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Web3 is expensive P2P

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Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#3
> P2P never made it to the mainstream; instead, centralized systems still (or, again? even more?) dominate the landscape. So, because it failed, should we try Web3? I doubt it, as it is more likely to fail, due to higher complexity and more dependencies.

One major reason decentralized has a hard time is because standards, public protocols cannot be innovated on rapidly. Or at least, new iterations cannot be deployed universally very quickly. So centralized / proprietary channels rise to the top because new ideas can find expression in them more rapidly.

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#4
No because it's mostly not P2P. A lot of it is centralized. There are central servers behind things like MetaMask or hosting most NFT content.

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#5

> P2P never made it to the mainstream; instead, centralized systems still (or, again? even more?) dominate the landscape. So, because it failed, should we try Web3? I doubt it, as it is more likely to fail, due to higher complexity and more dependencies. One major reason decentralized has a hard time is because standards, public protocols cannot be innovated on rapidly. Or at least, new iterations cannot be deployed…

Those "open standards" are often dictated by the whims of giants like Google. That's fine when the interests of buisnesses align with their clients, but a recent one that comes to mind is FLoC

Edit: I think this is why we have seen the emergence of standards like WebRTC, WebGL, etc. that enable "web apps", for better or for worse.

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#6
post #4

No because it's mostly not P2P. A lot of it is centralized. There are central servers behind things like MetaMask or hosting most NFT content.

you can point MetaMask to a different RPC endpoint or your own local node. it is like suggesting BitTorrent is centralized tech because many users download torrents on a centralized website.

most NFTs (of value) are using IPFS or Arweave not a URL.

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#7
What is the value proposition of web3 to the user?

JS web apps offloaded the compute and memory onto the browser/client, web3 to offload storage costs onto the user.

You will up pay for every click. web3 and metaverse feels so dystopian. but the young generations that were raised by tiktok will probably accept it.

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#9
P2P is a big component of blockchains. The "expensive" part is competition for the limited capacity in global consensus (block space), which is necessary if you want to interact with global systems that deal with high value objects.

Blockchains can't exist without P2P, but P2P is not sufficient. There are plenty of use cases that require global consensus, and that part is expensive.

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#10
post #4

No because it's mostly not P2P. A lot of it is centralized. There are central servers behind things like MetaMask or hosting most NFT content.

You can add your own or any node that is public to metamask in the settings. Infura has had outages a few times before so people know how to do this now.
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