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Welcome to Web 3.0

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Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#201

Post by [deleted] »

audunw wrote: post #134
JamesMcMinn wrote: post #95

So far I've yet to see a convincing argument for what "Web 3" is and can offer that we can't currently do without the use of a Blockchain. It all seems to boil down to "it'll cost something to do something", which isn't exactly a convincing argument on its own. The responses to this story read rather like Facebook comments on controversial news articles - there's a bunch of comments claiming the website is a bunch of…

With NFT, blockchain proponents have argued that ticket trading is a really good usecase, and could maybe lessen the grip of the likes of Ticketmaster I think the last episode of Last Week Tonight really shed light on why Blockchain can't really solve real-world problems like that. The problem isn't a technical problem. It'd be easy to solve the problem of ticked distribution/resale without blockchain if the concert…

[deleted]

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#202

Post by piva00 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #188
PretzelPirate wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those are on Magic the Gathering Online, do you really own them? What happens when that shuts down in favor of Magic Arena?

The same thing that happens if you have an NFT that's just a URL. If the URL target goes down, the NFT is broken.

Or if the game that accepted those NFT as in-game items shuts down, then these items cease to exist as well in any meaningful way, at least for the reasons it might be valuable in the beginning when I purchased it (stats in game, rarity, etc.). If the game ceases to exist then the NFT is just, what, a trading card that shows some scarcity/rarity?

I really don't get this argument at all. I bought an in-game mount for World of Warcraft as a NFT, WoW shuts down, where the hell am I going to use the in-game mount again? A shitty game that tells me "your WoW mount works here as well!"?

It really feels it's all a preparation for the "metaverse" bullshit.

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#203

Post by goosedragons »

PretzelPirate wrote: post #183
goosedragons wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could own something digitally before crypto. I've got some pretty sweet digital 7th Edition Magic cards I've had for about 2 decades. I traded away some of them and sold others.

If those are on Magic the Gathering Online, do you really own them? What happens when that shuts down in favor of Magic Arena?

What would happen if WotC ran a Magic Online NFT edition and shut it down? Do you think they'd let a third party use their IP? Would Magic cards you can't play with or view the art of and are just urls pointing to a dead server have real value?

Have you read the list of restrictions Ubisoft has for their NFTs? Do people really own those?

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#204

Post by acdha »

audunw wrote: post #134
JamesMcMinn wrote: post #95

So far I've yet to see a convincing argument for what "Web 3" is and can offer that we can't currently do without the use of a Blockchain. It all seems to boil down to "it'll cost something to do something", which isn't exactly a convincing argument on its own. The responses to this story read rather like Facebook comments on controversial news articles - there's a bunch of comments claiming the website is a bunch of…

With NFT, blockchain proponents have argued that ticket trading is a really good usecase, and could maybe lessen the grip of the likes of Ticketmaster I think the last episode of Last Week Tonight really shed light on why Blockchain can't really solve real-world problems like that. The problem isn't a technical problem. It'd be easy to solve the problem of ticked distribution/resale without blockchain if the concert…

> The problem isn't a technical problem. It'd be easy to solve the problem of ticked distribution/resale without blockchain if the concert vendors actually wanted. But now Ticketmaster owns most of those, so you can't solve it easily even if blockchains would help anyway.

Also since Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation it's not just ticket sales but also concert promotion and artist management, so even if blockchains were useful for ticket sales it would be hard to get traction because any venue which tried to cut them out would also find that a large number of popular performers wouldn't play at their venue:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/arts/music/live-nation-ti...

> I think blockchain is potentially a huge detriment to solving real-world problems.. because it tricks smart people into thinking "you apply blockchain, and then all these problems are magically solved", rather than actually working with other people on the actual social, economic and political problems we need to solve to make real progress.

This is a very important point, amplified by the built-in conflicts of interest caused by turning the tech layer into a financial instrument. Many blockchain proponents are capable of reasoning through complex problems but doing so means that they are guaranteed to be leaving money on the table compared to their less ethical peers and since the only way their tokens have value is by talking them up there's even a strong disincentive to acknowledging when other people are selling something they can't deliver.

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#205

Post by sidibe »

can16358p wrote: post #100
JamesMcMinn wrote: post #95

So far I've yet to see a convincing argument for what "Web 3" is and can offer that we can't currently do without the use of a Blockchain. It all seems to boil down to "it'll cost something to do something", which isn't exactly a convincing argument on its own. The responses to this story read rather like Facebook comments on controversial news articles - there's a bunch of comments claiming the website is a bunch of…

Sure. A "free" internet. Not in terms of money, but in terms of freedom of speech without censorship and a controlling authority. With no authority that decides whether I can send money to/receive from someone. Especially living in a corrupt authoratarian system, even only those two outweight all the bad sides (tx fees, scalability, PoW environmental effects) for me. It does more good than it harms in the big picture…

> With no authority that decides whether I can send money to/receive from someone.

There's no technical reason fiat money doesn't have this property. But societies everywhere, democratic or authoritarian, have decided that's a bad idea and have money laundering laws.

