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

My First Impressions of Web3

moxie.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 1001 posts

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#101

Post by ericd »

ineptech wrote: post #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 s…

Yeah, I think the success of Synology's NASes speaks to this - they're largely used as little home servers. And it could be even easier if someone built a box that functioned as a router and a server with dynamic DNS as an easy part of the setup. The UI would have to be really, really polished, but I think it could be done.

Symmetric home ISP connections would make these more useful, too. Sadly, that's not the norm right now, but perhaps that's because most people don't demand it.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#102

Post by spenczar5 »

lekevicius wrote: post #52

While it's refreshing to hear critique from someone who actually built something on web3, there are a couple of points where I'd dare to disagree, somewhat. Particularly, regarding "early days". It really is, still, early days, because there is a lot of complexity in getting all the pieces built. It took years to get overall blockchain going. Then, to understand the need of programmability (smart contracts). Other pi…

My understanding of IPFS is that there is some DNS-and-HTTP translation step that resolves content to IPFS locations. Is that correct, and is it immutable? How does that work?

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#104

Post by Uptrenda »

Thin clients that verify transactions are possible though. For something like Bitcoin you have SPV-proofs that prove chains of headers. You can prove that a transaction was included in the longest chain without having to run a node yourself just by checking proof-of-work merkle trees; Even if the vast majority of users end up running clients that don't verify the whole chain -- cryptographic trust would still be ensured by checking headers. This requires no centralization.

Satoshi wrote about this architecture early on in scaling the blockchain. Ethereum also allows light clients and I think it even has checkpoints that make downloading headers faster. Cryptographic protocols that verify smart contract results could be included in Metamask. I feel like not mentioning this in the essay shows a lack of familiarity with the literature even if he was extremely opened minded (enough to create dapps himself.)

He did make valid observations about third-party trust: OpenSeas and Infura. But in both cases: these protocols can be implemented without centralized architecture. A decentralized alternative to Infura (that provides reliable results to users and easy-to-check attestations) is possible to build. One should also note that in blockchain land the lack of incentives to run a full node is a problem people are working to address. It's actually a perfect illustration of how the blockchain can lead to emergent systems. Some ledgers already have rewards for running full nodes. So yes -- people do want to run full nodes -- they just want to be paid for it.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#105

Post by jd007 »

superfrank wrote: post #47

> People don’t want to run their own servers, and never will This kind of gets at the reason why I think a lot of tech articles/blogs about what the future will be like are just terrible. The wants of someone who is driven enough read and write about the bleeding edge of technology are very, very different from the general population. Like this author says, most people don't want to run their own web server, but I'd…

IMO this diagnosis is still one level away from a more fundamental truism, which is that people don't want to pay anything for digital goods. Running servers can and has been massively simplified over the last couple decades, and I don't see any inherent technical barrier preventing it from being as simple as registering for an account on FB (i.e. anyone can do it). The deeper problem is the lack of willingness to pay (directly) for anything online.

The reason for this is complex, with lots of unclear cause and effect dynamics (e.g. did our unwillingness to pay push the ecosystem to gravitate towards ad-based revenue models, or the other way around?). The inevitable race to the bottom between competitors, under the massive incentive for platforms to centralize/consolidate (if you charged any amount for your service I can always under-price and out-compete you) is likely a major contributor. We do not exhibit such reservations against payment for anything physical, probably because of the innate sense we have that anything in physical reality should have a cost, yet not so in the digital world.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#106

Post by milofeynman »

> The project can’t start as a web2 platform because of the market dynamics, but the same market dynamics and the fundamental forces of centralization will likely drive it to end up there.

Great insight.

I didn't realize for maybe 8 months that NFTs were not actually storing the art on the Blockchain. I appreciate Moxie pointing out the problems with this in an eloquent way.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#107

Post by exdsq »

spenczar5 wrote: post #85
exdsq wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no real reason for this to be honest. The Web3 projects I’ve worked on tends to fall for centralized services like Infura because of development needs at first and then it’s just easier to use it for production. I’ve made a decent living for the last two years setting up test infrastructure for Web3 projects due to its complex nature. This is true across all blockchains, not just Ethereum. It’s an area ripe f…

New products? Would those be more centralized platforms, or is it feasible for me to connect to the blockchain, verify stuff, and so on if I am running my own server? It still seems that my users on phones and browsers would need to trust me in that case, right?

Oh it’s totally doable to run your own node on your own server! And thanks to the protocols consensus rules your users can trust that for a transaction to go through your node and be accepted onto main net your node is a good actor.

So one example I’d give - every team I’ve worked on has had to build a local development environment with several nodes to easily spin up with a clean slate for deterministic testing. Teams get sucked into tools like Infura to set these up and then it’s so easy to do the same for deployment they do just that. I think there’s tons of room for Blockchain-as-a-Service tools to improve development and testing processes without forcing centralization on main net deployments.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#108

Post by tshaddox »

arcticbull wrote: post #39

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."

In what sense is it "gate-kept"? Isn't the complaint that in practice most people probably use those two services? As far as I know those two services don't do anything to try to force you to use them, and people just use them out of convenience because "People don’t want to run their own servers, and never will."

The potential for single points of failure (or even intentional abuse) does exist because of this de facto dominance of two service providers, but as far as I can tell there's nothing stopping anyone from running their own node and connecting their various cryptocurrency wallets to them other than the money and inconvenience of running your own server.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#109

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

ianbicking wrote: post #41
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And his arguments in favour of centralization are flawed. Sure, regular people do not want to run their own (email, chat, etc) servers. But they DO want to be able to chose from a handful of available servers the one they like best (or the one they trust most), without losing connectivity with their contacts. Tired of Google's shenanigans, move from Gmail to Protonmail, tell your contacts your new email, set up an au…

If you read the section "Recreating this world" it addresses this pretty directly

Directly, and not convincingly at all. He presents just one use case, which, coincidentally, is the only one that casts the service he runs in a really good light. There are other use cases, like several email users leaving Gmail altogether, escaping from what he calls "the worst of both worlds". And his alternative? Using the centralized service (preferrably, the one he runs), because, he promises, this one will be totally different, aha.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#110

Post by hrhrhrhrhr »

arcticbull wrote: post #39

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."

No post body was provided.
Post reply on HN