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Web3 is centralized and inefficient

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Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#561

Post by exdsq »

happymellon wrote: post #305
divs1210 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not why making an NFT out of the ticket is interesting. It's interesting because I can, for example, resell my Woodstock ticket on an open market.

You can resell your paper, or email ticket already. How does blockchain make it interesting?

Let’s you know the ticket is authentic because you can see it is part of the set of tickets the band/venue initially created, because of atomic transactions I can guarantee if I send you money I’ll get a ticket in return (NFTs are just another form of currency at the end of a day), because they’re unique I know no one else can own it even though it’s all public so I won’t have issues at the door, because they allow metadata the venue can confirm if they’re resellable or not on the NFT itself, a venue can get a % of resale value back allowing more second-hand markets to exist, among various other possibilities.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#562

Post by FabHK »

distortedsignal wrote: post #203
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…

I think the answer to why one chain is better than many chains is because it’s way harder to 51% one chain with many applications rather than having to 51% one chain with one application. I don’t know enough about blockchain tech to KNOW this is correct, but it’s something interesting that kinda falls out of the theory.

You hit the nail on the head, I'd say. If there is one chain, you need to amass 51% to attack it, which is nearly impossible. If there are 100 chains with 1% of the total hash rate each, you just need to control 0.51% of the total hash rate to take over one of those chains.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#563

Post by throw_nbvc1234 »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #550

The issue is that crypto-rooters took the term "Web3" and inevitable tied it to crypto. There are other decentralized approaches that could become a decentralized successor to todays web, (CCNs, IPFS) but are not blockchain/crypto related. So please don't buy into the "only crypto/blockchain" is the future of the decentralized web narrative.

This is too nuanced a take for most people, the kind who want to engaged in polarized 'discussions', to care about. Or use-case specific coins that solve a particular problem (Filecoin IPFS relationship). Web3, crypto, blockchain have all become poisoned topics that are mostly divorced from the technological characteristics underneath them.

This combined with the idea that if those technologies don't solve a problem for "me" then they're not useful technologies just makes these discussions worthless. I'm sure there are many more Ukrainians and Russians who will permanently think differently about "crypto" in a way that most USA resident will (hopefully) never need to. Some will use it for good, some for evil, but underneath that morality is just a technology.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#564

Post by swid »

theptip wrote: post #545
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…

The web3 answer here would probably be “use blockchain for identity” which is a hard thing to get right (understatement) when you consider “right to deletion” and various privacy laws, but imagine you could tie an email sender to some pseudonymous trail of transactions that prove it is a real economically transacting agent and not a bot. I don’t think anyone is proposing to use blockchain for email? (I’m prepared to…

If you want an email and okay with anonymous - send an email. If you want verification of economic activity without the right to see that activity - ask for a credit card.

I trying to figure out the problem you want to solve here and how blockchain is better - but it falls apart. For one, most people don’t buy things with crypto and there are also many different coins on top of that. So even if tie an email to a particular crypto address, it’s not likely the average person can prove they have economic activity.

Then the motives are wrong on both sides anyway - I don’t want services I use to have a copy of my spending history, and they want a way to deanonymize me to discourage abuse, or charge me for their services. Neither of which sounds like it is part of what you are suggesting.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#565

Post by TAKEMYMONEY »

Tade0 wrote: post #445

To me the most damning thing said about web3 etc. to date is: https://github.com/cryptog0/welcome2web3#social-media-on-web... > The cost of storing information on the Blockchain is referred to as GAS and at the time of writting costs roughly $2 USD per 1kb of data. To put this into perspective, a high resolution photograph can be upwards of 4000kb, or $8,000. Even if this estimate is three orders of magnitude off, th…

Blockchains aren't a replacement for cloud storage. Storing a yacht in a mailbox would probably get expensive too.

That readme file has little original content, and is riddled with speculation, errors and typos. I think there are more substantive criticisms of Web3 available, this is possibly one of the worst I've seen.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#566

Post by silisili »

HWR_14 wrote: post #547
silisili wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complete opposite take. Imagine putting all your eggs in Myspace, Geocities, Angelfire, AOL, or probably soonish, Facebook. The internet would have up and died. Yet these centralized providers come and go, but the web remains. Decentralization isn't about doing things yourself, it's about having constant choice. To flee sinking ships, to bet on rising stars. The web is fine. Web3 will pass like myspace, and the web w…

Something like 1/3 of the world uses FB. Do you really see it dying soon?

Soon in the relative sense, perhaps...I didn't mean to imply like next year. But 5-10 years from now? I can see it.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#567

Post by TameAntelope »

akyu wrote: post #496
dvt wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Yeah but collusion and lack of transparency is what you get with a decentralized network! With no rules to enforce, the powerful can do whatever they want, including acting badly.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#568

Post by usrbinbash »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #490
usrbinbash wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can give you plenty of more feasible analogies; Do I make my own bread? Sure, sometimes I do. Baking bread isn't that hard. But do I do it every day? No. Why? Because it takes time to do, my kitchen counter is usually a mess afterwards, and the result usually doesn't taste anywhere near as good as the 20+ bread varieties I can buy at the corner store. I sometimes do it for fun, but I wouldn't do it every day. Let's…

'Let's go to macro scale: What's the better solution: 1000000 people each baking their own bread (1 loaf a day), or a giant company baking all the bread?' The same argument advocates monopoly or central planning by government? If not, you have to jistify where is centralised enough. Now, if we have a 20,000 different bakeries, is that actually centralised? Decentralisation of plumbers doesnt mean everyone does his ow…

> The same argument advocates monopoly or central planning by government?

My argument isn't "centralization is good no matter what".

My argument is "centralization is not inherently a bad thing that is to be overcome. Done correctly, as demonstrated by many existing systems in our society, it is a great way to make things our society needs work at scale in an efficient manner."

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#569

Post by GuB-42 »

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…

> Addresses should be portable

You need centralization for that. And in fact, you can already do it.

Just register a domain name and use it for your email address. Most registrars offer a mail redirection service. And if you don't like your registrar, there is an official procedure to transfer your domain name, and therefore you email address. There are also official procedures regarding getting back a stolen domain name, and ways to avoid losing it by accident (grace periods, etc...), made possible because it is centralized.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#570

Post by acdha »

moffkalast wrote: post #553
acdha wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, now think about that a little more carefully: 1. Russia's problem is that other countries are choosing not to do business with them. The mechanism doesn't change that (China and India will do business, at a hefty discount, but that's true for gold, too) and Bitcoin adds some risks because the blockchain model is perfect for enabling censorship because it not only allows people to avoid transactions with sanctio…

This is where Monero comes in.

Which statistically nobody uses, is far from proven against nation-state level attacks, and if it fails to meet KYC will be banned in most countries. There just isn’t a technical way to magically nullify the power of the government controlling where you live.
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