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Web3 is centralized and inefficient

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Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#91

Post by cardy31 »

valcron1000 wrote: post #64
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/

What about international transfers without a middle man dictating what, when and how? If not for blockchain I would probably be working on a completely different field. Just because you don't find it useful does not mean that it's the same for everyone else

Turns out most people wanting to do international transfers without a middleman are criminals. Regular people are for the most part fine with international transfers going through banks, likely via SWIFT.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#93

Post by worthless-trash »

achow wrote: post #35
Victerius wrote: post #2

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

Web1 was read only (ex. blog) Web2 is Read+Write (all interactive apps - email travel booking, stock trading etc. However, the content of these are owned by mega or small corp) Web3 is Read+Write &'Own' your data. By virtue of blockchain tech you can take your data/content and use some other service. You have your NFTs, you have your Bitcoins, you can use any service to manage those.

Defining web versions is a jerk move.

I know its 'unsocial' and 'nasty' , it has to be said, we should feeding the jerks.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#94

Post by strangeattractr »

fryingneurons wrote: post #25

Quoted post unavailable.

Your retort is the most common one to criticism of web3 and crypto. The only reason people criticise it is because they don't own it. Surely then you'll admit the only reason people are proponents of it is because they do own it?

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#95

Post by worthless-trash »

pavlov wrote: post #77
achow wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web1 was read only (ex. blog) Web2 is Read+Write (all interactive apps - email travel booking, stock trading etc. However, the content of these are owned by mega or small corp) Web3 is Read+Write &'Own' your data. By virtue of blockchain tech you can take your data/content and use some other service. You have your NFTs, you have your Bitcoins, you can use any service to manage those.

So if “web1” was supposedly read only and the example of that is a blog, who wrote the blogs?

I agree, i had a bigger tirade written about versioning the web, into such 'cleanly' delineated markings, but I know it'd upset the hive mind.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#96

Post by uncomputation »

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…

> literally an article about having fun staying poor

And here it is. When the technical merits of “web3” fail to illicit genuine change (networks effects are powerful and matter [0]), its advocates fall back on the “get in or stay out” mentality, which is frankly a red flag for a supposedly technical project.

> could just as easily be steered into "how to improve the concept of Web3"

If web3 cannot sustain itself due to its technical merits and if there clearly are centralized effects at work here, then every person brought in with the threat that they better help out or “stay poor” (a truly disgusting phrase) is just another brick in the pyramid, another dollar to VCs. Just admit you are trying to coerce free labor to prop up your own bags.

Many are not impressed by the so called merits of web3 for good reason.

> Run your own node

Literally, in Satoshi’s original white paper in 2008, he pointed out that running a node is prohibitive and could result in centralization over time, which is exactly why he coined SPV (simple payment verification) (aka light clients).

> [OpenSea] is a GUI ontop of their smart contracts (public access backend code)

Blatantly false. OpenSea can and has taken down various tokens minted on their platform for reasons ranging from copyright infringement to sanctions compliance (Iran is the only country I am familiar with at the time). You can mint an NFT without OpenSea but to say that you can just use OpenSea’s “backend code” without their consent is false.

> There is an opportunity to inspire people with the tools to…

This crypto grift talk is frustrating, dishonest, and hand-wave-y coming from the cypherpunks to what we have now. Cryptocurrency and the space around it was never about “inspiration,” but about liberation and action. We don’t need to be inspired, we need to be empowered.

[^0]: Coinbase complies with sanctions. OpenSea removes artwork. MetaMask uses Infura as an RPC so any NFT removed on OpenSea will not show up in MetaMask wallets (using default RPC). Bridge hacks result in many accounts losing their money unless saved by an injection of VC funding, completely defeating the “be your own bank” mentality. Centralized platforms extreme usage relative to the rest of the network (Uniswap, OpenSea, MetaMask) result in high gas prices for everyone else. Billionaires like Justin Sun Tron can take out massive loans to influence distributed governance like he did for the Compound vote on collateral rates.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#97

Post by alexb_ »

People use centralized systems because they actually like the convenience that comes with it. And with that, comes the decentralized system changing in such a way that it changes to almost NEEDING centralization. The problem is that engineers and cybersecurity people all think that everyone else thinks like they do, when in actuality the complete opposite is true.

The biggest example is the internet itself - the internet is a completely decentralized network until it wasn't, with website certs becoming required. People use popular web hosting because it's easier and just better than what they could do. Email is completely decentralized, and it's very easy to set up your own web server - as long as you want every single spam system to immediately block all of your messages.

"Decentralized" systems will all go the exact same way. And it's because people don't want to spend time setting up their own shit, they are very happy to pay in either money or data to have someone else do it for them. Yeah, it's very easy to say "well just set up your own thing" but once you get to a critical mass of everyone using Gmail instead of their own server then the system becomes unusable without centralization.

Decentralization is a fantastic idea, and it works great in theory, but it fails to actually consider any of the practical problems that come with decentralization and doesn't consider what people who aren't programmers actually want to do with their time and money.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#98

Post by everfree »

TobyTheDog123 wrote: post #38
Nursie wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Maybe OpenSea is a bad example (NFTs are something I really don't understand) ;) A better example might be a DEX like Uniswap. Uniswap goes-down/bans-you/whatever? Use PancakeSwap or 1Inch or Futureswap or some other equally-ridiculously-named service. They all connect to the wallet that you own and cant be taken away from you.

If the Uniswap website goes down, you don't even have to switch services. You can just pick a different frontend for the Uniswap contract. In fact, 1Inch uses the Uniswap contract to fulfill some of its trades.

The trick is that the Uniswap API/service itself, the smart contract, cannot go down unless the entire Ethereum network itself is down.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#99

Post by philliphaydon »

bigbonch wrote: post #61
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/

Walmart Canada has used blockchain [1] to better their supply chains systems. I suspect when you say you "haven't found one legitimate use case for blockchain" you're referring to the consumer space based on current offerings. I would argue that "blockchain" just as an idea and technology has plenty of use cases. [1] https://hbr.org/2022/01/how-walmart-canada-uses-blockchain-t...

Blockchain does not help supply chains. It doesn’t guarantee that things have been tampered with. It doesn’t solve any problems.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#100

Post by xiphias2 »

TheCowboy wrote: post #88
xiphias2 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If we limit ourselves to Bitcoin then we're at a sliver of the web3 ecosystem everyone is casting their hopes upon. And Bitcoin in its current state still seems more like a blockchain working prototype and isn't 'feature-ful' enough to replace centralized finance. But proof-of-work's energy consumption is what kills Bitcoin for me. For what it's worth, I consider myself crypto agnostic. If a tech delivers something b…

Bitcoin has nothing to do with Web3, they are two different things (web3 is a new term, Bitcoin is a system from 2008)
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