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My First Impressions of Web3

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Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#591

Post by eyelidlessness »

> Please don't post generic, shallow, obvious, indignant, and/or dismissive comments—those are repetitive and predictable, we've had more than enough of them, they're tedious, not what this site is for, and we don't need more.

So the only “curious” comments are those which accept the premises of the post. Oh okay, little could make me less interested in finding out whether there’s actually something of value here than proscribing I give its contents merits before I even form my own opinion. I’ll see myself out again.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#592

Post by magicjosh »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #348
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…

This is trivially solved by including a hash of the object in the ownership certificate.

Would that be effective for low-res images like cryptopunks? Or can I create other 24 x 24 px images that have the same hash?

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#593

Post by jagger27 »

yata69420 wrote: post #374
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 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 ex…

> I believe that ERC-731 is valuable for the same reason that GIF89a is valuable.

GIFs can be created, parsed, read, played, copied, deleted on commodity hardware for free. GIFs became popular because they were so easy to exchange because video formats were so heavy and patent encumbered at the time (less so than GIF was, anyway). The cultural phenomenon of reaction GIFs arose because of its accessibility.

Tell me how a child is supposed to safely do the following: easily create a wallet, somehow get some Ethereum, and starts minting and/or buying NFTs. None of that is even remotely comparable to ease of use of GIFs on the internet.

If you want to argue that "cryptographic ownership of assets" is going to be commonplace, that's fine, but only for strictly digital onchain assets. It's never going to apply to any asset in meatspace because humans have sticks and stones to get what they want and renders your claims irrelevant.

If you lose access to your wallet for whatever reason, be it fire, flood, social engineering, forgetting your password, death, solar flare, it's gone forever. If you depended on it for anything important, there's no recourse. Let's say there are cryptocoin insurance companies. How do you prove that you don't secretly still have access to your wallet?

I am not buying it.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#594

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

tompccs wrote: post #363

"With the shift to mobile, we now live firmly in a world of clients and servers – with the former completely unable to act as the latter – and those questions seem more important to me than ever. Meanwhile, ethereum actually refers to servers as “clients,” so 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…

Can you transparently see all the code and databases for the websites you use and all the bank code and transactions?

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#595

Post by dexter89_kp3 »

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…

There are on chain NFTs like cryptopunks. The rest of articles details around API centralization stand true.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#596

Post by yed »

nemothekid wrote: post #565
yed wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Bitcoin did actually solve a real problem: a completely digital decentralized immutable record.

That doesn't describe a problem though, it describes a technical solution.

> I hesitate to call it a currency, but it created something that was digitally scarce.

My comment was about web3 really and the associated hype, not so much cryptocurrencies themselves. I agree there's something there, though not entirely convinced it won't always be illegal sales or scams.

> 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.

I see this repeated a lot but it's just not accurate. E-mail was invented within like 2 years of the internet and immediately allowed universities to exchange messages with one another. It doesn't take a networking enthusiast to see the value in sending a textual message instantly across the globe. Meanwhile I've never seen even a description of a web3 product that doesn't rely on architecture or politics to explain why it's useful.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#598

Post by treelovinhippie »

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."

No post body was provided.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#599

Post by jagger27 »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #591

> Please don't post generic, shallow, obvious, indignant, and/or dismissive comments—those are repetitive and predictable, we've had more than enough of them, they're tedious, not what this site is for, and we don't need more. So the only “curious” comments are those which accept the premises of the post. Oh okay, little could make me less interested in finding out whether there’s actually something of value here tha…

Perhaps this sits better with you:

> Please post unique, deep, interesting, humble, and/or inquisitive comments.

Nothing about that disclaimer suggests you must accept the premises of the post, come on.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#600

Post by cle »

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…

Yes, not dissimilar from torrents. Instead of being name-addressed and requiring the name owner to provide the infrastructure to serve the data (as with HTTPS), data are content-addressed so that anyone can serve the data.

Many NFTs are hosted by NFT platforms, and also by services such as https://nft.storage/ (backed by IPFS & Filecoin). It's quite trivial though to take the IPFS CID and pin it somewhere else (local computer, a pinning service like Pinata, etc.), and anyone can do it at any time. If all you want to do is be able to prove ownership at some point in the future, you don't really need to host the content indefinitely on IPFS...just host it when you need to.

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