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Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

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Re: Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

#291

Post by atq2119 »

aimor wrote: post #15
TimPC wrote: post #4

For those who don't know web3 is the idea of building a web on a decentralized blockchain. I think more specifically the idea is to replace the need for name servers with a blockchain protocol. Like anything blockchain there is no real solution for how to handle records becoming stale over time without a central authority that manages disputes. I find it ridiculous that this idea even got to occupy the name as I thin…

What sparked the sudden surge of interest in "Web3"? Was there a specific blog post or talk that pushed web3 = distributed web into the spotlight? I feel like overnight there was all this discussion about web3 and it felt very artificial because I didn't see any build-up. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=w...

My cynical take is that some of the smarter players in the field were worried about running out of greater fools, so they did a concerted marketing push of something new.

Re: Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

#292

Post by labrador »

this_user wrote: post #162
labrador wrote: post #60

I just created the worlds slowest database. People will have to pay many dollars to specialists called "miners" to update it. For design reasons, no one can delete anything from it. It's going to change the world.

Yeah, but at least all of your data are public.

Undeletable public revenge porn. If it can happen, it will happen.

Re: Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

#293

Post by chrononaut »

searchableguy wrote: post #228
paxys wrote: post #213

I've reached a point where I'm tired of discussing the possibilities/potential/revolution of crypto and blockchain. Is there anything I can use today, or must I keep waiting for this hypothetical future?

Try headline https://viaheadline.xyz/ which uses ceramic for storage, unlock for payment and membership, ipfs for pinning, and a bunch of other protocols for decentralisation. I can walk you through some of the useful stuff going on if you want to have a chat. Offer valid for anyone else.

> HEADLINE is a decentralized publishing platform where a creator’s content is always their own. There’s no service fee, no long form privacy agreement and your unpublished and token gated content is encrypted, enabling access control.

> Publish web content and send out newsletters. Build meaningful connections with your community and followers. Feel confident that the publishing platform you’re using respects what you create and who you create it for. Our excellence is in our collaborations.

> Powered by Unlock Protocol and built by Raid Guild, with integrations of Ceramic, Lit Protocol & IPFS, HEADLINE is truly multi-player, built and maintained by collaboration.

> HEADLINE operates as a DAO, decentralized autonomous organization. That means that we are run by collective efforts and innovation. Join us as we build together.

Who exactly is this being positioned to? If I passed this along to the marketing team at my job they will probably just reply back with a bunch of question marks attempting to understand that language. Is that even the right audience?

Re: Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

#297

Post by moistly »

awr wrote: post #254
Loughla wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sure, pay 25c via crypto wallet (2 clicks), read article, move on. 1. Couldn't this be done with just a credit card if companies took micro payments? My browser will save my cc details, so if they accepted micro payments, I could just click one button to get it. 2. Why would companies, who do not accept micropayments now, suddenly accept them just because crypto? 3. Wouldn't I still have to enter information into th…

Probably not today but there's a future where this could be done without crypto (hence my comment re whether web3 is the right tech). 1. Fixed payment processing fees make it unfeasible. Minimum credit card fees are 10s of cents, so anything sub a dollar becomes unpractical. 2. Viability of micropayments is proportional to the fees charged by the payment processor. If the processor charges 1c, then 10c micropayments…

> Fixed payment processing fees make it unfeasible. Minimum credit card fees are 10s of cents, so anything sub a dollar becomes unpractical.

VISA could waive those fees tomorrow. And then the rubber would meet the road: who will be more efficient at processing transactions on a global scale, hundreds or thousands of millions of transactions? VISA or a crypto coin?

I’d lay my bet on VISA.

Re: Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

#298

Post by awr »

moistly wrote: post #297
awr wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not today but there's a future where this could be done without crypto (hence my comment re whether web3 is the right tech). 1. Fixed payment processing fees make it unfeasible. Minimum credit card fees are 10s of cents, so anything sub a dollar becomes unpractical. 2. Viability of micropayments is proportional to the fees charged by the payment processor. If the processor charges 1c, then 10c micropayments…

> Fixed payment processing fees make it unfeasible. Minimum credit card fees are 10s of cents, so anything sub a dollar becomes unpractical. VISA could waive those fees tomorrow. And then the rubber would meet the road: who will be more efficient at processing transactions on a global scale, hundreds or thousands of millions of transactions? VISA or a crypto coin? I’d lay my bet on VISA.

Absolutely they could. There's multiple groups that need to come to the party (Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, CC companies, etc). Whether they will without a viable alternative like crypto remains to be seen. Whether there's enough fat for everybody to make a cut remains to be seen.

Crypto does offer (on the surface) an end to end solution to the problem that's not going through multiple companies.

The other side is identity linking. Again, can have a global account with a payment processor like stripe or PayPal that solves that problem though linking to your wallet does seem like a lower impedance opportunity.

I'm not of the opinion that crypto is going to become the new incumbent, but as a technology it presents as a viable alternative to the existing system that could trigger real change.

Re: Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

#299

Post by motohagiography »

runnerup wrote: post #220
motohagiography wrote: post #208

The quality of arguments against web3 seem related to a trend where smart people indulge in acting dumb on twitter because it feels powerful. It's just an off the cuff tweet by a giant of our age, not some ex cathedra papal bull. The basic innovation of proof of work is that it sidesteps the need to solve hard economic problems of energy storage and transmission and lets you turn energy where you find it into fungibl…

> When you view miners as electricity refineries, it's pretty simple. What? Just use an RDBMS, it'll "refine" that electricity to the same end product millions of times more efficiently. That's the argument most Web3 critics have.

The efficiency of an RDBMS treats trust as both an assumption and an externality, and that's not efficient in any risk adjusted model.

An RDBMS depends on trust, where web3 uses consensus, and that consensus is a different product, which also has some useful anti-technocrat and anti-leviathan properties. Are all these kids writing crypto protocols for smart contracts just too dumb to spin up postgress? Doubtful. The ideology behind it is from a generation raised on narrative and they are inventing a way to relate based on something concrete that requires proofs and truth.

The problem I think web3 techs solve is the forfeit of trust that institutions and platforms have engaged in over the last decade. There's no point in even talking to anyone involved in them because there's no reason to believe they would argue in good faith. Consensus protocols and proofs provide stability and some of that trust the culture has lost.

The people who still believe in those institutions are just clinging to a precarious bourgeois and managerialist aspiration to become a part of them, where it's people from wealth (material and cultural), and working class people with less education and money who are the marks of those institutions who are typically the ones flocking to cryptocurrencies and now web3. They're also where growth comes from. In this sense, web3 is less ideological than just a polarized class strategy.

The question isn't why not use an RDBMS, it should be, can you reasonably expect that anyone involved in the EMV payments partners, banks, government, social platforms, google, media(hah), non-stem academia, etc, are willing or able to act or debate in good faith? Consensus protocols route around that problem.

Re: Guido van Rossum: Let Web3 die in a flaming ball of fire

#300

Post by izolate »

maupin wrote: post #172
izolate wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For integrity reasons, no one can delete anything from it. Except if they're the central authority, in which case they can unilaterally rollback the blockchain, rewrite history and fork? Totally makes sense.

Well, they're not "web3" then. No central authorities allowed.

I was referencing what happened to Ethereum, which apparently has one.
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