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Web3 is going just great

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Re: Web3 is going just great

#251

Post by AlexandrB »

artursapek wrote: post #129
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…

Anyone making the "crypto is killing the environment" argument is basically just regurgitating a trope they read in the corporate media. Pretty obvious red flag.

Great. What's the counterargument? Just because it's a trope doesn't mean it's not true. PoW is insanely inefficient compared to traditional database technology, doesn't actually replace "the banking system" (so both have to run at the same time), and in practice only provides theoretical decentralization since most people invest in crypto through intermediaries.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#252

Post by 3np »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #116
beachy wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tradition…

> Though it's actually quite painful, slow, expensive, and lacks all of the benefits of traditional transactions so everyone avoids it if possible.

It’s really not. For several years, paying with crypto has been faster and easier than credit card or PayPal.

No arbitrary blocks, guessing traffic lights, aligning shipping and billing names and zip codes, figuring which card will work for what country and payment processor, biyearly renewals, SMS confirmations, risk of having it abused despite having good opsec, being on the phone with PayPal, etc etc.

I just open my wallet, unlock it used my preferred method, [scan a qr code/copy-paste something], click OK, done.

I understand that many people on HN get profiled “white” enough by “the algorithms” to not have to experience the Kafkaesque frustration of the status quo.

For the rest of us, cryptocurrency is faster, easier, and sometimes cheaper. Today.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#253

Post by pbourke »

fastball wrote: post #148
pbourke wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web 2.0 was a hokey name, but at least it was a new approach to building web apps, built on the techniques and technology that preceded it. Web 3 is ... not that.

How is web3 not a new approach to building web apps? You might disagree with the approach, but using blockchain as the backend for an app is very different from previous iterations of the web.

There have been plenty of new backend approaches since the term Web 2.0 was minted. The important change was a shifting from one request per view to multiple requests that comprise a view: it was the client/server interaction patterns that were important.

The fact that you build your “web 3” application using Web 2.0 techniques (SPAs, etc) tells me that web 3 is not a thing. It’s another type of backend, and the web is designed to have those appear in perpetuity.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#254

Post by Yizahi »

orange8 wrote: post #247
Yizahi wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Decentralized proof of ownership is the core merit But it's neither decentralized nor a proof AT ALL. NFT literally can't facilitate anything by itself, without adding some centralized DB to it and some centralized humans governing all interactions between clients.

> NFT literally can't facilitate anything by itself, without adding some centralized DB to it What exactly do you want an NFT to facilitate? And are you raving mad at the people who make the NFTs, the people who buy them or both?

Well at minimum at least something, at maximum - fully what cryptobros already promise today (so that their messages won't be lies) - proof of ownership, transfer of ownership, enforcement of ownership, decentralization, universal standards and so on. Nothing special, only the things crypto fans already say today to the gullible buyers.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#255

Post by Yizahi »

ipaddr wrote: post #222
Yizahi wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it can't be used for "proof of ownership" at all. Crypto only barely works because it lives inside blockchain completely. Anything external to the blockchain (which is practically everything) can't be verified using blockchain. Only using some centralized and opaque/corrupt additions to the blockchain some rights can be maybe transferred (but not enforced even then), but at that point blockchain is useless can be…

It can be used for proof of ownership not to be confused with proof of identity because anyone can check the public blockchain to determine that funds sent from account a belongs to whoever setup account a. It allows proof ownership without proof of identity.

No it doesn't allow proof of ownership. Ownership is a set of intellectual rights encoded via laws. NFT can't do anything about IPs or laws, and won't be able in future.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#256

Post by Yizahi »

orange8 wrote: post #245
Yizahi wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it can't be used for "proof of ownership" at all. Crypto only barely works because it lives inside blockchain completely. Anything external to the blockchain (which is practically everything) can't be verified using blockchain. Only using some centralized and opaque/corrupt additions to the blockchain some rights can be maybe transferred (but not enforced even then), but at that point blockchain is useless can be…

> Only using some centralized and opaque/corrupt additions to the blockchain some rights can be maybe transferred Hmmm... centralized and opaque/corrupt. So like a traditional bank?

