371–380 of 769 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the incentive for the ticket seller to enable that?
Royalties. The ticket seller can set that and every time the ticket is resold, they will get % of that sale. For an artist that would mean they can sell a ticket with % royalty set and then profit from future sales on an ongoing basis.
It's just a stream of rants about centralized vs decentralized without a single argument or explanation that stands on its legs. There are also a lot of asumptions and wishful thinking about the prospects of decentralization in finance and banking that clearly show the cluelessness of the author.
> I’m not the first person to tell you this, and certainly not the last, but Web3 is in fact centralized, just as Web2 was. Web3 is just a worse version of Web2.
Hum okay, dare to clarify? Nope, there's just not a single place in the article where some argument to back this claim is made. Yet this is repeated over and over. This is just argumenting by repetition.
> 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.
What does that even mean? I fear the author has no idea what he's talking about, and does not really understand how a Web3 app work. For those that wonder, here is what it typically looks like:
- You put the logic of your Web3 app in a smart contract, that's the essence of why it's called a distributed application.
You will most likely want some kind of graphical interface so that your users can interact with it. It wouldn't be very convenient if your app was just an API to call your smart contract on a blockchain.
- This GUI often takes the form of an SPA, which indeed you need to somehow serve to the users. You can serve in a distributed fashion, using IPFS for instance, but since the adoption is not that high, often there is also a traditional webserver somewhere to deliver the SPA (e.g. AWS Cloudfront or any other CDN). This is one of the potential point of centralization, but it gets better everyday with adoption of IPFS and such.
Now you have 1) the logic of your app in a smart contract on the blockchain and 2) a graphical interface that was somehow served to the client. You now need to let the GUI interact with the smart contract. There is mainly two possibilities to do that:
- Require the client to use a browser extension that offers an API for the webapp to pilot the user's wallet. That's what MetaMask does. It exposes an API that is usable from javascript webapps, and perform wallet operations accordingly. It's a bit annoying to use though, for two reasons: 1) MetaMask is a specific extension, with a specific API. If your webapp needs MetaMask to interact with the blockchain, you are somehow restricting the user to a single possible software, which is not really ideal (note that users could still directly call the smart contract, but we're talking about the average user here, not programmers) 2) MetaMask is not _just_ a bridge between a webapp and the blockchain, it's also a wallet, in that it wants to hold and manage your private keys for you (though there have been some developments to use hardware wallets with MetaMask). Note that MetaMask in itself is not _really_ centralized, it's just a software that you need to have installed. MetaMask communicate with the blockchain using traditional JSON RPC, so you need to configure MetaMask with the address of a node on this blockchain that accepts JSON RPC. Could be your own self-hosted node, but for simplicity MetaMask defaults to a mutual hosting blockchain node provider: "Infura".
Overall, if your graphical interface only support the MetaMask API to interact with the blockchain, it defeats a bit the purpose, which is why new solutions (and standards) are emerging.
- One promising alternative which is starting to be implemented in a lot of Web3 apps is "Wallet Connect". It's a protocol for bridging a webapp and a wallet. There's a lot of advantages to this model: 1) the webapp is now agnostic of the wallet it talks to. Any wallet application can support the "Wallet Connect" protocol and thus be used with any Web3 app. 2) There is no need for the wallet and the Web3 app to communicate locally (e.g. with a browser extension). You can use a Web3 app on your computer and pair it with a wallet on your phone or hardware wallet.
> Once upon a time, it was easy to mine Bitcoin. But Bitcoin took off, and it’s now absurdly hard to mine Bitcoin. You need farms of GPU mining just to get tiny amounts of bitcoin.
Hum, yeah right, I agree with the author on this one, but what's the link between the energy consumption of Bitcoin's PoW, and the centralization of Web3 apps?!
> The design of blockchain, is that as more coins are mined, you need more computing power just to get smaller amounts of blockchain.
Hu, no, that's the design of "Bitcoin", not "blockchain".
