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Web3 is expensive P2P

netfuture.ch

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Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#221
post #16

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.

> What is the value proposition of web3 to the user? Potential of paying for services and being able to require privacy in return? It is not a choice one can make with many web2 services (e.g. google). As for "blockchains are transparent and can't offer no privacy" - just a question of time. Tech is already here (zkps, mpc, etc).

Most tech calling itself web3 has less privacy - rather than 'just' Google knowing who I am across the internet, I'm spreading correlating information and pointers to publicly accessible records everywhere.

Privacy isn't some technology you can add to the stack. Rather than adding ZKP sprinkles on top, every technical choice will ultimately need to be reevaluated if privacy is a goal. Basically, you're talking about web4/5.

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#222
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many are minted with OpenSea (of course). In any case across the 70 million or so NFTs I have indexed HTTP is definitely the majority.

good to know!

it would be worth taking a sample of higher value tokens that are not minted by OpenSea. probably the vast majority of those tokens are spam or bots trying to capitalize on existing web content like DeviantArt database.

better platforms like Manifold, Foundation and Zora are already using IPFS or Arweave

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#223
post #110

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…

> But successful internet communities do everything in their power to remain walled gardens. What could they possibly have to gain by doing this? Like what would Reddit gain by moving Reddit Gold to the blockchain? We have to reimagine everything, I don't think a successful web3 platform will emerge from simply tacking on tokens to existing platforms. Successful internet communities become walled gardens to protect a…

“I’m running a sale on Shopify for my supporters, check the latest Patreon post for the discount code!”

Patreon makes it pretty easy to give your subscribers early access to stuff, too. No blockchain involved. A lot of it happens over email.

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about "game assets". It's a about having disintermediated access to the state of the "world". Think of all the stories of startups that offer a product that locks their users and then go to be acquired/shut down by some other bigger company. If the services and the data live on the blockchain, it's guaranteed by design that the users are in control of their own data (no lock in) and that if the company just…

Many apps offer you your data if you want it. For example, Facebook. I think people overestimate how useful data is outside of the application that was tailor-made to handle the data in the precise format it's in. I guess "Web3" (it pains me to even use that term) would allow another developer to reverse-engineer an application to digest the data as it exists on the blockchain, but... that seems like a pretty negligi…

> Many apps offer you your data if you want it.

but it is still locked into the walled garden. if 5% of Twitter users want to escape the platform when a billionaire buys it and reinstates Trump, their only option is to use an entirely new protocol (Mastodon).

if 5% of OpenSea users want to escape the platform, they can and already are doing so because OpenSea never owned the tokens and media on its platform to begin with. see: LooksRare, Zora, Rarible.

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#225

Nothing wrong with p2p. But often it's simply overkill. Skype started out as a p2p thing. But ultimately, video calls became a commodity where orchestrating them centrally proved to be good enough. I can make video calls with meets, facebook, whatsapp, signal, slack, etc. Not a big deal. I even still have Skype somewhere and it still works even though they ripped out the p2p bits ages ago. I'm not sure what web3 is o…

> Skype started out as a p2p thing. But ultimately, video calls became a commodity where orchestrating them centrally proved to be good enough.

It's my understanding that "phone" without the ability to tap is illegal in the US.

IIRC, the "must be able to let the govt listen" requirement occurred at the same time as Skpye switched models and the requirement was given as the reason for said switch.

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#226

Sort of agree. My initial understanding was that web3 was essentially a P2P solution with IPFS, Federated social graphs, decentralized p2p messaging and RTC stuff, and awaiting decentralized DNS. My current understanding or impression is that it's a coin wallet in my ~browser and I have to mine shit coins via storing and computing stuff on what will certainly be FAANGs behalf.

Web3 has always been an attempt to rebrand blockchain stuff, and make it appear like the next step in internet technology. Some other technologies (like IPFS) have been added to the Web3 umbrella, but blockchain an cryptocurrency has always been the core of "Web3".

IPFS was added because blockchain data storage is astronomically expensive. The problem is IPFS is a layer of abstraction to hide the problem away like some shell game. People treat it like it provides storage, while what it actually does is find parties who are hosting the data - if any are left.

So while your data might be independent of any single service provider in concept, it might actually be provided by a single vendor's servers, even potentially pinning it with no data backups.

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#227
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point, the game developer obviously has to buy into the ecosystem, but the difference is with the current status quo in-app purchases are not really owned by the customers, so even if another game developer wanted to honour their purchases there is no way to interop. Web3 is a pretty good use case for this, and the transaction costs barely add anything if you compare to the cut the platform takes (…

> the difference is with the current status quo in-app purchases are not really owned by the customers, so even if another game developer wanted to honour their purchases there is no way to interop. Roblox already does this. Your in-game purchases are yours and you can carry them from one game to another. Platforms outcompete protocols - this is why web2 became centralized.

> Your in-game purchases are yours and you can carry them from one game to another.

this is close to what web3 is trying to achieve but with all digital assets like domain names as well.

not familiar with roblox but it sounds close to this, except built on a private centralized ledger instead of public and decentralized. so the assets are attached to roblox as a company.

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about "game assets". It's a about having disintermediated access to the state of the "world". Think of all the stories of startups that offer a product that locks their users and then go to be acquired/shut down by some other bigger company. If the services and the data live on the blockchain, it's guaranteed by design that the users are in control of their own data (no lock in) and that if the company just…

Great! I have 132GB of photos, and would like to store them on the blockchain to ensure I always have access to them. How much will that cost me? Show your work, and round your answer to the nearest million. Maybe too much snark, but there’s a real tension there. “Store it on the blockchain” means “store a copy on every single node, forever”. It’s understandable that incurs some costs, and that one has to store only…

No. The blockchain is not a data store. The blockchain is needed only when you need:

- global view of the state that is taken as truth by all participants (consensus)

- where anyone is allowed to make operations to change the state (permissionless)

- and all operations that change the state are agreed by all participants (trustless)

You don't need the blockchain to store your music collection. Any content-addressable filesystem can do that for you. But you do need a blockchain if you want to make a decentralized "top-40" list.

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value proposition is the ability to share content without restriction or censorship, and own your data rather than being locked in a walled garden.

Those conditions are perfect if you want a system to get overrun with spam and scams.

Sure, but if you have an individually managed social trust graph built into the distribution network that's pretty easy to combat. Have a friend that's spreading trust to scammers? Reduce their trust value (or just stop trusting them), problem solved.

Re: Web3 is expensive P2P

#230
"the P2P community established something like a tiny, lightweight communist bubble"

Yes, and that's the core of the problem. Things are pretty limited when the premise is "donating spare hardware and bandwidth."

"[Web3 follows] a heavyweight libertarian path: Everything should be monetized."

I don't know what these people think. Only traditional companies should be allowed to make money, and the rest of the world should donate their resources?

The conclusion of this piece sounds a bit arbitrary too.

P2P failed in the past because of the lack of monetization.

Web3 tries to solve this by adding monetization at the protocol level.

Adding something to a system to solve an issue that wasn't solved before can add complexity.

The author doesn't like complexity, so it's a failed attempt.

What?

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