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Web3 is centralized

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Re: Web3 is centralized

#431

Post by darawk »

SoldShort22 wrote: post #125
darawk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree completely. There is a ton to criticize about crypto and "Web3" (I hate the term, tbh). It's rife with scams and unearned wealth. Even the things that aren't outright scams are mostly people selling hype. But this technology does enable something novel. Digital self-custody of scarce assets is a new thing. A thing that nobody could do before this stuff. And if that has utility, then the infrastructure for tradi…

> Digital self-custody of scarce assets is a new thing But what really are the "scarce assets" that Web3 is enabling self-custody for? A token on a blockchain that has metadata pointing to a digital file that anyone can view and reproduce? By definition, every NFT is scarce in that each one is non-fungible. But this scarcity doesn't mean there's any meaningful value. An NFT alone doesn't inherently give you ownership…

Well, again, in principle, NFTs can be used to represent ownership of anything. The current crop of NFTs I find just as silly and worthless as you do. However, I will note that even the current stuff is no more worthless than, e.g. a piece of paper autographed by a celebrity. What NFTs are right now is the digital equivalent of an autograph. I think buying a hat autographed by LeBron James is stupid, but obviously a lot of people disagree.

However, theoretically, you could tokenize other assets, like real estate, or intellectual property, and then trade them in a more liquid, global manner than is currently possible. The NFT ecosystem is one of the least developed parts of crypto, though.

If you want an example of tokenized value, just look at stablecoins. Stablecoins are literally tokenized dollars. They allow you to self-custody large amounts of, what is effectively digital cash. That is something you couldn't do before. If you didn't trust banks, you either had to store physical dollars in your home, which is extremely dangerous for a number of reasons, or you had to suck it up and trust them anyway. Crypto gives you a third option.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#432

Post by darawk »

usrbinbash wrote: post #189
darawk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree completely. There is a ton to criticize about crypto and "Web3" (I hate the term, tbh). It's rife with scams and unearned wealth. Even the things that aren't outright scams are mostly people selling hype. But this technology does enable something novel. Digital self-custody of scarce assets is a new thing. A thing that nobody could do before this stuff. And if that has utility, then the infrastructure for tradi…

> Digital self-custody of scarce assets is a new thing. How so? This is how "web1" operated all the time: People have a cool idea and fire up a webserver to host it. Self-Custody in its purest form. Sure, others could copy it, but they can also do that with whatever someone generates an NFT for "digital assets" (the certificate cannot be copied, the thing it certifies ownership for can). As for "scarcity": Digital as…

> This is how "web1" operated all the time: People have a cool idea and fire up a webserver to host it. Self-Custody in its purest form.

Web1 assets are not scarce, that's the difference.

> Sure, others could copy it, but they can also do that with whatever someone generates an NFT for "digital assets" (the certificate cannot be copied, the thing it certifies ownership for can).

Forget NFTs. Go print yourself $1000 USDC and try to exchange it for dollars. The thing that prevents you from doing that - that's decentralized digital scarcity. There is no equivalent on web1.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#433

Post by darawk »

tehbeard wrote: post #138
darawk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree completely. There is a ton to criticize about crypto and "Web3" (I hate the term, tbh). It's rife with scams and unearned wealth. Even the things that aren't outright scams are mostly people selling hype. But this technology does enable something novel. Digital self-custody of scarce assets is a new thing. A thing that nobody could do before this stuff. And if that has utility, then the infrastructure for tradi…

> But this technology does enable something novel. Digital self-custody of scarce assets is a new thing. ... It gives you a receipt. A digital receipt. That points to a URL that may or may not exist in 10 years?

Why is everyone here so focused on NFTs? I didn't mention NFTs at all. They just happen to be the hot thing to shit on right now. I am not a fan of NFTs. But "digital receipts" are tremendously valuable. Receipts are proof of provenance.

Proof of provenance is valuable in many, many applications. But anyways, that isn't the point. The type of digital self custody i'm referring to is for things like stablecoins. Stablecoins allow you to self-custody dollars in a way that was not possible before cryptocurrency.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#434

Post by gumby »

kortex wrote: post #394
gumby wrote: post #272

> but global consensus is a goal that is fundamentally at odds with the goal of decentralization. I’ve long fantasized that machines should “evolve” the network protocols they use to communicate. Parts of packet protocols they never use to communicate might gradually be dropped while common higher level portions always needing to be used might migrate lower. Of course more “formal” protocol specification would still…

That is certainly a cool idea, but how would a system like that cope with getting "wires crossed"? The nice thing about standard protocols (a form of consensus) is that there is a schema and at least at the transport level, there are no unambiguous values. Without consensus, you have the risk of party A saying something, and party B interprets it in a different way than intent.

The machines would handle such problems the same way humans do.

This approach would be handy for extremely bandwidth- and power-constrained environments, i.e. actual IoT.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#435

Post by darawk »

lottin wrote: post #206
i_hate_pigeons wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think web3 is just competing with traditional finance, or at least not in the restricted sense of investing/especulation. Also web3 is not replacing anything that already exists, just like "web2" didn't (and to be frank web2 was as much as hyped term than anything else) I see it more as retaining ownership some of the content we produce and happily give to twitter, youtube, facebook etc to monetise and have s…

Ownership of "content" requires intellectual property laws, which are enforced by courts of justice, and we already have these. A blockchain cannot enforce intellectual property rights because it lacks coercive power. If your goal is to "retain ownership" of the content that you produce, a blockchain is not going to help you AT ALL with that.

This is the classic "but I can already do all that with rsync" dropbox criticism. Yes, the traditional legal system is still required. Crypto does not make it go away, and anyone who says otherwise is a fool. What it does do is change the UX around transacting with these things.

