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Web3 is centralized and inefficient

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Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#51

Post by mccorrinall »

ipnon wrote: 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…

As decentralized as in “someone stole my funds, let’s roll back the whole chain”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#52

Post by dvt »

mbesto wrote: post #36
vmception wrote: post #5

> 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…

> Yep. It is a GUI ontop of their smart contracts (public access backend code). You don't have to use their GUI. So what happens if someone just copies the JPG and puts on their web host? Isn't that essentially what OpenSea is...a hosted service for the JPG.

All the blockchain holds is that a certain address (0x12345678) owns a certain token ID (42) minted from a certain contract (0xDEADBEEF). That's all. It proves provenance. What the metadata contains, where it's hosted, etc. is irrelevant.

So while it's true that OS hosts the JPEG of your NFT, for example (it actually caches it), the point is about proving ownership of a specific token identifier, not just a pretty picture.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#53

Post by ipnon »

djur wrote: post #40
ipnon wrote: 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…

Isn't that the point? Web technology is decentralized, but as an economic and cultural force it's dominated by a small number of corporations. Web3 has the exact same problems with economic centralization, and "rolling your own" requires all of the same investments and sacrifices as doing so on the existing web, plus more.

The general consensus seems to be that while both crypto and the Web share this problem, the Web is ultimately redeemable while crypto should be nuked from orbit. It's an interesting contradiction in public opinion, probably stemming from all of the money involved.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#54

Post by dvt »

mccorrinall wrote: post #51
ipnon wrote: 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…

As decentralized as in “someone stole my funds, let’s roll back the whole chain”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic

I know you're being a bit snarky, but the miners voted on that decision and decided, collectively, to fork. It's decentralized in the sense that there's no central mandate, and everyone needs to agree with a decision or that decision will ultimately fizzle.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#55

Post by ipnon »

mccorrinall wrote: post #51
ipnon wrote: 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…

As decentralized as in “someone stole my funds, let’s roll back the whole chain”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic

What's more decentralized than being able to fork an open source blockchain solely on the basis of majority consensus? The hullabaloo over the DAO fork arises because decentralization is conflated with fairness. Was the fork fair? Maybe, maybe not. It's irrelevant to the question of whether Ethereum is decentralized. Ethereum prevailed over Ethereum Classic precisely because the majority of users switched to the fork! This would not have been possible if Ethereum wasn't decentralized. A centralized system would have left Ethereum users in the dust and the DAO hacker with all the loot.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#56

Post by xiphias2 »

TheCowboy wrote: post #43
vmception wrote: post #5

> 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. This is lazy reporting It isn't practical for the majority of people to run their own node. Even Vitalik Buterin acknowledges[1] this isn't realistic for the current state of things. Last year I was interested in running a sidechain node and I was shocked when I looked at minimum system requirements. I can't just run it in the background and I have a 5600X Ryzen. Plus my NVMe drive needed to be m…

Regarding Ethereum you’re right, it’s centralized.

With Bitcoin I run my node and check the incoming transactions with it whenever I make a big money transfer (for outgoing transactions a full node is not really needed, as I don’t care if the network doesn’t accept it as long as my counterparty does).

Running a Bitcoin node is practical (less than a day of running in the background on the first run) if the amount of money is significant.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#58

Post by zhoujianfu »

yashg wrote: post #31

Agree 100%. Web3 is useless. The whole web3 thing is an extension to get more people and more real money to get into the crypto ecosystem and provide liquidity to the early adopters and insiders. I haven't found one legitimate use case for blockchain. The only thing it is useful for it speculative gambling. I wrote about it some time ago and and shared here on HN https://yash.info/blog/what-is-web3/

You say that like speculative gambling isn’t legitimate!

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#59

Post by hunterb123 »

mccorrinall wrote: post #45
yashg wrote: post #31

Agree 100%. Web3 is useless. The whole web3 thing is an extension to get more people and more real money to get into the crypto ecosystem and provide liquidity to the early adopters and insiders. I haven't found one legitimate use case for blockchain. The only thing it is useful for it speculative gambling. I wrote about it some time ago and and shared here on HN https://yash.info/blog/what-is-web3/

I know exactly one legitimate use case for blockchain: a public ledger like bitcoin. The thing is that you don’t need more than this one online currency though, right? It’s also the safest in terms of PoW [1]. I don’t see any reason for all other altcoins to exist other than charting and trading on exchanges (which is certainly fun, but does not provide value). [1] https://howmanyconfs.com/

Coins have different attributes and use cases. Who is to say who can make what. The best of the niche needed will win out, just like every other sector of all industries.

Ethereum has it's EVM. Monero has it's RandomX algo to prevent ASICs, and it's Ring signatures to prevent tracing.

Some coins are pure Proof of Stake and try to solve scaling differently, see Algorand and Cardano.

There are altcoins that are just clones, referred to generally as shitcoins.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#60

Post by mccorrinall »

TobyTheDog123 wrote: post #15

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 we “missed the boat” for Web3, does that imply that it isn’t going to bring its benefits to all of us?
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