> And even if the environmental concerns were nonexistent, if it’s so hard to mine Bitcoin, it favors established miners over newcomers. Is that really what you call a “decentralized” platform?
Indeed, which is why the overwhelming majority of blockchains are now "proof of something-that-is-not-work" (typically proof of stake).
But proof of stake does not solve the whole problem of the divide between "regular users" and "miners". Most people "staking" on blockchains use some kind of proxy or service to do so, because, well, it's not like everyone wants to host a block validating node even if it doesn't use much electricity.
Which leads me to modern blockchains that have WebAssembly SDKs, so you could perfectly imagine that you would be able to contribute to the blockchain during your browsing of the website, this eliminating the need for node hosting and staking services altogether.
> Expecting the financial industry to run on blockchain is like expecting AT&T to run their backbone on a Amazon warehouse sized place full of 56k dial-up modems.
Clearly, clearly, you have no idea of how the financial and banking systems are solving asset settlement and reconciliation today, because blockchain solves _exactly_ that problem, and in a very efficient and secure manner. Not only that, but even the slowest of the worst blockchain out there is infinitely more efficient and fast at settling transactions than any existing custodian, back office, clearing house, or broker.
Lots of people assume that when they see a transaction incoming on their bank account, then it's "done". Similarly, people assume that they can "buy a share of Apple and sell it to buy a share of Microsoft" in the same day. That's a horribly wrong understanding of how it works, trust me, I've been working in finance for 15 years now.
The reality is much, much more complicated than that. Most financial settlements are _at the very least_ 1 (or 2, or 3) days. The whole finance and banking industry is built around huge settlement/unwind systems that give you the impression that things are instantaneous, while you're just seeing "optimistic states in case of no settlement errors".
See https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/trading-investing/t... for an introduction of brokerage settlement, then realize this is just the tip of the iceberg.
> Sure, I work at Microsoft 365, because I had to. It was join Microsoft, or be dependent on my dad for money.
That sure escalated quickly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is true, but the flaw in your reasoning, and in the raison d'etre of NFT's in general, is that social consensus is the be all, end all. There isn't really the problem of acquiring a 100% perfect copy of an asset in the real world. You can approximate an item, but you can't literally get the same exact thing down to the molecular composition. On the internet, this is absolutely possible (replace molecules with by…
The NFT is the property. Social consensus is why people want to own it. The blockchain enables the creation of an ownable digital record. Our legal system continue to function and will still arrest you if you steal an NFT.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can physically live in a house that you don't legally own. Those are two different concepts.
Not really the ability to physically occupy the house is one of the rights owning it gives you. There are other ways to gain that right but there is conceptual overlap there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh they can, but that's just the public appearance; they get excited over them because they see them as potentially high return investments. But of course, the big fish already got their money (and added it to the pile they earned from a couple of scam coins, artificially inflated crypto, etc). Nobody is under any illusions here. Except the media and their gullible audience; the media is in on it and the people behin…
So Shaquille O’Neal bought this Bored Ape NFT: https://opensea.io/assets/0x60e4d786628fea6478f785a6d7e70477... Are you claiming that this NFT, which everybody knows passed the hands of Shaq, will be worthless in the future? Bored Ape is kind of like the art of Andy Warhol. Yes, the creators of bored ape made a lot of money, but so did Andy Warhol. Is there anything wrong with that? If you want to call that all a scam…
That's very likely, yes. It's just some digital trading card that he once owned. It's nothing in comparison to an artifact like a shirt from a game or even an autograph. And what are those worth? Much much less than what this URL was passed around for between rich crypto wash pumping bros.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your house analogy is not really correct, since in a digital space, you can have an infinite number of the same house, and an infinite number of people living in that house. I consider it more like a certificate. Some cool architect made an incredible house. Lots of people live in that exact same house. But there is one who can say he bought the certificate straight from the architect himself. It doesn't give him any…
Exactly. NFTs are digital trading cards. I don't know why people can't wrap their heads around the simple concept.
There are only so many monkeys you can attract.
NFT is a solution to this problem: You promise a high return of investment for additional monkeys to invest.
