Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

billprin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 319 posts

Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#161

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

dylkil wrote: post #44
thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #20

Why can't this be done with existing public key cryptography?

It can. The biggest success of crypto has been putting public/private key pairs in the hands of 10s of millions of people.

>> The biggest success of crypto has been putting public/private key pairs in the hands of 10s of millions of people.

I would argue that the biggest successes of crypto are selling GPUs and facilitating malware ransom payments.

GPUs have sold like crazy and you are lucky to get a high end one with the current demand. Everybody and their pets are running mining rigs. Good luck getting a nice GPU for machine learning or graphics rendering.

Previously malware authors had to rely on gift cards or similar means to get paid. Now they have variety of cryptocurrencies to choose from and they can even trade cryptocurrencies to launder the paid ransom funds.

Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#162

Post by MBCook »

herlitzj wrote: post #26
scotu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same thought. Imagine listing all blockchains in tiny icons you scroll sideways. I suppose that can be done a lot better, but still, who decides which blockchains are included and which are not?

Precisely. Or what if you're some random grandma that has a wallet (since we're living in a make believe world where this is easy to create). Imagine you've forgotten which blockchain your wallet is on. Will there be a search box to find my wallet in this mess of combinatorics that is a login page?

I mined a teeny tiny bit of Dogecoin years ago. One of the times it spiked in price, I decided to convert my teeny tiny bit into Etherium. So I used a wallet on a cryptocurrency trading site.

Do you know what site that was? I don’t. I can’t remember. I think the password may be in my password manager, but I’m not sure. I’d have to go digging.

But I am SURE I’ll remember which of the 1200 common block chains I use for my credentials.

Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#163

Post by rchaud »

mattlondon wrote: post #142
lamontcg wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I think it is mostly businesses that think this is a huge problem to solve to have identities matched across everything seamlessly. Mostly what I care about is logins and payments which are addressed by password managers and form filling for credit cards. I just want a friction free experience for setting up an account, logging back into it, and maybe purchasing something. And ideally I'd like to self-host, mayb…

> Yeah I think it is mostly businesses that think this is a huge problem to solve to have identities matched across everything seamlessly. Your comment just gave me a thought - just imagine the online advertisers using this for tracking purposes! At the risk of spreading FUD, it would not surprise me to learn that perhaps this web3 thing is being fuelled/funded by the existing crop of online advertising networks or t…

> At the risk of spreading FUD, it would not surprise me to learn that perhaps this web3 thing is being fuelled/funded by the existing crop of online advertising networks or their close associates?

Hardly FUD, of course these companies are watching. They have more cash than they know what to do with. They will acquire anything that even remotely takes off (even by the low standards of crypto).

Google acquired their way into all of their major businesses. None of the following were built by them:

- Google Ads (DoubleClick, acquired 2005)

- Google Analytics (Urchin, 2004)

- Youtube (acquired 2005)

- Android (also 2005)

The dates are off the top of my head, so I could be off by a year or two.

Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#164

Post by MBCook »

betwixthewires wrote: post #152
rbanffy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the ledger is not public, why would I trust it? If someone else claims they are you, how would I differentiate the conflicting claims?

Keys are identities. Someone claiming to be you doesn't matter. Always defer to keys. A non public ledger would be something agreed upon by participants only. So you and I and 5 other people for example could run some type of organization using some private way to keep track of state. You choose to trust it, if you don't, then don't use it.

If it doesn’t need a public ledger, why do you need a blockchain in the first place?

Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#165

Post by serverholic »

mwattsun wrote: post #62

I'm reading this with an open mind, but I have questions: > Problem #1: Owning Your Own Digital Identity & Fixing Authentication My very technical friends who are security minded are on keybase.io. Multiple usernames and passwords across the internet is solved in various ways without blockchain. There are a lot of good password managers (I use and encrypted text file.) I don't feel Google owns my identity because I u…

Social recovery wallets usually use an m of n system where you don't need all keys to recover your wallet but a subset. For example, 9 total keys and any 5 needed to recover your wallet.

