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My First Impressions of Web3

moxie.org

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Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#511

Post by techsin101 »

bern4444 wrote: post #505
techsin101 wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except those files/data has to be stored somewhere, and if server decides you don't own it, then regardless of how many NFTs you own for that data it is gone. Buying NFT is buying a referral to actual product, not even IOU.

I agree but those files are already stored somewhere - your PC, kindle, cloud account etc. On top of which, purchasing a movie via the Google Play Store or a book via Kindle doesn't mean you actually own that digital asset, just that you have access to it (which can be revoked by the platform). What I imagine being possible here is to transfer ownership of the pointer to that digital asset from your account to a frie…

If I buy something from Google Play Store, then I'm legally entitled to it, and if Google refuses to give it to me I can make them refund the money or give me the digital asset I own via legal system. NFT has no such requirement and NFT NEEDs legal system then written paper with two parties signature is just as valid.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#512

Post by arcticbull »

v1vek wrote: post #355
threeseed wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in theory I can build a social network and become bigger than Facebook. The reality however is that market dynamics, acquisition costs, network effects etc prevent this from happening. And these aren't things that crypto can really solve.

No you can't - the social graph is private.

Why would that stop you?

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#513

Post by micromacrofoot »

dragonwriter wrote: post #473
micromacrofoot wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where it falls apart for me too, people are paying huge sums for artificially scarce links to someone else’s server? I keep feeling like I’m missing something.

No, they are paying huge sums for a digital certificate of ownership of the content on some else’s server; the link is just the description of what they are certified to own, like the address on a deed. (There's all kinds of problems with it, sure, but they aren't paying for the link.)

ok so you own a certificate that describes the content of a link

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#514

Post by AlexandrB »

dragonwriter wrote: post #473
micromacrofoot wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where it falls apart for me too, people are paying huge sums for artificially scarce links to someone else’s server? I keep feeling like I’m missing something.

No, they are paying huge sums for a digital certificate of ownership of the content on some else’s server; the link is just the description of what they are certified to own, like the address on a deed. (There's all kinds of problems with it, sure, but they aren't paying for the link.)

As I understand, most NFTs don't confer any copyrights. So unlike a deed, it's not a certificate of ownership of the content at all. Some other entity still owns the content in the legal sense.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#515

Post by debt »

Just quickly from a technical perspective: web3 is like a useful wrapper around json-rpc which etherereum nodes use as a comms protocol.

You can just use whatever off the shell cli thing that supports json-rpc and talk directly to the mainnet.

Web3 is more of a concept that involves wrapping those complicated and cumbersome raw json-rpc calls(deploy a contract, compile a contract etc) into simple libraries. There’s literally a bazillion web3 libraries in many different programming languages. It simplifies talking to the ethereum mainnet.

I think they tackled it a little too high level in their post; missing the fact it’s really just a costly distributed state store you interact with via json-rpc with a shitty wrapper everyone basically calls web3.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#516

Post by adam_arthur »

atweiden wrote: post #490
adam_arthur wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 invent…

Well, I fully expect cryptos to implode akin to 2018 in the near future.

There's no tie to real world value... Everything is self referential and only implies value within world of crypto.

I do think there's potential behind the concept of standard protocols for "open source data", but blockchains have not delivered on the premise very well.

It's just one pyramid/ponzi scheme after the other, designed with self enrichment in mind first, as you say.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#517

Post by michaelsbradley »

From the post:

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

Fair enough, but there are active efforts to develop ultra-light clients for Ethereum together with the concept of "portal network":

https://github.com/ethereum/portal-network-specs/

https://our.status.im/nimbus-fluffly/

> there’s not even a word for an actual untrusted client/server interface that will have to exist somewhere, and no acknowledgement that if successful there will ultimately be billions (!) more clients than servers.

I would not say there's "no acknowledgement" of this; depending on how deep you are in the space, it's pretty obvious that the goal is to have layered networks and mission specific networks (storage vs. messaging vs. consensus), all economically incentivized, that are p2p through and through, from the resource constrained devices of end consumers to the staking nodes that secure the networks. That's the hope, the goal, and the focus of ongoing efforts.

The opposite of the missing word is "a node in a p2p network".

The points made about the difficulty in evolving protocols quickly are not lost on me, but I guess I'm more optimistic than the author that it will happen relatively quickly in coming years, including this one. In the process, there will be opportunities seized where the protocols fall short and half-measures or worse (with respect to decentralization) will generate excitement for a time. That seems like "growing pains" to me.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#518

Post by michaelsbradley »

endisneigh wrote: post #482
michaelsbradley wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

In terms of TPS, or what do you think is the orange?

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#519

Post by uncomputation »

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.

You’re still relying on one central server though because of the fundamental problem OP laid out: the blockchain is designed for servers, not clients. There is no API inherent to any chain and thus one must be grafted over it by a web server. Things will tend toward one or two companies because those will be the ones who can afford to run such services and then they will have funding to create more features and better documentation and do dev evangelism and you know the rest. Just look what happened already once OpenSea removed his NFT.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#520

Post by this_user »

devadvance wrote: post #17

This is a really well-thought-out, nuanced take. I really appreciate mixture of "but there are still servers", not being able to stop a gold rush, and (refreshingly) the technical take on the implementation details. It stands in such stark contrast to other content. For example, a web3 chat app announcement I saw yesterday [1]. I even joined the Discord to learn more and just found...hype. I found this parenthetical…

The fundamental problem with decentralisation is that it will always be less efficient than a centralised solution due to the overhead necessary for coordinating the system. This means increased costs of some nature. In order to justify those costs, the decentralised system has to add a sufficient amount of value compared to the centralised solution. And not only is that usually not the case, but, as Moxie points out, it is usually the opposite, because a centralised system can iterate more quickly.

And that is also true for the crypto/web3 world: Outside of some niches, it does not add any value. Almost anything it can do, existing centralised technologies can do better. The only reason they haven't so far is that most of these things are not terribly useful to begin with.

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