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I think this is at the center of a lot of arguments. The proponents come from circles where trust is a dirty word, so they don't want to say too loudly that they need it. The critics see this as an unnecessarily extreme position, which isn't the kind of thing you back down from, so they end up arguing that new tech is unnecessary/incapable when applied to this task.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It represents the lowest common denominator of what everyone can agree on. Democracies have problems when that denominator gets really low, but are relatively great when it is high
Yeah. I’m not saying it’s perfect, there may actually be some limited use for blockchain technology, but casting it as an alternative to the modern liberal state beggars belief.
An interesting angle to look at Web3 is the media angle. How it is talked about in the media. It seems it is: 1: A very popular topic For example, it comes up very often here at Hacker News. 2: A very controversial topic On one side, there are many people who expect it to change the world in a fundamental way. Investors are investing billions of dollars into it. On the other side, there are many people who call it us…
> Once submitted, that “contract” will be carried out exactly as specified. It is observable to everyone, debuggable, and non-falsifiable. But a centralized database can also achieve this, right? The premise of the general public trusting a blockchain more than an established, centralized 3rd party (e.g. government) seems so feeble.
Isn’t it the visibility thing? Yeah a centralised database can do this. Good luck getting access to it. “Security” says you can’t. I think that one of the allures of the blockchain is that it’s publicly visible. This may or may not be a fallacy of reasoning but hey, we’re human.
For example, in Austria we have the "Grundbuch", a register of land ownership. Everyone can inspect the Grundbuch database. Authenticity is guaranteed by requiring a public notary or a court to confirm any changes in the database, and there is a paper trail for every change to a record.
It's boring old tech, but it works, and doesn't have all the gotchas of blockchains.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
succinctly said. all these web3 / crypto folks forget complex laws exist to prevent and remedy situations that can't be simply solved by smart contracts. most of the laws are so complex, we've professionals who specialise in them.
I've come to the acceptance that lawyers are to the legal system as software engineers are to technical systems. You pay people who specialize in knowing the ins and outs of a complex system so you can get on with your life as a citizen, founder, etc. And people who espouse that we don't need laws or lawyers to run our society are making about as coherent sense as saying we can ship a unicorn entirely on no-code and…
In a fair system, sure, but the American financial legal system is bonkers. There's a reason people are looking for alternatives.
All of the examples of having to trust the government in this article neglect the fact that trusting the government is not just trusting the government, and it’s not just the government storing a deed or giving you a Social Security Number that makes it real. It’s the whole complex web of laws and regulations that created these policies that make them real, and the people (your fellow citizens) who have collectively…
(I can’t comment on this without noting that of all the interpretations of the name web3 I’ve seen so far, “a cryptographic commitment scheme” is the least novel idea, and the least to do with “the web” or anything related to it that I have seen. There is simply no way that is what web3 means. The author is describing smart contracts, and if that’s what it is, it is intellectually dishonest to be promoting “web3” as a new idea when smart contracts have been around for years and have had very little impact on society due to fundamental limitations like “not being capable of adjudication by a court, which is actually desirable and basically non-negotiable for 99% of people and corporations alike”. Talk about whether attempting to put better UX in front of them (a much more plausible definition of web3) is capable of remedying the basic flaws. Otherwise talking about it like this is a dishonest attempt to skirt around the debate that’s largely been had already, much like Facebook rebranding itself just as the PR heat got too much.)
Nice read. What I don't get about all the crypto haters, who will probably make up the majority of replies here, are they really just happy with the status quo? Do they really think the current financial system is great and their online bank account is perfect and nothing radical is worth trying? That usernames and passwords given to each of a million different companies are so great, why would people want to manage…
> ...there is a very real, very powerful, politically agnostic idea...
There's very little about the way cryptocurrency and NFTs and even blockchains as a concept are presented that seems politically agnostic; "you shouldn't have to trust anything or anyone in order to complete a transaction" is not a conventionally partisan position, but when you're applying it to government institutions, surely it's political.
[1]: I would say this happens a lot with crypto-adjacent technologies -- sometimes it seems like the only two acceptable opinions are "this will revolutionize literally everything, how can you not see it" and "this will destroy the entire world, how can you not see it" -- but I think it happens a lot with everything right now. That's a different rant, though.
If there's anything that shows that Web3.0, smart contracts and so on are a bad solution in search of a non-existent problem, it's this.
The ``problem'' is apparently that we don't trust each other and our institutions. The ``solution'' is to create a protocol for trust-less commitments. The bug is that the protocol ultimately relies on the fact that we trust each other and our institutions.
Can Web. 3.0 remove some friction from the system? Maybe. Enough to revolutionize it? Highly doubt it.
Nice read. What I don't get about all the crypto haters, who will probably make up the majority of replies here, are they really just happy with the status quo? Do they really think the current financial system is great and their online bank account is perfect and nothing radical is worth trying? That usernames and passwords given to each of a million different companies are so great, why would people want to manage…
I really don't think you do get it.
A much more interesting news in the space, not being discussed on HN: polygon just acquired Mir for 400 million $. They are slowly acquiring every zero-knolwedge teams in the space. https://blockworks.co/polygon-acquires-mir-in-400m-deal-to-s...
That doesn’t fit the narrative a bunch of cranky 40 year old engineers want to believe in. Let’s all instead gather around and discuss how code run on an aws ec2 instance solves any problem blockchain could ever hope to solve
Some large actors dominating the market and with that come regulations (AML/KYC), laws and borders and in the end it's like the traditional financial system with a VM and JavaScript instead of COBOL.
Whether that has any practical benefits to regular people remains to be seen. Perhaps, Perhaps not.