Why Web3? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Web3?

#621

Post by rytill » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

pphysch wrote: post #304

rytill wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "…

What an articulate description of your views. Thank you!

I know it was only a subset of your comment, but I’m very curious how an expiring subcurrency would function in an real economy.

How would you propose regulations work for a food credits “black market”, e.g. I will pay you 150 general-purpose capital credits for your 200 food bucks?

Would non-digital cash be completely done away with? What about objects of value that could be given to others? Would the transfer of expiring assets for non-expiring assets be prohibited? What about favors and more subtle ways of transfer?

How would food credits be legitimately redeemed? Would a small shop that complies with policy be able to instantly convert a food credits profit into capital that they could use to expand their business?

Re: Why Web3?

#622

Post by telxosser » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 1:24 PM UTC

nfw2 wrote: post #401

girvo wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still think NFTs are a bubble that will come back down to Earth eventually. But I also find sneaker and stamp collectors equally perplexing, and people don't discuss these phenomena with the same sort of skepticism. While I agree with basically all of your comment, I'd like to point out that plenty of people in the online space look at the sneaker market with the same skepticism... but that skepticism isn't stopp…

Skepticism was a poor choice of words on my part. I think skepticism is absolutely the right response for both sneakers and NFTs. What I should have said is that it seems a lot of people dismiss NFTs with a certainty that doesn't seem justified considering there are other collectibles like baseball cards without any inherently valuable physical properties that have retained their value long-term. I honestly don't kno…

Totally agree. Sport card collecting is just as ridiculous as the concept of NFTs.

A piece of thin cardboard changing in value based on a guy hitting more home runs.

Stamps and coins are the WW2 generation version of all this.

Practically everyone has their own personal form of gambling and at the same time everyone believes all the other forms of gambling are foolish.

Re: Why Web3?

#623

Post by CryptoPunk » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #603

CryptoPunk wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a transfer of wealth from those with surplus capital, who are looking to expend that capital on entertainment, to those on the brink of starvation, so yes it's a good thing. And no, if the transfer is done for entertainment purposes, as many game asset purchases are, it's not a "ponzi" scheme. >>Gains are illusory in aggregate. Gains might not be illusionary, given they are giving rise to new stores of wealth wh…

> It's a transfer of wealth from those with surplus capital, who are looking to expend that capital on entertainment, to those on the brink of starvation, so yes it's a good thing. I mean, you can make the same exact argument about any exploitation of poor people for entertainment purposes. Your description maps perfectly to Bumfights. I think most would agree that your description alone does not make an intrinsicall…

>>I mean, you can make the same exact argument about any exploitation of poor people for entertainment purposes

Paying poor people, who are grateful for the opportunity to feed their family, is not exploitiation. People heeding your admonishments against 'exploitation' would lead to more suffering, and no party being better off. It's pure politicization of interactions, at the expense of actual real life humans.

>>The rich folks are buying in to make a gain, not entertain themselves

It's a game, with a competitive element, so obviously some proportion are playing for entertainment.

>>Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff were just ahead of their time, apparently. Given sufficient mental gymnastics, they too could have been captains of industry.

Your hyperbolic comparison, between a game with digital assets, and actual ponzi schemes, is immature.

And arguing that digital assets, which become far more durable forms of property when NFTized on blockchains, can find economic utility as a store of value, is a completely reasonable argument, and your extreme reaction to this, full of snark and hyperbole, suggests your stance on this is far too motivated by emotion and bias to assess it.

Re: Why Web3?

#624

Post by specialist » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #560

hestefisk wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Largely agree with this. The big promise of defi was to “bank the unbanked”, but Eth is - slow (15 txn/sec, 22-23 with the move to proof of stake) - expensive (I read somewhere that globally Eth users spend more on 30M USD in fees per day!) - too volatile to be reliable for everyday banking use cases - bad for the environment Blockchain technology is interesting and very powerful, but VCs and founders have all too of…

> Largely agree with this. The big promise of defi was to “bank the unbanked” The un-banked aren't un-banked because there are no banks, or even because banks are inaccessible. They are un-banked because they do not have money. This is a social problem characterized by folks falling through the cracks. It's a lack of social safety net, a lack of unionization, a lack of inflation-adjusted minimum wage, a lack of healt…

I agree that the biggest problem poor people have is lack of money.

