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My First Impressions of Web3

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Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#561

Post by sbierwagen »

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…

>and move toward the decentralized end state that apologists are hoping for.

Is there any evidence that this is actually happening? It seems rather backwards! Is the maximalist argument here that these companies are going to build out all this infrastructure, move the global financial system onto it, and then rip it apart and rewrite it to be entirely distributed afterwards? Why? If the point is to be distributed, wouldn't they want it to be distributed first?

Where are the blockchains with full-fat clients that can actually run on normal mobile devices? And if they actually exist, does anybody use them? Like, for normal, actual uses, not "shilling this app makes my portfolio go up 300% before I dump it on some clueless bagholder, to the moon rocket emoji rocket emoji".

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#562

Post by brentis »

Loved the perspective. It does feel like those technologies which get "wrapped" open sourced or otherwise by first movers feel this way.

A few points which hope to not conflict with pinned rules:

- Ethereum has outlived it's usefulness. Cost me several thousand dollars closing token positions last month. Swore off anything on this chain. People literally cannot move their $100 worth of alts because of the fees. (my kids, test coins, etc).

- Your statement about centralization is what made me move most of my interest to mobile crypto. One coin does mining on phones and sends their to/from via mobile. See this as the way for true-er decentralization. Still have app issues associated from Apple & Google. Further think new $600 reporting reg for Cashapp/PayPal will increase mobile p2p interest - for some reason

- I'm not a dev, but OP's points made me wonder about The Graph (GRT) and perhaps ATOM as ways to ensure data has an outlet in the case where something like Openseas gains too much power?

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#563

Post by nixpulvis »

walterbell wrote: post #238
nixpulvis wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do we mean by this? I feel like it's a matter of OS improvement that will enable people to manage the software side of their own servers in as little (or less) effort than managing cloud platforms or even VPCs. Ideally in a standard way. Why is learning Dropbox any easier than learning to copy a file to some other FTP serving software? The clouds are just making $$ to support you, though that often turns on it's…

> I want my ISPs to give me a static IP more easily so I can more in this direction without worrying about weird dynamic DNS issues. Tailscale appears to have solved this problem. There are related open-source projects.

I'm not sure I would call this "solved", since it's effectively just a replacement for the DNS servers in effect.

What I want is no additional dependencies, esspecially on dynamic and slow to propagate services. Not to mention that my current dynamic DNS (through tplink) seems to be filtered by a lot of firewalls or something.

ISPs providing a static IPv6 would be a simple solution that I should be able to create my own DNS records for convienence. No external VPN or otherwise.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#564

Post by spyder »

magicalhippo wrote: post #494
bricemo wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If the NFT contained the content hash, your and the creators public keys, a signed timestamp, and the signature of those parts by the content creator, then the content could be stored elsewhere no? Obviously you'd want to keep a copy yourself, but at least you could then prove to others the file you have really is the one the creator sold, no? No expert at these crypto things, in either sense, am I missing something?

Yes, but the problem is many of them don't even include the hash, and you also need a way to verify the creator and his/her public key.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#565

Post by nemothekid »

yed wrote: post #547
lekevicius wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, it's difficult for me to find a truly charitable interpretation of this response. But I'll do my best. Blockchains started very simply. Famously, Bitcoin's whitepaper is just a couple of pages long. Simple systems are nice, but they can't solve every problem. As problems were discovered, solutions were proposed. Most solutions were themselves the simplest solutions to a given problem, so naturally, as new…

> This is not unique to crypto - see, for example, HTTP, or HDMI… HTTP and HDMI provided actually useful things to regular people despite their shortcomings. Crypto has been solving technical problem after technical problem for over a decade but has yet to offer anything useful to a non-enthusiast. > Another issue is that the goalpost is ever-shifting. We have truly distributed apps. And the only thing they are usefu…

>Crypto has been solving technical problem after technical problem for over a decade but has yet to offer anything useful to a non-enthusiast.

