as good as Twitter and Element is not as feature-rich as Discord). I really think it's as much of a UX problem as a technology problem and not enough decentralized projects have top-tier UX and UI talent to compete.

Mirror (https://mirror.xyz/) is an interesting Web3 alternative to Medium. I think they have gotten a lot of the elements right. Blog posts are backed up to Arweave perma-storage and they have easy point and click integration for crypto donations (with automatic splitting for multiple authors), NFT auctions, and crowdfunding.

At any rate, I think decentralized social networks are still nascent and we haven't yet seen a break out success on the level of Discord or Twitter or Facebook, but I remain optimistic that it will come.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#103

Post by qaq »

One issue with Web3 is that there are already decentralized solutions in many categories that Web3 will supposedly solve and yet they never really caught on. It just might be that general public really does not care about the decentralized part.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#104

Post by rambambram »

I'm not for or against, I just find it strange that stuff that already has a name (like blockchain, crypto, etc.) somehow needs another name or some new kind of umbrella name.

I'm not for or against, because it's unclear what there is to be for or against.

Web3 is nothing but an echo chamber. A very empty echo chamber, so it echoes pretty nice. I'm back to the world wide web.

I've been designing and programming for the web and internet for a long time now, and I took one break of a couple of years in between. When I came back there suddenly was this 'cloud' thing. I kept looking for answers. What is this? What's new? And although I found snippets here and there that made sense (it was basically infrastructure based, I found), it took me years eventually to really realize it was nothing more than the internet I already knew, but then decorated with marketing speak and buzz words.

I'm not opposed to new things, not even to new names, but I can sniff a name without meaning from miles away now. It looks like when big money is ready for the internet the whole thing needs a new name, the same now with blockchain, etc.

So I find it kind of funny I guess, hearing the proponents and opponents of Web3 speak.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#105

Post by MrPatan »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #36
chrisco255 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The existing internet is dominated by trillion dollar monopolies. How do you reconcile that Web3 is less democratic than a megacorp oligopoly than can unperson people at will? Web3 has decentralization, freedom of speech, anti-gatekeeping, permissionlessness and inclusiveness, at its core.

For one, the author pointed out that Opensea NFTs are stored on the Google Cloud Platform, one of those trillion dollar monopolies. Proof of stake means the largest stakeholders can unilaterally reject transactions. Technically the chain could fork. Practically, convincing everyone to move to a new chain seems about as difficult as everyone moving off Facebook because a few people get banned. Proof of work means the…

> Opensea NFTs are stored on the Google Cloud Platform

Other NFTs are fully on-chain, buy those.

This is such a weird argument to make.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#106

Post by littlestymaar »

reilly3000 wrote: post #10
jsemrau wrote: post #3

My main concerns with Web3 are that it is "pay to play" in many aspects and it's less democratic than the existing Internet.

Agreed. The one dollar-one vote concept is fundamentally flawed, but has become the main model for crypto community governance. There aren’t a lot of viable alternatives, especially as there is no concept of a person, just free, infinite wallets and limited coins. As such, the interests of the wealthiest steer the entire community, and a bad actor could derail a project with malevolent use of voting powers. Democracy…

> There aren’t a lot of viable alternatives, especially as there is no concept of a person, just free, infinite wallets and limited coins.

Sybil attack is the fundamental problem of the internet. (And proof of work was actually designed as a way to mitigate it)

Re: Web3 is centralized

#107

Post by cinquemb »

pharmakom wrote: post #50
errantmind wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of bullshit blockchain projects. That said, the reason tokens are tied to so many of these projects is to act as incentive and to quantify participation. There is no reason for people to, say, seed torrents aside from feeling good about sharing with other people. Financializing this process brings an incentive to participate in decentralized projects that otherwise would have no way to exist. Sure, mo…

Funny that one of the most successful decentralised technologies (torrents) has no token for incentives.

While torrents are great for some things (wrote my own bare bones client off of libtorrent and use it to send files to friends as well as download stuff, as well as merged it to work with my fork of opentraker that has a built in LSA search from hash-metadata mappings [0: that can also be distributed via torrents]), they are pretty poor at incentivizing people to seed unpopular content and have it be widely accessible, and tokens on various networks seems to have addressed that for specific applications (there are a bunch of decentralized aws-like type stuff popping up that involve a token, but I still think it will take some time for things to pan out).

Would be great if we could incentive via tokens people to run mastodon instances where people can log in with their address (and multiple chains tokens are recognized) because I personally have no desire for onchain social media like i do for onchain derivatives and exchange functionality.

[0] https://github.com/cinquemb/opentracker

Re: Web3 is centralized

#108

Post by jmspring »

neuroma wrote: post #72

It's fascinating how on hacker news one typically finds detailed, reasoned and thoughtful comments. However on the topic of crypto and web3 the comments reliably degenerate into partisan tit for tat, consisting mainly of poorly researched, unreasoned sound bytes. It's a pity because I'd love to hear quality thought on the space. My personal view is that crypto and Web3 "are a thing" (Mean Girls) and will continue to…

This is a very specific to Hedera Hashgraph link. But they are based on ABFT based consensus algorithm and they have a governing council that includes Google and other entities. Their consensus mechanism requires a majority of nodes outside the control of Hedera - specifically from the Hedera governing council. It’s all public.

I’d start there.

The latest buzz, like Ethereum is on NFTs. Not a fan myself. I hold hbars, but wanted to share one example.

https://medium.com/hashgraph/formal-methods-the-importance-o...

Re: Web3 is centralized

#109

Post by cryptica »

Freskis wrote: post #86
neuroma wrote: post #72

It's fascinating how on hacker news one typically finds detailed, reasoned and thoughtful comments. However on the topic of crypto and web3 the comments reliably degenerate into partisan tit for tat, consisting mainly of poorly researched, unreasoned sound bytes. It's a pity because I'd love to hear quality thought on the space. My personal view is that crypto and Web3 "are a thing" (Mean Girls) and will continue to…

For most people, crypto is about money, not tech. Easy money, quick money. Therefore the spam level of any crypto discussion is so huge that the opinion gets drowned out by the propaganda.

I've worked in the crypto space for several years as a software developer and I can confirm that this is true. Most projects have no interest in developing the technology. Some communities will actively go out of their way to suppress innovation. There is a lot of 'busy work' going on with many projects going in circles.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#110

Post by everfree »

vmception wrote: post #69
lawn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true for Monero, that hides the sender, receiver and amount for all transactions by default.

And also Secret Network, which hides smart contract variables, which therefore includes token and wrapped token amounts, along with the current owner. Monero has a trustless-enough bridge over to there.

And also Aztec Network, and Tornado Cash, and Zcash, and soon Starkware, and...

I'm surprised so many people on Hacker News apparently still believe that you can "see all transactions" on every blockchain. It really only takes some surface level research to find working, production blockchains/cryptocurrencies that use one of several types of cryptography to hide that data, plus if you're using a pseudonymous blockchain, non-custodial ways to "break the link" between wallets.

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