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Why Web3?

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101–110 of 706 posts

Re: Why Web3?

#101
In fiction, Hiro Protagonist got in early and bought some prime real-estate in the metaverse. Many IRL did the same with Bitcoin and made a killing. If you think all the lucrative web2 properties have already been claimed, then it makes sense to create virgin territory in web3 and stake a claim.

Re: Why Web3?

#102
post #3

One thing that is confusing most loud supporters of Web3 are VCs and yet: "It all comes down to the database that sits behind an application. If that database is controlled by a single entity (think company, think big tech), then enormous market power accrues to the owner/administrator of that database. If, on the other hand, the database is an open public database that is not controlled and administered by a single…

> If there is no locking what will create outsized returns for them?

Controlling consensus through proof of stake would give them an advantage.

Re: Why Web3?

#103

> Frankly, it is all too much for me. Same. I've been actively unfollowing people on Twitter every day to clean my feeds of it. I'm not anti-web3 or anti-crypto, but I definitely don't need to read the same rhetoric from 100 people a day. Decentralized trust could be great, but I wonder how much time actually needs to be spent talking about it vs. actually building it...

Web3 is federated, not decentralized. The distinction is significant.

Re: Why Web3?

#104
post #67

Decentralized cryptoapps may have a point, but somehow "web3" proponents forget that there there can be decentralization without crypto at all. Web2 succeeded because Web1 protocols haven't been developed to withstand abuse. For instance, the email protocol (Web1) hasn't got an extension that would enable receiving emails only from authorized senders. As a result, email is heavily abused by spam and phishing to a deg…

Email isn’t web1. It isn’t web-anything.

Re: Why Web3?

#105
Just relax and let it play out. The author is right. Web3 needs to deliver a killer app. Something with broad consumer appeal that would not be possible with web2. Something your mum would use.

If such a thing is never delivered, skeptical you was right and you can have your "told you" moment. If it does get delivered, you were wrong, and we may be at the start of something drastically new.

As tens of billions is flowing into these projects, either outcome is going to be very interesting.

Re: Why Web3?

#106
I don't like how the extreme hatred toward Web3 has spiraled into "I see no practical application for decentralization". Crypto and blockchain aside, how can you not see the utility in an open firehose database/API without gate keepers?

Don't conflate decentralization with blockchain.

Re: Why Web3?

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NFTs are a scam and are retroactively obsoleted by digital signatures I'm not one to ever defend NFTs, but this is not right. Suppose I bought an extremely trendy natural number k ∈ ℤ and I have a signature σ from its inventor that says "doomrobo owns k". Suppose in a year the trend has passed and I'd like to sell k. How do I transfer ownership to someone else? Clearly sending σ doesn't suffice, since σ is public.…

Good questions. Let's say I create a piece of digital art and create an NFT out of it. The NFT somehow starts increasing in value. Then I copy my original digital art-asset and perhaps use a Photo-Shop filter to make it have a different hue. I turn that into another NFT. And I keep on doing this for all colors of the rainbow. What prevents me from creating new NFTs with the same or slightly modified underlying digita…

In many cases you don't even need to modify it. Ownership of an NFT often does not provide copyright on the original image (https://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2021/04/article_0007.h... has some interesting details on what you do and don't get with an NFT). So if you made the original image, you can just mint a new NFT of that image and sell it.

Heck you can mint as many NFTs as you like of any image you own the copyright of :)

Re: Why Web3?

#108
post #93

HN wasn't around when Web2.0 became a thing, but I don't remember Slashdot being filled with constant articles justifying Web2.0. I'm am just forgetting or were we as a community a lot less divided about it?

It was less divided, but that was at least in part because "Web 2.0" was about the web. This usage of "web3" to mean crypto/blockchain has nothing to do with the web, and therefore feels completely absurd to me.

Re: Why Web3?

#109
post #99
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would UI need to be centralized? Even in normal SPAs the client is making most of the work, the UI is fairly trivial to decentralize and there were a few examples on hn already.

This is very simple: imagine you have decentralized Uber/Lyft so now all the logic occurs in a decentralized way. Now, Uber^2 publishes a great mobile app, the mobile app is obviously centralized and they can decide to use or not and how to use the decentralized mechanism because they are the winners as the UX. Isn't this obvious?

Oh you're thinking that centralized apps would always produce better UX for some reason? I think centralized apps are making UX necessarily worse, because they implement dark patterns in order to milk their users, while in a decentralized ones you can just make your own. For example, matrix vs discord, one I can customize and interact with however I want the other is garbage and if I change anything I will get banned.

Re: Why Web3?

#110
> financial applications have been built on top of Ethereum that all share the same database and users can move from application to application, keeping their data (and their login credentials stored in their wallet) as they go.

Does anyone have examples of this in the wild? I often hear data portability listed as one of the great benefits, but I don’t have a grasp on what that actually means.

In my mind, the data needs to be structured to be useful, otherwise other DAPs wouldn’t be able to act on it. Who defines the structure? And who manages changes?

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