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Web3 is centralized and inefficient

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Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#271

Post by vmception »

unmole wrote: post #249
vmception wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think of them as digital digital picture frames. A market for digital, digital picture frames currently exists and it has high margins. That is the extent of my thought on the what people are buying. They aren't advertised that way though and the transaction receipt of purchasing the digital, digital picture frame can be a valuable asset. Regarding where the images being viewed are stored, many are not following be…

> I think of them as digital digital picture frames. I don't understand this analogy. A digital picture frame lets me look at pictures. What on earth is a digital digital picture frame?

A digital picture frame is a physical device that lets you look at preconfigured digital pictures. There is typically a mechanism for changing them, you purchased the device though.

A digital digital picture frame is a set of classes that lets you look at preconfigured digital pictures. There is typically a mechanism for changing the image, you purchased the set of classes, typically following one of the NFT standards.

Those are the ways at which they are similar.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#272

Post by vishnugupta »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #141
alexb_ wrote: post #97

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 inte…

This is a false dichotomy. Most people don't want to run their own mail servers. That isn't the same thing as saying we need a single entity to be in charge of email. There are thousands of independent email providers. Your emails get marked as spam if you have two users, not if you have two thousand. And small providers getting marked as spam isn't because it's necessary to prevent spam, it's because large providers…

It's telling that email is the last popular, useful protocol. Almost every application (chat, video conferencing, file sharing etc.,) since then have been proprietary and closed wall gardens. It is as if big corporations clearly saw open protocols being a big threat to their monopoly and either didn't bother building apps that adhere to existing protocols or were openly hostile to them.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#273

Post by eru »

samoit wrote: post #258

For those who want to know what is a NFT: Imagine you get the hacker news logo (or any other digital asset, like an image,video,song etc). Then I take that image and apply to it a hash funtion to generate an id, a number that later I put into any blockchain (usually ethereum). As the blockchain is ordered the first one who does this process stores in the blockchain the asset... and so its property. Later someone else…

Giving priority to the first guy is just a convention, isn't it?

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#274

Post by mjburgess »

JesseAldridge wrote: post #245
rablackburn wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the book has a legal authority backing it up saying that its entries are property rights to the listed address. Buying an NFT just to have an NFT is like paying for an entry in a book with no further meaning. You just get to say that’s your entry. Oh and the entry is an http url, so there’s a good chance it’ll 404 eventually (if you even get a status code back)

And where does legal authority come from? Social consensus - it's the same thing. The legal edifice maintaining property rights also requires maintenance.

The army and the police force. "Legal authority" is not a constraint on you, its what constraints the state's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#275

Post by shafyy »

yashg wrote: post #248
telomero22 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are just some of the use cases 1. 100x cheaper, faster cross-border transfers 2. Immutable, digital, accessible, secure ownership of music, video, real-estate, cars, gaming assets, health data 3. Instant access to nearly all possible financial products (loans, lending, startup investments etc.) without a middle man There are many, many more use cases. Crypto drastically increases accountability, transparency, ac…

1. Nope. Still need to convert it to real money for buying something. Gas fees > transfer fees. 2. Nope. It doesn't grant any ownership. It's a just a pointer to a file on third party server. Ownership is enforced by a central authority. Code is not law. 3. Nope. Without an underlying economic activity it's all a ponzi scheme. There is no finance in DeFi. Just scammers running pump and dump schemes and rugpulling sta…

Couldn't have said it better myself!

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#276

Post by yyyk »

NFTs are not semi-centralized because Web3 or blockchain. They are like this because our current notions of 'ownership' are intrinsically centralized. Social reality beats tech, so the tech will end up either emulating it regardless of underlying 'decentralized' technology, or the tech ends up withering away due to non-use.

Do a random sketch on your computer. Now put it on some Web0 site. What does 'ownership' mean? You still have the sketch after all, no matter what people do with the sketch. Inasmuch as you 'own' it, you may want attribution (people giving you credit), copyright (both limits on copying and copyright fees), warranty protection (if someone looks at the sketch and gets an epileptic attack, it's not your fault), ability to transfer ownership, etc. In short, the current notion of 'ownership' mostly related to relations with other humans*.

All these are provided by the law, and can only be provided by the law. 'Code is law' simply changes the entities making decisions, it's still law. If a single chain is a law, than it must have only one record for 'owned' stuff. If you had multiple chains, this strongly affects the value of ownership. Imagine multiple records of ownership - does one pay copyright fees to all the different records? Split them? Recognize only one? Any solution ends up devaluing or centralizing.

This is a poor match for NFT tech, since nothing really stops you from forking (a cryptocurrency fork has serious roadblocks. A NFT fork has a much easier time fighting the regular NFT using the NFT's own assets), but to have value one needs to approach a single source. So NFT will either fork to nothingness or end up de facto centralized.

