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Web 3.0 – The Great Con

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Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#151

Post by orwin »

olah_1 wrote: post #68

Anecdotally, the only “Web 3” that has improved my life is Monero. It’s the best way I’ve found to send money to strangers on the internet. I’ve opened unofficial bounties and paid open source developers to implement them, as one example. It really “just works” in a way where other crypto currency doesn’t. I still support many other projects in this space, but Monero was the only one I felt comfortable actually using…

There is a lot of good ideas in the space. Even NFTs are a good idea overall, when you remove the human greed part.

But you're totally right, only monero have a 'legitimate' usecase (bypass the taxation laws).

Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#152

Post by orwin »

qeternity wrote: post #98
chrismarlow9 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't answer the question though.

It absolutely does. I presume you're talking about transaction security, since debit cards have long existed for convenience, and again: once you send money from a checking account, it's gone. If I have a dispute on a transaction, it's far more difficult to reverse. The very nature of credit makes dispute resolution much easier.

Not the person you're responding to, but this response is clearer than the previous one.

Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#153

Post by hiq »

ThomPete wrote: post #140
jiggawatts wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to list even one successful Web3 site. Not as in "could be useful in the future", but useful now , and used by a significant number of people for activities that are not directly crypto-related. Keep in mind that "web 1.0" was immediately useful, to many people, at a large scale. The original web wasn't restricted to web developers doing web development things. It was used by industry, government, and acade…

If you don't see the value of what is fundamentally a public ledger database, then I am not sure what to tell you. It's being used by many people today. It's not for everyone. It will evolve and at one point we won't even know we are using it. The thing about blockchain isn't that it isn't that you couldn't build it with "web2" the thing is it would be unfeasible to do so and still maintaining the trust. By separatin…

> It will evolve and at one point we won't even know we are using it.

It's been more than 10 years and billions poured into the ecosystem since Bitcoin started, and I still don't know anybody who uses a blockchain for anything beyond speculation, even though I'm in tech.

After how many more years without widespread adoption would you be convinced otherwise?

Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#154

Post by zeroclip »

This post is mostly about Bitcoin and Proof of Work. Currently "Web3" tech is being built on Ethereum, Proof of Stake, zero-knowledge proofs, rollup sequencers, data availability sampling, and multi-party computation. The recent advances are not like the earliest iterations; a harsh critique of Bitcoin is not equivalent to the harsh critique of Web3.

The post is riddled with fallacies. For example:

> Imagine, for example, a world where you're out at a restaurant, or something, and you accidentally drop your keys. Someone else picks them up off the floor, only instead of handing them back to you, they now legally own your house and car.

This framing is ridiculous and reveals either that the author has no idea what they are criticizing, or is being deliberately obtuse. Nobody in Web3 is suggesting you hold all of your assets in a single private key that you physically carry to a restaurant.

The root of this blog post is this:

> it's the sheer absence of any explanation or detail as to what problem [web3] advocates believe they are solving

And this is the primary complaint. Web3 is too vague a term, and encompasses too many unrealistic hype ideas like houses-on-the-blockchain, and the author has not bothered to look further than these claims.

Why not take aim at actual Web3 products that are live today: Uniswap, Aave, ENS. These all fit under the umbrella of Web3 and are able to secure billions of dollars worth of assets while meeting the promised goals: a set of trustless, permissionless, and decentralized tools for transferring and owning value on the internet.

Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#155

Post by zeroclip »

orwin wrote: post #151
olah_1 wrote: post #68

Anecdotally, the only “Web 3” that has improved my life is Monero. It’s the best way I’ve found to send money to strangers on the internet. I’ve opened unofficial bounties and paid open source developers to implement them, as one example. It really “just works” in a way where other crypto currency doesn’t. I still support many other projects in this space, but Monero was the only one I felt comfortable actually using…

There is a lot of good ideas in the space. Even NFTs are a good idea overall, when you remove the human greed part. But you're totally right, only monero have a 'legitimate' usecase (bypass the taxation laws).

