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My First Impressions of Web3

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Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#161

Post by jeroenhd »

threeseed wrote: post #140
jeroenhd wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bit that it'd be very practical, but the data itself is shared so in theory every company could set up their own API to render the blockchain into a readable, quick to access format. Even the vanished poop emoji NFT would reappear once someone else renders their view on the blockchain in the right way. The problem with this is that running servers that store and process one or even multiple blockchains in a searchabl…

Problem is who cares if you run your own servers when everyone you know is viewing NFTs through servers which are manipulating the data like Opensea is.

That's true, but if the NFTs show up on some places and not on others then you could start a "resistance" against the existing market places. Outside of DMCAs and other such legal requirements, an exchange needs to be impartial about the stuff being sold and published on there to remain credible.

The cryptocurrency crowd is usually drawn to the decentralised, unregulated market, and OpenSea has turned out to be the exact thing blockchains are trying to overthrow.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#162

Post by Animats »

arcticbull wrote: post #39

I'll be honest I had no idea that access to Ethereum is effectively gate-kept by two centralized entities (Infura, Alchemy). I knew there were only one or two true Ethereum full-nodes, but the impact of that never quite clicked. [edit] By "full node" I meant "archival node."

Me either. I had no idea that accessing a link to NFT-described content went through OpenSea for content that isn't even hosted by OpenSea. That's apparently a MetaMask thing. Supposedly a MetaMask wallet can connect to any willing node, but in practice they use the Infuria->OpenSea server.

Yes, you can run your own Etherium node and server, and connect a MetaMask wallet to it.[1] As Moxie points out, nobody wants to do that.

Worse, the blockchain does not, apparently, contain the hash of the data. You can't even prove you even have access rights to the data if the hosting service goes down. All you own is a link to a URL.

There are more Ethereum full nodes than two, but how many will accept web queries? That's a service.

[1] https://media.consensys.net/how-to-install-and-synchronize-y...

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#163

Post by jwblackwell »

ManishR wrote: post #124

> The people at the end of the line who are flipping NFTs do not fundamentally care about distributed trust models or payment mechanics, but they care about where the money is. So the money draws people into OpenSea, they improve the experience by building a platform that iterates on the underlying web3 protocols in web2 space, they eventually offer the ability to “mint” NFTs through OpenSea itself instead of through…

There's a huge amount happening in the crypto space beyond NFTs.

The article focuses on that area, which is fine, as they were the flavour of 2021, but it's worth keeping in mind that very few techies in the space saw the NFT hype train coming, Vitalik included: https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/147740467160615321... so it's probably to be expected that a lot of the hacky, centralized fixes pointed out relate to NFTs.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#164

Post by sillysaurusx »

nbzso wrote: post #145

Sorry. My "specific" take: Edited and self-censored due to lack of "substance" on the topic.

If you’ve been a reader here for a long time, you should focus on being a better writer. The best HN commenters write for the community as much as for themselves.

The fact of the matter is, web3 is a new phenomenon that isn’t going away. HN deserves good discussion on the topic. “Good” doesn’t mean “positive.” It means substantive — make a critique with substance. Say something that hasn’t been said countless times.

The effort is worth it.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#165

Post by dqpb »

endisneigh wrote: post #79

If you care about the environment even a little bit (like turning off lights in rooms you're not occupying) then you will reject Web3. Even the most efficient blockchains use more energy than the status quo unnecessarily. This is also to say nothing of the fact that it's more expensive per USD/KB transferred, slower and more complicated. I think what Web3 should be is a way to use your laptop or any commodity compute…

Algorand is carbon-negative. The inventor is a Turing-award winning MIT professor.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#166

Post by not2b »

simias wrote: post #29

>When you think about it, OpenSea would actually be much “better” in the immediate sense if all the web3 parts were gone. It would be faster, cheaper for everyone, and easier to use. That sums up the situation for me. Having a marketplace for purely digital goods might be a concept with a future. Having standard ways to interoperate between different platforms and query and update these goods might make sense (althou…

As the article points out, many NFTs are implemented by storing a URL in the blockchain; the digital artwork sits on some server and is reachable by that link. Fine, you can prove that you own the URL. But what that URL points to can change out from under you, so there's no way to make that trustless. If you own the domain and the server that it points to, the registrar can take the domain away from you and give it to someone else.

In a sense, NFTs are a lot like those schemes we used to see where some company will promise to name a star after you, even though no one recognizes their authority to do this. Fine, that URL is "yours". You just own a sequence of bytes, the ones in the URL, not the ones that the URL (temporarily) points to.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#167

Post by elliotbnvl »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #151
elliotbnvl wrote: post #18

This article seems like it neatly encapsulates and explains why I've subconsciously held off from jumping into the Web3 space. It might be confirmation bias speaking, but I don't think I've seen anyone lampoon Web3 so thoroughly, and it's nice to have some well-reasoned explanations for why I feel the way I do. EDIT: A further thought: this article is the first I've read on Web3 that feels like it's actually importan…

I don't think this article "lampoons" web3 in any way. While the article is on the whole critical (but not completely), it did not do so using sarcasm, ridicule, or irony. lampoon: publicly criticize (someone or something) by using ridicule, irony, or sarcasm.

Hmm, you're quite right. Poor word choice. Perhaps 'skewers' would be more appropriate.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#168

Post by Robotbeat »

jd007 wrote: post #105
superfrank wrote: post #47

> People don’t want to run their own servers, and never will This kind of gets at the reason why I think a lot of tech articles/blogs about what the future will be like are just terrible. The wants of someone who is driven enough read and write about the bleeding edge of technology are very, very different from the general population. Like this author says, most people don't want to run their own web server, but I'd…

IMO this diagnosis is still one level away from a more fundamental truism, which is that people don't want to pay anything for digital goods. Running servers can and has been massively simplified over the last couple decades, and I don't see any inherent technical barrier preventing it from being as simple as registering for an account on FB (i.e. anyone can do it). The deeper problem is the lack of willingness to pa…

I’m not sure I agree with that. People wanna pay as little as possible but they gladly pay for Netflix or whatever. People spend a lot of money on Amazon because they make it really easy to pay. One of the original promises of cryptocurrency is it would make micro transactions easy and painless (with something to do about trust, but… that goes in the opposite direction than consumers would like as it’s the provider that doesn’t have to trust the consumer instead of the other way around like with credit cards which allow you to back charge stuff).

The key is still making stuff easy to pay for. Low transaction fees. Low risk to the consumer. Low friction overall. Ideally we would want to enable that without enabling monopolies like Amazon. Because the low friction is Amazon’s real moat.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#169

Post by walterbell »

> These client APIs are not using anything to verify blockchain state or the authenticity of responses. The results aren’t even signed. An app like Autonomous Art says “hey what’s the output of this view function on this smart contract,” Alchemy or Infura responds with a JSON blob that says “this is the output,” and the app renders it.

Is there a technical debt story behind these practices?

Have there been attacks which took advantage of this gap?

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#170

Post by dylkil »

endisneigh wrote: post #79

If you care about the environment even a little bit (like turning off lights in rooms you're not occupying) then you will reject Web3. Even the most efficient blockchains use more energy than the status quo unnecessarily. This is also to say nothing of the fact that it's more expensive per USD/KB transferred, slower and more complicated. I think what Web3 should be is a way to use your laptop or any commodity compute…

What about proof of stake chains, do you reject those too? How many companies with huge carbon footprint do you reject? What about cows did you reject them?
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