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Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

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Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#61
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution" And it successfully achieved this specific goal, however it never claimed it is a good solution for micro/small payments, which is a requirement for "normal currency". Payments of small amounts require small fees and quick settlement time, neither of which Bitcoin has by design .

Well this is where, as any good developer, you have to look at the requirement and ask "why?" > ... without going through a financial institution. Why? Why don't we want to go through a financial institution? Well, honestly, the only REAL reasons are fees on large transactions, and the desire/preference to be able to conduct activities that are illegal by regulated financial institutions. And that, if we all remember…

I live in a corrupted country with a corrupted government and don't trust my government a single bit.

I'd happily use and adopt crypto. I don't do anything illegal, I just don't want corrupted and evil people having control over my assets.

Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first line of the Bitcoin white paper: > A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Now, if you want to say that it was badly designed for its purpose, that is a different matter.

It will allow it — just not fast, and if you want that, it still allows it, via Layer 2 solutions, many of which guarantee the same security as their Layer 1.

There is no known functional and scalable layer 2 solution. Lightning, as designed, can not scale.

Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Markets are not zero sum in aggregate. Every trade is zero sum-- a buyer has to be matched with a seller at a price. However, the price of an asset can move without any trades. Your perspective would seem to imply that overall economic growth of all markets could not happen without an equivalent amount of loss somewhere else. Clearly this is not the case.

Cryptocurrency trading is not the same as a regular market. None of the things that make a regular stock market not a zero-sum game do not apply to cryptocurrency markets. And cryptocurrencies are actually negative sum, due to miners and fees.

> Cryptocurrency trading is not the same as a regular market.

Could you substantiate what you see here with a concrete difference? Particularly in terms of my argument that an asset price can move without actual trades being made. If positive news comes out about bitcoin, the price can immediately move without any trading, or at least without every bitcoin needing to realize a gain through trading. This would be an example of growth in value that is not zero sum. Stocks can do the same thing as well. This is actually very visible when a stock opens with a gap from prior closing price.

> And cryptocurrencies are actually negative sum, due to miners and fees.

I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion. Fees and miner inflation are a drag on the asset class, I agree. But stocks also have fees to trade and issue, and are subject to dilution through new issuing. The issue is whether the drag is larger or smaller than growth of the asset.

Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#65

Yeah, no thank you, I don't come to Hacker News for crypto talk, the bias is comical and the talking points are recycled as a new article every week (scams!, speculation!, hype!, wasted electricity!, tether!) All of those have rebuttals, but I don't want to get into the politics of it, there's plenty of that already. Can we please talk about the fucking tech here? I'm talking about what's made with it, not some sort…

> the bias is comical and the talking points are recycled as a new article every week (scams!, speculation!, hype!, wasted electricity!, tether!) There is a very strong bias towards the truth, yes.

That's the equivalent of "yes-huh". Your truth is not reality.

If you really want to argue this, please at least have something of substance.

Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#66
post #46
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price of a 51% relative to the total marketcap won't change drastically (only moderately due to wider availability of hardware), and that's what security is based on, not the absolute cost of a 51% attack.

No... security depends on the cost mounting an attack, and that's the absolute cost.

No... a chain that costs $1M to attack with a mktcap of $100K is more secure than a chain that costs $10M to attack with a mktcap of $100B, as the latter has huge financial incentives for doublespending (after depositing say $100M at an exchange), while the former has none.

It's like how much you spend on a bike lock. A $100 lock on a $20 bike is probably quote secure, while a $200 lock on a $5000 bike is probably quite insecure.

Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#67
post #66
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No... security depends on the cost mounting an attack, and that's the absolute cost.

No... a chain that costs $1M to attack with a mktcap of $100K is more secure than a chain that costs $10M to attack with a mktcap of $100B, as the latter has huge financial incentives for doublespending (after depositing say $100M at an exchange), while the former has none. It's like how much you spend on a bike lock. A $100 lock on a $20 bike is probably quote secure, while a $200 lock on a $5000 bike is probably qu…

No... an attacker that is able to successfully execute a 51% attack can crash the token price and make enormous profits in the derivatives market, so the market cap is irrelevant. Moreover, and attacker may have motivations other than financial gains, which again makes market cap irrelevant. If your security model only protects against financially motivated attackers it means it's basically rubbish.

Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#68
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am genuinely curious on useful applications for a decentralized ledger, so I skimmed this linkdump. > https://github.com/OffcierCia/DeFi-Developer-Road-Map Background and development information, no applications. This link, by itself, has a massive number of links. > https://github.com/bkrem/awesome-solidity This links is later duplicated, but is also mostly background and developer information. There is one sectio…

> That's kind of cool, if unlikely to be monetizable. That's not a bad thing, but it isn't true anyway, you literally login with your wallet. Virtual currencies are banned on Stripe, PayPal etc. MMOs are how I got into crypto in the first place. > I am genuinely curious on useful applications. I was sharing "awesome" lists related to "web3", not a list of apps to support some argument you want to have about "energy u…

No, sorry, GP has a point. I think we have all seen lots of developer tools and concepts by now, but I’m also still waiting for actual applications we actually need ledgers for. Even in the additional three links you’ve posted, there’s nothing that isn’t a developer tool or demo and wouldn’t work with traditional technology.

Im genuinely curious, do you have any examples that do exist now, are remotely useful, and wouldn’t work without web3 tech?

Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#69
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's kind of cool, if unlikely to be monetizable. That's not a bad thing, but it isn't true anyway, you literally login with your wallet. Virtual currencies are banned on Stripe, PayPal etc. MMOs are how I got into crypto in the first place. > I am genuinely curious on useful applications. I was sharing "awesome" lists related to "web3", not a list of apps to support some argument you want to have about "energy u…

No, sorry, GP has a point. I think we have all seen lots of developer tools and concepts by now, but I’m also still waiting for actual applications we actually need ledgers for. Even in the additional three links you’ve posted, there’s nothing that isn’t a developer tool or demo and wouldn’t work with traditional technology. Im genuinely curious, do you have any examples that do exist now, are remotely useful, and wo…

I already linked apps directly above. The links above that were mainly dev tools.

If you're genuinely curious, explore the lists.

What you want is for me to list a small amount of apps so you can shit on them and we can have a subjective argument about whether they are useful, which can't be determined as it's an opinion.

Web3 doesn't do things Web2 can't, it does the same things differently that gives users more power over operators.

Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#70
post #3
post #2

Title should be plural: this is a roundup of links to critiques

It's named this because GitHub repos called "awesome-X" are precisely that. I forgot where the pattern originated

It started here, I believe.

https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome

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