My First Impressions of Web3 • Hacker News Board

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#481

Post by endisneigh » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 2:17 AM UTC

everfree wrote: post #217

endisneigh wrote: post #79

If you care about the environment even a little bit (like turning off lights in rooms you're not occupying) then you will reject Web3. Even the most efficient blockchains use more energy than the status quo unnecessarily. This is also to say nothing of the fact that it's more expensive per USD/KB transferred, slower and more complicated. I think what Web3 should be is a way to use your laptop or any commodity compute…

> it uses your computer as the source as opposed to their own servers > this comment could be saved on my computer, but accessible to everyone viewing even if my computer is off via caching It sounds to me like you're just renaming datacenters from "origin" to "cache", without any meaningful difference in how the data is stored and retrieved in practice.

Yes, exactly. The origin should be those who create the data to begin with, ideally.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#482

Post by endisneigh » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 2:18 AM UTC

michaelsbradley wrote: post #315

endisneigh wrote: post #79

If you care about the environment even a little bit (like turning off lights in rooms you're not occupying) then you will reject Web3. Even the most efficient blockchains use more energy than the status quo unnecessarily. This is also to say nothing of the fact that it's more expensive per USD/KB transferred, slower and more complicated. I think what Web3 should be is a way to use your laptop or any commodity compute…

> If you care about the environment even a little bit (like turning off lights in rooms you're not occupying) then you will reject Web3. Even the most efficient blockchains use more energy than the status quo unnecessarily. On an Intel NUC (Core i3, low power mode) I'm running a non-mining Ethereum 1 full node[1] plus a staking Ethereum 2 node[2] (comprising two active validators) on mainnet. Measured with a Kill A W…

Your comparison is meaningless because you're not comparing apples to apples.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#483

Post by baby » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 2:18 AM UTC

betterunix2 wrote: post #476

distrill wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think we've seen that fast consolidation in other early tech I actually struggled with this point throughout the article. I'm not sure I see this as a parallel trend toward centralization like we saw with web2 - but rather that this is how software is built today and this is what we're comfortable with. It doesn't seem unnatural or problematic to me that we will start with something that approximates the wo…

Why would we ever move toward decentralization? It is almost always easier to have at least some central point of control in any distributed system, even the Internet (IANA, RIRs, etc.). It is also very difficult to remove a centralized control point after a system is already deployed, especially if the system supports heterogenous clients (as it is likely that some clients will be slow to switch to the new design, a…

decentralization in the blockchain world is really to provide security and interoperability by emulating centralized services. So essentially it looks like a centralized service, but it's more secure than a centralized service.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#484

Post by barmstrong » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 2:18 AM UTC

Really liked this post - brings up some great points, and I consider Moxie a friend.

Here are a few notes that came to mind though...

1. For NFTs, some keep their data in IPFS (decentralized file storage) or in the smart contract itself for procedurally generated images. We (as a community) should probably move more to solutions like this over time, since it is indeed more decentralized to build them that way.

2. I agree with the overall point that clients don't behave like full nodes. However, there has been quite a bit of discussion about "light clients" in the crypto community even going back to the early days of Bitcoin/Ethereum, so i wouldn't say it hasn't been an area of focus.

3. I agree there is an overall move toward using platforms. But there is a big difference between using a platform that also owns all the data also (web2) and a platform that is merely a proxy to decentralized data (web3). In the latter, if a platform ever turns evil, people will switch. Not owning the data counts for a lot.

4. There are more options than Infura and Alchemy. Access to simple blockchain data will be relatively commoditized. Which is good for decentralization.

As Moxie points out, it's still difficult to build things in a decentralized way (nascent tools), so you are seeing various apps/companies revert to using more centralized web2 techniques when they run into a hairy technical problem. As a result, there are a lot of "hybrid" web2/web3 apps during this phase of web3 development. That doesn't mean the overall trend is bad though. I think it's great that more and more web3/decentralized technologies are being developed.

I do agree that all networks tend toward centralization over time. Great book on this https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empire...

I don't think crypto is anywhere near this end stage though. We are still seeing a lot of new technology and players enter the space. It's not "already centralized" as much as it is "still using some web2 components".

These points aside, the post is great and I basically agree with the overall premise.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#485

Post by endisneigh » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 2:18 AM UTC

dqpb wrote: post #165

endisneigh wrote: post #79

If you care about the environment even a little bit (like turning off lights in rooms you're not occupying) then you will reject Web3. Even the most efficient blockchains use more energy than the status quo unnecessarily. This is also to say nothing of the fact that it's more expensive per USD/KB transferred, slower and more complicated. I think what Web3 should be is a way to use your laptop or any commodity compute…

Algorand is carbon-negative. The inventor is a Turing-award winning MIT professor.

