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My First Impressions of Web3

moxie.org

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Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#61
post #24

As much as I hate cryptocurrency as-it-exists, I'm very much into its potential. Untraceable (eg Monero) digital cash that settles instantly? That has the potential to disrupt societies. The problem is that most societies don't have a particular need of being disrupted, so people are perfectly content paying with their credit cards, and why shouldn't they be? The UX is better and the banks are fine as long as they do…

Untraceable digital cash facilitates crime, money laundering and tax evasion.

None of these things are good for a stable democracy.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#62
post #20

> We’d all have our own web server with our own web site, our own mail server for our own email, our own finger sever for our own status messages, our own chargen server for our own character generation. However – and I don’t think this can be emphasized enough – that is not what people want. People do not want to run their own servers. I must be stuck in the past. It's true. No one wants to run an arcane, buggy, ins…

I think they key is: despite regular people not wanting to RUN their own server, they do want to CONTROL their own server. Current incumbents treat your data like tier asset, not like custody.

This is because you pay nothing. The beginning of regular people having empowerment begins by paying some fee to own the product.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#63

I like Moxie's work and writings, and this article has some great points, but I can't get behind this: We should accept the premise that people will not run their own servers by designing systems that can distribute trust without having to distribute infrastructure. I'm not ready to give in. I am happy to leave "normal" (tech illiterate and politically apathetic) people behind to reach my decentralization goals. I th…

> I'm not ready to give in. I am happy to leave "normal" (tech illiterate and politically apathetic) people behind to reach my decentralization goals.

Which should be already possible with with the current offerings around selfhosting applications and p2p technologies.

But as the same time you need to accept that the "normal" people would probably be happy to, in turn leave you behind to reach their goal of being able to use all service available without needing to concern themself with running their own server.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#64
> People don’t want to run their own servers, and never will.

Not really much related to web3/crypto topics, but I think this is an indictment of servers, not people. If managing a server were easy and secure, lots of people would do it - for blogs, a minecraft server for the kids, to back up their pictures, and yes, to store their bitcoins or other digital secrets - they just don't want to manage a unix or windows server.

It used to be hard to install a webcam, now it isn't. No reason server software can't do the same thing - all we need is for some gigantic corporation to sink 100k developer-hours into it (which sounds like a joke, until you remember that there are several gigantic corporations who have very profitable side-hustles hosting servers, and who would be creating a whole new class of customer if they did this).

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#66
I enjoyed reading this article. The closer you look towards cryptocurrencies and smart contract projects like nfts, the less likely without a significant (state) player supporting these experiments I doubt we'll talk let alone use these speculative industries in a quarter century. Anyone can make an currency, only a strong arm can force you to pay.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#67
post #6
post #4

I've known Moxie to often be right. And I think he happens to be right about this.

I'm perplexed with him writing this piece and, at the same time, adding crypto based payments to Signal... Has he written anything on Signal and payments?

> at the same time, adding crypto based payments to Signal...

Damn, and just when I'd been thinking how much I like Signal.

The goldrush when Keybase added crypto completely ruined what had been a pretty good tool.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#69

I'll be honest I had no idea that access to Ethereum is effectively gate-kept by two centralized entities (Infura, Alchemy). I knew there were only one or two true Ethereum full-nodes, but the impact of that never quite clicked. [edit] By "full node" I meant "archival node."

  only one or two true Ethereum full-nodes
source?

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#70

The first article on Web3 that I've read that drills into the details and was written by someone who's not only kicked the tires but taken the thing for a spin. And the conclusion: It's mostly the bad stuff of Web2 combined with the bad stuff of Crypto.

I find these articles to be a lot like criticizing tcp/ip because Facebook exists.
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