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

331–340 of 497 posts

Re: Web3 is centralized

#331

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

bpfrh wrote: post #58
yrral wrote: post #33

Web3 is less centralized in that the user data is exposed and freely available to be composed upon. For example, when someone makes a deposit (say of ERC20 USDC to earn interest, around 3.0% currently) on https://compound.finance , that data is freely available and the "receipt" becomes another token (the ERC20 USDC cToken). [1] This token can now be used for other things, on any other protocol, without the involveme…

That is not exclusiv to web3 and is not new. If I buy a house, I can take a credit on that house. If I bought some stock, banks will let me take a loan on them afaik. I can also borrow some money and choose something expensive that I own for a collateral. Maybe crypto makes the last one easier, but then it will lead to a lot of fraud, because veryifing that the item I set as collateral is the difficult and expensive…

Right, and none of what you mentioned is digital nor programmable. At least not to the user.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#332

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #322
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"problem most don't care about" Just as Chinese citizens seem to be mostly happy about the politics in their country. Maybe that is the actual problem, people not caring about issues like free speech until it is too late. (Julian Assange is still imprisoned in the UK and almost nobody cares)

Even if I assume you're completely correct and that is a problem, they're still totally correct that cryptocurrencies are solving problems that almost nobody cares about.

And the problem is centralization, which facilitates censorship and totalitarian control.

That nobody cares does not imply that it doesn't matter.

I don't want to bash China specifically, it just happens to be the first example that comes to my mind. So for example nobody cares that millions of Uyghurs are being enslaved in China, but that does not imply that it is not important. (Or take the example of Assange I mentioned - nobody cares that the UK locked him away without good cause).

Also most people don't really care about economics or how money or the stock market works. They just find themselves suddenly with a devalued currency or out of a job.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#333

Post by smt88 »

gitfan86 wrote: post #244
sergiomattei wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, completely glossing over the usefulness of digital-native money: instant, verifiable transactions from anywhere in the world, programmable money and low fees. Oh, and how it disrupts the remittances industry, something extremely useful to vulnerable communities with families abroad. I agree that Web3 is mostly a grift, but cryptocurrencies are quite useful already.

It is exactly the same situation as the Dot Com bubble. Enormous amounts of money and hype are being poured into a new promising technology. So you end up with people convincing themselves that WebVan and Pets.com will be the future of grocery delivery or buying pet products. And today it is "BTC is the ONLY internet Money", "Ethereum will be the ONLY way people can execute smart contracts in the future". Invest Now!

I completely agree with you, but the dotcom ideas you used as examples were ironically great ideas.

Grocery delivery is the future (or at least a huge, lucrative chunk of it) and a lot of people do buy pet products online and sometimes even in a subscription model. Chewy.com is a huge business.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#334

Post by acdha »

ThalesX wrote: post #215
RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #14

I think the author makes the mistake of assuming that web3 is a meaningful, tangible term being used in good faith. In reality, web3 is a marketing buzzword that cryptocurrency boosters have started promoting in an attempt to legitimize their resource intensive and otherwise useless financial speculation.

So if I just stop using web3 as a catch-all for the things I work on (i.e. IPFS, Crypto Wallets, Merkle Trees) and just start naming them one by one everything will be OK and it's not a marketing buzzword anymore? Or should I be aware that I am in fact only building marketing funnels even though I find value in the technology being built?

What’s named “web3” doesn’t improve on web technologies, making it odd to market it as a successor, and it’s hard to discuss when the term means whatever the sales person is currently selling.

