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Web3 is centralized and inefficient

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Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#681

Post by [deleted] »

yashg wrote: post #248
telomero22 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are just some of the use cases 1. 100x cheaper, faster cross-border transfers 2. Immutable, digital, accessible, secure ownership of music, video, real-estate, cars, gaming assets, health data 3. Instant access to nearly all possible financial products (loans, lending, startup investments etc.) without a middle man There are many, many more use cases. Crypto drastically increases accountability, transparency, ac…

1. Nope. Still need to convert it to real money for buying something. Gas fees > transfer fees. 2. Nope. It doesn't grant any ownership. It's a just a pointer to a file on third party server. Ownership is enforced by a central authority. Code is not law. 3. Nope. Without an underlying economic activity it's all a ponzi scheme. There is no finance in DeFi. Just scammers running pump and dump schemes and rugpulling sta…

[deleted]

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#682

Post by threeseed »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #583
panick21_ wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been interested in decentralization for many years, I never heard the term 'Web3' before 'Crypto'. Maybe it existed but certainty hear it about 1000x more now.

But the web is not a decentralized place. You put content on servers, and everybody downloads that content from there. There a copies or caches, yes (CDNs but also old-school http proxy caches). But if I remove content from my server (or a tweet), its no longer accessible by standard means. We build a whole set of technologies to not have a single-point-of-failure (i.e. load balanced servers + replication) but for ex…

There are hundreds of companies providing managed object storage and likely tens of thousands with file storage.

And you are free to create your own. It IS decentralised just at a different granularity to IPFS.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#683

Post by happymellon »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #335
happymellon wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Scalping is only an issue if the sales price of products is artificially depressed. No offense, but you do not understand art. Yes, there are a lot of bands that could sell higher priced tickets but don't because they want to be accessable to everyone, not just people with money to burn.

If they sold higher priced tickets, more bands would have incentive to tour. This would make live music more accessible, not less. Right now they're not accessible to everyone, they're accessible to rich people and a lottery of poor people.

As I said, I do not think you understand art.

Hundreds of shitty ape pictures that anyone has access to view has not changed the price of entry to the Louvre.

You do not reduce the price for one form of art by having other artists available. They are all different, and people will want to see one and not another.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#684

Post by 0ldskool »

preseinger wrote: post #506
vmception wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you mean or expect, but pretending - I mean assuming - that is a question in good faith, then for EVMs, I would start with Erigon https://github.com/ledgerwatch/erigon

Every time someone on a discussion forum identifies a fundamental problem with the web3 space, it's inevitable that someone will reply with a link to an essentially arbitrary project and claim that it solves that problem. I've never seen the same project linked twice in this way, it's always brand new, and usually from a group I've never heard of, either. Just wild.

A fundamental problem?? Somebody just said they don't like node implementations and asked for something else. The poster included a URL for an alternative node implementation... What were you expecting? In an open software world there can be many implementations for a given problem...

In a centralized system you cannot even ask this question. If someone said Banks implementation of SWIFT sucks, show me a better implementation what do you think the end result would be?

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#685

Post by cuteboy19 »

valcron1000 wrote: post #657
cuteboy19 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would need to deal with 2 middlemen: exchange A and exchange B. And exchanges are worse than banks in every way

Not at all. I buy crypto through P2P, and I decide with whom.

This is not the experience of the vast majority of crypto owners right? How can it be a defense of anything if only very few people even use it like that.

Also, you haven't solved the question of middlemen. Now instead of mostly trustworthy Binance you would have to deal with the guy in the dark alley who pinky promises not to run away with your cash.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#686

Post by 0ldskool »

usrbinbash wrote: post #392
vmception wrote: post #5

> A lot of Web3 platforms are in fact centralized. Your wallet (MetaMask), marketplaces (OpenSea), APIs (Alchemy) are all central platforms. Sure, they use a distributed database (blockchain), but before that it’s still a Go app on AWS, meaning its centralized. > Your wallet (MetaMask) Run your own node. This is lazy reporting to reach the end point about fawning over FreeBSD (its in the article, literally an article…

> It could just as easily be "This isn't decentralized! Let me fix that!" First I would like to be convinced that centralization is actually a problem. Most things in our daily lives are centralized: Power Generation and Distribution, Water Distribution, the Logistics which put food in our stores, Infrastructure setup and maintenance, to name just a few. Yes, even our financial systems work fine. I get my paycheck on…

that will probably never happen. There is always an ongoing fight between decentralization (enduser, humanistic approach) and centralization (efficient, dictorship, monopolization approach). Centralization will almost always be more efficient but has "security" flaws in the form of bad faith actors while also acting as the central authority. Basically see any form of dictatorship over multiple generations. Ofcourse they can accomplish good, working systems. They can even be efficient as long as all orders are done exactly without fighting back.

decentralization is taking back some of the control back from central authorities. The problem is people often do not want to be 100% responsible for their own well being. This in turn leads to re-centralization at some point. We have governments because people often do not believe they can easily live together with complete trust. We have laws in order to make it easier for humans to live together. Essentially offloading a cognitive function of threat detection by relying on a trusted entity (government) to create a safe environment. In a dictatorship its possible for that trusted entity to transform into a bad faith actor and no longer work towards its original purpose. We introduce democracy/republicanism (a form of decentralization) in order to protect against this flaw. This form of government itself often re-centralizes in some form or another (government parties).

