Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it's endlessly frustrating that there's no HN-like forum There are communities like this, such as the crypto dev discord, the daily gwei discord, ethereum cat herders discord, etc. You're just in the wrong communities. That's like spending time on 4chan and saying "the internet sucks, it's filled with horrible people and no thoughtful discussions."
I do think it's scattered, but certainly there. There are many high-quality and thoughtful Twitter posters but you really have to filter. Meanwhile, I think there is room for a crypto HN since HN is actively hostile to anything positive towards crypto.
Starting a crypto project
361–370 of 373 posts
Re: Starting a crypto project
#362Can confirm. I’m friends with a group of very smart distributed systems engineers who were excited to launch an actually useful crypto project that gets talked about here from time to time. As much as they’re excited about the technology itself, very few people are actually interested in using it. Instead, their business seems to revolve around the value of the utility tokens for their project. Few people are buying…
> They’re buying them to horde so they can resell to other speculators when the price goes up. It's almost like all interest in cryptocurrency is driven by greed and speculation. I've been learning more about it, and I'm pretty convinced this is the case. Go into any crypto space, and all people are talking about is yield, price action, how much their tokens have grown etc. I think the only thing I've seen that isn't…
Re: Starting a crypto project
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
Patron kinda proves the point that no-one wants micropayments (and that small/threshold payments work fine in a centralized system)?
No it does not. It proves the point that people are willing to pay for content. But no one wants to be locked-in to patron. There is a high chance over the next years many patron competitors will emerge and its neither in the interest of creators nor the consumers to have to pick one an lose out on the others or to use all in parallel. These walled-garden solutions suck. It either fragments people or someone has a mo…
Re: Starting a crypto project
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry for the confusion what I meant was this is achievable today, but instead people opt to avoid micropayments and instead want to watch ads + get the content free, or pay for an all you can eat model. Everyone’s thought about micropayments. For decades. They’ve tried it many times. There’s no technological reason today that micropayments couldn’t be adopted overnight. They reason they aren’t is because people don’…
>People don’t want to continuously make judgements about whether they’re getting good value for money in their content - especially their entertainment content. Why dont you look into the things we talked about here? See coil.com its a flat-rate system you are never bothered to decided if what you see is "worth the money" you just see that it streams money and you know its roughly halve a cent per minute. If the cont…
This is the problem you've danced around a few times. Content producers do not price their content by the byte or by the minute. They charge premium prices for premium content. And they charge low rates for low-end content. The flat-rate per-unit-data billing model falls down as soon as content providers set their own rates (and they will demand to). Then not only is there a ton of perverse incentive (like content providers just setting the max rate all the time since they know you're not making a purchasing decision) but it also feels crap to know you have no (a) idea and (b) control over how much you're getting billed.
The only model that I can see working is a Netflix type model where you bill folks a fixed monthly fee, and you hand out the money to content producers based on agreements you negotiate. You aggregate the risk, you negotiate the pricing, you intermediate the customers and the content producers. You bill once a month, a fixed, predictable amount. No blockchain needed, just a Stripe account.
I'm uniquely qualified to answer this, I worked at a startup that considered building literally this 5 years ago. The payment mechanics were never the issue. The fundamental billing model and customer interaction dynamics were at issue. Nobody wanted it haha, according to our user research. Nothing has fundamentally changed by stapling the blockchain to it.
We actually got pretty far along building it - and had a bunch of high profile content producer relationships, you're welcome to reach out if you want to take the learnings. You seem involved in the project.
Re: Starting a crypto project
#365Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you can use web monetization outside of coil owned platforms. Like you can use PayPal to sell (access to) digital assets? Or patron? I'm not sure which part of the core value proposition of coil has anything to do with blockchain? And small wonder: crypto/chains allows us to transfer trust (eg, I trust i can buy milk for my dollar, I buy bitcoin for a dollar, I give you bitcoin, if you can sell bitcoin for a dollar…
The question you have could easy be answer by yourself if you just go to the official page and read for 5 minutes what they are doing and how. Coil primary uses ILP its not a blockchain its a protocol it can use fiat or "magic crypto cash on the interwebz" its irrelevant. >This could also go via bank transfer, or hybrid systems like PayPal,stripe or vipps[1]. As soon as they support ILP yes, it could use whatever tha…
>> The question you have could easy be answer by yourself if you just go to the official page and read for 5 minutes what they are doing and how.
