Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Starting a crypto project

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 373 posts

Re: Starting a crypto project

#301

Post by inteoryx »

aero- wrote: post #290

Still waiting for someone to name one singular measurable impact of a crypto project. It's a solution that's been searching for a problem for over 10 years. Decentralized, distributed, blah blah, stop drinking the koolaid. Is a network controlled primarily by 4 mining companies decentralized? Do you need a distributed network to sell NFTS that are only useable within the world of a specific video game company? (game…

I was looking at a project called Helium or HNT. The basic idea is that "miners" are running something like a mix between a WiFi endpoint and a personal cell tower. People can use HNT tokens to get network access and the miners earn the tokens by providing the access.

I thought it seemed like a pretty neat idea and was encouraged by the fact that this crypto project actually did something useful. As I looked into it though I could only find people talking about how to mine the token, or details about the price, and nobody was talking about using the network. I wanted to try the network myself, or see if I could get a device on the network and what the service was like.

It's a little naive of me, but at first I was imagining something like cell service being provided by this system. I was wondering what it would take to get my laptop on it and imagining having a network connection wherever for a low price.

When I looked into it though I didn't find anyone using the network. The limitations on the network were severe, if I recall correctly their pricing calculator shows you the price of network usage in terms of cost per packet, where a packet can send something like 16 bits of information. Their envisioned use case was a collar for pets to wear that could ping the network once a day, but to my knowledge no such collars had actually been created or sold...

Disappointed to find something that looked kind of useful at first glance actually resolve to something that looks kind of useless.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#302

Post by swensel »

vmception wrote: post #204
onebot wrote: post #83

Having been part of launching Helium HNT token (which is honestly a real-world utility use case), here is my personal experience related to his points... Helium started as a traditional centralized IoT project, realized that centralization was a limiting factor, then joked about turning it into a blockchain application. Now it is over $1.5bn market cap and provides a real-world utility. Exchanges are pay-to-play. It…

I’ve advised many projects, allowing them to inherit my professional network in the crypto space, as well as launched my own tokens. And the exchanges really are a problem and are still a racket. It is so great that Uniswap and their style of autonomous liquidity pool creating has taken over, the market was tired of that other bullshit. Even the most reputable custodial exchanges are a total racket! See Coinbase’s se…

I've used Uniswap and IMO, the UX doesn't compare to the centralized exchanges. I think that will prevent mainstream adoption except for those who are pretty crypto savy. I'm also concerned that decentralized exchanges may have tough regulation applied to them in the future. I'm not sure what that looks like, but it seems like a risk to me. The charges brought against the founder of EtherDelta comes to mind.

That is interesting what you said about the shadiness of centralized exchanges. I wasn't aware of that. Maybe a more clear regulatory framework will help.

However, it seems like whenever more regulation is put upon traditional markets, folks just find a loophole in it and it makes the situation worse for retail investors (best price / HFT comes to mind, but maybe I just took the Flash Boys book too seriously). Anyway, I'm not sure what the answer is there. Curious if you have more thoughts on this.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#303

Post by [deleted] »

emmap21 wrote: post #29

From user experience, I personally don't see a strong benefit of crypto. It always looks like a Ponzi Scheme to me. When early users are people driven by greed than productivity, it is a HUGE problem.

[deleted]

Re: Starting a crypto project

#304

Post by celticninja »

throwaway_kufu wrote: post #76
berkes wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this any different from the "web tech" space at large? Where investors will push towards "data-hoarding", privacy-invasion, dark patterns and/or addictiveness or other psychological "abuse", more often than not?

Because these crypto companies are generally deliberately marketing themselves as the democratic solution to the original problem through this new decentralized technology. Then when their private discord and telegram groups get exposed for pump and dump scams, their go to defense rings of your comment “so what, it’s the way it’s always been”

I think the real issue is that in 2009-2013 it was used by people who understood the risks. Now it is used by retail investors with no clue, who will be hit hardest by it.

I suggested everyone buy it when it was under $500, I said invest with caution up to $1000. Now I can't in good faith suggest to people that they buy it. And I am fortunate, everyone who did buy it on my suggestion made plenty of money.. probably because they had me in their ear saying "don't sell it" when they hit their first bitcoin drop. I get messages often thanking me for introducing them to cryptocurrency. However I and sure that there are many who didn't buy it and now regret it. Same as there are others who bought it, sold at a loss and regret it. It has been repeated as Infinitum, only invest what you can afford to lose and that is most definitely still the case. Bitcoin can still go to zero (or close enough not to matter) but It could also go to $100,000, and right now latter is more likely, but I feel as the price goes up so does the chance it goes to zero.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#305

Post by tnzm »

notJim wrote: post #147
intotheabyss wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of useful applications on Ethereum. Maker, Compound, Aave, dYdX, Synthetix, UMA, Uniswap to name very few.

