161–170 of 319 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Solana and... EOS and... XRP...
But people seem not care that much about decentralization, as long as they could trade tokens.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where I live none of those services are available but cryptocurrency tech is. Connecting to services like patreon or getting small amounts for games on itch.io are headache inducing high friction activities involving several extra third party services that are barely worth the effort. The attached risk is hard to state as better given all the fly by night operations in the local finance industry. Even if very few peo…
Your poetic invocation of the theoretical glorious potential of crypto aside, what country do you live in?
And with the ever-increasing inflation of 40% YoY and government restrictions on the ability to convert foreign currency to local currency, crypto P2P is a saving grace here.
I do think most crypto stuff is probably still a scam, but the ability to buy stable coins and sell them to someone local here for peso's by getting 2x more than I would with the official central bank rate is a godsend.
Not going to lie, I thought and still think that the whole Web 2.0 thing was clever marketing and window dressing on top of fairly pedestrian but useful technologies. It was actually less of seismic shock than mobile first which despite being a bigger shift didn't actually get a number. As far as I'm concerned, Web3 is beyond this. It's what happen when you let Ponzi schemers write the marketing material. I can't for…
Web 3.0 should probably have something to do with the increasing centralization of web services, and the increasingly common subscription fees everyone is paying.
Instead it’s about blockchains … which are pretty much the only way the web is becoming less centralized.
Every time I read about decentralization, I remember this episode from NPR Planet Money (one of the best podcasts, btw). It's about Libertarian Summer Camp where they tried to spend a day without fiat money. Gold standard everything. Turned out it's actually pretty hard because you have to get gold, and make sure the gold isn't fake, all by yourself. You bought a hotdog with the gold and now you have to worry about i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Riding off a wave of addicts and their enthusiasm for gambling. Meanwhile, Cash App, Apple Pay, and Stripe have done more for fintech in the past month than all other cryptocurrency technologies combined in the last decade.
Where I live none of those services are available but cryptocurrency tech is. Connecting to services like patreon or getting small amounts for games on itch.io are headache inducing high friction activities involving several extra third party services that are barely worth the effort. The attached risk is hard to state as better given all the fly by night operations in the local finance industry. Even if very few peo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blockchain isn't even central in Web3, but it surely helps. Web3 = decentralized identity, full data and connection graph ownership by user, reputation transfer, verification via zero knowledge proofs, support for VR/AR and 3D objects. All of this stuff is either in prototype or draft phase, but it's ok. These things need to be built to stop horror stories on HN about "algorithm justice" and "data kingdoms”: - Google…
And that's an improvement how? At least with Google there's a chance you'll be able to get your account back. If it's "decentralized" (which in crypto land is apparently synonymous with "run by a cabal of miners in China") and you lose your private key, you're completely out of luck.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is always my issue with things in this space. There's a list of bad things to be fixed or good things to achieve. And then there's a technology like [jazz hands] blockchain . But when you ask how they relate, it gets very handwavey. When I was at Code for America in 2015, somebody dropped by one of our events to buttonhole me about [jazz hands] blockchain for governments. I listened politely for a while and then…
At its heart, the strongest claim blockchain technology offers is pretty good data consistency assurances between nodes that don't trust one another. I guess that's kind of interesting as a technical demonstration, but it's hard to see what's actually the practical benefit of that. This has been around and under continuous development since 2008, and still no actual use case. It seems like the space is full of hype-b…
Web3 requires retrofitting the web to use blockchain technologies to do what the web can mostly do already. In "Blockchains Are a Bad Idea", James Mickens gives several arguments against blockchain-based systems like Bitcoin: See his presentation here: https://youtu.be/15RTC22Z2xI 1. People have out-of-band trust relationships in real life which reduce the likelihood of malice. Bitcoin-style anonymous identities unde…
Bitcoin provides pseudononymous identities. Just like how someone can move to a new domain or amazon account after word gets out that they are selling deffective goods.
Trust only goes so far, even when dealing with people you should be able to trust. If this were not the case, then close-to-home scams would not exist. E.g. embezellment and other forms of stealing from people you work with face-to-face.
.
>2. Real life legal systems encourage good behaviors. If you have a dispute with someone, you can sue them. Bitcoin and related systems lack these protections.
The legal system is complex, slow, and _EXPENSIVE_. A lot of bad behaviour also goes unpunished when the cost to rectify is greater than the amount stolen. Offering an alternative, low-cost and quick system, and accepting the downside of there being no "takebacks", who is to say this is a strictly negative thing?
There is also nothing stopping a service provider from stepping in and providing dispute resolution by way of mostly automated eskrow. If the transaction of goods for money happens without flaw, then the money is released automatically. If an issue occurs but the buyer and seller can resolve it amicably, that two is automated. In the unlikely case that one or both parties are malicious, the service provider reviews the case and releases funds as appropriate (e.g. checking that the parcel was actually posted, reviewing images of the good if it was damaged in transit, resolving as best able in case of scams).
.
>3. Existing tools such as public-key cryptography and digital signatures can provide most of the functionality that applications need without the problems that blockchain-based systems have.
They can, but there are very few examples of such tools. This is hackernews, and this opinion is repeated ad nauseum, yet I don't see anyone actually going out and hacking something together.
Just like how it has been possible for financial houses to open up APIs to allow people to better manage, automate or make their money work exactly they want; it should come at no surprise when something comes along that actually allows this, no matter how much people cry that this was all possible and much more efficient without $NewTech, the people that have adopted said $NewTech aren't going to care too much.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And that's an improvement how? At least with Google there's a chance you'll be able to get your account back. If it's "decentralized" (which in crypto land is apparently synonymous with "run by a cabal of miners in China") and you lose your private key, you're completely out of luck.
If you lose some cash you are also out of luck, yet cash is still useful and even had some valuable properties.
The way people handle money is literally the opposite of keeping your identity on a blockchain.
I think the biggest potential might be in creating companies and contracts. I would love smart contracts that with given payment also give me some shares of company. Also investing in pre IPO for retail investors in scam-resistant schemes. Public funding of projects. Voting with ones wallet but formalized and outliers and spam resistant. Ability to profit from and measure public goods thus allowing to employ Capitali…
If you're an accredited investor (which is easier to be than ever), there's always Equityzen and friends. But it's already not so scam-resistant. There are lots of sketchy startups out there, and I'm not sure why one bypassing traditional finance channels would be any less scammy.