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Web3 is centralized

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Re: Web3 is centralized

#311

Post by brightstep »

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.

This is a real problem that will not, and can not, be solved by Web3. The power of corporate tyranny extends beyond the technological realm. It is political, cultural, and economic to name a few. You simply can't meaningfully challenge that with a technology alone.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#312

Post by pinouchon »

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…

Look for Vitalik, balaji srinivasan, naval ravikant podcasts, also chris dixon

Re: Web3 is centralized

#313

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

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…

That was true five or ten years ago - today there are legitimate alternatives and work being done on even better alternative to solve the issue you are talking about. Most fall under the domain of Zero Knowledge Proofs which have use cases beyond pure blockchain systems.

Apart from that, Web3 isn't simply crypto-currency adoption, its about using the consensus innovation core to crypto-currencies to build platforms regulated autonomously by a public group with certain guarantees for security, openness and control.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#314

Post by vmception »

kortilla wrote: post #111
vmception wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 discussio…

> As this is what makes it, it shows that this isn't the community to expect a deeper discussion right now.

As I wrote, I’m acutely aware of the signals for consensus formation, it is important for other people to know what kind of conversation is possible

Re: Web3 is centralized

#315

Post by lukeramsden »

chx wrote: post #306
127 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And once you entered the game, the only way for you to not lose money is to find a greater fool who will take over your crypto"currency", everyone who owns some becomes a proponent of it. It's an ingenious scam. Yes, that's the current pension system.

It is not. There are many significant differences: 1. There's no set of players who are guaranteed to win 2. There's no set of players who are guaranteed to lose 3. No one is set to gain by advocating for the "current pension system".

> 1. There's no set of players who are guaranteed to win

Pension fund managers are guaranteed to win, and they win more as life expectancy goes down.

> 2. There's no set of players who are guaranteed to lose

Literally everybody else loses, as inflation eats away at the buying power of older peoples' ongoing or soon-to-start pension payments, and young people pay in to a system that there is now no guarantee they will earn from in 40 years time.

> 3. No one is set to gain by advocating for the "current pension system".

Plenty of people stand to gain, see above, as well as politicians interested in protecting the status quo and electability above all else.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#316

Post by robryan »

root_axis wrote: post #101
chrisco255 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Which has basically failed, probably because of complexity for regular users. I don't know much about the crypto version of this, but it is probably more complex for a new user to get started with.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#317

Post by vmception »

numtel wrote: post #184
vmception wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would like to see more information about how Secret network's TEEs (trusted execution environments) are secure. The fact that they rely on special features of some Intel proessors makes me think that any sufficiently powerful actor would be able to break the encryption through backdoors that would exist in those processors.

Hit up their telegram or discord

You already know they are sharding secrets into nodes with Intel encryption co-processors but if you need more detail about how you got to hit them up

Re: Web3 is centralized

#318

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

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.

What makes you think they are the most successful when Bitcoin has a near $1 trillion market cap? Even if you think its worth $0, you cannot deny that it securely locks up all that money despite the hacker honeypot. That seems like an accomplishment.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#319

Post by UncleMeat »

lawn wrote: post #31
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…

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

Monero is one of the few chains that offers a truly new feature on top of other alternatives and... look at the price chart of its tokens. Now compare that to Shibe or whatever. Makes it pretty clear that price is driven by memes rather than features.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#320

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

yosito wrote: post #137

I too, believe that while blockchain technology holds a lot of promise, it is not fulfilling the purpose of decentralization, due in large part to so many transparent cash grabs. The current crypto craze is nothing more than a fancy gold rush. It will be interesting to see where blockchain technology ends up after the gold rush is over.

Mate this is the third gold rush. Whether the price is up or down there are legitimate people working hard all the time; the ones who don't put all their energy into marketing.
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