301–310 of 383 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alternative to what? I think you forgot a word there
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There was flattr [1] a while ago, with a similar concept, but it didn't really take off. I'm not sure a more complicated solution with a higher barrier of entry would.
> Something that has frustrated me so far about the debate over web3 is the extent to which it's articulated in the latter terms — those of a prediction market > ... all discourse is subconsciously understood to be people taking speculative positions on various topics > ... can I at least just get slowly tanked on free booze and annoy people with a reminder that the house always wins? So clearly the author thinks tha…
Alright, listening...
> It will display info about what is on my screen, and most importantly a "truth meter". While I couldn't work out the details of how this would work
You are describing dislikes, reviews, stars and similar systems. They exist. They are pretty universally considered bad and when they are not it is not because magic decentralization. I'd also ask why/how a universal "truth meter" would work. Saying "I couldn't work out the details of how this would work" makes this sorta like someone saying "Imagine if we had infinite power, wouldn't that be nice?" or "What if people could just get along?".
> Discuss Web3 without even mentioning cryptocurrencies
I'd love to! But the Magic Internet Money cryptocurrency people seem to have decided it must involve cryptocurrencies so the term is tainted. I consider web3 a term similar to php6 or ipv5. Something that was but also wasn't, isn't rescuable as a term since it implies something that never actually was.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In decentralization the only quality that matters is degree of autonomy. If I need your common access point to send/receive content the system is highly centralized as autonomy is fully vested in the third party content host. Things exist on a spectrum. I have autonomy to choose where to (e.g.) host my family photos, and even self-host on a VPS or even perhaps at home (either with a static IP or dynamic DNS). While…
Earth has multiple governments. Most governments are highly centralized. No oxymoron. Autonomy is the ease with which people are free to move between those governments. I suspect people view the web as decentralized because they cannot divorce their thinking from concepts like content is king and a client/server model.
But you wouldn't say that the governing of Earth in total is centralized (e.g., the UN (with their black helicopters/s)).
Going back to my link:
> As its name implies, decentralized systems don’t have one central owner. Instead, they use multiple central owners, each of which usually stores a copy of the resources users can access.
> A decentralized system can be just as vulnerable to crashes as a centralized one. However, it is by design more tolerant to faults. That’s because when one or more central owners or servers fail, the others can continue to provide data access to users.
* https://berty.tech/blog/decentralized-distributed-centralize...
Or Baran (1964):
> For example, type (b) in Fig. 1 shows the hierarchical structure of a set of stars connected to the form of a larger star with an additional link forming a loop. Such a network is sometimes called a "decentralized" network, because complete reliance upon a single point is not always required.
* https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_memorand...
One aspect that I strongly dislike about "web3" is that it poisons the discourse with its incentives. I don't believe that every person on Twitter with $BTC in their profile understands or can knowledgeably argue the benefits of Web3, but their crypto holdings make them a hard-lined crypto zealot in the hopes of multiplying few hundred dollars they've put in. It's fairly widely known how laughable it is to look for u…
But I love and value actual (sadly minority) projects that solve (or realistically aim to/can solve) real problems in genuine ways. I love how I can use my money that isn't regulated by a corrupted government (I'm from a country between Europe and Asia with an extremely corrupted government so this has extra importance), without a middleperson/controlling entity without trust where I can only trust mathematics and fully public code. Sure they bring their own problems and risks, but I'd still prefer them over current "real world" system of corrupted governments, banks, and evil corporations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope that I'm not following, because what you just described is both crazy and illegal. Cryptocurrencies are currently considered securities under US law. You can't just pop unrealized securities into existence when a prospective investor asks you for them: it's akin to naked shorting. That's why the stock market has "market makers," i.e. firms that provide low-latency settlement of securities in exchange for a sma…
It can be crazy, in your opinion, but the fact is fractional reserve banking has been a standard practice in banking since the invention of banking. I don't know of any country where it's illegal. Whether it would be legal for crypto-exchanges, which typically don't have a banking license, to engage in fractional reserve banking I don't know. Even if it was illegal in the US, it could be legal in Cayman Islands, or e…
I used the US as an example; what you're describing is illegal on every single major international exchange[1]. And as far as banking licenses go: the FDIC won't touch Gemini's actual non-third-party-custodial depository products with a ten foot pole, and they're about as clean as a cryptocurrency firm can be.
If you want cryptocurrencies to "succeed" in some nebulous sense, it would be good to get a start on the "not just good for crime" part of the equation. This isn't it.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_short_selling#Regulation...
One aspect that I strongly dislike about "web3" is that it poisons the discourse with its incentives. I don't believe that every person on Twitter with $BTC in their profile understands or can knowledgeably argue the benefits of Web3, but their crypto holdings make them a hard-lined crypto zealot in the hopes of multiplying few hundred dollars they've put in. It's fairly widely known how laughable it is to look for u…
Everything I've seen so far are either people trying to get rich quick, or people trying to be, or trying to be seen to be edgy.
I'm ignoring it until somebody breaks the existing internet. Oh good, we're incentivising that now...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing that cryptocurrencies have really successfully decentralized and democratized is becoming a shareholder — of cryptocurrency schemes. Anyone can buy a share of a coin, and make a profit as long as the amount of fiat currency put into the chain keeps growing. Every new user convinced it's going "to the moon" pays dividends to existing holders. This automatically creates a financial incentive to become an astr…
How does any of that differ from the current US stock market?
I have the impression that most comments here are either biased against cryptocurrencies or trying to push for them blindly. That's a bit sad considering we should at least be discussing the technology here. web3 is a marketing brand that defines a future version of web apps where the frontend is a compiled SPA possibly hosted on decentralised platforms (IPFS) and where the backend is a decentralised blockchain (and…
Where does this preoccupation with payments come from all of a sudden? Personally I don't want "payments" implemented in my web browser, and I seriously doubt that that would be in anyone's interest.
Reading through the linked article on "real world uses for Web3", most of them seem to consist of things that public key cryptography has been able to solve for decades (persistent identity, multiple persistent identities) or things you could do anyway ("right now, people can only go to facebook or Google. With Web3, everyone can have their own space!!") because the writer has apparently never heard of a web server.…
I often feel like I’m missing a key piece of technological or intellectual insight when I read bullish articles like the linked one. I cannot see a single use-case in there that would definitively be improved by the use of blockchain, and in most cases, I’d expect the opposite to happen.