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

Web3 is going just great

web3isgoinggreat.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 357 posts

Re: Web3 is going just great

#111

Post by pvarangot »

mavhc wrote: post #77
DantesKite wrote: post #13

All the Web3 criticisms remind me of my experiences with Star Trek. For context, I never watched Star Trek. I'd read stories about fans and it always struck me as the dorkiest possible show, with unabashed nerdiness making something like the Big Bang Theory look like a sophisticated work of art. But one day, I listened to a podcast about strength training and a question came up about which Star Trek leader the host l…

Problem is blockchain is a test to see if humans will set their own home on fire, while they're still living it, for the promise of a quick buck. Promoted by people who think government is a terrible idea, an idea so terrible that literally every large group of people invented it. Of course if I had mined some bitcoin when it was new, I'd be telling you how great it was to ensure my own profits

I wouldn't say large groups of people invent governments. I think they arise from infighting between small groups of people and then a majority of people that didn't really care much about what was being fought about are just "ok with it".

I don't know if government is a terrible idea, but if you agree that monopolies are a terrible idea then maybe at least you should give people against the concept of a government some attention regarding the "monopoly on violence" contradiction that's pretty much alive in all forms of government in place today.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#112

Post by sergiotapia »

Justin Kan of Twitch fame just started a new startup for NFTs, I wonder what drove him into this?

I don't get it. It smells and feels like a grift where people are pretending it's not because they have nfts they want to appreciate and then dump.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#113

Post by not2b »

exdsq wrote: post #83
pcwalton wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would hard for me to make a case that eventually cryptocurrency will fail. It's easy for me to make that case. Ransomware aside, there's no underlying value in cryptocurrency, unlike currencies which have the full faith and credit of governments. This is a fundamental problem that I see no way around.

I’d argue there’s an underlying value in tokens like Ether that is similar to paying for compute power and storage on AWS. I’m not saying the price right now is correct, but that there is an intrinsic value.

It cost compute power to produce the tokens, but that's sunk cost, not intrinsic. All that matters afterward is whether people want the tokens and will exchange things of value for them.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#114

Post by beebeepka »

dvt wrote: post #87

I'm not a Web3 shill, but this is so insanely disingenuous it's not even funny. First of all, the argument that web3 is the biggest ecological problem of our time -- when essentially all of Asia is contributing 80% of ocean pollution, and the supply chain contributes to more than 50% of greenhouse gas emissions, is just straight-up delusional. The claim that Web3 is rife with hacks, when you have daily hacks of Web2…

Mhmmm. Remind us again, which country us by far the biggest polluter per capita on the planet? It's not "Asia". I think it's the country you are from.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#115

Post by OnlineGladiator »

deltarholamda wrote: post #94
trunnell wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the math and incentives are there. Can you elaborate on this? The best critiques of blockchain tech, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, DeFi, etc. describe fatal flaws at the core of those technologies. For example, the lack of monetary policy and regulations, privacy and security shortcomings, and high transaction costs. It'd be great to read a positive analysis of the core merits (the math and the incentives) and how th…

Decentralized proof of ownership is the core merit, as I see it. That has some value, and NFTs are kind of the perfect vehicle to use the technology. But does it have any practical use? That's the question. NFTs are hot right now as an investment vehicle, or as a way for artists to sell unique creations (leading to investment vehicles, I suppose). I'm not sold on the utility, long term.

> Decentralized proof of ownership is the core merit

> But does it have any practical use? That's the question.

Sounds like a solution searching for a problem.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#116

Post by PragmaticPulp »

beachy wrote: post #84
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the math and incentives are there. It would hard for me to make a case that eventually cryptocurrency will fail. This strikes at one of my primary complaints with crypto/web3 discussions: Advocates switch between specific cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency in general, and the concept of a blockchain in general as convenient for their arguments. The concept of a cryptocurrency will always exist, but that doesn't m…

> What people are really excited about is the exchanges and the on-ramps and off-ramps, which have nothing to do with the blockchain or cryptography. Isn't that like saying that what gets people really exciting about beer is the euphoric feeling after consuming it, which has nothing to do with the liquid itself? If it wasn't for the exchanges and on- and off-ramps then cryptocurrencies wouldn't exist at all. Potentia…

> If it wasn't for the exchanges and on- and off-ramps then cryptocurrencies wouldn't exist at all. Potentially spending it one day is the only thing that makes the crypto world go around.

"Spending" it doesn't require cashing it out in a hypothetical cryptocurrency future. People can, and do, transact in cryptocurrencies. Though it's actually quite painful, slow, expensive, and lacks all of the benefits of traditional transactions so everyone avoids it if possible.

