Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Web3 is expensive P2P

netfuture.ch

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 384 posts

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#131

Post by eric_cc »

Feriti wrote: post #106
bsedlm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have you considered how (not "why?") was google able to give away one gigabyte of email storage to anybody before 2010s? that was not free either... what I'm trying to get at (and not very eloquently) is that a lot of that work is done by the computers. also, something about how the code is written once and then used by everybody at the same time. sure, writting the code may be expensive at first. dunno, I doubt bett…

I follow plenty of things Google as a company just does due to the money they have. Undersee cables for example. Project Zero. Secure by default. 2FA. Google even gives you now the option of configuring your ads. Realistically speaking some entity with a monetary motivation is solving hard problems for us. Who will solve this issue in web3 and with what motivation? If it is monetary (as it will be) do I now should st…

> the etherium company

LOL

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#132

Post by notriddle »

the_other wrote: post #52
diego_moita wrote: post #38

Moxie Marlinspike on Web3 [1]: * "People don’t want to run their own servers, and never will" * "A protocol moves much more slowly than a platform" [1] https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html

I admit, I've not read Moxie's post. IMO "people" would run many of their own servers if it were easy. At the moment, it's not easy because it's not easy to safely open up to the public a server running on your computer/phone, or home network. ISPs benefit from making this hard, and (as best I understand it) the IP4 address space isn't wide enough anyway. If "people" could run servers on their phones, safely, with mi…

Read it. It’s not long.

It’s not just that running servers is hard. It’s that decentralized control can cause ossification. A bunch of functionality that people want became implemented in OpenSea because they couldn’t roll it into Ethereum itself.

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#133

Post by rvz »

diego_moita wrote: post #38

Moxie Marlinspike on Web3 [1]: * "People don’t want to run their own servers, and never will" * "A protocol moves much more slowly than a platform" [1] https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html

Says the same co-creator of Signal shoving a private crypto-currency and wallet into the Signal app by not only pumping and dumping their own coins on an exchange once listed [0], but with the nature of an encrypted blockchain being a road to hell allowing the likes of terrorists, extremists, scammers and criminals to easily hide their funds used for illicit activities.

At this point, Moxie's fans and minions are not even aware of this involvement of the darker sides of that cryptocurrency project which have even (allegedly) plagiarised some of their privacy features from Monero. [1]

To Downvoters: So this is not true? Care to explain your reasons why as now I have added sources backing up these claims? [0][1][2]

[0] https://amycastor.com/2021/04/07/signal-adopts-mobilecoin-a-...

[1] https://twitter.com/fluffypony/status/1379559273504641025

[2] https://twitter.com/sethforprivacy/status/137979120155827814...

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#134

Post by chrisco255 »

moolcool wrote: post #98
axg11 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some benefits that I think web3 can bring to the user: - Universal login: An alternative to "Sign in with Google/Apple/XYZ" that can't be denied by a corporation. There are countless examples of these companies deactivating accounts for questionable reasons. - Permissionless composability: I'm not sure how to word this one better. If a developer wants to build on top of blockchain data, they can. No need to apply for…

> Universal login You can have universal login with MetaMask, sure, but that functionality isn't reliant on a blockchain. It's decades-old public key cryptography. > Ownership in communities.... The difference is that existing platforms don't let you build on those communities outside of their walled garden But successful internet communities do everything in their power to remain walled gardens. What could they poss…

> You can have universal login with MetaMask, sure, but that functionality isn't reliant on a blockchain. It's decades-old public key cryptography.

For sure, you can do PGP, but if it's decades old, you have to ask yourself: Why hasn't public key cryptography taken off as a sign in solution in the same way that email or Google or Facebook have been?

Mainly because it's always been a chicken and egg problem for consumers and application developers. If you implement PGP as your sign-in method, it's unlikely that any consumers will adopt it unless they're developers. And you increase the barrier to entry for anyone who does not understand it.