IMO these things are basically driven by speculation as well. From what I can tell, they mainly provide liquidity for financial institutions. Financial institutions are interested in crypto so that they can make money trading it. IMO there is very little actual utility here.

I suspect financial institutions are interested in crypto because they don't want a new financial system with a more democratic organizational model to make them obsolete.

Maybe there are some forward thinking people there who want crypto to be the driving factor behind refactoring from COBOL, who knows.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#306

Post by vmception »

swensel wrote: post #302
vmception wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve advised many projects, allowing them to inherit my professional network in the crypto space, as well as launched my own tokens. And the exchanges really are a problem and are still a racket. It is so great that Uniswap and their style of autonomous liquidity pool creating has taken over, the market was tired of that other bullshit. Even the most reputable custodial exchanges are a total racket! See Coinbase’s se…

I've used Uniswap and IMO, the UX doesn't compare to the centralized exchanges. I think that will prevent mainstream adoption except for those who are pretty crypto savy. I'm also concerned that decentralized exchanges may have tough regulation applied to them in the future. I'm not sure what that looks like, but it seems like a risk to me. The charges brought against the founder of EtherDelta comes to mind. That is…

Uniswap already has mainstream adoption lol. V2 has had more volume than Coinbase for almost a year and its less than a year old.

People that want alpha learn that interface, the end.

If you want limit orders and big ole' chart taking 3/4ths of the screen so that you can pretend the Bollinger bands are suggesting a breakout, then you have to use third party GUIs, it is all possible and there are plenty of github projects about it. Uniswap V3 makes that even easier.

HFTs already exist here, they provide a service mostly liquidity depth. Crypto exchanges are fairly unique in that they operate many conflicting roles when in other markets they would have fiduciary duties.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#308

Post by swensel »

samsonradu wrote: post #203
onebot wrote: post #83

Having been part of launching Helium HNT token (which is honestly a real-world utility use case), here is my personal experience related to his points... Helium started as a traditional centralized IoT project, realized that centralization was a limiting factor, then joked about turning it into a blockchain application. Now it is over $1.5bn market cap and provides a real-world utility. Exchanges are pay-to-play. It…

> Security is hard. I'm still wondering how no impactful hacking occured to this day at major exchanges or even the major blockchains. By now it's probably a top-level target worldwide.

There have been a few notable hacks to exchanges, Binance, for example [1]. The DAO hack on the Ethereum network, which caused the fork of Ethereum and Ethereum classic, is also notable [2].

I do think the fact that there hasn't been a successful attack on the Bitcoin network is an example of how resilient it is. Safely securing $1 trillion in value on a decentralized network that hasn't been hacked in over a decade of operation, when as you said, it's probably a top-level target, is pretty amazing.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/08/binance-bitcoin-hack-over-40...

[2] https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/the-dao-hack-makerdao

Re: Starting a crypto project

#309

Post by swensel »

vmception wrote: post #306
swensel wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used Uniswap and IMO, the UX doesn't compare to the centralized exchanges. I think that will prevent mainstream adoption except for those who are pretty crypto savy. I'm also concerned that decentralized exchanges may have tough regulation applied to them in the future. I'm not sure what that looks like, but it seems like a risk to me. The charges brought against the founder of EtherDelta comes to mind. That is…

Uniswap already has mainstream adoption lol. V2 has had more volume than Coinbase for almost a year and its less than a year old. People that want alpha learn that interface, the end. If you want limit orders and big ole' chart taking 3/4ths of the screen so that you can pretend the Bollinger bands are suggesting a breakout, then you have to use third party GUIs, it is all possible and there are plenty of github proj…

Thanks! For the adoption, I meant more like new folks to crypto. I think sending someone new to Coinbase is a lot easier than having them set up Metamask, telling them how to get some ETH and sending them to Uniswap (and also having them understand gas fees, etc, otherwise their Uniswap transaction will take hours and maybe be cancelled due to slippage).

Anyway those third party GUIs sound interesting.

I also figured there already was HFTs on crypto, but good to know.

We'll see what happens with potential regulation. I do hope the US understands that not stifling crypto innovation would support them in having companies and leaders in this upcoming field. I do think crypto is in it's early stages at the moment and mainstream adoption to me is having crypto adoption at the level of say the US stock market.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#310

Post by acjohnson55 »

aero- wrote: post #288
arberx wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference with COD skins being in-game vs on a blockchain is not only can you associate a universal identity to them (your wallet address), but anyone can see and trade for them anywhere. Maybe not the best example, but if you generalize to artwork/digital content it really makes sense.

Why would you need to trade your COD skin through a decentralized distributed network if that skin is only usable through a specific centralized game? The use cases for CRYPTO and NFT are extremely small. Its a solution that's been looking for a problem for over 10 years.

Agreed. I think the real use for NFT is tradable identities/roles, which grant access to digital or physical experiences that span organizations. Remains to be seen whether someone builds a killer app/experience around that. So far, people are only interested in mundane simulation of physical scarcity.
Post reply on HN