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Web3 is centralized

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Re: Web3 is centralized

#341

Post by lottin »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #291
lottin wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you have to see all transactions, in order to know the current balances on every wallet, in order to prevent double spending. This is, in fact, the whole principle on which blockchains operate.

There is no such requirement. The only requirement is that you be able to prove consistency and correctness of the ledger. The naive blockchain implementation needs transaction visibility but there isn't a hard requirement for it beyond that. Monero uses a system that at a high level is referred to as Ring Signatures (it's not too complicated but it's more than I want to get into at the moment). Zcash and other netwo…

I've spent the last 30 minutes researching how ring signatures can be used to prevent double spending without revealing the spender's balance, and I've found nothing. Do you know where I can find the details?

Re: Web3 is centralized

#342

Post by acdha »

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #332
cmeacham98 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 men…

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

This is a gross misunderstanding of both the current banking system (which is decentralized) and the degree to which using a slow database doesn’t prevent legal actions. Blockchains are very easy to monitor and censor: ideal for an authoritarian government to get a signed confession for every disapproved transaction you make, and a high-volume always-on network is trivially blocked should they care to.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#343

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #185

I'm still not 100% clear what web3 is supposed to be and why it's mostly advertised by cryptocurrency enthusiasts. We have IPFS and several projects like it, and web3 seems to be that but on a blockchain? What does crypto add to "web3"?

I think some grassroots web3 people will agree with you, web3 is not simply about blockchain and IPFS would certainly be included in their definition.

To answer your question, 'crypto' adds the ability to store valuable data trustlessly. This means any data for which there is profit in manipulating, user accounts, key-stores, accounting (obviously). In practice most of web3 should take place off chain - 'crypto' or blockchains are suited for the most important data. Its much like the difference between the foundation of the building and the interior - it may be easy to take for granted what you don't often see or interact with.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#344

Post by davewritescode »

chrisco255 wrote: post #16
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…

> are an absolute boon to tax collectors, forensic accountants and fraudsters Weird that it would be a boon for both forensic accountants and fraudsters. How do you reconcile that sentence? The fact that something is done in public does not mean that it is centralized. There is public and decentralized, public and centralized, private and centralized, and private and decentralized. Decentralization itself, is a spect…

> With the recent introduction of zk rollups on Ethereum, it's now possible to have the best of both worlds, in my opinion (see https://aztec.network/index.html). Transactions that need to be private will be conducted on zero-knowledge rollups built for privacy. Mastercard is working on this with Consensys for Ethereum (https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/12/16/consensys-colla...).

I can’t find any real technical documentation on this system but from what I understand about ethereum, this kind of use case effectively needs to be run off the main ethereum blockchain?

I just don’t understand what the purpose of the blockchain really is when most of the interesting ways to scale add features rely on processing transactions OFF the chain.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#345

Post by squabble »

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #84
dudus wrote: post #28

Crypto market is really sad. It's a novel technical solution. But it can't find a problem where it fits as a good alternative. It's not a good alternative to banks, art collections or web hosting. But Bitcoin is still worth billions, NFT are all the rage and Web3 went from new concept to "trend" in the span of what feels like a week. But even with all the success they don't seem to be convincing many they have any in…

"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)

Many people care about Julian Assange.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#346

Post by StingyJelly »

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,…

Web3 is a buzzword that makes it sound like something which it isn't, same with AI - dumb but pattern recognition is still useful. I wouldn't call trustless programmable money with defined supply irrelevant since there is no alternative in the mainstream financial system. You are talking about just one function - transfer of value - but that already works just fine. For your points:

You can have much lower transaction fees than in Visa / Mastercard (which sometimes you can't even legally charge customer with) so there's a bigger scam by your definition.

One has to find someone willing to trade to get goods -_- because dollars instantly turn into chicken soup when you're hungry.

For fractional banking you need a trusted system, this is outside of cryptocurrency scope but you can do it atop of cryptocurrecnies just fine, look at exchanges.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#347

Post by cableshaft »

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…

> But the majority of people interested in crypto don’t care about the technology, they are in it to get rich.

"But the majority of people interested in TikTok don't care about the technology, they are on it to watch people dance and laugh."

The majority of people on the planet don't care about technology except what it can do for them. Having nuanced discussions about technology usually only interesting to a small subset of people. For many other technologies, HN is a place to have that discussion. But it hasn't been for crypto.

> Look at the level of discussion bitcoin had when it wasn’t realistically exchangeable for USD.

Bitcoin's first block was January 3, 2009. 10,000 bitcoin were famously exchanged for two Papa John's pizzas on May 22, 2010. The first bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, was launched July 18, 2010. So you're talking about a year and a half window since it was first conceived to have such discussion, less than 12% of the entire time bitcoin has been in existence.

And considering the name of the bitcoin paper is "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System", there was probably some talk about it eventually being exchanged for USD right from the start.

> nobody cares about the actual technology

Yeah that's not true. On HN that may be more or less true (although I care about the tech and I'm on HN), but there's plenty of people that care about the tech and are discussing it in other channels.

It's crazy, I've had much deeper discussions about the tech with people who can't even program on channels on Discord than I've had on HN, ever, about this space. I'm still desperately trying to play catchup, they keep dropping articles and talking about things and concepts I haven't heard of before. And intelligently, too, not just "I like the web3 makes me money go fast moon please." like it seems everyone on HN assumes these people think.

There are people legitimately trying to do new and interesting (to me anyway) things with the space, and donating their time and energy and cash to try to build it and make it happen.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#349

Post by cinquemb »

CrazyStat wrote: post #298
cinquemb wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that there are people blindly interacting with malicious contracts, which is more of a social problem and not a technical one. There are people now who for example, don't approve random token addrs that they haven't decompiled or which had the source available… i know, shocking… Did you respond to the right chain of comments, none of us mentioned anything related to ZK solutions (chains line mina or roll…

"It's not safe to use web3 unless you're comfortable analyzing decompiled source code" is a super good sign for the future of the ecosystem.

> "It's not safe to use web3 unless you're comfortable analyzing decompiled source code" is a super good sign for the future of the ecosystem.

Plenty of people don't de-compile or read the source, don't engage with random tokens credited to their address, and the ecosystem around using "smart" contracts has grown since 2015. Not my problem if people want to use/trust something else (others audits for example) without putting in any work to learn/observe themselves and engage with random stuff. That's their problem, not mine. Some learn better after going through school of hard knocks anyways.

As a society, we have expected more and more people to learn how to read and write for basic literacy over hundreds of years. Those who know how to read and write code will have a leg up for that expanding literacy set for engaging with digital things and those who don't will be left behind esp as more aspects of life are governed/mediated through code and this goes beyond the whatever is being branded as "web3".

If you don't wanna use it, you are free not to (unless in the case someone hacks your devices from across the world, you don't engage in backups, and the only way to unlock it is to buy some tokens to pay them off; then its just hard choices to make).

Re: Web3 is centralized

#350

Post by bpfrh »

angio wrote: post #293
bpfrh wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that depends on the country you live in, but essentially you are saying web3 somehow doesn't get regulated and therefore is better. The reason you wouldn't be able to simply start a website offering people loans would be because of laws, I see no argument that if you somehow use a different technology it is suddenly legal.

I explicitly said I'm not sure it's better or worse (largely depends in which country you're living I guess), but it's undeniably more decentralized than the current situation.

ahh, ok, then I can agree to some extent, altough I think the problem with product visibility and chain acceptance will make it more centralized in the long term.
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