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Web3 is centralized

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Re: Web3 is centralized

#171

Post by hooande »

ur-whale wrote: post #126
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…

> it moves records of transactions from many private places to one public place True for some of its current incarnations, but it is absolutely not a built-in limitation and therefore not a valid criticism of the entire space. As a matter of fact, a number of existing blockchains are already entirely opaque to analysis (zcash, monero, grin, beam, etc...), and in these, the effort required to actually connect particip…

if it's opaque to analysis, what's the point in using a blockchain? why not just a central database?

Re: Web3 is centralized

#172

Post by emerongi »

sergiomattei wrote: post #166
emerongi wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally: can you make cryptocurrency transactions offline? In my opinion that is a crucial part of the "digital cash" idea. I don't know the technical details so it would be nice if someone more knowledgeable could answer. I'll even throw in a scenario that I've encountered: the card readers in a store aren't working, because there is a connection issue. Instead of using cash in my literal physical wallet, I'd l…

My perspective: I don’t see bitcoin replacing fiat anytime soon, so for day-to-day transactions, cash works all good! No need to replace it completely. They can coexist. In the scenario you mention, I’d just reach for cash. However, as a protocol for payments/value in the digital world, it’s very compelling.

If we are aiming to re-think currencies and use cryptocurrencies as the new building block, I feel like it should handle these cases, otherwise we will need to re-do the whole thing again in the future. I'm too lazy to do this multiple times.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#173

Post by cinquemb »

seanhunter wrote: post #160
vmception wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Weird that it would be a boon for both forensic accountants and fraudsters. How do you reconcile that sentence? It is very common to track people by the tokens they hold and target them for theft and fraud. One example is to airdrop a backdoored token, and when the user tries to move it they wind up authorizing movement of their other valuable tokens. Or to just use the airdrop to lead a curious user to the airdrop…

Looking at the token standards[1], I can't see how you could create a "backdoored token" that would authorize movement of other tokens but that sounds like a scary threat vector. Could you explain how that would work please? I've heard about ERC20 tokens that allowed the issuer to pull them back (that's the SoarCoin thing[2]) but not a token that allowed other tokens to be transferred. [1] https://eips.ethereum.org/E…

The standards only really define what should be done at the interface or what the function inputs and outputs should be, but don't really define the internals of the functions. For example inside of a malicious approve function call, you could hardcode a list of popular addresses that also approved those tokens if the msg.sender is holding (balanceOf calls) them and even potentially then have transfer functions calls inside of the approve function call for the malicious token.

For me, its only scary if one regularly interacts with tokens they haven't bothered to look up for the source code for. People really shouldn't be interacting with contracts if their first time hearing of it is from looking at who randomly airdropped them a token with a domain name in it. But hey, people regularly do stuff in crypto that i just think "wtf arw the thinking", so w/e.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#174

Post by FabHK »

ramchip wrote: post #161
deivid wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least my problem with this entire ecosystem is that it enables artificial scarcity on digital goods, which wasn't really feasible before.

Digital goods in games have had artificial scarcity for ages. Look at the Golden Pan in TF2 for instance, which sells for thousands of dollars.

The game servers are centralised. Blockchain enables enormously wasteful decentralised scarcity. Woop woop.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#175

Post by runeks »

> If web3 people cared about decentralization, then starting a private ledger should be as easy as starting a private IP network, or even easier.

Why would people want to start a "private ledger"? What's the use case?

And how would it be meaningfully different from spinning up a private SQL database?

Re: Web3 is centralized

#176

Post by ngcc_hk »

Blockchain is horrible as it is totally logged and transparent for all. It is totally centralised from totalitarian country point of view. The security by covering up does not work for many, let alone you use this for web access.

Think China every time you do any human work. Be free and not be bound. Totalitarian does not pay for humanity.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#177

Post by numtel »

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…

A few issues with this:

1. Not all crypto currencies are public. See monero, haven, secret network. Although that last one depends on some specific features of some Intel processors... I'm of the opinion that the pseudonymous nature of public blockchains is very beneficial to society. I would love it if I could see what companies, governments, and people near me were spending their money on. It would enable me to make better decisions.

2. "Web3" is about decentralization but it doesn't necessarily mean storing data on a blockchain. The most important aspect is that users no longer have to sign up or log in. They submit responses which are signed by a key pair, which is their identity instead of a record in a "users" table.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#178

Post by CJefferson »

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…

To me, web3 is just the "tech bro" version of LuLaRoe or beany babies. There is plenty of thoughtful discussion of both, but none of it positive.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#179

Post by baxtr »

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…

I feel the same. There is only hate and despise for crypto. I’m also skeptical but I’d love to see a more nuanced discussion.

To your question, I like https://www.rekt.news/

Re: Web3 is centralized

#180

Post by headmelted »

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…

I think at this point we’re just so far past the point of having reasonable discourse on this topic that it will not be possible to have a reasoned discussion about it ever again, anywhere, regardless.

Personally I have to fight my own rising blood temperature to even discuss it as being “a thing”, because people have such fundamentally different views on what that thing is, and I believe the argument is made in bad faith (not by you or your comment by the way, just in general).

Adherents would have you believe that the current price, whatever it is at a given point, must mean some variant of “can all these people really be wrong? That’s ridiculous”. It’s not a reasonable starting point for a discussion, and then it immediately breaks down again.

The tldr of it is that to have a discussion we’d need to agree a common set of facts as a starting point.

To me, it’s a collection of distributed ponzi schemes based on signed linked lists, but it seems the whole world wants to agree that regardless of whether or not cryptocurrency is the future of money, blockchain is a really transformative and revolutionary breakthrough without any evidence to support that claim.

Also stop trying to make fetch happen.

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