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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

#31

Post by toolz »

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.…

Most (any?) smart contract platforms can theoretically bake in a concept of proxy upgrading or even decentralized governance over triggering the proxy into an upgraded contract. Sure it's complex now, but this is still very very new tech and those problems can easily be built upon and abstracted away.

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

#32

Post by SilasX »

danr4 wrote: post #9

Why in the name of the lord would you block my ability to open links in new tabs (on the main site) Edit: this site navigation experience is one of the worst i've ever encountered. I'm really interested in looking around but it's so painfully slow. Edit 2: the new tab is blocked on the main site, not on the blog post

“I learned it by watching you” where “you” = 90% of the web today, sadly.

(That is, unnecessarily and avoidable breaks some links that should be thusly clickable even if some still can be.)

How we got to this point, I have no idea.

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

#33

Post by toolz »

sharemywin wrote: post #28
davepeck wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

because it's not a real problem. The same way you can buy a mona lisa t-shirt in the gift shop and that doesn't steal any of the value away from the owner.

What you describe could be rather easily implemented, but why would anyone build or use that?

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

#35

Post by wmf »

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.

The fat protocol hypothesis hasn't been proven. If your app has value, why would you let a protocol take any of it?

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

#36

Post by hervature »

toolz wrote: post #24
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 st…

Searching for "DeFi loan" returns a deluge of results with https://defirate.com/loan/ at the top for me. They seem content claiming that secured loans are useful loans.

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

#37

Post by machiaweliczny »

I think the biggest potential might be in creating companies and contracts. I would love smart contracts that with given payment also give me some shares of company.

Also investing in pre IPO for retail investors in scam-resistant schemes.

Public funding of projects. Voting with ones wallet but formalized and outliers and spam resistant.

Ability to profit from and measure public goods thus allowing to employ Capitalism there and get rid of EU bureocracy. One can dream.

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

#39

Post by machiaweliczny »

wmf wrote: post #35
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.

The fat protocol hypothesis hasn't been proven. If your app has value, why would you let a protocol take any of it?

Because this allows to make bigger pie for everyone in the end. Not sure it does. Just speculating based on economic benefits of infra - see roads, transport, internet, aws etc.

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

#40

Post by davepeck »

serverholic wrote: post #30
davepeck wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What you’re describing does indeed happen — and in many cases I think it’s a good approach — but it’s not the same as what I’m talking about.

You might find these two blog posts useful:

1. OpenZeppelin’s post on the Ethereum proxy pattern: https://blog.openzeppelin.com/proxy-patterns/

2. USDC’s adventure in upgrading their contract: https://blog.coinbase.com/usdc-v2-upgrading-a-multi-billion-...

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