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

In 2022, Web3 went just great

newsletter.mollywhite.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 205 posts

Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#51

Post by simplify »

agdasdigonio wrote: post #39
simplify wrote: post #21

I'd be curious to see the source on those numbers and how they're broken down. For example, Terra/Luna was a spectacular crypto failure. FTX, on the other hand, was just plain old fraud, not really related to crypto itself.

>FTX, on the other hand, was just plain old fraud, not really related to crypto itself. The fact that it's not related should tell you something. Cryptocurrency is designed to solve exactly the problems FTX had. It is designed to enable trustless finance. Why didn't cryptocurrency prevent that problem? Because FTX wasn't using cryptocurrency, because cryptocurrency is unworkable.

A proper use of cryptocurrency could have prevented the problem, but FTX and users mutually agreed to give FTX more trust by giving FTX custody of user funds. That's really all it was. Not very interesting.

Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#52

Post by onebot »

The problem I have with articles like these is that my definition of Web3 is quite a bit different. I tend to lump "crypto" more with NFTs, wild speculation, scams, heavily VC backed "decentralized" tokens, etc. But on the other hand, I want social networks not owned by businesses, I want other major utilities also not owned by major companies (I think gmail is used for 8bn addresses). I think the fediverse is nice start, but still not decentralized enough (a single mastadon server admin can kill it anytime they want or change the rules). In my opinion the definition of web3 is:

"Web3 represents a fundamental evolution of the internet built upon blockchain architectures. Moving from centralized control and capitalization to a decentralized network where the capital is distributed between the operators and consumers."

I feel like the definition of Web3 is hijacked by pundits. Probably because it has become yet another buzzword and being so tightly associated with Crypto maybe has it tainted forever?

Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#53

Post by giantrobot »

PaulHoule wrote: post #3
LeeroyWasHere wrote: post #2

Are we going to pretend there's any industry that isn't filled with scams? L

Other industries are also filled with things that aren't scams.

You laugh now but when these JPEGs increase in value for some reason I'll be rich and you'll wish you were me! Buy my JPEGs now before they explode in price! /s

Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#54

Post by fallingknife »

agdasdigonio wrote: post #39
simplify wrote: post #21

I'd be curious to see the source on those numbers and how they're broken down. For example, Terra/Luna was a spectacular crypto failure. FTX, on the other hand, was just plain old fraud, not really related to crypto itself.

>FTX, on the other hand, was just plain old fraud, not really related to crypto itself. The fact that it's not related should tell you something. Cryptocurrency is designed to solve exactly the problems FTX had. It is designed to enable trustless finance. Why didn't cryptocurrency prevent that problem? Because FTX wasn't using cryptocurrency, because cryptocurrency is unworkable.

Because the trustless nature of crypto is present only at the protocol layer of crypto. The application layer, which is what basically all non institutional users of crypto interact with, isn't trustless at all.

But also we should remember that pretty much every bank in the US would have FTXed it's customers money in 2008 if the government hadn't bailed them out.

Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#55

Post by pwinnski »

timdaub wrote: post #41

posters in this thread believe that there are obviously really bad people using and working with crypto currencies. these same posters, however, don't have an inch of skepticism that there could be equally bad people sitting in powerful western financial institutions.

On the contrary, it is my certainty that there are bad people in every area of life that causes me to prefer the system with checks and balances and laws and enforcers and insurance, all of which help to protect me from those bad people.

"don't have an inch of skepticism" seems to better describe the collective from whom more than $4 billion was stolen this year without recourse than those who did or didn't fall prey to traditional banking fraud with consumer protections in place.

Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#56

Post by macNchz »

Lendal wrote: post #22
Eisenstein wrote: post #13

I would feel bad for people who lost money in crypto if every time I tried to warn them during the bubble they wouldn't have said 'have fun staying poor' and called me ignorant. It is tough to remain motivated to try and convince people that they are making bad decision when they actively berate you. It feels like telling someone about to jump into the shallow end of a swimming pool from a balcony that they are going…

I think we need to look at this from the perspective of a society and ask ourselves what else we could have done. Obviously there are a whole lot of people in society completely lacking in common sense and critical thinking skills, while at the same time mass rudeness seems normalized too. Is this a failure of education, or parenting? Or has it always been this way, and the only difference is the way we communicate w…

There’s obviously a super complex web of things involved, but I personally think that the nature of the post-2008 economic recovery (in the US) has had an impact on this at a societal level.

I think people perceive that the opportunity to have a comfortable life doing a “regular job” is slipping away in favor of an upper middle class of professionals who enjoy stability, and an enlarged sub-middle class who are finding the traditional trappings of middle class stability hard to come by.

This widening class gap leaves many realizing that lifestyle improvements will require a significant step change, not just a bit more effort. So we see people gambling. Someone might be working hard and saving all they can and still only have $5k in savings. They look at the price of houses doubling and realize they’d need to save for another 50 years at this rate just for a down payment, so they say fuck it and buy some call options and NFTs instead.

Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#57

Post by satellites »

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #27
seanw444 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could spend less money on an ad campaign to explain what crypto actually is, and what it's good use cases are, and what it's not good for. Rather than, you know, binding it up in vague and obnoxious legalese.

The "not good for" list is "practically everything." The "good use cases" effectively don't exist. Every crypto solution falls into one or more of these buckets... - Has substantial centralized elements, could be done vastly more efficiently with a DB - "Decentralized" but still requires some central authority to provide critical features (particularly any form of conflict resolution) - Depends on one or more smart c…

> Primarily used for illicit goods and services

This is the only actual use case. And it’s not a great look.

Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#58

Post by spamizbad »

timdaub wrote: post #47
ranger207 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

posters in this thread also believe that there are bad people in western financial institutions but that 1) the laws and regulations in place ensure that the system is at least usable by normal people to do useful work, as evidenced by the bajillions of dollars of money made by selling products and services that are not stolen from their bank accounts; and 2) that western financial institutions will not in general re…

we'll see how this "don't repeat prior mistakes' thing will play out with maxed out inflation, raging corruption in western democracies, moral wars in Ukraine, rising distrust in media and a laissez-faire approach to white collar crime after the financial crisis in 2008.

Crypto solves none of those problems because those are social and political problems. You can not free your self from oppression by changing the brand on the boot.

Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#59

Post by fallingknife »

timdaub wrote: post #41

posters in this thread believe that there are obviously really bad people using and working with crypto currencies. these same posters, however, don't have an inch of skepticism that there could be equally bad people sitting in powerful western financial institutions.

It's more similar than people want to think. I suspect that when all the dust settles, the FTX collapse will look something like the MF Global collapse. And in 2008, the only difference in the outcome of your checking account to the outcome of an FTX customer is that in the former case, the government bailed the bank out.

Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#60

Post by pwinnski »

timdaub wrote: post #50
satellites wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a blatant straw man fallacy. No one here is insinuating that financial institutions are pure and innocent. If anything, crypto news over the past year has proven one thing: that the crypto space is just as corrupt as “traditional finance,” but with none of the guardrails that make it harder to commit blatant scams. Society developed immune responses to financial fraud in the form of regulations. They are insuf…

The difference between traditional finance and DeFi is that DeFi is so transparent that a single person (Molly) can run a blog to aggregate all things that went wrong. They can arise at a single number of error that the industry has created. This is an achievement of radical transparency; something that should be celebrated.

She states that the "single number" is a "very conservative" estimate, in part because it's very difficult to track some of the "radically transparent" obfuscation in the cryptocurrency world.

In addition, being able to state that X worth of cryptocurrency disappeared into a tumbler or mixer isn't particularly transparent, either.

Post reply on HN