Welcome to Web 3.0 • Hacker News Board

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#221

Post by falcolas » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 1:49 PM UTC

samsonradu wrote: post #121

can16358p wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. That’s actually a good point and Bitcoin/crypto solves this. Why doesn’t it stop there though, what does web3 solve?

> That’s actually a good point and Bitcoin/crypto solves this.

For now. Governments are catching on, and since the transactions are public, they can (and are putting the building blocks in place now) easily apply the same regulations to international bitcoin transactions as they do traditional money transfers.

Basically, folks today are taking advantage of a blind spot in government oversight. They're aware of it and are removing that blind spot.

I heard an analogy at one point - governments are elephants. It's usually pretty easy to avoid being stomped on when you're small. But if you do get stomped on, you'll be utterly destroyed. Many governments have no problems with making examples of people.

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#222

Post by falcolas » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 1:53 PM UTC

sidibe wrote: post #205

can16358p wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

AND have started the mechanisms to bring bitcoin transactions under these laws. It started (in the US) with the IRS taxing bitcoins as they would material wealth.

And why wouldn't they?

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#223

Post by RedBeetDeadpool » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #71

RedBeetDeadpool wrote: post #49

This is just a hater hatin, coming up with the worst ways to make web 3.0 look bad. An example of a real value proposition of web 3.0 is spam protection and reduction of fake reviews. Much like how bitcoin itself cannot be counterfeited, utilization of the blockchain enables some guarantees in a digital world of endless copying. The only thing I got from it was that the creator hates crypto bros so much he's willing…

If you don't want anything to be copied you just not copy it, no need to create all the complicated stuff. eg I can't copy my money in my bank even though it is a digital number.

For the record, you're not the one doing the copying of the money in your bank.

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#224

Post by falcolas » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 2:01 PM UTC

IanCal wrote: post #211

secretsatan wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

`Build the integration with my game & a generic API` Seem to be missing a few steps here

Is it? The larger point was that that's the same either way so it comes out in the wash. But OK if you want to break it down more: * Have the user prove they own a specific account ( https://walletconnect.com/ I would guess would be a simple approach to this) * Make a REST API call to check if they own the item (edit - to clarify, the API already exists, you just need to do a single get request) * Set local flag in g…

> What more detail would you need?

Implementing the weapon. Paying for that implementation.

Concrete example: I buy an NFT for a sword in World of Warcraft. I want to take it with me to FFXIV. Now FFXIV has to implement the sword. Its looks, its behaviors, its power, in a completely separate engine and world.

They - Square Enix - also probably have to pay Blizzard for the trademark and copyrights to the sword. Yet when I buy the sword that money goes to Blizzard, not Square. So... why would Square do it?

Plus, implementing a "yes, person with email address N owns sword X" rest API is pretty straightforward. You could even implement public/private key signatures for authentication of the receipt. It just would be stored in someone's email inbox instead of the chain.

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#225

Post by falcolas » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 2:04 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #186

IanCal wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can offer that we can't currently do without the use of a Blockchain. The real issue with responses like this is that you can do anything with computers anyway. The blockchain basically gives you a * Globally writable database * With stored procedures * And row level security Now, you can always swap out that with a centralised service. Turing machines can do stuff and machines can talk to each other. Whether it's…

> So to make, say, an in game item that people can re-sell, swap, etc There is a fairly specific kind of game where anything like this would even be useful and arguably it is impossible for the practice to not be predatory anyway. It is difficult to imagine an entity that would do this without also wanting the kind of complete control that a blockchain supposedly exists to avoid.

Not to mention that trading/selling items is something that - within individual games - has been done for decades now. Diablo II anyone?

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#226

Post by IanCal » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 2:11 PM UTC

piva00 wrote: post #218

IanCal wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You describe step-by-step in a detailed way what would be needed to implement the usual way and then simply glosses over "build the integration with my game & a generic API". That is exactly the tricky part, isn't it? Handling and managing money transactions to run an auction sounds very much like a tricky part, there's a lot of regulation I'd be getting involved in going down that road. Building the integration wi…

> Handling and managing money transactions to run an auction sounds very much like a tricky part, there's a lot of regulation I'd be getting involved in going down that road. What makes you believe there won't be regulations on trading NFTs in the future? The moment NFTs become an instrument for money laundering you're going to end up with the same KYC regulations as any other financial instrument. There is nothing i…

> What makes you believe there won't be regulations on trading NFTs in the future?

Even more reason for me to not want to be involved in the actual trading part.

> There is nothing in NFTs that protect companies using it to be above regulations.

Sure! The crypto-bros are wrong that there aren't/can't be regulations on these things, as are those complaining it's an unregulated area.

> I don't know, I don't work on the space. Leveraging from my 20 years of career I'd say that it's never trivial to integrate with a 3rd party for any kind of complex business logic.

