My First Impressions of Web3 • Hacker News Board

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#431

Post by Karrot_Kream » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 1:25 AM UTC

pshc wrote: post #404

pavlov wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's one of Moxie's points: how exactly is web3 supposed to be avoiding the centralization that occurred on the web, when it's already at that point.

It’s not the same as web2. These web3 frontends don’t have moats or lock-in like Facebook or Google, because they don’t actually control the data. The data they serve is all from public ledgers. You can switch off of Infura in a second by changing your RPC url.

While in theory you could change your RPC URL, in practice what difference would it make? At least IPFS offers some form of integrity checking through its generated hash. But there's no way to say, for example, that I karrot_kream at time T fetched a URL pointed to by NFT N with contents C. As demonstrated by Moxie's changing NFT and eventual deletion by OpenSea, who _knows_ what will happen to it? It's possible to at least build cryptographic attestations of fetching a particular NFT (and even maybe placing this attestation on-chain, to have some NFT "provenance" going on) but there's really not that much work going into it right now. That's the critique.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#432

Post by chucksmash » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 1:25 AM UTC

password1 wrote: post #281

wyck wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MetaMask is a wallet, its not ingrained into any blockchain, your free to use alternatives, and many protocols don't support it. The centralized aspect of a chrome app and marketplace like opensea is very well know issue and talked about a lot in crypto, the problem of course comes down to lack of education, which is apparent in this very post.

Can you point me to where this insightful discussion happens? And where can I educate myself? 99,99% of content and forums I find online about crypto only care about promoting coins, nfts or services basing only on futuristic visionary promises, hyping up the users and attempts at FOMO. It's almost literal spam. This is the first time I read something that just explains how thing works from a technical standpoint and…

The Daily Thread on https://old.reddit.com/r/ethfinance has a number of folks who are in it for the the tech and generally some pretty good takes on protocol/ecosystem tech. It is better than any other crypto subreddit I've come across.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#433

Post by walterbell » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 1:25 AM UTC

Uehreka wrote: post #399

walterbell wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at Tailscale and open-source alternatives.

Just looked it up, this looks like a tool to let you and your friends create a “private internet” using a VPN. Which is cool (I could see a bunch of uses for this, like SSHing into my home computer while I’m on the go), but I’m talking about the ability to expose a device on your home network to the public internet.

One approach is to use a public proxy + tailscale VPN, https://init8.lol/expose-web-services-at-home-via-tailscale-...

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#434

Post by TimJRobinson » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 1:28 AM UTC

Kognito wrote: post #389

toxicFork wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some NFT platforms operate with IPFS whose URLs are hashes of content. This solves that problem.

I’m not terribly up to date with IPFS (so feel free to correct me), but if I’ve understood it correctly, it’s not dissimilar to Bittorent where files are seeded by interested parties and if no one happens to be seeding any longer, the file is essentially dead? It’s almost like you want some centralised entity to preserve copies of the images these NFTs link to. I wonder how many IPFS-backed NFTs are only being seeded…

Filecoin that you pay to have any files you like mirrored by many people, in a decentralized way.

Arweave is also a one off fee to have the file mirrored forever, the hosters are paid from the yield earned on that fee.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#435

Post by Karrot_Kream » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 1:31 AM UTC

epolanski wrote: post #208

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…

I don't buy the early part. 3 years into the internet we already had emails and tcp. 13 years into blockchains we have nothing.

I don't buy the early part either, but "3 years into the internet we had emails and tcp" is the wrong way to critique it IMO. The "Internet" meaning IP was already the 3rd or 4th (or more) attempt at trying to create a computer networking standard. Predecessors to the internet include: ARPANET, Usenet, FidoNet, BBSes, and CYCLADES, if not more. By the way, Email existed on _all_ of these platforms before TCP or even IP. Usenet used UUCP to transfer Internet Messages (the format used by Email later on). FidoNet had EchoMail. BBSes had their own custom mail message like standards. The Internet also had a direct competitor in the form of France's MiniTel.

