My First Impressions of Web3 • Hacker News Board

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#661

Post by sudosysgen » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:15 AM UTC

RoboTeddy wrote: post #618

giantrobot wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be easy to look at the very early computers, which were perhaps not all that useful, and shrug — but that take wouldn't have extended well into the future as the technology scaled. Early computers solved problems they were designed to solve. So they were plenty useful . Your statement is nonsensical.

Early blockchains have also solved the problems they were designed to solve. For example: - Bitcoin offers a transferrable store of value which cannot be inflated by governments, - Stablecoins, thanks to being cross-border, are often used in e.g. Argentina where the local currency is unstable and it's not legal to buy dollars, - Proof of Humanity + universal basic income has provided extra income to Argentinian peopl…

So, the thing is, all of these things fall into two categories.

Either purely technical solutions, or previously solved problems.

For example, IoT scale global 5G networks you can roan into? That's a solved issue already. Same for programming bounties, proof of humanity, UBI, transferrable assets (though Bitcoin is in some ways more transferable) etc...

Others are fully technical problems, like fully private digital transfers.

Others yet are pretty much just temporary workaround. The fact that you can send remittances to Lebanon or Venezuela was never inherently problematic because of the instability of their currency, rather, it's because the government (in some cases other governments) decided to make it more difficult.

If a government wanted to, they could make sending remittances via crypto just as difficult as by any other way.

NFTs as a funding model is not inherently different from the existing comission and copyright system. What NFTs brought was hype, which made people who wouldn't previously comission artwork to now do so. Attesting ownership or transfering ownership of a piece of art with a contemporary author is not more difficult without than with NFTs. Especially because you still need to trust whoever minted the NFT.

There are few, actual, real world problems that have been solved by Web3 tech. I wish it wasn't the case, but it's true.

The fundamental issue is that Web3 tech can't fully replace centralised institutions. So we need to build centralised institutions anyways. If those fail, it can provide some palliation, as long as they don't fail so hard the government tries to fight it. So in the end, it doesn't truly solve any problem in the real world, though it can in some situations act as a Bandaid.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#662

Post by astrange » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:18 AM UTC

AlotOfReading wrote: post #376

mediocregopher wrote: post #249

I view the final two conclusions points, that people do not want to run their own servers and that we need to make software easier to build/run, to be one and the same. Is the reason people don't want to run a server because it's just so difficult and expensive to keep a computer online in your living room (remembering that a smaller deployment doesn't need 20 nines of uptime), or is it because the UX of running serv…

The internet as it exists today for the vast majority of people simply isn't well-equipped for everyone to have their own servers. Imagine a small server box that you could simply plug into the wall and give your wifi credentials. You still have the solve the NAT issue. You still have to secure the publicly routable box somehow and constantly apply updates, or backdate when (not if) something breaks. In parts of the…

They're also noisy and you don't have a personal security team.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#663

Post by dopidopHN » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:19 AM UTC

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #435

epolanski wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy the early part. 3 years into the internet we already had emails and tcp. 13 years into blockchains we have nothing.

I don't buy the early part either, but "3 years into the internet we had emails and tcp" is the wrong way to critique it IMO. The "Internet" meaning IP was already the 3rd or 4th (or more) attempt at trying to create a computer networking standard. Predecessors to the internet include: ARPANET, Usenet, FidoNet, BBSes, and CYCLADES, if not more. By the way, Email existed on _all_ of these platforms before TCP or even…

I used Minitel 5 or 6 years before I ever connected to the internet. That stuff was clunky and frustrating.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#664

Post by distrill » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:20 AM UTC

sbierwagen wrote: post #646

distrill wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is the maximalist argument here that these companies are going to build out all this infrastructure, move the global financial system onto it, and then rip it apart and rewrite it to be entirely distributed afterwards I haven't heard anyone articulate this as their vision lol. I would think they distribute the systems somewhere between trading monkey JPEGs and actually moving the global financial system onto it. As…

"You should check out my new car company, ThreeWheel. We're completely revolutionizing the business of getting around. The key innovation is that our cars have three wheels. This reduces tire cost, improves aerodynamics, and reduces rolling friction. Our three wheeled cars are the future of all wheeled transport!" "Okay." "But our prototype has four wheels, as a temporary prototype to test out the technology." "That…

I'm sure this is funny but a much better example would be the Prius and electric vehicles.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#665

Post by astrange » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:20 AM UTC

insaider wrote: post #560

I think the best thing that can come out of this whole crypto/web3 space is a new sort of stock market. I've a startup that I want to open up for micro investors and the best way I can think of doing so is through NFTs/crypto that represent shares in the company. The barrier to entry to the traditional stock markets (turn over requirements etc) is far too high. Does anyone know of something like this?

