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Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

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Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#281

Post by nsotelo »

rthomas6 wrote: post #233
carlosdp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I joined the team at Mozilla that developed Persona as an intern, just as they closed it down. Persona failed because it was fighting against a head-wind of an already established trend of using Google/FB OAuth2, without giving the service provider any new benefits. There was no incentive for a website to actually implement Persona, since it was just another auth provider and users weren't using it. Users didn't use…

> built-in, straightforward payment rails. Yeah. Crappy ones with high latency and high fees.

Solana transactions currently cost $0.00025 and can handle 50,000 transactions per second. For comparison visa handles 1700 TPS and MasterCard 5000.

Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#282

Post by mderazon »

throwaway92873 wrote: post #47
jdlshore wrote: post #11

Several years ago, Mozilla/Firefox created "Persona," which was an open-source federated identity system that provided all the benefits described here. The idea was that it would eventually be built into browsers. I used it on a commercial site myself for many years. It failed to gain traction, and Mozilla eventually pulled the plug. Persona had many advantages over the Web3 vision described in this article. It was p…

The Persona team approached the company I was working for, asking us to add Persona login alongside our other login options. Mozilla came to us because we had a huge web presence at the time (about the size of Wordpress, let's say). We discussed it internally and ultimately rejected their request. We were going through a re-org and just didn't have anyone to spare. We were also rewriting the component where the login…

I think that unless you worked at FAANG it wouldn't have made much of a difference for Personas

Google / FB login still would have probably won

Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#283

Post by jl2718 »

Web3 did not invent cryptographic login!

Client cert auth has been available for decades. There was never a need for centralized login.

It’s a one-liner in Apache with mod-ssl, and here’s a random google result showing the entire thing in a few lines of standard library python: https://gist.github.com/nebulak/6d865ddd768fb905a562d6026cdd...

Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#284

Post by arvindrajnaidu »

Identity is a system of vouching so as to gain access to protected resources.

The article suggests, you should let a network vouch for u instead of a corporation. By doing this you gain “ownership”

You only “own” something when you can create, destroy and erase all signs of its existence at will.

Explain how you do this with Web3.

Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#285

Post by lpcvoid »

rchaud wrote: post #169
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…

Actually, I wish all of the internet had the simplicity and no-bullshit approach to information consumption that HN offers. RSS, simple login, text based - it's ideal.

Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#286

Post by littlestymaar »

carlosdp wrote: post #126
jdlshore wrote: post #11

Several years ago, Mozilla/Firefox created "Persona," which was an open-source federated identity system that provided all the benefits described here. The idea was that it would eventually be built into browsers. I used it on a commercial site myself for many years. It failed to gain traction, and Mozilla eventually pulled the plug. Persona had many advantages over the Web3 vision described in this article. It was p…

I joined the team at Mozilla that developed Persona as an intern, just as they closed it down. Persona failed because it was fighting against a head-wind of an already established trend of using Google/FB OAuth2, without giving the service provider any new benefits. There was no incentive for a website to actually implement Persona, since it was just another auth provider and users weren't using it. Users didn't use…

> Websites that integrate web3 wallet login do get something new: built-in, straightforward payment rails.

With super high fees, transfers that take litteral minutes to complete, no charge back and the ability to lose all the money yoy have if you ever get hacked. How exciting! Even bank transfer as a mean of payment is way better UX.

Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#287

Post by littlestymaar »

andreilys wrote: post #255
luhn wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Websites that integrate web3 wallet login do get something new: built-in, straightforward payment rails. I'm not convinced it's that a large benefit. For the foreseeable future, any website that aspires to be anything more than a niche web3 player will need to support web2 auth and web2 payments. So web3 is just adding layers, not removing them. Until web3 becomes powerful enough that you're losing customers becaus…

I'm not convinced it's that a large benefit. That's because you're not a merchant that has to deal with the monopoly of Visa/Mastercard which inflict high fees on your business and who at a moments notice can bankrupt your business by blocking all payments. Companies that are built around "SIN" such as weed and porn have basically been strong-armed by this financial monopoly, to the point that Crypto is a welcome add…

> That's because you're not a merchant that has to deal with the monopoly of Visa/Mastercard

Visa and MasterCard don't have a duopoly on payment. They have a duopoly on “instant credit-card-based payment with charge back”, and Blockchain "tech" isn't competing in any of these features. If you don't need this and don't care about subpar UX, you can use bank transfers and still have a better solution than a blockchain-based one.

> high fees on your business

You think Visa fees are high? Blockchain transaction fees must look giagantic to you then…

Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#288

Post by xigoi »

Sargos wrote: post #259
readams wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it doesn't solve that at all since there's no way to tie something on the block chain to the real world. All the same problems of knowing whether some particular PGP key belongs to the person you want apply the same to a wallet address.

I probably should have worded it differently to avoid that connotation. There are a lot of identity protocols but that's not what I was focusing on. On HN I am Sargos. You know this because I am replying to you and only I can do that with this account. I can also tell you that I'm @JamesCarnley on Twitter but there's no way for you to verify that. If I were using my public key to log into HN and Twitter you would kno…

You can verify that you're the same person on Twitter by mentioning “I'm @Sergos on HackerNews” in your Twitter.

Re: Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1

#290

Post by xigoi »

nsotelo wrote: post #281
rthomas6 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> built-in, straightforward payment rails. Yeah. Crappy ones with high latency and high fees.

Solana transactions currently cost $0.00025 and can handle 50,000 transactions per second. For comparison visa handles 1700 TPS and MasterCard 5000.

Solana is proof-of-stake, right? I think the parent comment was talking about proof-of-work.
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