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An engineer's observations on Web3 and its possibilities

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

#261

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

tim333 wrote: post #259
dgb23 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who put their hope into blockchain and crypto currency technology are missing a fundamental point that would have _catastrophic_ consequences on social mobility, exploitation and oppression in the long term: You don't actually want a decentralized, persistent log of all transactions, especially if that also includes credit and debt. The financial market is going out of hand because since the 70's/80's it i…

The way to deal with excess debt is not to have a cranky database that loses the records. Also forgiveness seldom happens. What does happen in reality often is inflation - government gives money to the needy (or similar) and the money being given out inflates away the debts.

Governments also “inflate” their way out of debts through population increases.

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

#262

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

shsbdncudx wrote: post #230
wpietri wrote: post #122

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…

This [jazz hands] _thing_ works once but then drop it, it ruins your [jazz hands] _story_

[sarcastic finger quotes]?

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

#263

Post by markelliot »

fastball wrote: post #237
Uehreka wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, NOW WE’RE TALKIN. In years of talking to blockchain people about this stuff, no one has ever given me a use case description that succinct and concrete. A decentralized SSO is the kind of thing that would seem useful on it’s own, even without the other stuff. So let’s say I want to try this out this weekend. Do I just download MetaMask and make a wallet? Do I have to go somewhere or pay someone to inscribe my use…

Decentralized SSO is a great use case for blockchain tech and there are so many ways you can do it. There has been a lot of hype around NFTs due to the crazy prices we've been seeing for "digital artwork NFTs", but you can also use them for auth and it's actually pretty slick. Here is a project[1] that a friend of mine is building that does exactly that. It's basically a collection of TailwindCSS components that he o…

Thanks for sharing the NFT-as-access-token example, it's far and away the strongest example of a relatable use for NFTs that I've heard, and is compelling both in its value to the issuer (as a verifiable access token) and to the buyer (for both immediate use and due to its resale of residual value after having been used).

I imagine that your friend's NFT contract stipulates he gets a cut of resales, but I'm also curious if/how your friend deals with potentially bad actors that, say, scrape the entire content then resell the token for most of what they paid for it having extracted the content it unlocks. Obviously the contract could help offset a part of that trade, but seems tricky nonetheless?

Edit: I suppose part of the premise is that there are only 500 passes and content continues to be produced, so if you want access to the current library after all passes have been used trading the pass is actually a key attribute of others gaining access to the content.

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

#264

Post by wpietri »

askonomm wrote: post #162
wpietri wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your poetic invocation of the theoretical glorious potential of crypto aside, what country do you live in?

Not sure about OP, but I live in Argentina, and there is no Apple Pay, Stripe, or Cash App here either. Not in most of the Latin American countries, actually. I had to make a U.S Wyoming company in order to be able to use Stripe. And Latin America is a pretty big chunk of land, with a ton of people. And with the ever-increasing inflation of 40% YoY and government restrictions on the ability to convert foreign currenc…

Is there actual data on cryptocurrency use in Argentina?

Last I lived in an unstable Latin America country with inflation issues, the common solution was just to buy dollars. So much so that the country, Ecuador, eventually just switched over to using dollars entirely. So I can believe it's possible that people are trying to do similar things digitally when they don't trust the local currency. But given the user-hostile nature of a lot of the cryptocurrency systems, I suspect they aren't doing all that much of it. As an example, look at El Salvador's clown-shoes attempt to switch over to using Bitcoin.

So as much as I grant the theoretical potential of an imagined version of cryptocurrencies to be useful, I'm still pretty skeptical of the actual use of actual cryptocurrencies, even under those conditions.

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

#265

Post by wpietri »

shsbdncudx wrote: post #230
wpietri wrote: post #122

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…

This [jazz hands] _thing_ works once but then drop it, it ruins your [jazz hands] _story_

Oh, is today the day on HN where we give unwanted writing advice? In that case, I'll just tell you that I don't really listen to people who universalize their individual reactions and act as if they're their only audience member in the world. So next time you want to give feedback, please do it in a fashion where your individual feelings are clearly marked as such, not hyperbolized into the total ruination of the writing in question.

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

#266

Post by ekanes »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #204
thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #149

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…

1. Existing payment systems expose your entire financial history to the service provider (e.g.: your bank, your credit card company etc.). I don't understand how people can complain about surveillance and data collection by tech companies, and then be perfectly fine with consumer finance companies doing the same thing. 2. What is legal is not what is moral. E.g., outlawing sex work, which results in SWers in even Wes…

Honest question: What if coinbase is hacked, and the info connecting people's verified real-world identities to their wallet is revealed? Now everything is public - isn't that worse?

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

#267

Post by wpietri »

nberkman wrote: post #199
wpietri wrote: post #122

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…

I remember when the massive early growth of Napster led to a similar hype cycle around P2P, with overblown articles in Wired proclaiming it to be the answer to everything. Around 2004 I was CTO of a company building a streaming music service and I got a call from the CEO of a P2P-based CDN. I asked him some basic questions trying to find any reason I might consider them. It became clear that it would make no sense fo…

Wow, excellent story. If only he had gone out of business before the sale, we might never have heard from that guy again, and the world would have been much better for it.

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

#268

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

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.

Just wanted to thank you! Well done.

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

#269

Post by askonomm »

wpietri wrote: post #264
askonomm wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about OP, but I live in Argentina, and there is no Apple Pay, Stripe, or Cash App here either. Not in most of the Latin American countries, actually. I had to make a U.S Wyoming company in order to be able to use Stripe. And Latin America is a pretty big chunk of land, with a ton of people. And with the ever-increasing inflation of 40% YoY and government restrictions on the ability to convert foreign currenc…

Is there actual data on cryptocurrency use in Argentina? Last I lived in an unstable Latin America country with inflation issues, the common solution was just to buy dollars. So much so that the country, Ecuador, eventually just switched over to using dollars entirely. So I can believe it's possible that people are trying to do similar things digitally when they don't trust the local currency. But given the user-host…

I don't have any data points, but my own social circle, of which the majority uses Binance to buy crypto and uses Binance P2P to sell it to ARS (Peso). And since the transfer will be reflected on your bank balance as some regular person sending you money locally, it's not taxed either. The whole process of buying stablecoins USDC or Tether to it being sold to ARS and actually landing on my local bank account takes about 5 min maybe, which is really nice as well - Western Union and Xoom take up to 3 days or so on average.

Most people have used Western Union / Xoom here to get local money, but those have quick limits here, and the government is making it harder and harder to do that, by often prompting to explain your income, then pay taxes on that income, often resulting in double taxation for people.

Most of the things in Argentina are still in Pesos (pubs, restaurants, grocery stores, etc), except for the real estate market of which about half the rental listings ask payment in USD, and if you want to buy a car then half the listings of those are also in USD. Lots of local jobs also pay in USD, so I can definitely see how ARS might at some point be devalued and everything going over to USD, but for now for most day-to-day things you still need ARS.

I'm by no means saying that crypto is the future or even a great solution, but for the current situation here it is quite convenient and better than any alternative.

Edit: To add, if there is one indication of crypto use there, it's that the local Apple Pay equivalent "Mercado Pago", which is available in most shops and restaurants here, has announced that they will add the ability to pay with crypto balance to their app, so I guess there are enough people to warrant that, at the very least.

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