Isn't the barrier to entry SEC regulations about being a public company? This is not avoidable through crypto.

Private startups don't use "the traditional stock markets", they use a cap table, which is just an Excel spreadsheet or a service like Carta.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#666

Post by astrange » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:22 AM UTC

drexlspivey wrote: post #152

wstrange wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Untraceable digital cash facilitates crime, money laundering and tax evasion. None of these things are good for a stable democracy.

You mean like paper cash?

Cash isn't untraceable, it has serial numbers on it.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#667

Post by astrange » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:24 AM UTC

ManishR wrote: post #124

> The people at the end of the line who are flipping NFTs do not fundamentally care about distributed trust models or payment mechanics, but they care about where the money is. So the money draws people into OpenSea, they improve the experience by building a platform that iterates on the underlying web3 protocols in web2 space, they eventually offer the ability to “mint” NFTs through OpenSea itself instead of through…

> This raises an interesting question - can a new technology ride the hype-train sufficiently long enough to become mainstream and benefit from network effects and ecosystem dynamics kicking in, even if in its best case scenario - it's only a replacement of status quo and not necessarily an improvement?

That's more or less how Uber works. They just ignored taxi medallion laws, and only ended up winning because everyone decided to abandon them.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#668

Post by p1esk » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:24 AM UTC

yed wrote: post #596

nemothekid wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crypto has been solving technical problem after technical problem for over a decade but has yet to offer anything useful to a non-enthusiast. This is too dismissive of Crypto. I’m not a crypto bro but Bitcoin did actually solve a real problem: a completely digital decentralized immutable record. I hesitate to call it a currency, but it created something that was digitally scarce . The economic value it created can…

> Bitcoin did actually solve a real problem: a completely digital decentralized immutable record. That doesn't describe a problem though, it describes a technical solution. > I hesitate to call it a currency, but it created something that was digitally scarce. My comment was about web3 really and the associated hype, not so much cryptocurrencies themselves. I agree there's something there, though not entirely convinc…

As a non-enthusiast I agree with your points. I’ve heard a lot about cryptocurrencies since 2010 and I’ve never had a need to use them. Paying for goods or services on a black market might be a valid use case, but I, like vast majority of people, have never needed to do that. Smart contracts sound like an interesting concept, but again, I don’t really have anything in my life that could use them in the foreseeable future.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#669

Post by landemva » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:25 AM UTC

darcys22 wrote: post #341

password1 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point me to where this insightful discussion happens? And where can I educate myself? 99,99% of content and forums I find online about crypto only care about promoting coins, nfts or services basing only on futuristic visionary promises, hyping up the users and attempts at FOMO. It's almost literal spam. This is the first time I read something that just explains how thing works from a technical standpoint and…

Its almost entirely done on crypto twitter. You follow the builders and they talk about this stuff. Tweet threads are terrible but that is where the good information is. Twitter is frustrating in that the good content is buried and if you follow the wrong people they just spam your feed. Its a constant battle to keep the signal to noise ratio of your feed high and the right people to follow constantly changes.

I agree about Twatter being difficult. And it is time consuming. Some projects have decent Discord channels. It depends on the devs and community there.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#670

Post by mac-chaffee » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 6:29 AM UTC

phire wrote: post #411

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I own an NFT and make sure to store the hash, does that mean I also own all collisions?

You don't even own the hash. You just own a database entry pointing at the hash. There is no mechanism on the Blockchain preventing someone else creating a new NFT with the exact same hash.

I'd argue you don't even own the database entry. You own _a private key for a wallet that appears in_ the database entry for the hash of the image.

But to truly _own_ something, all the cryptographic guarantees in the world won't change the fact that true ownership can only be enforced through violence. And if your private key can be stolen by hackers in countries without extradition treaties, one could argue that anything digital is only "owned" in the absolute weakest sense of the word: no one has tried disputing it yet.