51–60 of 78 posts
This struck a nerve. The internet is most certainly hardware based. While distributed databases are great, there is an extraordinary system of hardware that will always need to be produced, maintained, and powered to keep such databases operational.
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…
> The proposals for "web3", to the best of my understanding, require people to run their own blockchain nodes, manage wallets, etc. AFAIK, the proposal is to use federation, i.e., only those who can/want run servers, whereas normal users use those federated servers.
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…
The problem is lock in. Running proprietary software still has the problem, even on your own hardware. The idea is to have everything run to spec/protocol, with mechanisms preventing customised behaviour - the issue is similar to the problems within bit-torrent wrt custom clients not behaving correct i.e. not maintaining ratio, which meant there needed to be a decentralised mechanism for managing this across-network.
The idea is it doesn't matter so much who runs the software or what they run - the network protocol maintains the peace.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The proposals for "web3", to the best of my understanding, require people to run their own blockchain nodes, manage wallets, etc. AFAIK, the proposal is to use federation, i.e., only those who can/want run servers, whereas normal users use those federated servers.
It doesn't change things. There were federated alternatives to most centralized sites you see today. I remember Mastodon for Twitter, I'm sure there are more. The point is that web3 is not adding anything new here. We could always have gone to federated environments, but turns out it's more complicated than it seems and people don't care too much about what's inside as long as it works.
The lesson is that when you compare centralized and decentralized systems you need to consider them dynamically, as processes, instead of statically, as rigid products. Centralized systems often start out fully baked, but only get better at the rate at which employees at the sponsoring company improve them.
Centralized platforms often come bundled at launch with compelling apps: Facebook had its core socializing features and the iPhone had a number of key apps. Decentralized platforms, by contrast, often launch half-baked and without clear use cases. As a result, they need to go through two phases of product-market fit: 1) product-market fit between the platform and the developers/entrepreneurs who will finish the platform and build out the ecosystem, and 2) product-market fit between the platform/ecosystem and end users. This two-stage process is what causes many people — including sophisticated technologists — to consistently underestimate the potential of decentralized platforms.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wikipedia was mentioned in the article and it provides a great example of a product that was built in a decentralized way. Ironically, the author doesn't appreciate that Wikipedia's success had nothing to do with Web3 or crypto. The success of large companies isn't because of a lack of technology, it is due to human nature and economies of scale and network effects. Anti-trust is the way you fix this. Break youtube o…
But the page locking is a result of a democratic decision, not a single admin.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the page locking is a result of a democratic decision, not a single admin.
Exactly, and share holders vote for the leadership of public companies. Web3 isn't a new paradigm of governance.
The author says "democracy isn't perfect but it's better than the alternative," then overlooks the obvious corollary with regard to "GAFA" and other powerful corporations: we should have democratic control over our economy. Crypto and web3 are an attempt to solve a political problem with a technological tool; a cop-out to avoid a political fight. We're not going to make a better, more just or more democratic world by…
I prefer 'consensual' to 'democratic'. Most blockchain-based systems are consensual in that they operate based on rules that enjoy the unanimous consent of everyone they apply to. If I and everyone I want to interact with via a blockchain agrees to change the rules, we can freely do so, but if someone doesn't agree, we either have to stop interacting or come to an agreement.
I strongly believe political fights should be avoided whenever possible because they are (at best) win-lose. Political fights are about who should get to control everyone or what everyone should be forced to do. Technological solutions can sometimes allow everyone to get what they want without imposing their vision and preferences on others.
You don't need blockchain for decentralized services, just look at peertube, mastadon, etc. NFT identity etc might be a useful addition, but decentralized services don't need to be 'built on' so-called 'web 3.0'.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Others can run the nodes. The point is the network of nodes are distributed and no node is more important than any other. They are all just peers.
You mean like e-mail? Sadly, most people use gmail now and there are whitelists so you don't get to write your own email server.
[1]: https://infura.io/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Not single points of failure, but a few major (AWS, GCP, Azure, Cloudflare) points of failure.
Take any one or more of these down and there are major disruptions in commerce, connectivity and communications.
Sure, there are other hosting providers, but there's far too much centralization of Internet resources on those four platforms.
Any real decentralization solution will require ubiquitous (multi-)gigabit symmetric links to/from the Internet on commercial and consumer connections.
Because if you don't have enough bandwidth, you'll need to host your content/resources in "the cloud" (read: someone else's servers). And that locks all of us into centralized platforms.
tl;dr: If you want real decentralization, you need to provide the resources to do so at all levels of the networking/application stack.
Edit: Fixed usage: Symmetric vs. synchronous.