In hindsight, it seems like "3 years into the internet we already had emails and TCP", but the seeds for these things had been in the works for a decade plus. It's a testament to the massive success of the internet that we _think_ in hindsight that "3 years into the internet we had emails and tcp".

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#436

Post by pshc » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 1:31 AM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #413

pshc wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the same as web2. These web3 frontends don’t have moats or lock-in like Facebook or Google, because they don’t actually control the data. The data they serve is all from public ledgers. You can switch off of Infura in a second by changing your RPC url.

The problem is that they control distribution – the only thing that matters. You don't need to own the data if you own the eyeballs/mindshare. For example: Spotify doesn't own any music copyrights, yet they own 32% of the music streaming market. The second best is Apple at 16% ... which also doesn't own any of the music. https://www.statista.com/statistics/653926/music-streaming-s...

Yes, web2 incumbents control data and they control distribution. I agree with you there!

aside; sometimes I feel like I’m taking crazy pills because for the last decade or so on HN we’ve been talking about how Big Tech has monopoly control over everything, how they’ve destroyed privacy and monetized eyeballs and engagement to the fullest. And now that a potential decentralized competitor is emerging, the kneejerk reaction is “why not just keep using ”?

(I understand why, cryptocurrency is the whipping boy of the week, and it’s full of scammers, I get it! But I’m not going to pretend I’m happy with the existing crop of centralized services.)

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#437

Post by Zerverus » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 1:32 AM UTC

wyck wrote: post #206

clarle wrote: post #25

As an engineer, I feel like this single post helped me better understand Web3 and how it worked under the hood better than any of the heavily hyped Discord and Twitter announcements of new projects over the past year. It's interesting how tightly coupled Metamask is to all of the other big crypto / NFT marketplaces. Feels like the "distributed web" portion of it has just been an over-exaggeration all along.

MetaMask is a wallet, its not ingrained into any blockchain, your free to use alternatives, and many protocols don't support it. The centralized aspect of a chrome app and marketplace like opensea is very well know issue and talked about a lot in crypto, the problem of course comes down to lack of education, which is apparent in this very post.

No post body was provided.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#438

Post by bsldld » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 1:33 AM UTC

> Blockchains are designed to be a network of peers, but not designed such that it’s really possible for your mobile device...

If I am not mistaken Hyperledger Iroha[0] has(had?) that as one of its goals.

[0] https://github.com/hyperledger/iroha

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#439

Post by als0 » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 1:35 AM UTC

danielrhodes wrote: post #401

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."

I'm curious what would happen if somebody uploaded illegal data (e.g. child porn, sensitive PII, or government secrets) to an Ethereum contract. Would these nodes be legally required to filter it? If you look at something like the Pirate Bay, it's not simply enough that you are an allegedly content-unaware service -- once you become aware of your service being used for or distributing something illegal, you are requi…

FYI it’s already happening https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47130268

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#440

Post by atweiden » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 1:35 AM UTC

ManishR wrote: post #124

> The people at the end of the line who are flipping NFTs do not fundamentally care about distributed trust models or payment mechanics, but they care about where the money is. So the money draws people into OpenSea, they improve the experience by building a platform that iterates on the underlying web3 protocols in web2 space, they eventually offer the ability to “mint” NFTs through OpenSea itself instead of through…

> This raises an interesting question - can a new technology ride the hype-train sufficiently long enough to become mainstream and benefit from network effects and ecosystem dynamics kicking in, even if in its best case scenario - it's only a replacement of status quo and not necessarily an improvement? Historically, any widely adopted technological innovation has had the burden to offer and prove incremental value to society to justify paying the transition costs. But here, the incremental value is being pitched as literal "money" to be made by getting in early - which can be hard to resist for your average joe - notwithstanding their passion or stance on the underlying technology.

If the product is self-enrichment, not technology, then when the “technology customer” — who has, invariably, invested money — starts losing money during a bear market, the vendor has a de facto failed core product on their hands in addition to a ruinous reputation from their prior unscrupulous peddling of a technological dud.