Post's date has 2020, but it also says Sept. 8th, therefore I ask: Is this exactly one year old, or a date error?
Web3 is a stupid idea
71–80 of 220 posts
Re: Web3 is a stupid idea
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, let me get this straight - your company has the non-sharded encryption key (not the user), it centralized by your service, and all of that is subject to google's whims. Yep, sounds like the heart of web3.
Metamask is distributed through Google as well, and it operates in Chrome. It would be easier to let me know what web3 technology is not subject to Google's whims!
IPFS
Re: Web3 is a stupid idea
#73Even an ideal blockchain-ified P2P "Web 3.0" is a silly fantasy on par with NAT-less IPv4. First they reinvented gold & databases, now they are reinventing IP. Flat networks are a thing of the past, when you could keep the whole Internet in a paper directory on your desk. Blockchains may be used for settlement and accounting within small networks of international firms, but they will never service the latency and thr…
I suggest you look into blockchains like Solana and Fantom, there have been some technological advancements lately that allow crazy fast and cheap transactions (with some other downsides of course).
I think of the current state of crypto as a kind of a wild west situation, there's still so much to be discovered and there's a lot of competition between different tokens to see who can do something better than the others. Saying that it's too slow right now doesn't mean it still will be a couple years down the line.
Re: Web3 is a stupid idea
#74I think it's poorly named. It's not a new major version of the web. Forget the fact that the vast majority of the web's users don't care about decentralization vs. centralization even a single bit. People will continue to mindlessly use WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Coinbase because decentralization is not a concern for _most_ users. Most users of these apps just want to socialize with friends and family,…
When it comes to tech, you can't judge what's important by people who use tech but don't spend three seconds in a day working on its possibilities. Surprisingly few regular people thought they wanted a PC before the World Wide Web. They still don't care about the technical details. Web 3.0 is obviously an aspirational name for what is still mostly a vision at this point. But developers need their moitivators. :)
The difference here though is that web 3 really is just 'technical details' to most people. PC's had potential, they were getting cheaper, faster, and more software was being written for them every day. People could play video games, and show off to their friends. Web 3 has none of that, it's all just technical details that 90% of the population doesn't care about one bit.
Re: Web3 is a stupid idea
#75So I've never heard of this term until now, but actually, I can think of a use case for this I kind of like. So, pretty much daily I get linked to an article on a paywalled site that wants me to subscribe or get a free trial. And I always click away, I'm not going through the hassle of email verification or putting in my credit card for a 2 minute read. But if this supported something like "pay 25 cents to read this…
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Re: Web3 is a stupid idea
#76Really wish progressive enhancement was chosen as the first thing, want to get rid of the backend db? ok, two APIs, store to extension-managed DB (e.g. flatfiles in the home directory, or shunted onto something managed with LDAP, or loaded onto some weird coin thing on a local light node, or etc), or in environments where extensions are fussy / overcomplicated, store to another website via a http api (la https://remo…
> If you were to decide to write your data onto a gold ingot
Why do crypto enthusiasts feel the need to use gold as a strawman? The vast majority of non-crypto people use digital money (in local currencies), and have never touched gold in their lives. Digital money works great, and doesn’t need a blockchain.
Re: Web3 is a stupid idea
#77It's much easier to criticize than to build an alternative. I don't think anyone at Metamask or in the space in general thinks to themselves that the ecosystem is in a state of full maturity or that there aren't major problems. Despite its shortcomings, MM and Web3 have given us capabilities that simply didn't exist five years ago. And those capabilities aren't just limited to a select number of shadowy super hackers…
People are building things like renewed web standards (Project Fugu, for example) and P2P networks (Beaker, Hypercore), and light clients (Mighty). These projects don't get any attention from the "Web3" crowd because they don't involve currency speculation.
You cannot separate economics incentives from networking protocols.
You need an actual sepeculative market to price and offer these services.
Most of open source fails because they don't acknowledge this reality.
Re: Web3 is a stupid idea
#78Did the author just forget about the attempted corporate take over of .org? [0]. Blockchains like Ethereum are part of the solution which help prevent something like that from happening. They're not at the stage to be usable yet but it seems that is where we are going. It just takes more de-platformings, bans, hostile takeovers, suspensions etc to accelerate the need for this. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id…
> Blockchains like Ethereum are part of the solution which help prevent something like that from happening.
How so? The problem is that many humans are greedy. How do "Blockchains like Ethereum" fix that? The existence of a technology that's completely orthogonal to the problem isn't "part of the solution" although marketing it as a solution certainly does help move worthless tokens.
Re: Web3 is a stupid idea
#79Even an ideal blockchain-ified P2P "Web 3.0" is a silly fantasy on par with NAT-less IPv4. First they reinvented gold & databases, now they are reinventing IP. Flat networks are a thing of the past, when you could keep the whole Internet in a paper directory on your desk. Blockchains may be used for settlement and accounting within small networks of international firms, but they will never service the latency and thr…
Theres some great work being done on zk roll ups you might be interested in.
Re: Web3 is a stupid idea
#80This whole post reads like someone who is frustrated with a new technology they don't understand.
>We should stop building key-management plugins and start thinking about a standardizable web API. We must stop training our users to install shitty browser plugins!
"standardizable web API" is a total pipe dream. The space moves too quickly for standards. Why is installing a browser plugin bad? Is metamask shitty? The millions of MAU must not have noticed.
>We need to make light clients work as soon as possible and become independent from third-party services like thegraph and Infura.
What does this mean? You can use metmask and web3/ethers.js with your own node. When $$$ is on the line (as with Uniswap, et. al.), it makes sense to farm out your infra to someone else. Should we also be moving away from AWS and its reliability / productivity gains to appease the author?
>We need to improve our client libraries (ethers.js and web3.js) by dramatically simplifying them and making them bug-free (god damn it!)!
Yes, first good point of the article. People are working on this. Could be said about ANY technology. Web3 is still VERY early.
>We need to take advantage of some of the blockchain's fundamental properties. Most data is immutable so let's start caching things.
Not sure what this means either. What are we caching? Where? Why? Are you aware we already (kinda) do this with the strata of different ETH nodes via say syncmode in geth? Or are you talking about front ends, many of which are already distributed via IPFS?