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#206

Post by acdha »

IanCal wrote: post #163
audunw wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With NFT, blockchain proponents have argued that ticket trading is a really good usecase, and could maybe lessen the grip of the likes of Ticketmaster I think the last episode of Last Week Tonight really shed light on why Blockchain can't really solve real-world problems like that. The problem isn't a technical problem. It'd be easy to solve the problem of ticked distribution/resale without blockchain if the concert…

> And you really can't solve the problem of scalping without tying tickets/accounts to a verified national ID, which is a political problem. I'm not sure I understand that. You could tie it to something within a smaller group (e.g. tickets can only be transferred to people who have bought the bands album, or only to verified accounts that the vendor approves). I would also be surprised if there wasn't a ZK way of doi…

The problem is that you need to link what's checked at the door with the online trail. If you only allowed people holding the band's CD to enter, that'd definitely work but it's just turning a different physical object into the ticket.

You could try to have a trusted third party verify ID and only allow registered accounts to participate in the resale market (Ticketmaster sells this service) but at that point the blockchain is, as usual, not adding anything other than overhead because the trust depends on that third-party and the venue's staff checking ID at the door (otherwise you'd find people on Craigslist paying people to register, get their ID checked, and letting the scalpers use their account).

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#207

Post by simonw »

sergiosgc wrote: post #181
JamesMcMinn wrote: post #95

So far I've yet to see a convincing argument for what "Web 3" is and can offer that we can't currently do without the use of a Blockchain. It all seems to boil down to "it'll cost something to do something", which isn't exactly a convincing argument on its own. The responses to this story read rather like Facebook comments on controversial news articles - there's a bunch of comments claiming the website is a bunch of…

The idea of a public ledger, where any public record can be kept without the need of a central authority certainly has value. The fact that current tech solutions are not efficient, and thus expensive, should not hide that value. Instead of going through offshoots trying to find the killer app, I'd much prefer to see cryptocurrency tech evolve in order to bring costs down. Take the base use case of keeping "bank acco…

> The idea of a public ledger, where any public record can be kept without the need of a central authority certainly has value.

Based on what we've learned over the past few years, I'm not sure I believe that any more.

Without a central authority, there's no way to be confident that anything is "true". Partly because it's impossible to correct mistakes.

So you get NFTs of stolen art, because there's no authority to verify it.

You get ideas to "put real estate deeds on the blockchain" with no answer to the question "what if someone loses their private key?"

The only information that can reliably be handheld by such a blockchain is information that entirely exists within that blockchain - so account balances, but effectively nothing else.

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#208

Post by ryanbrunner »

PretzelPirate wrote: post #183
goosedragons wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could own something digitally before crypto. I've got some pretty sweet digital 7th Edition Magic cards I've had for about 2 decades. I traded away some of them and sold others.

If those are on Magic the Gathering Online, do you really own them? What happens when that shuts down in favor of Magic Arena?

Either way, you're trusting the owners of Magic the Gathering Online. With a purchase from them they're actually holding the records, but even with a NFT there's nothing stopping them from no longer supporting or honouring those NFTs, or not honouring them if they've been transferred or sold or whatever.

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#209

Post by acdha »

can16358p wrote: post #100
JamesMcMinn wrote: post #95

So far I've yet to see a convincing argument for what "Web 3" is and can offer that we can't currently do without the use of a Blockchain. It all seems to boil down to "it'll cost something to do something", which isn't exactly a convincing argument on its own. The responses to this story read rather like Facebook comments on controversial news articles - there's a bunch of comments claiming the website is a bunch of…

Sure. A "free" internet. Not in terms of money, but in terms of freedom of speech without censorship and a controlling authority. With no authority that decides whether I can send money to/receive from someone. Especially living in a corrupt authoratarian system, even only those two outweight all the bad sides (tx fees, scalability, PoW environmental effects) for me. It does more good than it harms in the big picture…

> Especially living in a corrupt authoratarian system, even only those two outweight all the bad sides (tx fees, scalability, PoW environmental effects) for me. It does more good than it harms in the big picture.

More accurately, it could if it actually worked but since it doesn't all you're doing is paying more for lower quality of service. A key concept to understand is that when blockchain sales people say “no authority” they mean “except the miners, software developers, exchange and oracle operators, and the governments which have jurisdiction over them”. Just as real-world censorship is far more often based on after the fact consequences rather than preventing someone from speaking first, consequences can be applied retroactively to anyone who participates in illegal transactions and blockchains very helpfully publish a full list of transactions so the authorities don't miss anyone.

We're seeing this right now: technically, someone in Russia can make a Bitcoin transfer since the Russian government hasn't chosen to block the protocol at the network layer but when they do so they are finding that many companies won't participate in those transfers and since the history is public that can extend to any downstream transactions based on the transferred funds.

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#210

Post by ryanbrunner »

piva00 wrote: post #202
jiggawatts wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing that happens if you have an NFT that's just a URL. If the URL target goes down, the NFT is broken.

Or if the game that accepted those NFT as in-game items shuts down, then these items cease to exist as well in any meaningful way, at least for the reasons it might be valuable in the beginning when I purchased it (stats in game, rarity, etc.). If the game ceases to exist then the NFT is just, what, a trading card that shows some scarcity/rarity? I really don't get this argument at all. I bought an in-game mount for…

No game is going to do the "your X game items work here", since it cuts off any revenue stream they have, and the NFT itself is almost definitely not going to include a functioning asset, just a token that you own mount with an ID of XYZ. It would be on the game developers to create art and code for every single NFT they want to support.
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