> I've never met a single person who had money but couldn't get a bank account...

This is an exhaustively documented problem.

There absolutely are banking deserts (riffing on the "food desert" phrase). Those pay day loan and 3rd party check cashing services exist (to exploit) those communities which don't have banks, credit unions.

Re: Why Web3?

#625

Post by CryptoPunk » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 1:39 PM UTC

hestefisk wrote: post #599

CryptoPunk wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>- slow (15 txn/sec, 22-23 with the move to proof of stake) - expensive (I read somewhere that globally Eth users spend more on 30M USD in fees per day!) - This is no longer the case with L2 solutions, like zk-Rollups. See what StarkEx, which is one particular Validium/zk-Rollup L2 solution, is doing: https://twitter.com/EliBenSasson/status/1475206185762578437?... >>Past week, @ethereum ~ 9M txs. StarkEx ~ 6.25M TWO…

L2 solutions: yes they do indeed scale them, but it appears to be a centralised solution to a decentralised problem. In other words, putting lipstick on a pig. Stablecoins aren’t volatile, correct, but that’s because they are pegged to an offchain fiat currency or other form of “real” collateral. Even DAI, which is the most “truly” decentralised stablecoins of them all, is pegged against fiat. POS is good yes, but th…

>>L2 solutions: yes they do indeed scale them, but it appears to be a centralised solution to a decentralised problem. In other words, putting lipstick on a pig.

L2 block selection can be entirely decentralized. The first iterations are centralized because the software is extremely immature and having the block inclusion process centralized allows bugs to be more quickly and effectively dealt with. The major L2s all have decebtralization of coordinators in their roadmaps.

>>Stablecoins aren’t volatile, correct, but that’s because they are pegged to an offchain fiat currency or other form of “real” collateral. Even DAI, which is the most “truly” decentralised stablecoins of them all, is pegged against fiat.

Dai is pegged to the dollar, but can use entirely on-chain assets like ETH as collateral. Other stablecoins, like RAI, are not even pegged to any fiat currency, and use only on-chain assets for collateral.

>>POS is good yes, but the Eth community have been saying this for a long time now.

Progress has been made. On December 1st, 2020, the Proof of Stake Beacon Chain.

The Merge, which will complete the transition to the Beacon Chain, now has a testnet, launched on December 20th, 2021:

https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/12/20/kintsugi-merge-testnet/

The transition should be complete within a year. It can't be rushed, given the amount of financial value involved.

Re: Why Web3?

#626

Post by telxosser » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 1:53 PM UTC

nfw2 wrote: post #407

nfw2 wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skepticism was a poor choice of words on my part. I think skepticism is absolutely the right response for both sneakers and NFTs. What I should have said is that it seems a lot of people dismiss NFTs with a certainty that doesn't seem justified considering there are other collectibles like baseball cards without any inherently valuable physical properties that have retained their value long-term. I honestly don't kno…

I actually think there is an interesting and nuanced conversation to be had on what fundamentally is different between an NFT and a baseball card. But that doesn't seem to be the conversation anyone is having.

Well one major difference is that a person could ruin their cards or bend them.

There is also the grading system and you can't really make the card go up in grade, just down.

The whole boom in the 80s really started because boomers came into their prime earning years. When they were kids baseball cards were mostly to put in their bike spokes to make a clicking noise or thrown around so cards in great shape were in short supply. Most importantly though they were not coins or stamps that their parents collected.

I use to listen to a radio show 5 years ago for card collecting that the whole show was basically people calling in and the host telling them the cards were not worth anything.

This past year though is the all time high for sports cards but we already well off the peak.

The problem with NFTs is they came along at the peak of the everything bubble so the prices have nothing to do with reality. Digital collectibles make perfect sense and are no less goofy than anything else people collect.

Not something I would ever buy but ultimately nothing is as goofy as the price of an original Mark Rothko painting. To me that is the gold standard of collectibles and the rationality of the collectibles market.

Re: Why Web3?