In the case of MetaMask, this has already got significant traction at 21 million monthly active users (more if you count other EVM wallet solutions), because there's no other way to interact with a blockchain. It's also relatively user friendly. And there's an ecosystem now of applications that require it for interaction, so you're starting to see network effects grow for "Sign in With Ethereum/EVM".

> But successful internet communities do everything in their power to remain walled gardens

This will be proven to be false in the long run. This was the same argument against Linux back in the day vs. Windows. The bazaar will win against the cathedral in the end.

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#135

Post by web41 »

kkielhofner wrote: post #48
web4 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You certainly can point to a local blockchain node but the question is - have you ever run your own? Running your own blockchain node is nothing like BitTorrent. The required storage, memory, cpu, and IOPS performance is already pushing the limits of readily available standard hardware. This applies mostly to Ethereum. When you go to higher throughput chains like Solana and Polygon the node requirements jump to hardw…

you can run an Ethereum node without running a full node. agree IPFS client is pretty janky but the idea of content addressable p2p hosting is not a bad thing.

the goal of these base systems is not to be faster or easier to use than a centralized Amazon server. the goal is resistance to centralized control.

mod note: my other account “web4” is rate limited after a couple comments?

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#136

Post by byhemechi »

eric_cc wrote: post #111
moolcool wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Universal login You can have universal login with MetaMask, sure, but that functionality isn't reliant on a blockchain. It's decades-old public key cryptography. > Ownership in communities.... The difference is that existing platforms don't let you build on those communities outside of their walled garden But successful internet communities do everything in their power to remain walled gardens. What could they poss…

> what would Reddit gain I think you nailed it. It’s a victory for USERS - owning your own assets in a way that does not require you to trust the platform. It’s not so great for centralized platforms.

it's not so great for centralised platforms, unless the centralised platform you are talking about is infura, in which case it's a huge win.

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#138

Post by web41 »

kkielhofner wrote: post #35
Karunamon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPFS only enables decentralization, it doesn't guarantee it. I'd be willing to bet most NFT content is only pinned by the exchange.

Most NFT content is hosted with HTTP(s). Many NFTs that reference an IPFS url point to a specific IPFS gateway run by the creator as opposed to a “standard” IPFS url with ipfs:// I know this because I have a product that indexes various blockchains and the referenced content.

how many of those are minted with OpenSea? and how many are high value - not spam?

OpenSea engineers should be shamed for their use of HTTPS URLs in contracts, but it is not the norm outside of their minting platform.

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#139

Post by dane-pgp »

WanderPanda wrote: post #80
freeone3000 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People were fine "running their own servers" back when Skype was peer-to-peer. Or when Team Fortress 2 let you play with your friends.

Wait, Skype ain't p2p anymore?

Here is a series of headlines that give the best explanation of this architectural change that I've ever seen:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18411779

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#140

Post by web41 »

kkielhofner wrote: post #81
web4 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

web3 is not "pay for every click." value prop is disintermediation and decentralization. like purchasing a game asset, and not having it tied only to your iOS or Steam account.

In practice it effectively is. Without the Google, Facebook, and Twitters of the world pouring substantial resources into hosting and powering those platforms a decentralized approach needs to cover costs somehow. Of course they monetize the users and their content and make a pretty penny while doing so (except for Twitter). The centralization of these big tech companies also brings efficiency, optimization, and econ…

agree that media storage is not going to be easily decentralized, and most web3 products will depend on big cloud tech companies for storage and services.

almost all NFT platforms will extract some % commission from trades as a form of monetization. they could take 0% but then will have to cover their costs some other way; maybe monthly subscription or regular advertising.

but in the end it doesn't matter how the platform decides to offset its costs, if the data and assets are removed from centralized control. good example of this is NFT art marketplaces - one can go offline, and users can just move to another, or build a new one on the public data (blockchain tokens + IPFS media).

Post reply on HN