This isn't complex business logic, that's my point. There's _already_ a standardised API. As I've said, there are annoying differences, but they are for more complex use cases and "read public data" is about the simplest there is.

To break it down a bit more, you utilise two key things. One is the standard API that all nodes have (https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/apis/json-rpc/) which acts the same for the use case here. There are public ones, you can pay a company to run one and you can if you want run one yourself. The end user can be free to swap between any of these.

The interface there isn't so nice, as you can ask for data stored somewhere, but finding exactly what address to read isn't that nice. Helpfully it's extremely generic so you can use a library to help with that step. You would do something like this in python:

    web3 = Web3(node_provider_url)
    my_contract = w3.eth.contract(abi=my_abi, address=my_contract_address)
    print(my_contract.functions.my_read_only_function().call())

Here my_abi is something I control (it's my contract), the contract address is known after you publish it.

That's it. You're pulling from a shared database.

I hope that helps explain it a bit more - the API/backend stuff is generic and doesn't have to be run by you. However the only real external piece here is the storage layer - you're still in control of the data structure & functions (you write the contract). You're not relying on a third party to manage a "game item" API and hoping they don't change it, if you use a third party here it's about paying someone to run an open source project for you on their hardware.

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#227

Post by falcolas » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 2:11 PM UTC

MadSudaca wrote: post #32

Never forget that cryptocurrencies are essentially software, therefore it can most likely change to overcome its present pitfalls. You don’t like the negative environmental impact that PoW has? There are many eco-friendly cryptocurrencies that don’t use PoW. Don’t like that the fees are too high? There are feeless cryptocurrencies. Don’t like that many cryptos are VC money schemes? There are many with fair distributi…

> The underlying technology is valuable and the problems it may have today can be overcome.

I'm pretty sure that's been said about email and its encryption/validation problem. And while it's still used, other products have come in and eaten its biggest market - asynchronous communication.

Inertia's a bitch, and when you have millions of users, you can't change things willy-nilly. At least, not if you want the product to be viewed as legitimate.

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#228

Post by RedBeetDeadpool » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 2:14 PM UTC

chmod775 wrote: post #76

RedBeetDeadpool wrote: post #49

This is just a hater hatin, coming up with the worst ways to make web 3.0 look bad. An example of a real value proposition of web 3.0 is spam protection and reduction of fake reviews. Much like how bitcoin itself cannot be counterfeited, utilization of the blockchain enables some guarantees in a digital world of endless copying. The only thing I got from it was that the creator hates crypto bros so much he's willing…

Would you have paid to write this comment? Would someone who has a monetary incentive to comment pay to do so?

I don't have to pay to write comments, but I would likely have to lock up capital tied to an account while the comment is being rated, which can be lost permanently. Having an account with more verified comments can have a mark or rating of quality that can be queried off a blockchain outside of the centralized website that serves the data, which can be investigated independently by a user suspicious of centralized vote manipulation.

What users do when seeing comments from accounts that have lower signals of quality is up to the user to decide. If they would rather listen to voices from unverified accounts over ones that have higher signals that's for them to ultimately choose. No one will be required to necessarily lock up capital to comment, and no one will be required to only look at comments from those who locked up capital.

This is just an example I thought up of on the spot, but I believe there are people who actually did a much deeper dive into these concepts.

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#229

Post by falcolas » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 2:17 PM UTC

legutierr wrote: post #120

ohgodplsno wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a problem anyone has ever had. The entire world is running on either no coordinated mutations, or batched mutations that are spreading over time. If you're found not respecting the mutations that my Apache server has done, the only thing that happens is that you get banned or fined. Cryptobros see the world as absolutely unable of trust, when it's ran for millenia on it.

> The entire world is running on either no coordinated mutations, or batched mutations that are spreading over time. Every financial transaction that requires settlement between institutions is a “coordinated mutation.” And while it is true that financial transactions are often synced between institutions via a “batched mutation” approach (especially when coordinating settlement), the delay that batched settlement re…

> the delay that batched settlement represents

Bitcoin transactions can take anywhere from 10 minutes to upwards of 16 hours for minuscule volumes of transactions. It's not solving that problem for certain.

> extremely costly

The cost is built into the transactions. Just like it is with blockchain transactions. Now then, which has higher per transaction costs?

Re: Welcome to Web 3.0

#230

Post by miracle2k » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 2:20 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #209

can16358p wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 aut…

> 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”.

Critics like to say "it doesn't work", then the next day complain about how it enables a ransomware plague. You can't have it both ways. The fact is it clearly works.

This isn't to say it's magic; it doesn't protect you from bullets any more than it makes you coffee. It is not a magical unicorn; just finding a reason why there might still be censorship somewhere is not a valid argument.

Free speech laws work even if Facebook deletes your post, or you a fired, or sometimes someone doesn't appeal their conviction. Your argument about "miners, developers or exchange operators" existing is not any more valid than this one is.