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My First Impressions of Web3

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Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#801

Post by robbiep »

spiddy wrote: post #795
betterunix2 wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is a point to be made here that is an important difference between web2 and web3+centralized apis. On the latter companies do not have lock-in of the data, which provides a big incentive to not be evil. the moment someone can make a case for bad play they have the advantage to shift the market to a different platform. Unfortunately this is not so easy on web2 because of the data that locks users on those platfo…

This is probably the best argument I have seen in favour of web3

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#802

Post by sildur »

hk__2 wrote: post #746
can16358p wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the URL points to a decentralized and immutable file storage system instead of a regular URL with a domain/IP?

This solves the problem while creating a new (big) one: make this decentralized and immutable file storage work.

They already exist, and work. IPFS, for example.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#803

Post by hoyd »

coffeecat wrote: post #617
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.

> I keep feeling like I’m missing something. Nope, you're not missing anything. NFTs are the world's most convoluted and expensive way to store a bookmark.

Thanks for that comment

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#804

Post by bambax »

m12k wrote: post #722
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.

>I keep feeling like I’m missing something You are missing something - a huge position in crypto. Like the article points out, your existing investment would benefit from all the hype that a slew of crypto-oriented services and products could give. Irrespective of whether those same services could be implemented "better" using standard centralized tech. And - amusingly - irrespective of whether those services offer p…

Yes, well, the fundamental reason is not what any individual owns, it's that (as the article brilliantly points out) these positions make it a gold rush.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#805

Post by mikewarot »

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

People don't trust their computers on the open internet enough to run them as servers. No computer running Linux, Windows, or MacOS exposed to raw internet is safe.

This is subject to disruption, should sufficiently well designed microkernel based OSs arrive on the scene before the war for general purpose computing is lost.

Personally, once I get a capability based OS as a daily driver, the first thing I'm going to try out is running a few servers on it, and persistently checking for trouble.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#806

Post by deepGem »

" that URL often just points to some VPS running Apache somewhere. Anyone with access to that machine, anyone who buys that domain name in the future, or anyone who compromises that machine can change the image, title, description, etc for the NFT to whatever they’d like at any time (regardless of whether or not they “own” the token). "

This is how I felt when I first created a NFT. Man, the contract is so secure and all that but the raw asset - forget about it.

https://twitter.com/pbanavara/status/1457675453565599748?s=2...

What I deduced was that the chain will somehow reject any other contract referencing the duplicate asset and only preserve the original contract. Something similar happened on OpenSea with Moxie but isn't this centralisation ?

But doesn't this apply to all off chain assets ? Essentially any underlying data for a smart contract, because you know storing even a byte of data on chain costs a lot.

So the smart contract - essentially a set of instructions is distributed, decentralised but prone to security lapses ( a whole another story ) yet somehow the data for these smart contracts is centralised ?

I am so confused.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#807

Post by clippablematt »

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…

fwiw I follow a lot of crypto people on Twitter and 0 of them are following this message app, it has 700 followers and you decide to jump into the discord? To me that’s like getting a random email about a product and saying “yes tell me more” I’m not sure what you are expecting.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#808

Post by dmitriid »

spiddy wrote: post #795
betterunix2 wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is a point to be made here that is an important difference between web2 and web3+centralized apis. On the latter companies do not have lock-in of the data, which provides a big incentive to not be evil. the moment someone can make a case for bad play they have the advantage to shift the market to a different platform. Unfortunately this is not so easy on web2 because of the data that locks users on those platfo…

> the moment someone can make a case for bad play they have the advantage to shift the market to a different platform.

As we have clearly seen with OpenSea and rampant fakes, copies, plagiarism etc. Oh wait...

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#809

Post by yawnxyz »

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…

Enough tooling has been built (IPFS, Polygon, etc) that we're starting to use these tools for computational biology, as part of @lab_dao

This wasn't possible 2 years ago! So I think they have made strides; it's just hard to see

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#810

Post by yawnxyz »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #435
epolanski wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

3 years into the emails, we didn't have something as user-friendly as Hotmail or Gmail
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