Another legitimate use case is financial privacy. There are several tools on other blockchains that achieve the same.

Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#156

Post by zeroclip »

mmcnl wrote: post #149
maxisrelaxed wrote: post #103

One of the worst facets of the whole web3 movement is the "thought leaders" and community talking very confidently about how blockchain will replace very well established ways of doing business (FTA "airlines selling tickets"). The author takes a very dim view of the whole blockchain space, and uses the worst possible interpretation of parts of it to make their case, but I don't disagree on this point. Whether web3 b…

No one doubts that platforms can be powerful. At least I fully agree with that. But what is the benefit of a decentralized platform powered by blockchain? Spotify is a very successful platform for artists. No blockchain involved.

Spotify is a terrible platform for actually paying artists. Look around[1][2]. Ironically they are now testing NFT and blockchain technology, which might drive some more sales toward artists, but still through Spotify's high rent extraction.[3]

Why use a decentralized platform? Because users are able to escape the walled garden, and have more power over the protocols that distribute and generate sales on their content.

[1] https://edm.com/gear-tech/steve-aoki-made-more-money-from-nf...

[2] https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-...

[3] https://cointelegraph.com/news/spotify-reportedly-tests-nft-...

Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#157

Post by illiac786 »

I agree with the bottom line, but the form, why does the author have to exaggerate like this?

Cryptocurrencies are not "useless except for criminals"... Blockchain is also not useless. It's just much less useful than the hype makes it out to be.

Making absolute statements like this isn't helpful, it makes it easy to demolish the argument for the actual scammers.

Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#158

Post by hrbf »

orwin wrote: post #151
olah_1 wrote: post #68

Anecdotally, the only “Web 3” that has improved my life is Monero. It’s the best way I’ve found to send money to strangers on the internet. I’ve opened unofficial bounties and paid open source developers to implement them, as one example. It really “just works” in a way where other crypto currency doesn’t. I still support many other projects in this space, but Monero was the only one I felt comfortable actually using…

There is a lot of good ideas in the space. Even NFTs are a good idea overall, when you remove the human greed part. But you're totally right, only monero have a 'legitimate' usecase (bypass the taxation laws).

> when you remove the human greed part

So they are theoretically a good idea with no practical application in the real world.

Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#159

Post by bertman »

illiac786 wrote: post #157

I agree with the bottom line, but the form, why does the author have to exaggerate like this? Cryptocurrencies are not "useless except for criminals"... Blockchain is also not useless. It's just much less useful than the hype makes it out to be. Making absolute statements like this isn't helpful, it makes it easy to demolish the argument for the actual scammers.

>Cryptocurrencies are not "useless except for criminals"... Blockchain is also not useless.

You say this, and yet fail to mention a legitimate use case, which is exactly what a big part of the article is about.

Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#160

Post by Gigachad »

jaimex2 wrote: post #147
Gigachad wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbh I can't think of a single commercial p2p product left. Mobile was certainly the driving force, but I think better/cheaper cloud infrastructure contributed. These days all the major content distribution companies have static content positioned inside ISP data centers so its fairly cheap and fast to distribute. Even laptops probably contributed. A lot of people are going to be using laptops on the go and connected…

I think what made Skype popular was it worked everywhere and was quite good at bypassing firewalls/DPI. It was everyone's goto as it had a high chance of success especially in schools/uni. CGNAT could be another explanation. I still don't see why you wouldn't try and have p2p as a back channel that's attempted. If it can increase deployment speeds and improve user experience then its a huge plus. Think of any softwar…

Slow updates isn’t really fixed by p2p though. Steam downloads run as fast as your internet speed. P2P can’t be any faster than that other than some highly unlikely situation that another machine on your local network already has the game.

And that’s where p2p died. CDNs got really really fast and the user benefit reduced to nothing while the possible disruption from seeding large files remained. Especially as consumer upload isn’t that great so any uploading can disrupt online games.

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