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Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

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Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#41

Post by skeeter2020 »

dusted wrote: post #34

"During the first era of the internet — from the 1980s through the early 2000s — internet services were built on open protocols that were controlled by the internet community." <-- is this no longer the case? Did something happen to HTTP and HTTPS or the underlying IP protocol suite ? Isn't everyone still free to purchase a domain name and plug a computer to their network and serve a website?

The premise that the first era of the Internet was the 80's through 00's is flawed. The modern web? Maybe, but web !== internet. The protocols he touts where firmly established by the early 70's

Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#42

Post by gjulianm »

senko wrote: post #9

What I find curious in that web3 scenario is this: 1. Today's internet is decentralized because people can't run their own web, smtp, nntp, xmpp, servers, WP blogs. Which is true, we can't expect people to run this the same way we can't expect every car owner to have a mechanic shop. 2. The proposals for "web3", to the best of my understanding, require people to run their own blockchain nodes, manage wallets, etc. Ba…

> Based on our collective experience in (1), how does anyone believe that (2) is a reasonable proposal?

The people who are invested in crypto and think it's the future. They do the same reasoning all the time: crypto can be used for X, so X will be done now! Thinking about why X wasn't done before is not something they do.

Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#43

Post by Robotbeat »

ulzeraj wrote: post #25
babelchips wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under 10 transactions per second globally is why Bitcoin isn’t used in retail. Micropayments and nanopayments require thousands and tens of thousands TPS. There are newer generations of crypto that can do that and with none of the energy consumption problems of Bitcoin and other Proof of Work systems.

Sphinx chat payments work exclusively on Lightning and so is the El Salvador Chico wallet. Why do people keep using the same uninformed arguments every time bitcoin is mentioned?

Sounds like recentralization to me.

IMHO, if we’re gonna do cryptocurrency, we should try to make as many transactions as possible on layer 1.

Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#44

Post by astoor »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #36

This seems like a really long-winded, single perspective (and perhaps even revisionist) way of justifying one possible use-case, in which the author has an oblivious conflict of interest. Maybe he's got some ideas of what a possible future could look like, but it's hard to square this with it conveniently running through the technologies where he's invested, and there's no explanation of how the NFT exchange he was e…

For venture capitalists like the article author, the primary objective isn't fixing problems or making things better, it is about making money. He even makes this explicit in the article: "cryptonetworks align network participants to work together toward a common goal — the growth of the network and the appreciation of the token", i.e. the common goal is to not to provide useful new functionality or to improve upon things in some way, it is quite simply to get new members to join their cryptocurrency schemes and in doing so make existing members of the schemes more money.

BTW, original discussion on this article from 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16410478

Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#45

Post by Zababa »

babelchips wrote: post #33
Zababa wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make the same arguments but with servers instead of nodes. That's how things are today. But the web isn't decentralized.

No, today we have servers with some form of leader or centralised point of failure. With a properly decentralised network any node can be taken down without taking down the entire network. Not all public DLTs are born equal however. Leaderless networks which are not vulnerable to DDOS attacks are the dream.

What is this single point of failure? You can take any server down on the internet and it will be fine. The DNS may be a more vulnerable point, but still, lots of different organisations have DNS servers on lots of different places.

Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#46

Post by ulzeraj »

Robotbeat wrote: post #43
ulzeraj wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sphinx chat payments work exclusively on Lightning and so is the El Salvador Chico wallet. Why do people keep using the same uninformed arguments every time bitcoin is mentioned?

Sounds like recentralization to me. IMHO, if we’re gonna do cryptocurrency, we should try to make as many transactions as possible on layer 1.

You can run Sphinx on your own hardware. You can pay bills on El Salvador with any LN wallet connected to any node.

Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#47

Post by Olreich »

fsflover wrote: post #8
Olreich wrote: post #6

The points about centralized power make sense, but why http, smtp, and social media became centralized in the first place wasn’t grappled with at all. Running your own servers is attractive for some, but they aren’t the majority and never will be unless it requires something as simple as buying a $35 box and plugging it in at home with no additional setup. Social media is hard to accomplish without a centralized disc…

> The author didn’t address these forces driving web content to centralized platforms, and web3 isn’t likely to avoid the same incentive structure from what I can tell. A decentralized system driving to centralization is much better than centralized overlords having a full control over users in a walled garden reinforced by network effects. As TFA says, " Decentralized networks aren’t a silver bullet that will fix al…

But that's how we got to the current situation with something like email: A bunch of people ran their own servers because they were tech saavy early adopters. Then, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, etc. started offering poor email service which most people adopted. Then Google came along and had an offer that was very impressive to consumers and everyone switched to gmail over the years. Sure, a competitor CAN exist, but it doesn't because Google's product was good enough and captured a large enough market share to become the default. We even have people trying to come up with them (see Hey!)

Why wouldn't this happen with web3 servers?

Why doesn't HTTP count as decentralized? Anyone can put a server on the network by buying an IP and domain name. And how does crypto help at all with these basic network effect problems that are the reason previous decentralized systems centralized?

Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#48

Post by fsflover »

Olreich wrote: post #47
fsflover wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The author didn’t address these forces driving web content to centralized platforms, and web3 isn’t likely to avoid the same incentive structure from what I can tell. A decentralized system driving to centralization is much better than centralized overlords having a full control over users in a walled garden reinforced by network effects. As TFA says, " Decentralized networks aren’t a silver bullet that will fix al…

But that's how we got to the current situation with something like email: A bunch of people ran their own servers because they were tech saavy early adopters. Then, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, etc. started offering poor email service which most people adopted. Then Google came along and had an offer that was very impressive to consumers and everyone switched to gmail over the years. Sure, a competitor CAN exist, but it does…

> Why wouldn't this happen with web3 servers?

It can happen with them, and it does happen with Bitcoin to a degree. However, it's much better than full monopoly of Facebook and Youtube. By the way, there are still many alternative paid email providers which work fine for those who do not want to run their own server.

>Why doesn't HTTP count as decentralized?

To me it does. But we need more: we need decentralized services on top of it, like PeerTube.

Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#49

Post by Geee »

ulzeraj wrote: post #25
babelchips wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under 10 transactions per second globally is why Bitcoin isn’t used in retail. Micropayments and nanopayments require thousands and tens of thousands TPS. There are newer generations of crypto that can do that and with none of the energy consumption problems of Bitcoin and other Proof of Work systems.

Sphinx chat payments work exclusively on Lightning and so is the El Salvador Chico wallet. Why do people keep using the same uninformed arguments every time bitcoin is mentioned?

I think summm's comment was mocking anti-bitcoiners, but some people probably took it seriously.

Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#50

Post by derbOac »

senko wrote: post #9

What I find curious in that web3 scenario is this: 1. Today's internet is decentralized because people can't run their own web, smtp, nntp, xmpp, servers, WP blogs. Which is true, we can't expect people to run this the same way we can't expect every car owner to have a mechanic shop. 2. The proposals for "web3", to the best of my understanding, require people to run their own blockchain nodes, manage wallets, etc. Ba…

Some of this just requires the right wrappers/UX and greasing from hardware manufacturers.

There was another thread in the last day or two about someone asking where to get a dumb TV. In that discussion it became clear to me that there's already mesh networks all over the place without people realizing it, or if there's not, there could be. The only difference is it's being used by Amazon, Samsung et al to connect their devices and talk about you than to enable you to do something on a peer-to-peer service. I'm not saying it's easy, or that it could happen, but it seems like if peoples' routers or IoT hubs or whatever came with P2P stuff in the box with an easy UX it could move things along?

I generally think IoT/home security hubs/smarthome hubs etc are plagued by vendor lock-in, and I wouldn't be surprised if someday it got dropped in favor of something more standard. At that point I could see P2P maybe coming baked in? Not sure.

Twitter is basically RSS for the masses, cloud is just remote servers for the masses, I suspect decentralized/P2P for the masses is just a UX problem too.

Lots of things happen in steps too, from more hardcore tech crowds to the general population. Email was once the realm of college students and defense people only, and the web was a curiosity.

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