This keeps on going until the whole thing crashes down burning. Those who invested first and really care already pulled out their share. The monkeys will suffer though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that is all solved with signing and verifying in cryptography. Why does it need to be on the blockchain? I think you are asking the same thing somewhat. In many countries (at least in the EU) the gov now has mobile apps (and horrible desktop versions but the idea is the same) which generates a key pair on your device, sends the public key to the gov where it is connected to your tax number and that is it. This in…
The main point of it is to take out thridparties to fight against anything they could enforce. Blockchains are public registries where you cryptographically sign everything you do to ensure it happened. NFTs are digital assets, be it code, music or pictures. You can prove their unicity through the blockchain and if you were to trade an asset you'd have the proof it happened too. Now you could sell your house on a saf…
Edit: in short, I would love to talk to a proponent of blockchain who has a more compelling story than 'transfer value'. I mean; I see the case for transferring money to and from warzones etc; if your gov does not allow you to use your money or doesn't allow you to buy a more stable currency than your country has, then this is a means, if kept on chain, for you to have liquidity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, they’re digital receipts. Because the thing that it’s representing could still disappear or go away. Maybe that has heaps of value, maybe once the server ther points to the thing you’re meant to own goes down or the asset at the url changes it becomes worth 2 parts of sweet f all
> Because the thing that it’s representing could still disappear or go away. Not if you, the owner, or someone else, stores a copy. Even if the URL associated with the URL is broken, it doesn't change the fact that it still represents the thing people want it to represent. NFTs are not a backup system for your data.
Don’t get me wrong, I get that it’s not meant to be a data backup and it can be totally disassociated from the ‘thing’ - but setting that concept up and just being a bit more aware of what you are actually getting might make some people a bit more hesitant to buy a digital receipt with a url that may or may not 404 in the future. Great, you’ve got a receipt - for something that potentially millions of people also have a copy of. What makes your receipt at that point, if/when the underlying disappears, worth anything?
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. The sad thing is that people like the convenience of centralized systems. Humans are lazy. They'll go with the #1 option, even if it means building a centralized monopoly. I should've made this point clearer. Note: I am the article's author.
Am I lazy because I don't forge spare parts for my car and install them myself? No. I leave this to the huge, rich, established company that manufactured my car, and their contractors. Why? Because the only times I ever repaired anything in a car, was in videogames. And I want to be sure that the thing that I entrust my safety to while traveling, is in excellent working order.
For the same reason, most people don't setup their own mail servers, don't setup their own racks to run webapps, invent their own currencies, grow their own food, produce their own electricity, or dig wells.
Our society runs on a huge variety of systems, most of which are too complex individually for any single human to fully understand/make/maintain on his own. Centralization is not a bad thing to be avoided, it's an inevitable consequence of technological development.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh they can, but that's just the public appearance; they get excited over them because they see them as potentially high return investments. But of course, the big fish already got their money (and added it to the pile they earned from a couple of scam coins, artificially inflated crypto, etc). Nobody is under any illusions here. Except the media and their gullible audience; the media is in on it and the people behin…
So Shaquille O’Neal bought this Bored Ape NFT: https://opensea.io/assets/0x60e4d786628fea6478f785a6d7e70477... Are you claiming that this NFT, which everybody knows passed the hands of Shaq, will be worthless in the future? Bored Ape is kind of like the art of Andy Warhol. Yes, the creators of bored ape made a lot of money, but so did Andy Warhol. Is there anything wrong with that? If you want to call that all a scam…
In this case, absolutely. https://checkmynft.com/?address=0x60e4d786628fea6478f785a6d7... ("Asset Strength: Poor")
The NFT is a simple link to an URL hosted at boredapeyachtclub.com. Even if the owner backs up the image on IPFS, the NFT won't point to the IPFS backup; the NFT will always immutably point to BAYC's website.
Inevitably, BAYC will go down, and when it does, the NFT will be a receipt pointing to nothing.
("But it's a receipt to nothing that Shaq once held!" … yeahhh, sure.)