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Web3 is centralized

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Re: Web3 is centralized

#231

Post by aflag »

aiisahik wrote: post #228

So many people complaining about web3 being: - more centralized - more controlled by VCs - less performant / reliable / secure than web2 These are probably all true for now. They failed to see the key features web3: 1. the possibility (but not guarantee) to operate in a hostile government / regulatory environment 2. the possibility (but not guarantee) to operate without a legal entity without shareholders / boards We…

Isn't it harder to operate in a hostile government with a centralized ledger? Once the government somehow gets a hold of which wallets you use, they will be able to track down all your steps.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#232

Post by jakupovic »

headmelted wrote: post #180
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…

>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.

But it is reasonable to dismiss the whole field because you think it's a scam? Please read what you write before you post, as this is meaningless and illogical.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#233

Post by dskloet »

deivid wrote: post #128
darawk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree completely. There is a ton to criticize about crypto and "Web3" (I hate the term, tbh). It's rife with scams and unearned wealth. Even the things that aren't outright scams are mostly people selling hype. But this technology does enable something novel. Digital self-custody of scarce assets is a new thing. A thing that nobody could do before this stuff. And if that has utility, then the infrastructure for tradi…

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

Goods that weren't scarce before still can't be scarce. Only a new type of good can be scarce. Do you have a problem with that?

Re: Web3 is centralized

#234

Post by exo762 »

Very curious. I'll go point by point.

> while anyone can join the Ethereum or Bitcoin network, you can only join if you agree to follow the same protocol that all the other nodes use.

Just reiterated definition of the protocol. Absolutely irrelevant to decentralization topic.

> The way this protocol is decided on is not exactly centralized, but it's not exactly decentralized either.

Decentralization is not "I do whatever I want". It's "other people can't force their arbitrary will on me".

> The entire blockchain world is focused on building systems for global consensus, but global consensus is a goal that is fundamentally at odds with the goal of decentralization.

Once again complete confusion of terms. Global consensus is on question of property. Property is by definition a right to thing that excludes everyone else's rights to the thing. This you can't have two different opinions about ownership and be able to cooperate effectively. Thus - global consensus.

This critique reminds me "blockchain + X" dynamic. You don't need blockchain if you are not talking about global consensus. You don't need blockchain for the use-case where HTTP is enough.

> 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.

No! This way of decentralization matters a lot, since it deals with money. Go and read about people who got cut off the banking system as a result of political censorship.

> I care about decentralization is primarily to avoid global failures

Ethereum competes with banking system (global and local) and with great amount of other chains. Author problem is with notion of owneship / property, not with Ethereum.

> If you're trying to run a DAO, why build it on Ethereum... ?

Ethereum is a part of web3, not whole of web3. If you build your DAO on other chain, you will not have this problem.

> It's much more damning to me that the fundamental technology these people choose — Ethereum and similar blockchains — is more centralized than the web.

Author provides this claim while providing no evidence. And they even agree that blockchains are censorship resistant elsewhere in the text.

I see no point in continuing. This article is a critique by a person who got a wind of some buzzwords and now think that they can contribute an insightful opinion.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#235

Post by ur-whale »

hooande wrote: post #171
ur-whale wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> why not just a central database?

I would have thought this to be obvious, but these chains, while anonymous still have the following attributes:

    - decentralized
    - permissionless
    - does not rely on third-party trust
A central database has none of these attributes.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#236

Post by jakupovic »

xchaotic wrote: post #117
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 w…

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Re: Web3 is centralized

#237

Post by i_hate_pigeons »

lottin wrote: post #206
i_hate_pigeons wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think web3 is just competing with traditional finance, or at least not in the restricted sense of investing/especulation. Also web3 is not replacing anything that already exists, just like "web2" didn't (and to be frank web2 was as much as hyped term than anything else) I see it more as retaining ownership some of the content we produce and happily give to twitter, youtube, facebook etc to monetise and have s…

Ownership of "content" requires intellectual property laws, which are enforced by courts of justice, and we already have these. A blockchain cannot enforce intellectual property rights because it lacks coercive power. If your goal is to "retain ownership" of the content that you produce, a blockchain is not going to help you AT ALL with that.

I wasn't talking about it as in copyright / legal sense, and more in the I can allow others to access a snapshot of it at a given time and/or remove access to it for future content if I wish to do so.

Now the relationship is the reverse, I give content to some org and they can do as they wish with it; I'm surrending it for them to use in exchange of them allowing me to use their platform for free.

e.g. from Twitter's terms of use:

> By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods now known or later developed (for clarity, these rights include, for example, curating, transforming, and translating).

If the content was hosted somewhere else and then displayed on twitter instead, this would not be the case or I could revoke it in the future but still be able to distribute such content via other means

Now, if I want to use another site then I need to duplicate the content myself.

Since all that they really offer is the userbase/community, its very hard for competitors to come into play and offer better terms or capabilities. In fact, they can change these terms at anypoint and I can do very little about it aside of deleting my account (if they even allow you to do that!)

Re: Web3 is centralized

#238

Post by denton-scratch »

root_axis wrote: post #78
euske wrote: post #63

The discussions around web3 reminds me of the days when people were looking for a "killer app" for Web 2.0. Was there any? I don't remember much, but I don't think there was a single thing that stood out as "the" Web 2.0 app. I expect web3 to be more or less the same. A lot of buzz, not much material.

Web 2.0 was a post-hoc description of interactive web pages, there were no web 2.0 evangelists pushing web 2.0 as the future, it simply happened organically based on its own merit. The web3 movement is astroturfed by enthusiasts trying to make a buck.

> it simply happened organically based on its own merit

I think I agree with you. I'm not sure I agree with "organically", though - it happened almost instantly[0] when IE delivered XMLHttpRequest. It was irresistible because it was so useful.

[0] By "almost instantly", I mean over about 6 months. By the time Firefox delivered XMLHttpRequest, AJAX was already everywhere.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#239

Post by 9dev »

rambambram wrote: post #104

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 t…

I understand where you're coming from, but the essence of the entire "cloud" thing, to me, was that the underlying infrastructure disappeared. We went from managing root servers, or VPS maybe, to transparently scaling resources. Using "the cloud" means switching to application-based hosting, where the hardware below doesn't matter anymore, and that's a pretty significant change to me. I don't have to manage the SSH daemon config anymore, instead I push Docker images into a registry. Of course below all that it's still the same technology we had before, but it's evolved quite a bit, and I actually appreciate that change.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#240

Post by rmsaksida »

basisword wrote: post #118

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 succ…

I disagree. I think the cynicism is there because the audience on HN is more aware of the technical aspects of crypto and thus has a better understanding of its flaws. The criticisms of web3 are legitimate, especially when it comes to the question of decentralization.
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