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My First Impressions of Web3

moxie.org

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Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#831

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #420
codehalo wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like you (and a vast majority of HN including Moxie) is tying web3 to several centralized front ends (Metamask/OpenSea). I saw this back in the 90's when a lot of people thought the internet was "Internet Explorer".

It's a step up from the "crypto isn't crypto" mantra that many used to repeat, refusing to even look at how it works. Not sure why it took something as silly as art NFTs, but it does seem that now even those who previously tried avoiding cryptocurrencies at all cost have at least started looking at them critically. He does point out some real problems. Yes, all this has been discussed in the Ethereum community alread…

This is exactly the attitude that moves us forward. "Us" not being just those who happen to get in early on the solutions to the solvable problems, but hopefully including everyone who can get a benefit from using truly decentralized services.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#832

Post by walterbell »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #794
pkcsecurity wrote: post #754

Moxie makes so many good critiques (some are so subtle, it might be worth a second read). I got the sense he’s trying very hard to be even handed and constructive about a situation he feels pretty badly about, but his true feelings are bleeding through in some of the side points / parentheticals. One point that I disagree with is his almost axiomatic premise that decentralization is an inherent good and the implicati…

it's impossible to talk about trust without talking about cryptography. from an implementation pov "trust" is a distraction where anyone can quickly derail any argument citing "Trusting Trust" or "the show me the root of trust" ... So to avoid meta-discussions talking about cryptography instead of trust skips the noise and goes straight to the heart of the issue. Consider this: - Talking about cryptography is hard bu…

Instead of cookie warnings, could every NFT/web3/crypt0 discussion be preceded by a warning about implicit trust?

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#834

Post by jakupovic »

The article is written great and was enjoyable to read. I do have issues with how it is focused on NFT marketplace to the detriment of explaining what the real benefit of the blockchain/crypto is. Which I am going to try and explain to the best of my ability. Here goes. The article omits to mention that whatever is stored in the blockchain is immutable. This means that there is not google or Zuckerberg behind it all with ability to actually change what's on the chain as this is not possible at all. Instead the author focuses on the ability of OpenSea to remove things from their marketplace and also how it uses centralized apis to get the info. This, while true, is orthogonal to the immutable ledger use case which is still true.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#835

Post by _heimdall »

menzoic wrote: post #791
_heimdall wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get me wrong its good that the option is there, but short of coding and operating your own full node Metamask will still be trusting a centralized third party

You don't need to code a full node. It's software than you run via a cli interface

If the goal is to remove trust in a third party you would either need to code or verify the software before running it. Short of that and you still have to trust whoever coded it and all the distribution infrastructure that let you download it.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#836

Post by sriku »

Very well raised points!

Having a cryptographer taking up this topic has become a rarity, and that says something. I have not delved into the NFT world much, although I am quite familiar with blockchains and smart contracts. I've argued with more knowledgeable colleagues and friends that there is not much meaning in "owning" the hash of a piece of art for various reasons - a) you don't possess the art and are the mercy of systems which you need to do anything with it, b) someone can make an imperceptible modification to the art and invalidate the hash while retaining full artistic value except perhaps as a pedantic statement ... and then some.

What baffled me is that the accepted protocol for NFTs currently just requires a URL, any URL! ... with no hash validation! How did the blockchain world get here? Well, perhaps a IPFS URL would be "best practice", but it is shocking that currently any URL with no content validation goes! It should be impossible to mint an NFT for a URL with no content validation.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#837

Post by bambax »

> When you think about it, OpenSea would actually be much “better” in the immediate sense if all the web3 parts were gone. It would be faster, cheaper for everyone, and easier to use.

I really love this idea. Why doesn't a company with already established authority (say, Google) build this? An NFT-free NFT marketplace. That would be hilarious, as well as probably useful.

Or maybe someone else than an established player, but then with some mechanism to compensate for the lack of intrinsic authority. For example, a database with a hash of the whole db stored on a blockchain. To keep costs low, the hash could be stored only every x inserts (or, for a fee, one could force a hash store after a given transaction).

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#838

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

wyck wrote: post #206
clarle wrote: post #25

As an engineer, I feel like this single post helped me better understand Web3 and how it worked under the hood better than any of the heavily hyped Discord and Twitter announcements of new projects over the past year. It's interesting how tightly coupled Metamask is to all of the other big crypto / NFT marketplaces. Feels like the "distributed web" portion of it has just been an over-exaggeration all along.

MetaMask is a wallet, its not ingrained into any blockchain, your free to use alternatives, and many protocols don't support it. The centralized aspect of a chrome app and marketplace like opensea is very well know issue and talked about a lot in crypto, the problem of course comes down to lack of education, which is apparent in this very post.

People are certainly free to use alternatives, but if they aren't spinning up their own nodes what will they be using, another centralized node service? Most people aren't going to run their own node and for good reason, its expensive and profitless. Sure a cryptographic/economic layer on top of Ethereum could incentivize people to run nodes and have users pay for decentralization, but at the end of the day people will use Infura or a competitor because it is cheaper, and when these companies control who gets transactions they also influence who can make blocks.

Ethereum is fundamentally flawed in this sense - it only pays for mining (and in the future, staking). The work of routing and storing data is done by the most prolific miners and businesses reliant on Ethereum to keep it from collapsing; there is no sustainable model where a decentralized cohort of nodes can run Ethereum without fundamentally changing how Ethereum pays for infrastructure.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#839

Post by machiaweliczny »

simias wrote: post #29

>When you think about it, OpenSea would actually be much “better” in the immediate sense if all the web3 parts were gone. It would be faster, cheaper for everyone, and easier to use. That sums up the situation for me. Having a marketplace for purely digital goods might be a concept with a future. Having standard ways to interoperate between different platforms and query and update these goods might make sense (althou…

I am only interested by money aspect of crypto and especially on ability to fund companies easily via labor (actually that worked well in Communism). Will see if central bank currencies will allow for the same. That could be big boost to economy and big hit to VCs so I expect this to come from EU.

All those creator economy apps show that there's a need to democratise economy. I am again tempted to quote hustlers here.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#840

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

password1 wrote: post #281
wyck wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MetaMask is a wallet, its not ingrained into any blockchain, your free to use alternatives, and many protocols don't support it. The centralized aspect of a chrome app and marketplace like opensea is very well know issue and talked about a lot in crypto, the problem of course comes down to lack of education, which is apparent in this very post.

Can you point me to where this insightful discussion happens? And where can I educate myself? 99,99% of content and forums I find online about crypto only care about promoting coins, nfts or services basing only on futuristic visionary promises, hyping up the users and attempts at FOMO. It's almost literal spam. This is the first time I read something that just explains how thing works from a technical standpoint and…

David Lancashire has given numerous interviews on the subject of Ethereum's issues around node operation.
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