Assuming if the banks are bad, please tell me why are we replicating them them again but in worse way? (opaque, unregulated, anonymous and usually sitting in offshore fearing IRS sanctions)

Re: Web3 is going just great

#257

Post by ___q »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #176
___q wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which Web3 technologies How does self-sovereign identity exclusively benefit speculators?

how come you need a blockchain to assert your identity, doesn’t public key cryptography solve this?

SSI uses public key cryptography, are you familiar with it? Adding a blockchain allows creation of a registry, smart chain interactions, notarization, many other features.

How does it only benefit speculators?

Re: Web3 is going just great

#258

Post by baby »

tbabb wrote: post #161
baby wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's GP's conclusion. GP's conclusion is that crypto is rooted in real innovation and the noise surrounding it gives the false impression that the tech is just a scam.

It's not clear that the impression is false.

I’m working in the middle of the field so I might be biased, there’s incredible innovation

Re: Web3 is going just great

#259

Post by pvarangot »

mavhc wrote: post #236
pvarangot wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

There's no large functioning society without government though, it appears to be the natural stable state. If you want to gather 100,000 of your most random friends and try a new idea though, that's great. But history suggests you'll invent government.

You could have said the same thing but change "without government" to "with electricity" in like 1830 and be right. History doesn't suggest anything, people suggest things, and "it didn't happen yet so it will never happen" is useless as a historical argument.

History suggests what the stable state of something is as much as reading tea leafs suggests it.

Re: Web3 is going just great

#260

Post by lapinot »

erulabs wrote: post #228
lapinot wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure you'll roll your eyes at this response, but a large chunk of economists don't believe there is value in anything. Food and shelter have value which is pretty near to objective. In fact it is routinely used to compare economic levels throughout history or societies. In fact it's quite useful to distinguish market price from usage (intrinsic) value. Usage value is variable from individual to individual, but…

While pragmatically what you've said is entirely true - if we treat the subject with some rigor it's extremely easy to find examples of people who have valued food and shelter at zero. What of the self-immolating buddhist? They valued Tibet's freedom over their own life, and certainly over food and shelter. So sure, most reasonable people would agree on food and water - but that's introducing a very very powerful new…

I'm gonna nitpick on your nitpicking, but for me the self-immolating buddhist did value life/means of existance just like everybody else, it's just that they valued some more complex thing more (that thing being of course extremely rare). I mean i'm pretty sure my view is (at least superficially) consistent (eg i believe i can find alternate interpretations for any counter examples) so we have to look a bit deeper!

About your pick on judging other and building a hierarchy of reasonable values: well that's politics/ethics/moral (i'm no philosopher so i don't fully understand the difference between these concepts)! I'm not here saying there a is a total order between value systems, mostly a partial order based on inclusion/precision. And i'm asserting that whatever the set of living things you're taking, they'll have a non-trivial greatest lower bound (eg there is a common notion of intrinsic value) (but i think you got that).

About rationality: perhaps we don't understand the same thing by rationality but i believe one cannot be irrational, it's kinda vacuous. One can be in irrational with respect to some value system, but every one is (boundedly) rational with respect to his values (and it's by this axiom that we can infer peoples value systems). My comparison of value systems isn't on qualitative comparison between alternatives (me good you bad), it's a comparison on commonness/shared-base (this specific to me, this specific to you, this common).

on your edit: :) you feel nice to disagree with, send already, but i'm not promising i'll read! Btw i'm not sure i'll actually disagree with such critics, i personally don't really believe in value (as a homogeneous unit) because different things aren't always comparable and even different orders of magnitude of the same thing aren't always comparable (i've got no value for 0.01 house or 100 house, or more precisely it's not 0.01 resp 100 times my value for 1 house).

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