Listing a specific technology avoids allows claims to be discussed technically without the vagaries of marketing.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#335

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

btdmaster wrote: post #295
chx wrote: post #288

The problem with web3 is not that it's centralized -- that's irrelevant. The fundamental problem with all crypto"currencies" is as follows: the world uses real currencies and there is only one way this enters into the world of crypto"currencies": by someone selling a coin to someone else. Thus, regardless of what crypto"currency" we are talking about, it would be a zero sum game if not for transaction fees. However,…

Though I generally agree with the sentiment, there is one significant use case -- transferring money across country borders. Currently, transaction fees on cash transactions are much much higher than they are on cryptocurrencies (maybe except bitcoin) and so this would mean that, in theory, they could be used as a way to transfer goods across country borders.

>> there is one significant use case -- transferring money across country borders. Currently, transaction fees on cash transactions are much much higher than they are on cryptocurrencies

Ideal for malware ransom payments.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#336

Post by jslove »

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…

with taproot bitcoin lightning transactions can be mostly private, scalable, not using energy, and cheap.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#337

Post by pibechorro »

chx wrote: post #304
btdmaster wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though I generally agree with the sentiment, there is one significant use case -- transferring money across country borders. Currently, transaction fees on cash transactions are much much higher than they are on cryptocurrencies (maybe except bitcoin) and so this would mean that, in theory, they could be used as a way to transfer goods across country borders.

This doesn't change the scam nature of the underpinning mechanism. As I said: it doesn't matter what you do with your coin.

No post body was provided.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#338

Post by jslove »

jiggunjer wrote: post #289
input_sh wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay but like who cares? Are any of those even in the top 30 cryptocurrencies by market cap? Is anyone speaking about them in the context of Web3 or is it all ETH, XRP and maybe two more? From my blissfully uninformed mind, the only time these cryptocurrencies pop up is precisely this: as a counterargument to the popular ones, where you can see all the transactions. They're fringes even among the fringe that is crypt…

Doesn't the lightning network used by btc allow obfuscation constructs?

yes with taproot that just went live. there is also bitcoin liquid which is hidden as well.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#339

Post by cormacrelf »

ThalesX wrote: post #215
RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #14

I think the author makes the mistake of assuming that web3 is a meaningful, tangible term being used in good faith. In reality, web3 is a marketing buzzword that cryptocurrency boosters have started promoting in an attempt to legitimize their resource intensive and otherwise useless financial speculation.

So if I just stop using web3 as a catch-all for the things I work on (i.e. IPFS, Crypto Wallets, Merkle Trees) and just start naming them one by one everything will be OK and it's not a marketing buzzword anymore? Or should I be aware that I am in fact only building marketing funnels even though I find value in the technology being built?

Yes, you should stop using it. Here's Wikipedia's definition of the web:

> The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system where documents and other web resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators (URLs, such as https://example.com/), which may be interlinked by hyperlinks, and are accessible over the Internet.

The only one of the three you referenced that has anything like that is IPFS, and it's missing large chunks of the web experience we know. Sorry, but a crypto wallet and a data structure simply have nothing to do with the web in any sense that word has ever known.

People love the web. It has profoundly affected nearly everyone on Earth. The last time someone invented something like it was in 1440 in Germany. If you want to redefine it as something completely different, people will assume you're doing it in bad faith to co-opt goodwill for your product. If it's for your crypto wallet, they will be right.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#340

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

lukeramsden wrote: post #325
captn3m0 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m very much interested in finding out the answer the “blockchain vs the DMCA” question. A node operator serving any copyright content (irrespective of it being served over HTTP or a DLT) is liable. What happens when Disney starts suing node operators? Your ISP still gets a notice right?

How does DMCA handle steganography? For example, you could post hex-encoded bytes of a copyrighted image in a Facebook post - obviously a trivial example, but with a minor amount of effort and some more obtuse encoding it would be nigh-on impossible to tell otherwise. This is exactly what it looks like when putting copyrighted content on blockchains like on Ethereum. It's also _prohibitively_ expensive to store data…

That's a compelling argument against a certain type of concern trolling I will forever more be ignoring, but what about the instance of node sabotage by uploading such data? What is the network to do to safe-guard itself from being forced to break laws?
Post reply on HN