But this exposes another flaw in the currency argument: If the on-ramps and off-ramps were to become so cheap, fast, and ubiquitous that we could transact instantly in cryptocurrencies for free, then suddenly the underlying coins wouldn't need to have any speculative value. If I could click "buy" on a product and the exchange into crypto, transfer, and end-user exchange out of crypto was basically instant, then the exchange rate doesn't actually matter at all because I'm only holding for a brief instant. Yet that would break the speculative use case entirely, so the hype tends to follow the deliberately inefficient coins. Crypto proponents don't actually want cryptocurrency to be easy to use. They only want you to buy it, then do nothing with it. Ever. If you lose it, even better (for everyone else).

Re: Web3 is going just great

#117

Post by acdha »

carlosdp wrote: post #38
ShamelessC wrote: post #4

The decision to call all of this "web 3.0" without actually consulting any developers (that don't own/trade cryptocurrencies) was such a mistake. No - I don't want to write inherently buggy smart contracts for your scam. If I wanted to do that, I would have gone into fintech awhile ago.

That's not how words work. You propose a term, and either it catches on or it doesn't, and this one has caught on. I don't know what committee of developers "that don't own/trade cryptocurrencies" you imagine exists that has some authority on what marketing terms you can use on twitter, or why a group explicitly disinterested in a topic should be consulted in the creation of those terms...

It’s not so much proposing a word rather than trying to take over a popular one in an effort to shed the negative reputation which years of failure had given your first one. It’s not surprising that people who work on the web don’t want their hard work being coopted to bail the cryptocurrency guys out of a mess they talked themselves into.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#118

Post by fab1an »

trunnell wrote: post #103
fab1an wrote: post #48

I'm flabberghasted at the amount of hate this space is getting from parts of the dev community and in particular HN. Web3 has its fair share of issues, but there's community and energy in the space that I haven't seen online since the early days of the world wide web. Consider this: if you are absolutely, 100% convinced that all of this is bogus, is going to go nowhere (despite the high number of talented individuals…

But your video on twitter, although very creative, documents exactly the type of accelerating self-referential tornado that that makes people skeptical. All just one big art project? Just a fun game? That'd probably be fine with everybody, skeptics included, but that's not what the proponents are saying. They say it will change everything. Energy and community are necessary but not sufficient for these claims.

Yes, you're right generally, though specifically in THIS case, we are actually talking about an obscure and extremely nerdy art project / game. That doesn't mean everything has to be one big art project. I'm in various other communities doing amazing stuff around climate change, for example, and the energy is just as intense and friendly as in the art/game projects. I linked to this because the community is one of the best I've experienced online in 3 decades of using the web.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#119

Post by emptysongglass »

trunnell wrote: post #63
DantesKite wrote: post #13

All the Web3 criticisms remind me of my experiences with Star Trek. For context, I never watched Star Trek. I'd read stories about fans and it always struck me as the dorkiest possible show, with unabashed nerdiness making something like the Big Bang Theory look like a sophisticated work of art. But one day, I listened to a podcast about strength training and a question came up about which Star Trek leader the host l…

> But the math and incentives are there. Can you elaborate on this? The best critiques of blockchain tech, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, DeFi, etc. describe fatal flaws at the core of those technologies. For example, the lack of monetary policy and regulations, privacy and security shortcomings, and high transaction costs. It'd be great to read a positive analysis of the core merits (the math and the incentives) and how th…

There's also fatal flaws at the heart of capitalism and a centrally controlled currency whose value is manipulated at will completely outside a citizen's power to control.

These fatal flaws have not prevented capitalism from blooming all over the world.

Lest you think I'm some species of these crypto libertarians, I believe it's an imperfect solution to hand humans more greed levers to go about life dictating their actions by perverse incentives.

The solution for me looks more like a free net whose power is contributed by a mass group of volunteers. But who then will run the datacenters? With what materials will they build them and who will freely give it to them?

Capitalism needs to be ripped up from its roots before we can have a hope of a free in all senses world for all. Until then, maybe we first take control of the machinery by replacing the currency with which the state does its business of violence.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#120

Post by Yizahi »

DantesKite wrote: post #13

All the Web3 criticisms remind me of my experiences with Star Trek. For context, I never watched Star Trek. I'd read stories about fans and it always struck me as the dorkiest possible show, with unabashed nerdiness making something like the Big Bang Theory look like a sophisticated work of art. But one day, I listened to a podcast about strength training and a question came up about which Star Trek leader the host l…

Math is indeed there, multiplication, division etc. I just fail to understand why is that important for you? Incentives are also there - the infamous FOMO. I think it's not a thing to be proud of.
Post reply on HN