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Web3 is centralized and inefficient

neelc.org

21–30 of 769 posts

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#21

> A lot of Web3 platforms are in fact centralized. Your wallet (MetaMask), marketplaces (OpenSea), APIs (Alchemy) are all central platforms. Sure, they use a distributed database (blockchain), but before that it’s still a Go app on AWS, meaning its centralized. > Your wallet (MetaMask) Run your own node. This is lazy reporting to reach the end point about fawning over FreeBSD (its in the article, literally an article…

> Run your own node.

Which platforms are doing that? Any you can name offhand?

> You don't have to use their GUI.

Who's doing that?

> don't use Alchemy or Infura as your RPC endpoints?

Who's doing that?

> It could just as easily be "This isn't decentralized! Let me fix that!"

Write the post, then. I'd read it.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#22

Can someone explain what Web3 is in 50 words or less to a layman?

I'll quote Ubik at you in 100 words.

===

The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please." He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you."

"I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt."

...he found the contract. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.

"You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug.

===

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#23

Can someone explain what Web3 is in 50 words or less to a layman?

An attempt to stay relevant by piggybacking on the historical success of the web 2.0 brand, pushed by those personally invested in crypto, but who are totally not pushing this for their own profit.

Or, less sarcastically, it's a collection of technologies that attempt to link the blockchain with the "real world", supposedly bringing back decentralization to the web in the process. I'd like to elaborate but there's really nothing more to elaborate on, the entire thing is a vague collection of ideas (such as "maybe users could use blockchain-based microtransactions to pay for the sites they use instead of being served adverts") that nobody's actually figured out what to do with. Why exactly blockchain is required for these ideas, or exactly what ideas constitute "web 3.0" is still an unanswered question...

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#24
post #19

> A lot of Web3 platforms are in fact centralized. Your wallet (MetaMask), marketplaces (OpenSea), APIs (Alchemy) are all central platforms. Sure, they use a distributed database (blockchain), but before that it’s still a Go app on AWS, meaning its centralized. > Your wallet (MetaMask) Run your own node. This is lazy reporting to reach the end point about fawning over FreeBSD (its in the article, literally an article…

When a product has a lot of negative externalities, and you also notice that it doesn't deliver on the promise that's meant to counterbalance those externalities, it's entirely reasonable and appropriate to conclude that the project should be rejected, rather than joining in to try to fix it. I don't know why anyone would want to build a "Web3" with people who use "have fun staying poor" as a catchphrase, or whose un…

*FreeBSD, BSD Desktop is what was used in the article

Many people join in to fix it, that's exactly what Alchemy, Infura, OpenSea are and were, many people that would be interested are first exposed to offputting characters that don't know anything but who believe every sales pitch. I mostly think the lack of standardized education on this is what creates these outcomes of the latter population. Since some of them would be useful to have in that space.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#26
post #7

Some platforms like Ethereum are completely decentralized. You forfeit some of this decentralization bit by bit when using MetaMask, OpenSea or Alchemy, but the platform itself is still decentralized. The Web is completely decentralized, by you forfeit some of this decentralization bit by bit when using Paypal, Facebook, or AWS. The trend in technology has always been to trade control for convenience. This doesn't st…

> When these occur it will be the decentralized blockchains like Ethereum with failsafes in place to survive, and it's the centralized blockchains like Binance that will implode.

Didn't Ethereum recently disclose a major settlement vulnerability discovered by a researcher that could've forced a hard fork had this person chosen to exploit it? He got a multi-million dollar bounty for it I believe.

This kind of certain optimism that nothing will go wrong with a piece of software reminds me of all the people back in 2007 that said the housing market could never collapse because it never had before. Folks buy into the idea so much that they forget at the end of the day, it's computers running code and shit happens all the time.

EDIT: I believe this was the story I was referring to, he received $2M[0]. There have been multiple major vulnerabilities discovered in the last couple of years.

[0] https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/22/02/255731...

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#27

This seems like the angry ramblings of someone who missed the boat. I'm not invested in cryptocurrency or other tokens, but this seems very unfair to the ecosystems that power them. Sure, there are centralized wallets, marketplaces, APIs, but that's just not the point, not the problem they're trying to solve. If Google deletes your account, that's it. If OpenSea deletes your account, another app will happily connect…

> If OpenSea deletes your account, another app will happily connect to your wallet and let you continue where you left off.

Or not, because they all use the OpenSea API instead of bothering with the blockchain.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#28

> A lot of Web3 platforms are in fact centralized. Your wallet (MetaMask), marketplaces (OpenSea), APIs (Alchemy) are all central platforms. Sure, they use a distributed database (blockchain), but before that it’s still a Go app on AWS, meaning its centralized. > Your wallet (MetaMask) Run your own node. This is lazy reporting to reach the end point about fawning over FreeBSD (its in the article, literally an article…

You’re falling into the same trap as tech enthusiasts in web1.

Sure, you could scan blockchains and extract NFT data yourself, and sure you could run your own node for every blockchain that interests you (paying god only know how much for storage and bandwidth). Just like how in web1 you could run your own email server to handle email and have your own blog server to publish info and your own git server to host your code and your own domain name to put it all under…

But it turns out that exceptionally few users actually care about putting in the time/effort/money to do that. Hence the rise in web2 and platforms. The people who run their own infra now are all doing it more as a hobby than anything else.

Like it or not, recentralization is the future of web3 for the average consumer. You can be a crypto decentralization purist, but I hope you realize that you’ll be the minority in that, if crypto/web3 actually is to gain widespread adoption.

For the average consumer, convenience is the real feature, and true decentralization is inconvenient.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#29

This seems like the angry ramblings of someone who missed the boat. I'm not invested in cryptocurrency or other tokens, but this seems very unfair to the ecosystems that power them. Sure, there are centralized wallets, marketplaces, APIs, but that's just not the point, not the problem they're trying to solve. If Google deletes your account, that's it. If OpenSea deletes your account, another app will happily connect…

Continue where you left off, except without access to OpenSea (or whatever other vendor), in an economy where the value of the contents of your wallet is increasingly dependent on the availability and visibility of your "digital assets" on vendor services.

But you're right. Decentralization is not the problem that the crypto community is trying to solve, because they don't actually care about a decentralized "Web3". They care about the parts of the system that make them rich. The "decentralization" cant is just social-good camouflage, no different from Facebook's claims about making lives better through the "metaverse".

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