What I'm trying to get at is that while centralization is efficient and many things head to centralization we should still try to make the backbone decentralized whenever possible. It is a form protection against a central authority transitioning to a bad faith actor. Almost all central authorities will eventually transition to bad faith (from the end users perspective). With as much of the backbone being decentralized as possible we can at least more easily finger point and hold those central authorities responsible for their actions.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#687

Post by preseinger »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #490
usrbinbash wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can give you plenty of more feasible analogies; Do I make my own bread? Sure, sometimes I do. Baking bread isn't that hard. But do I do it every day? No. Why? Because it takes time to do, my kitchen counter is usually a mess afterwards, and the result usually doesn't taste anywhere near as good as the 20+ bread varieties I can buy at the corner store. I sometimes do it for fun, but I wouldn't do it every day. Let's…

'Let's go to macro scale: What's the better solution: 1000000 people each baking their own bread (1 loaf a day), or a giant company baking all the bread?' The same argument advocates monopoly or central planning by government? If not, you have to jistify where is centralised enough. Now, if we have a 20,000 different bakeries, is that actually centralised? Decentralisation of plumbers doesnt mean everyone does his ow…

The long arc of human civilization absolutely points toward unification of society and government, not balkanization into independent city-states.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#688

Post by encryptluks2 »

0ldskool wrote: post #666
encryptluks2 wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all about money, but they now have a couple questionable endeavors like Filecoin and NFT.storage. It seems they are more interested in making money than improving their project, and IPFS has many outstanding issues and limitations.

Using blockchain ontop of IPFS is to provide incentives. I don't know what is "questionable" about Filecoin, it seems fine to me. I used IPFS before blockchain but mostly just to play around with, never for any serious projects. Filecoin is simply a way to get more people to use IPFS. NFT.storage is the same, they see a market they would be a perfect fit for and try to get more and more people using IPFS.

The last I checked Filecoin cost around $17/TB of storage, which is ridiculously high. Like most cryptos they pumped the market and profit from hype than actually providing a competitive service. It is lower tier storage too than you'd get through something like OneDrive or Google Drive.

NFT.storage is well, to put it nicely, a scam platform to drive traffic to Filecoin.

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#689

Post by jrochkind1 »

tsujp wrote: post #540
jrochkind1 wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

vishnugupta said "popular", you replied with "works fine". While protocols may exist that "work fine", it seems clear that for "chat, video conferencing, file sharing" (as well as social media), proprietary networks are more much much more popular than standardized protocols. Email being a notable still-popular exception, when it comes to internet communications.

> proprietary network The statement was protocols, not networks. Not all protocols involve networks. But let's assume you did mean protocol here and not network. > it seems clear that for "chat, video conferencing, file sharing" (as well as social media), proprietary networks [protocols] are more much much more popular than standardized protocols. No that's categorically false. HTTP came into existence in 1989 and HT…

I think we're talking about different things. I'm not sure if you know we are talking about different things are are doing it intentionally, or if we are just talking past each other.

I can't say for sure what vishnugupta meant, but what I thought when I read their comment are:

* Most people's chat goes over things like Slack or MS Teams -- proprietary protocols. Not the open protocols that do exist like IRC.

* Most people's "instant messaging" goes over things like Signal, Whatsapp, or Facebook Messenger, all proprietary protocols. Even if open protocols like XMPP exist, they are less popular.

* Most people's video conferencing goes over things like Zoom, MS Teams, Apple Facetime -- proprietary protocols.

* I am not familiar with the "file sharing" protocols popular, but I assume the same.

HOWEVER, most people's email goes over open protocols. It's an outlier when it comes to these higher-level interpersonal communications.

(Do you disagree? I'm not sure if you do, or if you're just talking about something else!)

But yes, of course, there are other open protocols that are still very much in use. Including things like TCP/IP and UDP (which almost all of the protocols we are talking about function on top of) and HTTP (which some may as well). Most of these popular infrastructural protocols are also older, where vishnugupta suggested "since then", new protocols that become popular tend to be proprietary. An example of a newer network protocol that was open and standardized and also had a lot of uptake would be good to hear!

Re: Web3 is centralized and inefficient

#690

Post by oblio »

0ldskool wrote: post #655
oblio wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's going to be the same with cryptocurrencies. All the interesting stuff for normal people is built on top.

well the case is that if github keeps going down and becomes completely unreliable you can take your decentralized code and more it to a different provider. Those other providers will also have value added stuff and you will not lose the core of your business/work (your source code). If it was a pure central authority + protocol you would be doomed to live and die with them. Imagine if instead of git + github you had…

Ok... how does that help cryptocurrencies, though?
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