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Web3 is centralized

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Re: Web3 is centralized

#361

Post by chx »

acdha wrote: post #310
5560675260 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't you exchange goods and services for crypto, without using fiat? Transaction fees are obviously unfortunate, but there is just no going around the need for infrastructure. And where is an infrastructure - there are maintenance fees, crypto isn't unique in this regard.

It’s not “without using fiat”: cryptocurrencies are pure fiat currencies but with very weak backing — people need sovereign currencies to pay taxes, pay or get paid for government functions, and participate in large preexisting economies. Nobody has to use cryptocurrency for those reasons and the variable, usually high, fees discourage use — especially in the case of Bitcoin where the economic model incentivizes hoar…

> cryptocurrencies are pure fiat currencies

I thought even Bitcoin maximalists have given up on this nonsense by now? Fiat money is legal tender backed by the taxation power of a nation state and ultimately, the monopoly on violence. This is why I always write crypto"currency" -- even naming so, crypto shills have pulled an ingenious move pretending their scam is a currency which it utterly is not.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#362

Post by fullstackchris »

acdha wrote: post #342
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I think that's a bit disingenuine considering the US government couldn't even put up a healthcare signup website without it crashing.

With such a track record, you really think they could just "tap in" or "modify" any given crypto protocol so they could audit every transaction?

Give me a break.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#363

Post by vmception »

api wrote: post #328
vmception wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily overload the transfer() method with approvals of an array of token contract addresses and the subsequent transfers Its not really a technical problem its a user got phished problem

It's a technical problem in that this shows the the VM for smart contracts is a mess. It should not be so easy to do such things.

Okay, if that’s what you want to see

To me it shows that the user experience for wallets doesn’t catch up

Or that the standard classes for tokens leaves more to be desired, there are competing standards

the VM never asked anyone to make token classes and it is phenomenal that people made those classes

Consumer protection can come in other parts of the stack

Re: Web3 is centralized

#364

Post by CrazyStat »

cinquemb wrote: post #349
CrazyStat wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> 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".

We have. We've also extended protections for people lagging behind, for example by putting restrictions on what kinds of contracts can legally be entered into and voiding contracts that one party could not have reasonably been expected to understand, or entered into under duress or undue influence.

None of these protections exist under "smart" contracts, which is exactly why we can't and won't allow code to govern or mediate life as web3 envisions. Your dystopian vision of "oops, you lost your retirement savings because you didn't decompile that contract before interacting with it, too bad", or "oops, you lost your retirement savings because someone beat your wife with a baseball bat until you handed over your private key, sucks to be you"--in short, the dystopia of "code is law"--flies in the face of thousands of years of jurisprudence and civilization. Once the goldrush hype wears off people will realize how heinous the fundamental idea is and dump it in the gutter of history where it belongs.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#365

Post by withinboredom »

The only value I see with crypto and web3 is when we finally leave the earth and transactions need to be reconciled over billions of kms. Before then, it really doesn’t have much value. IOW, each planet or system would have its own fork. A “Wild West” scenario is the only time this kind of tech really makes sense.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#366

Post by abaga129 »

post_below wrote: post #115
ojkelly wrote: post #49

Web3 feels like the next grift after we caught on to ICO's. From the article: > The problem here is the profit motive: people who are working on web3 generally want to get paid for it, but it's fundamentally harder to extract rent from truly decentralized systems than it is from centralized ones. Because of that, people end up building systems that are centralized at their core, with some aesthetics of decentralizati…

The ecological problem is, in my opinion, what should lead the conversation. Climate change being what it is, we shouldn't even be considering technologies with carbon footprints as large as existing blockchains. In theory that problem is solvable, but in the present, it should be a deal breaker

The carbon footprint you refer to applies only to proof-of-work blockchains. Unfortunately 3 of the largest systems use this (bitcoin, Ethereum, and doge) but an alternative has already been created called proof-of-stake. Nearly every new crypto uses proof-of-stake and Ethereum plans to switch to it. The market seems to approve of this as well as some of the big gainers in market cap use this system.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#367

Post by jeroenhd »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #343
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 b…

Storing user information on be blockchain not only sounds unnecessary, it's also illegal in the EU.

I get the advantage of blockchains and such for trading virtual currencies, but I'm still not sure why you'd need a public ledger to accomplish anything new that a standard PGP signature wouldn't already accomplish.

Is the idea of web3 to put the entire internet on some kind of blockchain to replace HTTP? Wouldn't that be crazy inefficient?

Re: Web3 is centralized

#368

Post by arbol »

notpachet wrote: post #282
quantum_mcts wrote: post #280

So the argument starts with a (rather bizarre) claim that blockchains are centralized because one have to use the protocol that the rest of the network is using. The argument goes on with an attempt to contrast blockchains with the "web as it exists" and claim that one can "speak whatever protocol you want" in it -- with a caveat that "one have to put significant work" to convince others to use it. It is quite ironic…

I agree that there's a little confusion in the article regarding the role of protocols in the decentralization equation. That said, I do think the larger point (global consensus protocols are just another form of centralization) is valid and worth discussing.

You could say that this new form of centralisation has the potential to allow governance systems that breakaway from, modify or usurp nation States. All of it being economically incentivised. This is pretty interesting IMO.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#369

Post by withinboredom »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #283
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…

A lot of these smaller networks are on top of or connected to top 10 chains. A number of the top 10 networks will eventually (~5-10 year time frame) get privacy preserving transactions however the space is still very much in development and it's a bit easier to reason about the network and what changes to make next when you can see what the users are doing. I know at the very least, IOG (the company currently leading…

I hear the word “eventually” associated with crypto, quite a bit. I’ve yet to see an “eventually” actually pan out before they run out of money or the value tanks so low nobody will mine it anymore. As an observer following all of this fairly closely, it feels remarkably like a scam.
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