This is too dismissive of Crypto. I’m not a crypto bro but Bitcoin did actually solve a real problem: a completely digital decentralized immutable record. I hesitate to call it a currency, but it created something that was digitally scarce . The economic value it created can be seen in the Silk Road or in ransomware.

At one point the internet was also a problem looking for a solution too so I don’t think it’s a fair criticism of the technology.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#567

Post by uncomputation »

derangedHorse wrote: post #546
simias wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But see, this is where I get lost in this concept. Should Jagex fold and the game become unplayable, what do you own? An entry in a database that says that you once had this item but you can't do anything with it? Why is that valuable? I can sort of see the argument if other game developers allow for these items to be reused in other environments, and that's something pushed by NFT enthusiasts, but I don't see how th…

>Should Jagex fold and the game become unplayable, what do you own? An entry in a database that says that you once had this item but you can't do anything with it? Why is that valuable? Sometimes just ownership of something is valuable in itself. That's the whole idea of collectibles, it's not always tied to its original utility. Think having an original SNES versus an emulator on a computer or an original Picasso vs…

> Sometimes just ownership of something is valuable in itself. That's the whole idea of collectibles, it's not always tied to its original utility. Think having an original SNES versus an emulator on a computer or an original Picasso vs a digital jpeg copy.

But with a Picasso the scarcity is inherent in its physicality: there is only one in existence. With digital data, it is infinitely reproducible and fungible. If I replaced a JPG with a bit-for-bit copy, no one would notice nor care. Not so with a Picasso. So, NFTs are supposed to come in a make a record of your purchase of this JPG, but unlike the Picasso, this JPG does not physically exist. It must be stored somewhere and, unlike the Picasso, this has an ongoing cost. You don’t need to pay to store the Picasso (although most collectors certainly don’t just keep it in their house, they could). But you do need to pay someone - whether a company or a decentralized network - to keep storing your JPG and once you stop, it’s gone forever. It seems like it would be more future proof if Jagex just mailed you a physical print of the JPG and a certificate of authenticity.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#568

Post by eezurr »

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…

>Another moment I would critique is the clever NFT, that displays different things. Yes, ERC-721 allows any URL as metadata file, so you can put traditional DNS-resolved URL there. But I would struggle to find any "respected" NFT collection that actually does that. Almost every high quality NFT project (Art Blocks, BAYC, so on) has IPFS as metadata URL, and goes as far as to freeze metadata, so it couldn't ever be changed.

The problem with digital art is that it is infinitely copyable (at no cost) and untraceable (with little effort, and a huge/impossible effort to trace backwards). There's nothing stopping an artist from selling a work of art as edition 1 of 1, and then a month later "minting" another copy or 10. Secondly, there's no way to prove the image uploaded is from the original owner. What happens if someone steals someone else's work, mints an NFT and sells it, and the buyer finds out the next day?

Thus, I cant be convinced a "respected" NFT collection / distributor can exist.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#569

Post by roywiggins »

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…

I guess at least if you keep a copy of your NFT you can start serving it over IPFS yourself if whoever is hosting it can't be bothered anymore, or pay a service to on your behalf. It's sort of the ideal use-case for content-based addressing, I would think, since you're trying to prove some sort of connection with/ownership of/patronage over a piece of content. And it should be more long term resilient than a centralized solution as long as the NFT owners themselves don't lose their own files. At least the incentives are aligned (if you own the NFT you will want to keep at least one copy, if only so you can show it to potential buyers!)

It seems a substantially less silly idea than pointing a token at a url that you don't control. I guess I'm surprised that NFTs aren't all hosted on IPFS or something like it, if only as a backup. Like, have these people not heard of linkrot?

But I guess as long as the buyers don't realize yet that their immutable ledger entry can become a dangling pointer in a puff of smoke, it doesn't matter.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#570

Post by soffer »

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."

Check out Pocket Network, it's a web3 network protocol that incentivizes node operators to run ethereum nodes (and other blockchains). Effectively decentralizes Infura / Alchemy https://www.pokt.network/
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