#627

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 1:55 PM UTC

CryptoPunk wrote: post #623

arcticbull wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a transfer of wealth from those with surplus capital, who are looking to expend that capital on entertainment, to those on the brink of starvation, so yes it's a good thing. I mean, you can make the same exact argument about any exploitation of poor people for entertainment purposes. Your description maps perfectly to Bumfights. I think most would agree that your description alone does not make an intrinsicall…

>>I mean, you can make the same exact argument about any exploitation of poor people for entertainment purposes Paying poor people, who are grateful for the opportunity to feed their family, is not exploitiation. People heeding your admonishments against 'exploitation' would lead to more suffering, and no party being better off. It's pure politicization of interactions, at the expense of actual real life humans. >>Th…

[deleted]

Re: Why Web3?

#628

Post by arcticbull » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 2:05 PM UTC

CryptoPunk wrote: post #623

arcticbull wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a transfer of wealth from those with surplus capital, who are looking to expend that capital on entertainment, to those on the brink of starvation, so yes it's a good thing. I mean, you can make the same exact argument about any exploitation of poor people for entertainment purposes. Your description maps perfectly to Bumfights. I think most would agree that your description alone does not make an intrinsicall…

>>I mean, you can make the same exact argument about any exploitation of poor people for entertainment purposes Paying poor people, who are grateful for the opportunity to feed their family, is not exploitiation. People heeding your admonishments against 'exploitation' would lead to more suffering, and no party being better off. It's pure politicization of interactions, at the expense of actual real life humans. >>Th…

> Paying poor people, who are grateful for the opportunity to feed their family, is not exploitiation. People heeding your admonishments against 'exploitation' would lead to more suffering, and no party being better off. It's pure politicization of interactions, at the expense of actual real life humans.

I mean it depends on what you’re paying them to do and how much you’re paying them. Axie “players” now make on average less than minimum wage in the Philippines and continued earnings depends on more people buying into the ponzi.

> Your hyperbolic comparison, between a game with digital assets, and actual ponzi schemes, is immature.

The economics are clear and you haven’t really disputed them except by invoking the intangible magic of the blockchain and digital assets.

Re: Why Web3?

#629

Post by CryptoPunk » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #628

CryptoPunk wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I mean, you can make the same exact argument about any exploitation of poor people for entertainment purposes Paying poor people, who are grateful for the opportunity to feed their family, is not exploitiation. People heeding your admonishments against 'exploitation' would lead to more suffering, and no party being better off. It's pure politicization of interactions, at the expense of actual real life humans. >>Th…

> Paying poor people, who are grateful for the opportunity to feed their family, is not exploitiation. People heeding your admonishments against 'exploitation' would lead to more suffering, and no party being better off. It's pure politicization of interactions, at the expense of actual real life humans. I mean it depends on what you’re paying them to do and how much you’re paying them. Axie “players” now make on ave…

>>Axie “players” now make on average less than minimum wage in the Philippines and continued earnings depends on more people buying into the ponzi.

The minimum wage in the PH is zero, with millions unemployed, and many more than normal, due to lockdown restrictions.

Axie saved many lives, and if you were to put aside your agenda, and objectively study this, you'd find out how many people in the Philippines who were on the brink are grateful for the lifeline Axie provided them.

>>The economics are clear and you haven’t really disputed them except by invoking the intangible magic of the blockchain and digital assets.

Collectibles don't suddenly become "ponzi schemes" (!) when they become digital or are issued on blockchains. Your analogy is absurd, but I suppose that's ok, given the abundance of hyperbole on the pro-blockchain side.

Re: Why Web3?

#630

Post by dmitriid » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

mendyberger wrote: post #617

dmitriid wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just shouting "BUT DECENTRALIZATION!" bears as much sense as "BUT BITCOIN". Decentralization doesn't have inherent value, and has a whole host of problems that cryptopeddlers don't want to either acknowledge or pretend to solve.

> Decentralization doesn't have inherent value I think that when building the internet and the web, decentralization was assumed to have a lot of value, do you disagree with that?

> decentralization was assumed to have a lot of value

It wasn't inherent.

The value was "in the case of global nuclear war it would be nice to have independent centers that could still continue to operate in the aftermath". It was a solution to a very specific (though thankfully theoretical) problem.

"web3" offers no such problem, but loves to scream "but decentralization!".