An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities • Hacker News Board

Re: An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

#21

Post by machiaweliczny » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

cornstalks wrote: post #20

> Protocols like SMTP (1981; email), TCP (1983; reliable packet transmission), HTTP (1991; web), and XMPP (1999; chat) all created immense value while capturing little for their inventors. Blockchains upend this, allowing inventors to capture considerable value for themselves. That... seems like a huge negative to me. No wonder crypto enthusiasts give me the same feeling as relentless door-to-door salesmen.

Not necessary negative from UX perspective. Can make economics of walled gardens less diserable as you can profit on protocol and have incentive to make best protocol possible. Time will tell.

Re: An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

#22

Post by viksit » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

v_london wrote: post #16

Thanks for the great article! I wished the section on DeFi addressed the biggest elephant in the room, overcollateralization. A DeFi borrower always needs to lock in more assets as collateral than what they are borrowing, thus defeating the whole purpose for taking a loan aside from financial speculation. And there's no real way to solve it: all mechanisms I've heard of either try to replicate some form of background…

This is a great point. Some ways I'm seeing this addressed are in the form of,

- Credit ratings from the real world being moved on chain, both by startups and by established companies (see Fitch report from Oct 21, pay-to-access only).

- Credit ratings across and on chains (https://www.credprotocol.com/) to make sure that a defi OG on eth can have access to collateral on other chains.

- Chainlink and others are working on products like CCIP (https://chain.link/cross-chain) to facilitate creating more systems like this through Oracles vs having to be reinvented.

I would imagine this state of affairs gets better over time.

Re: An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

#23

Post by obarthelemy » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

I almost read the thing, but I can only read so many words in that horrendous font. Is this representative of the substance vs form stance of web3 ?

Re: An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

#24

Post by toolz » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

v_london wrote: post #16

Thanks for the great article! I wished the section on DeFi addressed the biggest elephant in the room, overcollateralization. A DeFi borrower always needs to lock in more assets as collateral than what they are borrowing, thus defeating the whole purpose for taking a loan aside from financial speculation. And there's no real way to solve it: all mechanisms I've heard of either try to replicate some form of background…

Can you provide an example of someone claiming defi can provide solutions for loans?

The best I can come up with logically is something like cardano's prism that effectively puts a persons encrypted identity on the blockchain which allows that person to reveal things like their grades etc. to future partners as a means of quickly establishing trust. Maybe something like that could enable defi loans? Even that is a stretch.

Re: An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

#25

Post by machiaweliczny » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

tmaly wrote: post #17

davepeck wrote: post #6

Hi all — I wrote these notes with my colleagues at PSL while trying to wrap our heads around the madness that is Web3/Crypto. I’m an engineer by background and sort of a skeptic by nature; I think of this piece as a collection of loosely connected, hopefully pragmatic opinions from a builder’s perspective.

Great notes! I am curious, what language / tech stack would be most promising in this space?

AFAIK only EVM(Ethereum VM) is popular and others are emulating it. You have Soldity there which is meh from my CS view. On frontend you use whatever you like and just bind via library to wallets.

Re: An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

#26

Post by rodiger » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

jude- wrote: post #15

> At the same time, smart contracts have some deeply problematic constraints: > Smart contracts can’t be upgraded. Smart contracts are deployed once and run forever; their code cannot be changed. The software development industry has literally zero experience with such a deployment model. I stopped reading here. First, this is factually wrong -- the software industry has tons of experience dealing with software that…

It's not very, very hard currently though. It's just slightly more complex and more error prone. Most complex DeFi protocols are upgradeable by design these days.

Re: An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

#27

Post by jerrygoyal » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

are there any other working examples of web3 except torrents?

Re: An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

#28

Post by sharemywin » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

davepeck wrote: post #18

jude- wrote: post #15

> At the same time, smart contracts have some deeply problematic constraints: > Smart contracts can’t be upgraded. Smart contracts are deployed once and run forever; their code cannot be changed. The software development industry has literally zero experience with such a deployment model. I stopped reading here. First, this is factually wrong -- the software industry has tons of experience dealing with software that…

Original author here. I strongly disagree. While it’s certainly true that firmware on many devices can’t be or simply isn’t updated, it’s also the case that bugs ship. Because of this, engineers design and ship their more complex devices with the facility to upgrade firmware. Even my ages old stereo receiver is upgradable (although painfully so). But this is about smart contracts: code that in many cases moves money.…

I think that's what's interesting about "blockchains" versus on specific chain.

1. polygon is a cheap(as in transaction fees) knock off of Ethereum, competition good. bad from the perspective of capture value in the protocol.

2. as far as I can tell as long as one oracle doesn't become dominate that provides competition

3. Defi is enabling users value across other networks. uniswap, etc.

4. On a side note, not sure why there's not an api that encrypts an nft on ipfs and only returns the watermarked version unless you send it a fee. or your the owner.

Re: An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

#29

Post by getsprite » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

Great job with this. Very nice overview.

Re: An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

#30

Post by serverholic » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

davepeck wrote: post #18

jude- wrote: post #15

> At the same time, smart contracts have some deeply problematic constraints: > Smart contracts can’t be upgraded. Smart contracts are deployed once and run forever; their code cannot be changed. The software development industry has literally zero experience with such a deployment model. I stopped reading here. First, this is factually wrong -- the software industry has tons of experience dealing with software that…

Original author here. I strongly disagree. While it’s certainly true that firmware on many devices can’t be or simply isn’t updated, it’s also the case that bugs ship. Because of this, engineers design and ship their more complex devices with the facility to upgrade firmware. Even my ages old stereo receiver is upgradable (although painfully so). But this is about smart contracts: code that in many cases moves money.…

So you deploy a new contract and tell users why they should update. Then they can choose to use the new version or not. I don't think you really understand this idea.