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Why Web3?

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Re: Why Web3?

#301

Post by [deleted] »

nfw2 wrote: post #282
root_axis wrote: post #68

I'm not convinced. People talk grand about "permissionless data" but I fail to see any practical applications. NFTs are a scam and are retroactively obsoleted by digital signatures. All of the ideas about logistics tracking, deed tracking, etc etc are all rendered pointless by the oracle problem, you can get identical guarantees with digital signatures minus the blockchain. DeFi is DOA. Gas fees are insane, "layer 2"…

Do digital signatures really make the blockchain obsolete if they fill the same niche? Even if blockchain are technically equivalent to digital signatures, it seems like it has some real advantages from a business perspective: - it is capturing the market of people who want to buy "official" digital assets and is becoming the de facto way to do so - the market is one that should have strong network effects - gaining…

[deleted]

Re: Why Web3?

#302

Post by threeseed »

Lordarminius wrote: post #297
threeseed wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm still waiting to figure out what problem it can solve meaningfully Money laundering and other criminal behaviour. Many of the things we spent decades trying to remove from the financial system will come roaring back in. Of course it will come courtesy of young, wealthy, educated IT guys who are the least exposed to any financial shocks.

If you want to hate on crypto, that's your prerogative but stop using the old, tired, false argument about money laundering. It is easier to launder money through the legacy financial system than through cryptocurrency. In fact, financial institutions and businesses do it all the time.

> It is easier to launder money through the legacy financial system than through cryptocurrency

I work for a bank and this is a flat out lie.

We have a significant number of controls (regulated by government agencies) for managing money laundering risk. We try to identify source/destinations who hide behind shell companies through beneficial ownership methods. We enforce domestic and international sanctions. We identify and provide data on suspect fraudulent transactions to authorities.

None of this happens with crypto. None.

Re: Why Web3?

#303

Post by threeseed »

darawk wrote: post #83
jasonzemos wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One company controls the specification and reference implementation. These gimmicks tend to be "open" so contributions can flow in from anywhere, but the company has full priority and benefits by controlling the pace and final result. Outsider contributions are submitted publicly, while features developed by the company start in secret and can remain secret as long as possible. The company's contributions are rammed…

Except all these things can be trivially forked. If you don't like how the VC one is doing things, just fork it. There are a billion forks of everything in the crypto space, for exactly this reason.

There are hundreds of open source projects that implement a social network.

So does that mean I can be the next Facebook with one click of a deploy button ?

Re: Why Web3?

#304

Post by pphysch »

rytill wrote: post #81
pphysch wrote: post #29

Global finance will eventually be eclipsed by large-scale economic planning systems. It will probably take a couple decades for finance to go the way of alchemy, but the signs of its irrelevance are there: hilarious schemes like SPACs, DeFi, NFTs. Totally divorced from the underlying economics.

Interesting take. I’m not sure many would agree with you. Care to expand or point us somewhere where your ideas are expanded?

I was being provocative -- finance will not totally disappear, but it will play a greatly diminished role in human economies. Successful national economies will adopt a tech-driven, centralized approach to economics. The global, eternally-fungible USD, and all the problems it brings, will cease to exist.

Non-transferable, expiring, digital currencies may be employed in limited domains, for example "food credits" or "fuel credits". This means that free markets will still exist much like today, you can shop for whatever food you want, but you now can't use your "food money" for e.g. financial speculation or buying a new car. This unlocks UBI as a practical solution to many societal problems. You can give everyone $250 foodbucks a week with 1 month expiration and not worry about massive financial fraud & waste. Price mechanism still works, food industry is still competing for your foodbucks which would be converted into some other representation of economic value upon purchase.

Libertarians will lose their minds at this, but frankly the nations that adopt a centralized tech-driven economy will vastly outperform those still based on legacy financial systems. In fact, they already are beginning to. There is so much waste in the current American economy and yet most Americans are still struggling to pay rent and put food on the table.

The alternative future is the one described by DeFi/web3 crowd, which is essentially based on a deep misunderstanding of what finance and money is about and how they relate to the actual economy. They tend to view economics as a subset of finance ("fix the money, fix the world") when really it's the other way around, and finance itself is nonessential.

Re: Why Web3?

#305

Post by aboodman »

root_axis wrote: post #123
quickthrower2 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can send two of those assignment signatures to two different parties simultaneously. Is there a way in your system to avoid the double send?

You can do the same thing with blockchain NFTs, just mint another blockchain NFT with the same content. You can say "well, the NFT that was minted first is the true original" but the same is true of the "double sent" digital signature NFT, one will be dated more recently than the other, which affords one identical guarantees of authenticity to the blockchain NFT.

> will be dated more recently than the other

How does the receiver of such a transfer know that the transfer is final? There's no way for them to know that an "earlier" transfer of same item won't show up days later.

Re: Why Web3?

#306

Post by malermeister »

Zaskoda wrote: post #275
csbartus wrote: post #263

The single important question about web3 is: will it be free? Can app devs just start building without paying the blockchain / network fee? The same for users; can they just use apps for free? If not, the question is: do you pay with data, and go free, or do you pay with real money and prices skyrocketing due to endless speculations?

IMO, pay with money. End of story. Expecting services for free got is into this horrible advertising model that turned us into the product rather than customers. There are people promoting gasless, free to use chains. That model is flawed. Financial incentives is what finally made decentralized networks a real thing. For a good explanation as to where we're going with this, read "Who Owns The Future."

It sounds to me like what you are suggesting would be taking the awful inequality we're already suffering and would transpose it to the web. Why would we want that?

Re: Why Web3?

#307

Post by threeseed »

ehsankia wrote: post #235
jshen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a very limited database that is very slow and scales poorly.

Not only that, but every operation would cost fees, right? Good luck convincing people that every time they logging into their account or literally do any action will cost them some fees. Refreshed the page? Oops that'll cost ya!

No you see they will have a cache in front of it.

And then eventually that cache will be a database.

And then eventually that database will have some additional data.

And then eventually we will back to where we are today.

Re: Why Web3?

#309

Post by ineedasername »

One key difference I see is that web 2.0 kind of just emerged and we looked around ourselves and said "Hey, this is different. It's basically version 2 of the web, web 2.0". It happened, and we observed it, and gave it a name, which was then hyped and buzzworded.

Web3 seems to be going in the other direction: people have a vision for what the next paradigm shift might be, gave it a name, and are pushing it forward but it's not quite here yet. It might not get here, and if it does it might not be in the form that proponents are hoping for. Magic 8-ball says "situation hazy, ask again later"

If we do get a newly decentralized Web3, I suspect the pendulum may then ultimately swing back yet again to centralization with Web4, and so on. So it goes.

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