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Web3 is centralized and inefficient

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Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#491

Post by diego_moita »

seibelj wrote: post #478
diego_moita wrote: post #475

"People don’t want to run their own servers, and never will". Moxie Marlinspike https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html

It’s called choice. There are a panoply of email providers yet only one Twitter. And you don’t need to add any DKIM nonsense to get the blockchain to accept transactions broadcast from your own node.

> It’s called choice.

Fair enough.

But Moxie's point is that such choice has consequences and implications. Centralization is the most obvious of them.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#492

Post by danaris »

OrlandoHakim wrote: post #471

It is hard to advocate for the value of decentralized systems without sounding like a hand-waving conspiracy theorist. The benefits of decentralization do come at a cost of efficiency and throughput and they are often harder to quantify or justify unless one takes a harder look at the fully loaded cost of centralization. As an example, consider the fact that MacDonald’s is by far the most prolific restaurant in the w…

There's plenty of solid, non-conspiracy-theory-based argument in favor of decentralized systems...for many things. I don't think currency/banking will ever be one of them.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#493

Post by dmitriid »

jcbrand wrote: post #426
dmitriid wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are literally thousands of concerts, and sporting events, and any other events that people buy tickets to. Guess why people still go to Sziget or Woodstock. Also guess why it's impossible to just click your fingers and pull an unlimited number of Woodstocks out of thin air.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. The fact that there is a limited number of Woodstocks is irrelevant. There are other organizers and bands who can also offer concerts, and at a reduced price compared to the premium that something like Woodstock would demand. That's competition, and it puts downward pressure on concert prices in general, thereby helping people on a tight budget.

There are already thousands of concerts doing that. And yet Woodstock is still there with their prices.

Why do you think that is?

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#494

Post by DennisP »

mbesto wrote: post #485
dvt wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pi…

Ok so lets say the same JPG exists on two sets of blockchains. One is 0x12345678 and the other one is 99x12345678. How do I prove that I own the JPG?

Which one did the creator use? That's the one that has legitimacy and value.

Legitimacy is basically a coordination game, where you get the best payoff by making the same choice as everyone else. To really dig into this, read this piece by Vitalik:

https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#495

Post by pharke »

hiq wrote: post #309
majormajor wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Why wouldn't there be as many chains as their are email providers Email providers can send email to each other, making them all as equally useful. Different blockchains wouldn't be compatible with each other by default, by definition, so it's more of a winner-takes-all situation.

Isn't that a problem worth solving? It had to be solved for banks to work as reliable institutions. Having a single blockchain in the end is probably as bad as having a single bank, although for slightly different reasons.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#496

Post by akyu »

dvt wrote: post #54
mccorrinall wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a distorted retelling of history. Mining pools ultimately did settle on voting in favor of the hard fork, but did so through collusion and lack of transparency. Most notably, ethermine miners voted against the hard fork, but the pool operators contributed the entire pools votes in favor of the fork any way. There were similar situations with other mining pools, and in general the actual miners were left in the dark. The Ethereum Foundation was communicating with mining pool operators and exchange operators in private chats the entire time all of this was playing out.

Was the hard fork the right move in a pragmatic sense? Probably. But it was not at all the exemplar of decentralized consensus that people seems to remember these days. It was messy and ugly.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#497

Post by indymike »

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…

> 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.

The fallacy here is most centralized services are implemented on top of the biggest, most successful decentralized system: the web.

> 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.

I'm not so sure. For really important tasks, I'm routinely amazed by what people cobble together to solve the problem, especially when they can't build software. Perhaps there are just a lot of things that if made easy, provide enough value they are worth buying, but aren't important enough to people to invest a year or two building a product for. Regardless, most modern centralized systems are simply nodes on a decentralized system.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#498

Post by preseinger »

vmception wrote: post #39
taywrobel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But I don't care about that the impractical enthusiast stuff, I care about the bloggers that make these flippant dismissals instead of talking about the impractical things that are possible. I simultaneously observe that the impractical things can be made more practical . For example, Metamask with a non-default RPC node is great compared to using crypto before Metamask. Phantom wallet on Solana is even further impro…

> I care about the bloggers that make these flippant dismissals instead of talking about the impractical things that are possible. I simultaneously observe that the impractical things can be made more practical.

Why, though? What's the sell? What does a decentralized future get me, concretely, that I don't have now? Appeals to user privacy and data ownership aren't concrete things. Concrete things are faster loading times, or new features that are impossible or infeasible in other architectures. In these dimensions -- the only ones that matter -- I can't see how decentralization is anything other than an enormous step backwards?

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#500

Post by vmception »

mbesto wrote: post #487
vmception wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have to be conflating about half a dozen different concepts to write that sentence. I can't help you. If you want to learn, you can.

So then explain it instead of the personal attack. You guys seem fun.

> 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.

The question then is whose problem is that?

“What happens” to who?

There are about 6 or 7 distinct parties in the NFT market, so which person are you thinking about? Who would care and why? What does the rehoster get out of it?

That’s a good start

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