Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

> That's not a bad thing, but it isn't true anyway, you literally login with your wallet.

> Here's more geared towards your "genuine curiosity" of web3 apps

I get that you weren't addressing my particular interest in your original post. I've put in a decent amount of time digging through the links you've shared; I'd appreciate if you accepted my curiosity in good faith.

Thanks for sharing more links, though they are not terribly digestible. The first link in particular seems to have many decentralized applications that don't use a blockchain (see below).

> https://github.com/gdamdam/awesome-decentralized-web

These are all cool decentralized web applications (many with real value, including bittorrent, mastodon, etc) -- but how many are built on a decentralized ledger / blockchain? Eight include "blockchain" in their description, and only three I would consider "apps":

- BigchainDB [dev tool] - a 'database'

- storj [dev tool] - blockchain-based object storage

- dtube [application]- decentralized video platform built on a blockchain ("STEEM")

- opentimestamps [dev tool?] - blockhain timestamping (not sure what this is for?)

- namecoin [application] - dns on blockchain

- steemit [application] - blogging/social networking on top of a blockchain db

- arcblock [dev tool] - tool for building "dapps, blockchains and websites"

I'm specifically curious about useful applications for decentralized ledgers, if that wasn't clear. The web/internet already runs on many decentralized protocols.

## STEEM

Both dtube and steemit are built on "STEEM", which seems to function as a form of social credit. Basically, whuffie (for the Doctorow fans out there). That's kinda cool[1].

IIUC:

- new users get 15 STEEM (where does this come from? is this not a spam vector?)

- posting costs STEEM

- upvoting content yields STEEM for the producer (content creation)

- early upvoters earn STEEM (curation)

The crypto part is mostly managing relationships and influence, not attempting to decentralize the actual shuffling of bits. Reasonable. Influence being portable across social networks is a cool idea too.

But how does the _business_ of this work, and is it an improvement over centralized social networks? Steemit, Inc, funds itself via the STEEM digital currency. The STEEM digital currency can be bought -- i.e., influence on the networks can be bought. Is this better than buying likes/comments/subscribers? Abstractly, it might keep the actual social signals cleaner -- except that IIUC you have to like/comment/etc to actually have your STEEM influence people! It's not clear to me that having the network funded by selling influence is an improvement. In ahttps://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/05/20/steem-hard-fork-..., off-platform deals to leverage other people's influence will still be a reality.

So what are the benefits? Theoretically influence becomes decentralized, though the role that Steemit Inc plays is unclear to me. How are new participants funded? Who actually runs and pays for the social network infrastructure? And of course there are the usual risks like 51% attacks.

In practice: according to reddit.com/r/steemit, Steem has been forked because Steemit was acquired and the community didn't trust the new owners who had a majority share (STEEM used proof-of-stake, not proof-of-work). This was because of some drama involving "witnesses", presumably having to do with implementing the actual STEEM rewards/rate limiting. This happened in Apr 2020. The sticked post on r/steemit is from only six months ago (Aug 2021) for some reason. This explains why steemit.com seemed dead. https://hive.blog is apparently where all the action is now. Tthere are other UIs (or could be), so this is not centralized (does this mean the actual content is on the chain? Seems expensive and unscalable).

Detangling just this one "dapp" took >30 minutes. All the crypto stuff aside, hive.blog looks basically like a multireddit made of small subreddits (DTube shows up as the equivalent of a subreddit[2], btw).

## Namecoin

Once you have decentralized DNS the others can already rely on other decentralized parts of the internet (IP, etc).

DNS is not really centralized IMO, which the existence of Namecoin itself attests to. You can choose your nameservers; arbitrary levels of subdomains are supported; etc. If you are capable of opting into Namecoin, why not another root DNS?

Practically Namecoin acts like another root of trust. How well does it perform this function?

https://www.namecoin.org/docs/faq/#is-squatting-a-problem--w... https://www.namecoin.org/docs/faq/#what-is-the-threat-posed-...

Maybe there's a way to better execute this idea; however Namecoin seems to be dominant implementation.

[1] "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" was written in the early 00s, so "cyber" is almost appropriate. [2] https://hive.blog/trending/hive-196037

Yes, that was a dumb mistake on my part