From coil.com:
> Get your Coil Membership for $5 per month.
> Install the Coil Extension or the Puma Browser app.
> Log in to Coil and enjoy web monetized content and features across the internet.
So the same model as patron?
The original question was about if the companies product could work without the blockchain. I would be happy to see an open standard for transactions - but no one will pay coil.com for that. They make money as middlemen. That's what they are selling.
So, again - how is blockchain essential to what coil are doing (as a business)? Is their business model not being a payment provider, collecting legal tender ("real money") from consumers and funelling it to producers? Do users not depend on coil for the client code and platform?
Certainly creating an open protocol, is a way to build the product - but it does not appear to be quicker or easier than a more traditional, centralized solution?
Re: Starting a crypto project
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
That doesn’t require the blockchain. The US is moving from ACH to RTP, which is 24/7 instant approximately free transfers between bank accounts. [1] My understanding is the reason it took so long was small banks wanted to figure out a risk management model. [1] https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp
These system do not work outside the justification where they are made. Domestic Tx are fast and cheap because all parties involved have agreements and the same laws etc. etc. Cheating between local banks is rather useless because there is some kind of overload (the sate/a judge) that can order stuff to be reversed. Blockchains are for when no such trust/power based system is in place. So if you send USD to Mexico fo…
People keep saying this like it’s a good thing. It’s dreadful.
> Blockchains are for when no such trust/power based system is in place.
And exactly what situation are you transacting with somebody you do not trust and you cannot find a mutually acceptable intermediary? If no such situation exists you probably should not be transacting. You are exposed to too much counterparty risk.
Do you have a concrete example of a time that this has been a problem for you? Because I can’t think of a single one.
Re: Starting a crypto project
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uh? There's no mining in proof of stake. That's the entire point.
I thought this when I first learned about the idea, but the name doesn't give away the true nature of, at least, most implementations... It's like 'mining requires less energy', and not that the tokens aren't mined at all. Of course, theoretically you could've an initial distribution defined and shared without effort, but what really happens is a points system that makes it easier for people to... uh... mine, but it'…
Re: Starting a crypto project
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uh? There's no mining in proof of stake. That's the entire point.
I thought this when I first learned about the idea, but the name doesn't give away the true nature of, at least, most implementations... It's like 'mining requires less energy', and not that the tokens aren't mined at all. Of course, theoretically you could've an initial distribution defined and shared without effort, but what really happens is a points system that makes it easier for people to... uh... mine, but it'…
Re: Starting a crypto project
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do. I can take out a 6 figure loan in 15 seconds and send it to anywhere in the world ( https://aave.com/ ). I can deploy capital, I can participate in liquidity pooling on decentralized exchanges in a completely permissionless manner ( https://uniswap.org/ ) (impossible unless you're a Wall Street insider in the current system), I can lend out currency at higher market rates to day traders participating in leverag…
The defi thing really gets me confused as someone who works with loans and finance. What I have seen in defi is basically a borrower provides 100% collateral for the privilege of paying interest on it. That’s something no business would ever touch in the real world, unless they thought their “investment” in the collateral would exceed their interest rate. That works for borrowers as long as token prices keep going up…
Example 1) lend USDC for 25% interest on Venus.io. Borrow DOT at 3-4% interest. Stake DOT for 12% interest and collect the difference.
Example 2) Lend USDC for 25% at Venus.io. Borrow BUSD for 12% interest. Trade the BUSD for USDC 1:1. Lend that USDC to borrow more BUSD. Repeat until you max out you reserve ratio.
Venus is a fork of Compound and MakerDao.
Re: Starting a crypto project
#370Can confirm. I’m friends with a group of very smart distributed systems engineers who were excited to launch an actually useful crypto project that gets talked about here from time to time. As much as they’re excited about the technology itself, very few people are actually interested in using it. Instead, their business seems to revolve around the value of the utility tokens for their project. Few people are buying…
Sounds like Chainlink