Nope. Still worse than status quo + planting trees via partners, which is exactly what alogrand does...

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#486

Post by CryptoPunk » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 2:19 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...

Control of distribution is a problem, but control of data makes it much harder for users to switch away from them and use a different distributor.

>>For example: Spotify doesn't own any music copyrights

It has licensing agreements with numerous record labels.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#487

Post by lmarcos » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 2:19 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #330

not2b wrote: post #166

Earlier 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…

Honest question: at this point why don't we skip the NFT part and just keep the URL and the content in the Internet Archive?

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#488

Post by tshaddox » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 2:20 AM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #196

tshaddox wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that you do need to use Google and Facebook if you want to interact with their data. They literally gate-keep the access to their data. It's not just inconvenient to host your own server that discovers peers and syncs the entire log of all historical events on the Facebook social network and allows you to write new events to that log which those peers will recognize. That's impossible (or at least, it would re…

Heh. “Illegal hacking effort”? In the EU, it's illegal for Facebook to prevent this. In fact, there's even an export button, which gives you quite a lot of the historical data (though not all of it). To get events, just scrape the Facebook website using Selenium and Python. There are online tutorials for this. Harder than it should be, I'll be the first to admit, but easier than blockchain-based systems. (Blockchain…

That covers exporting one user’s data at one point in time, sure. But you can’t read all public events without significant work on a scraper, and you certainly can’t contribute without going through Facebook’s servers. Of course you’re not forced to use Facebook, but in order to use Facebook you must go through their computer systems on their terms.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#489

Post by Uehreka » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 2:21 AM UTC

distrill wrote: post #459

bko wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The centralization of apis (infura, opensea and ethscan used by metamask) is the biggest problem. I could be wrong, but I don't think we've seen that fast consolidation in other early tech. I remember in the late 90s there were a number of search engines but no one really owned the space. Only 20 years later did Google emerge as the winner and is (IMO) by far the best in terms of relevant results. But that didn't hap…

> I don't think we've seen that fast consolidation in other early tech I actually struggled with this point throughout the article. I'm not sure I see this as a parallel trend toward centralization like we saw with web2 - but rather that this is how software is built today and this is what we're comfortable with. It doesn't seem unnatural or problematic to me that we will start with something that approximates the wo…

But why would it do that though? I’d like to hear a falsifiable theory of how that would happen, because as of right now it’s not happening, and no one seems able to explain what big thing is going to change. If the biggest part of the change (using the blockchain) isn’t causing the dynamic to shift, what future change will?

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#490

Post by atweiden » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 2:21 AM UTC

adam_arthur wrote: post #426

beoberha wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s extremely disingenuous to say we have “nothing”. The EVM and smart contracts really are amazing technology that I hope any technical person could appreciate, even if they don’t see a practical application.

I think OP was implying something of real world value. I can see the hypothetical value in decentralized computing/public database. Certain types of data could in theory be stored publicly, and anybody could build APIs around them. In particular, it would be cool if there was some common protocol and storage format for something like tweets, such that anybody could build Twitter client. Common protocol would especial…

> But all that being said, why has nothing real world value oriented materialized yet?

Because Ethereum was founded by early Bitcoiners to raise bitcoin for themselves, and the technology always came second to the pursuit of self-enrichment. Software projects can never lose their soul. If the soul was rotten from the very beginning, as the saying goes: “garbage in, garbage out”.

I sincerely doubt if any of the inventors of the marketing phrase “web 3” ever thought it would come to this: where their investors are so desperate for yield that they begin taking the term seriously. Not that it matters to the founders of Ethereum, many of whom have long since become secretive Bitcoin billionaires.

The Ethereum project is best described as a series of cynical courtship displays designed purely to bootstrap the “network effect” for their newly created confidence game called ETH, which in 2014 they sold to — to borrow their own legal terminology — “philanthropists” in exchange for “donations”. A process they swore up and down bore no similarity at all to a securities offering.

People not privy to the way cryptocurrency works are shocked to find the various buzzwords hatched by the Ethereum people for their own self-enrichment in the described legacy era of ICOs turn out to be a whole lot of nothing. They shouldn’t be shocked, they should be embarassed for lowering themselves to investing in such a system, or angry if they did so in ignorance.