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Web3 is centralized and inefficient

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Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#411

Post by dfabulich »

hahaitsfunny wrote: post #337
dfabulich wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockchains are hierarchical power structures. They're democracies, in fact, but instead of "one person, one vote" you get a share of votes based on how much electricity you waste. As the article explains, mining capacity is centralized, and therefore, so is Web3. Blockchains are no better than any other democratic institution; substantially worse, in fact, because they're wasting electricity to do it. Web3 pretends…

I never claimed they were not - I said they were a big FU to nation state fiat. I don't work on web3 or own crypto. Nation State fiat is a scam too - I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make to me... Am I trading one hierarchical power structure for another? Maybe? Does that mean blockchains hold no promise? No. With POS an eth node will supposedly be able to run on a rasp pi - is that too much electricit…

If we assume that you're trading one hierarchical power structure for another, then can we agree that proof-of-work blockchain is worse, just for the electricity waste?

What's the point of an electricity-guzzling PoW blockchain if it's just a new hierarchical power structure, the same as the old boss?

"Proof of stake" (POS) is really the same as the old boss. There's no way to build a decentralized POS network, because in POS, the more stake you have, the more you earn. Centralization follows immediately. POS is literally no better than using the banking network.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#412

Post by shudza »

taywrobel wrote: post #28
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…

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…

So if we cross out the decentralizaton part, which problem does web3 solve over web2? Why do we need it? Honest question.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#413

Post by anhner »

birracerveza wrote: post #363
jdrc wrote: post #359

The mortal sin is to consider artificial rarity a good thing . The internet is infinite, the appeal of the metaverse is exacty because you can be infinitely young, infinitely rich, have infinite partners, break ouf of the constraints of this world. Constrained virtual worlds are called games and have a different objective. If we are to build a zero sum world, we d better stick to the physical one.

EDIT: nvm

I think that was his one of his points.

What about the inverse? How fun would it be if on the internet you could only order an arbitrary number of a digital product, like an ebook? For example "only 1000 people can order this [infinitely copyable, but digitally restricted] book".

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#414

Post by bamboozled »

majormajor wrote: post #160
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Email is one I keep coming back to when I try to picture a future that runs on blockchain tech. It seems like even if there are enough situations where the zero-trust nature proves to make sense to users, it would be silly for them to all use the same chains. Why deal with the overhead and transaction costs? Why wouldn't there be as many chains as their are email providers, and then most of them would only have value…

I have a domain with 3 users, I don't have any problems?

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#415

Post by Tabular-Iceberg »

yashg wrote: post #168
moorow wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a project when I was consulting that was floated, a few years ago. It was a blockchain-backed ledger for tracking fuel charges across a truck fleet - effectively, when the truckies filled up with fuel, they'd record it in the ledger. It can't be modified or altered, nobody can defraud the company because it's an immutable record!, shouted the sales team. I mean, the truckie could always put the wrong value…

Also if the company just created a simple web/mobile app for truckers to enter data that doesn't have edit and delete functionality it is immutable. Non programmers think immutability is inherent in a system and not something controlled by code. Even if I use a blockchain and cryptography to timestamp it, if I am the one controlling the node, who in the world can prevent me from going in and changing it and time stam…

It would still remove plausible deniability. The trucker would not be able to blame anyone else for entering the wrong data in the system.

Another advantage is that you immediately see if an entry in the ledger has been dropped due to a network or other technical error, which can be a problem if you’re running a complex state machine on the data. I once helped a company build an IoT product where that was a problem. I pitched the idea but got absolutely no traction. I think the mistake I made was not calling it a blockchain, but just said I wanted to include hashes in the messages, so it didn’t sound sexy enough. I don’t like blockchain hype either, I didn’t care about being public, distributed, having proof of work or consensus, I just wanted to know if and when a message had been dropped, which is apparently too much to ask.

Also I think the vendor of the actual device didn’t understand what message authentication was, so they wouldn’t have been able to make it happen on their end. Their idea of security was just encrypting the data, but making no effort to ensure who it came from. I also think they wanted to use DES, which had already been broken for a few years at that point.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#416

Post by threatripper »

rablackburn wrote: post #241
threatripper wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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)

Yes, but the legal system could back specific NFTs instead of specific books. That would give those NFTs meaning and value. Right now I just don't see why any government would want to do that.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#417

Post by genge »

This article is realy lazy. If you want an actually valid argument against web3, here is Tim O'Reilly's take. He is the creator of the term web2.0 and created much of what we know as open source: https://www.oreilly.com/radar/why-its-too-early-to-get-excit...

I don't understand how these types of articles can reach the front page of hackernews. A hadoop system could provide a replacement? That's like arguing a multi-threaded pc will be a replacement.

Blockchain does have a lot of hype, we can all agree there. But there's decent technology being built too. He is right in that many things are centralized, and many tools have to still be decentralized (like infura).

The thing is, things are being built to solve certain issues and we are at early stages. Wwhat serious teams want to achieve is not "decentralization", but "sufficient-decentralization". As in, you can expect for a protocol to enforce solving conflicts of interest accounting for what the majority in the protocol want. Governance is important here, and it's being dealt with. DiD will potentially allow more democracy (instead of capitalisti) decision of the rules. You have energy sector investing heavily on energy conflict resolution. There's many topics that are solved by certain features.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#418

Post by tuvistavie »

hiq wrote: post #325
everfree wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you've actually tried to send an international wire transfer, but it requires more paperwork/effort, is more expensive, and is less reliable than signing a crypto transaction. Many smaller banks require you to physically drive to the branch and wait in line to send one. They usually cost upwards of $40 and that's before currency conversion, which is done at a rate that may or may not be favorable. Mak…

> I don't know if you've actually tried to send an international wire transfer, but it requires more paperwork/effort, is more expensive, and is less reliable than signing a crypto transaction. Don't platforms such as https://wise.com/ solve international wire transfer problems? I have experience with only a few currencies, but as long as you can do transfers in your home currency online you should be able to do the…

Depending on the country, it can truly be. Some of my relatives have money stuck in Lebanon and there is currently not really any way of getting the money out of the country.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#419

Post by black_puppydog »

Kiro wrote: post #336
black_puppydog wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you would be, if the reference at least contained a content hash. as is, you literally just buy a link

The content hash would prove nothing. What you're buying is "this NFT was minted by this artist, as confirmed by their Twitter or verified OpenSea account or whatever". The value is totally dependent on the social contract. Some random person minting the same NFT with the same hash would be worthless, unless they impersonate the artist.

Fair point. Indeed content hash and signature from the artist would have to be on-chain, and somehow the signing party needs to be established as the real one as well. So... it's even worse that none of that is happening. With NFTs, to me it really just looks like BS all the way down.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#420

Post by prmoustache »

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…

Internet started being centralized when companies started making decisions instead of keeping it collegial and use IETF RFC's.

Business companies all strive to get monopolies, hence they build things to capture consumers. Same companies are more attractive than open standard because making things not interoperable is more agile/faster as you can break things whenever you want. Thus companies build more attractive things to the users and users get captured in those shiny gold plated cells.

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