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

Web3 is centralized

blog.wesleyac.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 497 posts

Re: Web3 is centralized

#111

Post by kortilla »

vmception wrote: post #82
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…

People mostly email me about very specific topics. Nobody "still doing research™" about the broad topic of crypto is getting anywhere because they get bounced from the funnel immediately and paint the whole space with an equally as broad brush. Its decade 3 and this is where we are, so what do people really want to know? To me, there's lots of killer apps, to others I don't really care to debate any longer, who cares…

> or a thread every time a new version of one of those languages used in Ethereum Virtual Machines is out.

But the majority of people interested in crypto don’t care about the technology, they are in it to get rich. Articles talking about the new technologies underpinning crypto do exist and get submitted, it’s just that to a rough approximation nobody cares about the actual technology.

Look at the level of discussion bitcoin had when it wasn’t realistically exchangeable for USD. That’s the equivalent level of interest from a pure technology perspective.

All of the noise today (including this article) are about the societal implications of disrupting this or that or enabling some other business/grift that wasn’t possible before. The technology is almost irrelevant at this point.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#112

Post by jacobmischka »

BrissyCoder wrote: post #91
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

"Calling somebody else fat won’t make you any skinnier. Calling someone stupid doesn’t make you any smarter."

Re: Web3 is centralized

#113

Post by Findeton »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #99
Findeton wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend looking into BSV, as you can store data on-chain for cents, but it looks like any comment mentioning it will get automatically moderated for some reason.

Ahh the blockchain created by the fraudster claiming to be Satoshi.

Sure but have you looked into the technology?

Re: Web3 is centralized

#114

Post by danjac »

beej71 wrote: post #22

It's amazing how much I can read about web3 and still be confused as to what problems it solves.

It's best to heed Warren Buffet's advice to stay clear of investment opportunities you don't understand.

I'm seeing people in tech who are way smarter and more knowledgeable than I'll ever be, scratching their heads around web3 trying to figure out if there's anything of value. If they don't get it, I'm not going to get it, which either means I'm not smart enough to invest time and money in it wisely (as per Buffet) or it's all smoke and mirrors around a giant MLM or Ponzi scheme to relieve lesser fools of their money.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#115

Post by post_below »

ojkelly wrote: post #49

Web3 feels like the next grift after we caught on to ICO's. From the article: > The problem here is the profit motive: people who are working on web3 generally want to get paid for it, but it's fundamentally harder to extract rent from truly decentralized systems than it is from centralized ones. Because of that, people end up building systems that are centralized at their core, with some aesthetics of decentralizati…

The ecological problem is, in my opinion, what should lead the conversation.

Climate change being what it is, we shouldn't even be considering technologies with carbon footprints as large as existing blockchains.

In theory that problem is solvable, but in the present, it should be a deal breaker

Re: Web3 is centralized

#116

Post by kortilla »

chrisco255 wrote: post #19
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.

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.

Dominated but not controlled. You can still run your own mail server, websites, etc all without depending on any FAANG infra.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#117

Post by xchaotic »

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…

Perhaps the quality of arguments is an indicator here. At this point in time I am tired of explaining the basics to new, naive newcomers who somehow think that distributed chains of hashes are some kind of new, breakthrough science. I am tired in the same way as explaining to people that statistically they should vaccinate - the scientific base is already established but it looks like reasonable arguments no longer work. There’s opportunity cost and I feel like a lot of web3 efforts to reinvent the wheel could be better spent on research into fighting cancer or genetic diseases.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#118

Post by basisword »

The cynicism in these threads on this topic is really something. It seems to correlate with an overall change in mindset in the tech space (maybe driven by the younger generation?).

I remember when startups and making lots of money was cheered on HN. A decade ago people would have been looking at the positives of this tech, figuring out how they could get involved and how they could make money and try to make it succeed. There was a much more optimistic atmosphere. It now seems that people making lots of money are reviled. It gels with the anti/post capitalism memes that are quite prevalent.

I’m not judging this view (I often find myself swinging between capitalist views and socialist views and try not to strongly subscribe to either) but I think it explains the cynicism in these “crypto” threads.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#119

Post by Lordarminius »

r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #9

The main issue with "Web3" is that it moves records of transactions from many private places to one public place. Sure this one place may not be controlled by a single entity, but it facilitates tracking at an unprecedented level. Cryptocurrencies are the ultimate example of this and are an absolute boon to tax collectors, forensic accountants and fraudsters. In our current economy financial transactions are recorded…

> Cryptocurrencies are the ultimate example of this and are an absolute boon to tax collectors, forensic accountants and fraudsters.

If it represents a boon to forensic accountants it cannot also be a godsend to fraudsters.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#120

Post by kortilla »

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…

Using certificate identities for logging in has been a thing since the 90s. It was (and is) still way better than passwords. The problem is that someone loses the cert and getting new ones is a usability disaster.

Websites intentionally switched to passwords because it was easier for users to understand. Web3 offers no breakthroughs here.

Post reply on HN