Right now buying IP rights is a bespoke process involving lawyers. It has very high transaction costs in the Coasean sense. Tokenizing and standardizing these things, and standardizing the way revenue across directly to the rights holder in a way that is agnostic to who the owner is.

This is the value of the decentralized economy. It has the ability to shrink the domain of responsibility for the traditional legal system, and standardize things in a way that simplifies entry for entities that are less legally fluent.

I think an appropriate analogy here would be between the private and public markets. Buying stocks on the public market is easy and simple, because the process is standardized. You don't have to read complex legal agreements or study cap tables. You just click buy. The token economy has similar properties, although all the details of what the best ways to standardize, and what should and shouldn't be standardized, are not yet flushed out.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#436

Post by darawk »

xondono wrote: post #186
SoldShort22 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Digital self-custody of scarce assets is a new thing But what really are the "scarce assets" that Web3 is enabling self-custody for? A token on a blockchain that has metadata pointing to a digital file that anyone can view and reproduce? By definition, every NFT is scarce in that each one is non-fungible. But this scarcity doesn't mean there's any meaningful value. An NFT alone doesn't inherently give you ownership…

This. There’s a “mind-virus” doing the rounds on the crypto space, the idea that scarce = valuable.

Scarcity is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for value. By establishing the necessary conditions we facilitate the discovery of sufficiency in particular applications. Whether or not any particular scarce digital asset is valuable is a subjective question. Whether or not the underlying infrastructure created the potential for it to be valuable is an objective question, and the answer is yes.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#437

Post by usrbinbash »

i_hate_pigeons wrote: post #425
usrbinbash wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or I could revoke it in the future Unless whatever service accessed the tweet/image/text/whatever made a local copy and is displaying that once the "blockchain service" no longer allows access. An NFT doesn't confer access control. Its a certificate of ownership, the asset itself is infinitely reproducible.

NFTs represent something else completely, I'm talking of other use cases that are enabled by the same underlying tech - with the disclaimer I mentioned above of pending issues to be resolved, particulaly gas fees if you are not aware of how something like what I described could work maybe have a read around on some simple smart contracts where there is hidden state (like guess the answer or contracts that implement r…

Regardless of what relationship a piece of data has to some blockchain technology: As soon as it is publicly accessible, even once, it's scarcity can no longer be guaranteed, because by their very nature, digital assets are infinitely reproducible.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#438

Post by usrbinbash »

darawk wrote: post #432
usrbinbash wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Digital self-custody of scarce assets is a new thing. How so? This is how "web1" operated all the time: People have a cool idea and fire up a webserver to host it. Self-Custody in its purest form. Sure, others could copy it, but they can also do that with whatever someone generates an NFT for "digital assets" (the certificate cannot be copied, the thing it certifies ownership for can). As for "scarcity": Digital as…

> This is how "web1" operated all the time: People have a cool idea and fire up a webserver to host it. Self-Custody in its purest form. Web1 assets are not scarce, that's the difference. > Sure, others could copy it, but they can also do that with whatever someone generates an NFT for "digital assets" (the certificate cannot be copied, the thing it certifies ownership for can). Forget NFTs. Go print yourself $1000 U…

> There is no equivalent on web1.

Of course there is. If the service offered is not just access to some data, but things like computational power, access to a game server, food delivered, etc. I put up a payment system, and unless its used there is no access to the asset.

What form that payment system has, and what tokens it accepts USD, EUR, BTC, Seashells or Sliced Bread, is completely irrelevant.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#439

Post by gitfan86 »

smt88 wrote: post #333
gitfan86 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, and public ledgers, digital money, smart contracts will be used by the people in the future, but BTC and ETH prices are as important as WebVan/Pets.com stock prices for that to happen.

Re: Web3 is centralized

#440

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

acdha wrote: post #427
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are literally "central banks", and if banks don't want to give somebody a bank account, there is nothing these people can do about it. That is the result of centralized control. You can not prevent somebody from having a Bitcoin address. I know that transactions on the Bitcon blockchain are public. There are approaches to fixing it and several altcoins claim to fix it. It certainly isn't the last iteration of t…

> There are literally "central banks", and if banks don't want to give somebody a bank account, there is nothing these people can do about it. That is the result of centralized control. You can not prevent somebody from having a Bitcoin address. Banks follow laws, which is also a hard requirement for cryptocurrency businesses. Very, very few people are banned from having an account and those bans are of categories wh…

"Banks follow laws, which is also a hard requirement for cryptocurrency businesses"

Laws are not always just, and not everybody who is prosecuted by some government is a criminal. Governments can seize bank accounts.

You can be labeled a nazi for nothing these days, and then businesses (including banks) who do business with you will receive threats and shitstorms to make them stop doing business with you. It can happen quicker than you think. Maybe you are lucky that you live a private live and never dissent with anything. By "nothing" I mean literally nothing - my own Twitter account for example was shut down by a rampant bot that was triggered by mere keywords. Even on HN there are frequent stories about Google accounts and PayPal accounts being locked.

"governments don't say “he used Monero, guess we have to give up on law enforcement” but rather “Monero does not comply with our financial laws, any business or person caught accepting it will be fined and risk jail time”"

Sure, I worry about that kind of issue a lot, when I think about how to enable free speech in unfree countries. Should dissidents in authoritarian regimes just give up, and not use Encryption or Tor? It certainly seems dangerous, but what is the alternative? Also I suppose you could try using Monero without anybody knowing that you used it.

In any case, if the laws in your country become unbearable, you can memorize your crypto seeds and try to flee the country.

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