* In a physical asset, there are a range of decisions regarding the physical asset, but again the question of who makes these decisions is a question of relations between humans, and inherently pushes towards centralization.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#277

Post by miracle2k »

mmaunder wrote: post #188

I still can't get over that NFT's are just a URL pointing to the data. They don't even have an on-chain hash of the digital asset. It's like selling a sign pointing to houses for the price of the house, and claiming you own the house, hoping that the sign will increase in value the way the house does, and bragging about it. For reference: https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html

> They don't even have an on-chain hash of the digital asset. It's like selling a sign pointing to houses for the price of the house, and claiming you own the house, hoping that the sign will increase in value the way the house does, and bragging about it.

If your metaphor is correct, it remains correct even with a hash being stored on-chain. Frankly, most NFT critiques seem just as thinly thought through as yours.

The NFT is a ledger entry that says you own an edition of a piece of digital art. People coalesce around this believe, because the edition was released by whoever owns the actual copyright (ideally the artist).

The link is conceptually irrelevant. Cryptopunks never had one. As long as the community of collectors remembers and agrees on what each ledger entry represents, there is no problem. A hash can help with this, which is why almost all high-value fine art NFTs have one (in their IPFS-url). No, moxie could not be more wrong when he thinks IPFS should be enforced; the NFT never represents a set of bytes, it always represents an idea. The NFT may link to a 4K render of the artist's 3D scene, but it also represents the 8K render.

The first tweet will always be the first tweet, in the same way as the first transatlantic flight has no physical presence. If Jack sells the first tweet as an NFT, it is no requirement that Twitter stay online for ever. It is merely strongly preferred that someone will archive it so it doesn't disappear from our collective memory, but that need not be the job of the NFT. The job of the NFT is simply to record your ownership of the concept. And you need a blockchain for this, to give it the credible neutrality needed for it to be considered something equivalent to real ownership; you can't have it be at the mercy of a single entity.

If you think paying money for database entries is stupid now, imagine how stupdi it would be if they were in Google Art, a product that will shut down in 3 years, and where Google will delete all your art when your country attacks a neighbour.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#278

Post by boomlinde »

threatripper wrote: post #226
mmaunder wrote: post #188

I still can't get over that NFT's are just a URL pointing to the data. They don't even have an on-chain hash of the digital asset. It's like selling a sign pointing to houses for the price of the house, and claiming you own the house, hoping that the sign will increase in value the way the house does, and bragging about it. For reference: https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html

Legally owning a house is literally just having your name and the address of your house in a book. EDIT: The actual power does not reside in the book. It resides in the mindshare this specific book has. Anyone can put anything in a book but only some people control the book that people pay attention to. Similar it is with fiat, cryptos and nfts. The power is not in the technology itself but in the mindshare they occu…

The stipulations of the book are enforceable by law. If you have the "mindshare" of the governing body and their means to create and enforce laws you are generally better off.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#279

Post by lampe3 »

exdsq wrote: post #212
mmaunder wrote: post #188

I still can't get over that NFT's are just a URL pointing to the data. They don't even have an on-chain hash of the digital asset. It's like selling a sign pointing to houses for the price of the house, and claiming you own the house, hoping that the sign will increase in value the way the house does, and bragging about it. For reference: https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html

To be specific, an NFT can be anything - even a Turing complete program - but common ones are simply containing a string of a URL. Edit: I was loosely involved in some of the conversation around smart contract and token implementation on a top 10 chain and there’s actually a lot of interesting issues with on chain data, such as if child pornography is added suddenly in some countries hosting a node can be seen as dis…

Tickets to a concert in the NFT world if you want so are a step back on what we had.

Back in my days, a Ticket was just a piece of paper. Without any name on it. The only information it had for what concert it was and what seat you had if there was the option. I could give it to anybody and he/she could go to the concert without any extra fee or a middleman.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#280

Post by unmole »

vmception wrote: post #271
unmole wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think of them as digital digital picture frames. I don't understand this analogy. A digital picture frame lets me look at pictures. What on earth is a digital digital picture frame?

A digital picture frame is a physical device that lets you look at preconfigured digital pictures. There is typically a mechanism for changing them, you purchased the device though. A digital digital picture frame is a set of classes that lets you look at preconfigured digital pictures. There is typically a mechanism for changing the image, you purchased the set of classes, typically following one of the NFT standard…

But an NFT doesn't let me look at a picture. It doesn't have a display for one. The whole point of a digital picture frame is that it has a display. Is a browser a digital digital picture frame?

I have as much need for a specialised digital digital picture frame as I have for a digital paperweight.

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