I was under the impression that crypto currency was thought of as nothing but yet another pyramid scheme.
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My First Impressions of Web3
371–380 of 1001 posts
Re: My First Impressions of Web3
#372I would like it if Metamask connected to a distributed hash table of Ethereum node providers and sent transactions to random subsets of those nodes. Then if there was some way to track the reliability of these nodes to make some kind of ranking of quality. Perhaps the client (Metamask) and a given server could mutually sign the transaction so when it eventually makes it into the mempool it is clear who put the transaction there.
Re: My First Impressions of Web3
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes - a bit over-simplifying I admit. And Moxie said that it's "early days". However it turns out, it'll be fun to watch.
To be fair Moxie says it's only "early days" in the sense that the technology has failed to advance, since of course a significant quantity of time has passed since inception. In some ways, cryptocurrency’s failure to scale beyond relatively nascent engineering is what makes it possible to consider the days “early,” *since objectively it has already been a decade or more*.
To be fair, (and I am by no means a fanboy), blockchain's decade isn't that long of a time.
Look at the history of the internet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet
The use of technologies is not always obvious or immediately successful.
Re: My First Impressions of Web3
#374While 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…
I think this is the right take.
I'd add that having a globally readable ledger encourages interoperability in ways we can't yet appreciate.
I believe that ERC-731 is valuable for the same reason that GIF89a is valuable.
I don't think anyone in 1989 could have predicted meme culture and the importance of the gif, but it happened because an enabling technology (communicate with animations) arrived and people started experimenting.
NFTs will probably become part of daily life in unexpected ways, because an enabling technology (cryptographic ownership of assets) has arrived and people are starting to experiment.
Re: My First Impressions of Web3
#375Once again I was hoping for a discussion of IPFS, DAT and Hyper. I've written post of an implementation for HyperSwarm and am impressed by the possibilities for decentralization. Does anyone know of a similar article for web3 that excludes the blockchain?
> Does anyone know of a similar article for web3 that excludes the blockchain?
Unfortunately in a lot of people minds web3 is "blockchain", just like crypto now just means blockchain, how hacker used to mean something else etc.
Not sure if the battle is completely lost, but I' wouldn't mind alternate name for such technologies.
As someone who used to spend some tile playing around with IPFS, and freenet, I find that unfortunate.
Re: My First Impressions of Web3
#376I view the final two conclusions points, that people do not want to run their own servers and that we need to make software easier to build/run, to be one and the same. Is the reason people don't want to run a server because it's just so difficult and expensive to keep a computer online in your living room (remembering that a smaller deployment doesn't need 20 nines of uptime), or is it because the UX of running serv…
The internet as it exists today for the vast majority of people simply isn't well-equipped for everyone to have their own servers. Imagine a small server box that you could simply plug into the wall and give your wifi credentials. You still have the solve the NAT issue. You still have to secure the publicly routable box somehow and constantly apply updates, or backdate when (not if) something breaks. In parts of the bay, PG&E goes offline every time the wind blows. Does everything in your digital life go offline with it?
There's a lot that goes into running a reasonably reliable server.
Re: My First Impressions of Web3
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
As the article points out, many NFTs are implemented by storing a URL in the blockchain; the digital artwork sits on some server and is reachable by that link. Fine, you can prove that you own the URL. But what that URL points to can change out from under you, so there's no way to make that trustless. If you own the domain and the server that it points to, the registrar can take the domain away from you and give it t…
So, this has a really easy fix. The NFT points to a content hash, and the content is uploaded to the Internet Archive (and they're compensated for the storage) as part of the NFT minting process. Your ownership is now on a distributed ledger, with a cryptographic hash of the content, paired with long term storage of said digital artwork. The Internet Archive's costs are ~$2/GB to store content in perpetuity, which se…
But then it’s just back to trust based web2, you’re trusting internet archive. That’s his point: this isn’t leading to trust less decentralization in practice. To do that, you’d have to store the NFT data on chain, which is prohibitively expensive
Re: My First Impressions of Web3
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
As the article points out, many NFTs are implemented by storing a URL in the blockchain; the digital artwork sits on some server and is reachable by that link. Fine, you can prove that you own the URL. But what that URL points to can change out from under you, so there's no way to make that trustless. If you own the domain and the server that it points to, the registrar can take the domain away from you and give it t…
So, this has a really easy fix. The NFT points to a content hash, and the content is uploaded to the Internet Archive (and they're compensated for the storage) as part of the NFT minting process. Your ownership is now on a distributed ledger, with a cryptographic hash of the content, paired with long term storage of said digital artwork. The Internet Archive's costs are ~$2/GB to store content in perpetuity, which se…
Is there any market pressure that will demand a change to the cryptographic hash? Is any of the current speculation concerned in any way about the content hosted at the URL, or just the current value of the NFT and what you can sell it for.
Re: My First Impressions of Web3
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, this has a really easy fix. The NFT points to a content hash, and the content is uploaded to the Internet Archive (and they're compensated for the storage) as part of the NFT minting process. Your ownership is now on a distributed ledger, with a cryptographic hash of the content, paired with long term storage of said digital artwork. The Internet Archive's costs are ~$2/GB to store content in perpetuity, which se…
But then it’s just back to trust based web2, you’re trusting internet archive. That’s his point: this isn’t leading to trust less decentralization in practice. To do that, you’d have to store the NFT data on chain, which is prohibitively expensive
> But then it’s just back to trust based web2, you’re trusting internet archive.
Correct, because it's clear storing the content in web2 Internet Archive is superior ("you’d have to store the NFT data on chain, which is prohibitively expensive"). They will persist regardless of web3 shenanigans, and hash addressing ensures content integrity. You could even use a torrent to store and serve the content (again, which uses hashes to identify and preserve integrity of content).
Why would one trust a distributed ledger over a centralized archive run by folks whose primary focus is on preservation of the bits they're storing? The economic benefit of running storage nodes of encrypted content is unlikely to ever be sufficient to provide the same economic incentives a corporation or non profit realizes by offering the durability a centralized service provides (due to scale).
EDIT: @Ragnarork It seems like web3 is making some promises it can't keep?
Re: My First Impressions of Web3
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Couldn't Rolex issue a PGP signed CSV of all valid Rolex serial numbers once a month on IPFS and you'd get the exact same security and trust profile without having to involve any "web3" feature? A serial number can be copied and engraved onto a forged watch, so not really. A more analogous scenario would be if Rolex embedded an NFC hardware chip with a private key inside the watch, such that anyone could wave their…
Well sure but that's the "analog gap" problem. NFTs don't fix that, do they? In the end there'll have to be something that will tie a given NFT to a given watch, and one way or the other it'll be the same issue as tying my CSV to a given watch.
I agree, one can’t easily tie an NFT to a physical object. Nothing guarantees that the watch and NFT change ownership in tandem.
All I’m saying is that a serial number doesn’t really prove anything because it’s trivial to copy. A private key inextricable from the object would be better, because it could generate timestamped signatures as proof.