Web3 is centralized • Hacker News Board

Re: Web3 is centralized

#381

Post by cle » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #319

lawn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think this is very true even outside of crypto. As an extreme recent example, consider GameStop.

This problem is larger than crypto. It seems to be related to the accessibility of trading to "retail investors" (enabled by lower fees, new technology, monetary policy, etc.).

Re: Web3 is centralized

#382

Post by ViViDboarder » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:24 PM UTC

numtel wrote: post #177

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…

A few issues with this: 1. Not all crypto currencies are public. See monero, haven, secret network. Although that last one depends on some specific features of some Intel processors... I'm of the opinion that the pseudonymous nature of public blockchains is very beneficial to society. I would love it if I could see what companies, governments, and people near me were spending their money on. It would enable me to mak…

How do you figure that public blockchains provide a more pseudo anonymous experience than anything we use today?

I can go to a website today and register any name I want. The main thing that can break that is IP. How does a public blockchain solve the problem of routing a request to a device? How does consolidation of all user accounts to a single public ledger offer _more_ anonymity than exists today where I can have a random distinct account on any website I use?

Re: Web3 is centralized

#383

Post by StingyJelly » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:25 PM UTC

chx wrote: post #357

StingyJelly wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 transactio…

> You are talking about just one function - transfer of value I do not. I am talking of the only way money enters this system. If there would be no money in the system no one would care. At the end of the day, in this time and place, our society decided money is the ultimate goal. I don't like it but it's what it is. > You can have much lower transaction fees than in Visa / Mastercard First of all: it's nonsensical t…

How do you define money if not a medium for value transfer?

For the ultimate goal, I'd say that's wealth / power.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#384

Post by ViViDboarder » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:29 PM UTC

ur-whale wrote: post #235

hooande wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Really? So I can go onto one of these chains and transfer anything to a new address without a third party blessing my transaction?

I was under the impression that nearly the entire thing is based on some form of consensus. Consensus is necessarily by third parties. So if the consensus drives decisions on what gets accepted and what does not, is that not a permission? If there is a single dominant consensus, is that not centralized?

Re: Web3 is centralized

#385

Post by legutierr » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:30 PM UTC

vmception wrote: post #23

chrisco255 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Weird that it would be a boon for both forensic accountants and fraudsters. How do you reconcile that sentence? It is very common to track people by the tokens they hold and target them for theft and fraud. One example is to airdrop a backdoored token, and when the user tries to move it they wind up authorizing movement of their other valuable tokens. Or to just use the airdrop to lead a curious user to the airdrop…

> One example is to airdrop a backdoored token, and when the user tries to move it they wind up authorizing movement of their other valuable tokens.

Do you have an example of where something like this was actually deployed? How would a user moving one token would result in another token being moved?

I can only imagine a situation where a user might be induced to install a compromised wallet, and then to give that wallet keys to the their account. But this is not an attack strategy that depends on there being a "backdoored token" of any kind.

Is there some way to code an ERC20 token that would somehow give you access to a user's other tokens?

Re: Web3 is centralized

#386

Post by kortex » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #330

jakupovic wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you need someone to repeat what's scarce? The digital anything can be written down in the blockchain notebook with your name/key and it's yours then. Same as when you would get a C from your teacher who would write it into one of those big notebooks with everyone's names. That combination of your name + class + grade is the asset uniquely assigned to you. Now when you asked your teacher to change that C to a B, to…

But why would you want your grade history to be public so that anybody can read it? And adjusting grades is a valuable feature, given that some teachers do really make legitimate grading mistakes that should be corrected.

The public aspect of the content is orthogonal to the public aspect of the data. E.g. let's say the grade record is encrypted. Anyone party to the key is able to verify that the record is (un)tampered, but the wide world cannot read your grade.

And that is orthogonal to whether the content is mutable or not. It just means that mutation is deliberate and obvious.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#387

Post by vmception » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

legutierr wrote: post #385

vmception wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Weird that it would be a boon for both forensic accountants and fraudsters. How do you reconcile that sentence? It is very common to track people by the tokens they hold and target them for theft and fraud. One example is to airdrop a backdoored token, and when the user tries to move it they wind up authorizing movement of their other valuable tokens. Or to just use the airdrop to lead a curious user to the airdrop…

> One example is to airdrop a backdoored token, and when the user tries to move it they wind up authorizing movement of their other valuable tokens. Do you have an example of where something like this was actually deployed? How would a user moving one token would result in another token being moved? I can only imagine a situation where a user might be induced to install a compromised wallet, and then to give that wal…

To me this is like asking if I have an example of a phishing site, not off the top of my head?

Just embed approval methods for a predefined external token contract address into the transfer() method of the airdropped token

Then you can also chain the transfer within it or you can wait and transfer them all yourself

Doing too much in one transaction will alert more users because the gas price will be unexpectedly large

Re: Web3 is centralized

#388

Post by mritchie712 » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

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…

Some people will lose a lot of money if "web3" burns to the ground.

People that don't have money to lose have massive FOMO.

Thus, two very split sides.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#389

Post by dmitriid » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

qudat wrote: post #307

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…

> Yes, sometimes the most exciting things are emergent, but it's been over a decade of the blockchain field of dreams and we're still talking in hypotheticals are what it will be good for. There’s a reason our current financial infrastructure is still being run on cobol: if it only took 10 years to build it would have been updated already. Financial tech takes a very long time and with a revolutionary idea such a cry…

> Financial tech takes a very long time and with a revolutionary idea such a cryptocurrency, I’m sure it will take even longer.

"cryptocurrencies are revolutionary" is a statement that needs proof, not blind belief.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#390

Post by kortex » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:42 PM UTC

jakupovic wrote: post #236

xchaotic wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Quoted post unavailable.

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

> Eschew flamebait.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html