Let's say you give a key to a business and that business gets hacked. That's fine because a single key can't steal your wallet and you have 8 keys left. You can even invalidate the keys and generate 9 new ones.

Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#166

Post by codeptualize »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #150
codeptualize wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what bugs me most about this whole web3 situation, if people want to dump their money into these ponzi-scheme pump and dump bs be my guest, but then naming it web3 isn't very nice. To then attach all kinds of good qualities to it that are not shown, nor proven, and often demonstrable incorrect just finishes it off. As you say, a lot of the bigger ideas claimed to be part of this "new" web3 thing aren't new, a…

web3 = Web 4.0 I guess ? (Just like IPv5 never got anywhere ??)

Sounds reasonable haha.

We might as well also try the HTML approach, attach some letters (DWeb, XWeb) then once we all regain our sanity continue with web 4.0

Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#167

Post by MBCook »

iskander wrote: post #79
rbanffy wrote: post #54

I was fully expecting to see an empty HTML page. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only new idea here is to use a ledger to hold public keys associated with an identity. You could add keys by signing a new key with one of the previously globally accepted ones proving you are that entity and the same would go for removing a lost one, by signing a new message with all the remaining keys. Having a key copied without your…

A lot of these "this is not very different from X, you could do Y" replies remind me of the original Dropbox news.yc thread. What everyone seems to be missing is that the web3 apps and UI conventions already have broad adoption among millions of only mildly techy users. They don't know what SSH is but they do know how to sign things with their in-browser wallet app. Of course, they also seem to not always know that g…

Do they really? Or did they follow some guide somewhere hoping to cash in on a gold rush?

If a huge number of people were using cryptocurrency to pay for things every day, I would agree with you. But I think a huge number of people just make one purchase and then sit. What percent of them could actually make a purchase without having to go look up how to do it?

Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#168

Post by serverholic »

mattlondon wrote: post #141
ilogik wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if I run an online service, and you login with web3, if you're an asshole, I can still ban your "indelible" account

Yep - so there all these claims about no censorship or gatekeeping etc are clearly bullshit.

That's not true if it's a smart contract. People are still using the uniswap v2 smart-contract even though the uniswap website has completely moved on to v3.

Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#169

Post by rchaud »

endisneigh wrote: post #84

So what happens when you get phished with Web3? If the value of all crypto goes down 10% YoY why would you use it? The author makes a bunch of silly assumptions: > We need some way of saying “who we are” on the internet in a consistent manner. That way we can communicate with others in a verified way and associate with digital data that we own. We also often need that data to be interoperable between different web pr…

> No, this is not true. That's why most people on this site are not logging in through Google. Sites will store their own data, and if you trust them to store that data there’s really no reason to just trust them to store a link to your identity.

You're missing the point. Yes, we don't need oAuth to log into HN. But HN is a site that is over 15 years old, and reflects the technology of its time. Instead, look at the companies YC funds and ask yourself how many of them DON'T have oAuth/SSO of some kind. Reddit is roughly HN's age, and you can see that with the introduction of VC money and profit goals, they've shifted towards discouraging anonymous logins. My 10-year old Reddit account doesn't even have an email associated with it; I doubt that's allowed now.

The old web made by hobbyists having fun and not trying to sell anything is long gone. Even sites like HN are disappearing, and everything IS being monetized, whether we like it or not.

Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#170

Post by serverholic »

enos_feedler wrote: post #24
itsdrewmiller wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One possible advantage web3 has over Persona is that it is not under the control of Mozilla or whatever foundation Mozilla set up to address those very predictable concerns. Being distributed might help it gain early adopter mindshare which could lead to future UX improvements. (Not saying I believe this will definitely happen, just that Persona failing isn't a guarantee of failure here.)

This doesn't explain why Persona didn't work. Unless we understand why it didn't work and show how web3 alleviates the problem, how is anyone to believe a web3 login system will work? You could also ask what has changed since Persona tried and failed? In other words, why now?

Web3 login has been working for awhile. I've used uniswap for example and it's a fantastic experience.
Post reply on HN