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But, aren't you folks web2?

nadh.in

71–80 of 191 posts

Re: But, aren't you folks web2?

#71
post #46
post #11

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At this point, web3 is becoming strongly associated with high-profile scams, many of them likely criminal. It's also associated with people who won't stop talking about how the blockchain will make your teeth whiter, or something equally unlikely. Blockchains are just decentralized Merkle trees. Merkle trees are a cool trick (look at git!). But the cost of decentralizing them, Bitcoin-style, has been massive carbon e…

I think it's worth separating the technology of cryptocurrencies from the culture surrounding it.

Blockchain technology was innovative and is interesting, but still early stage. I doubt that many of the early adopters of Bitcoin expected it to blow up in the way that it did, rather than just being a cyberpunk experiment that would potentially lead to some world-changing technology in the future. I would consider myself an early Bitcoin adopter, and all I ever really used it for was to buy pizza for like 10 BTC back when it was all a bit of an interesting joke. It certainly seemed like something that could change the world, but not in its current form.

When viewed in this light, issues like carbon emissions are more understandable. When you're prototyping some new idea, you probably aren't thinking about carbon emissions at that point. That's something that can be hopefully figured out later, like Ethereum are trying to do.

What turned Bitcoin/cryptocurrency from an experiment into the toxic hellscape it has become are cryptobros, scammers and gamblers looking to make a quick buck, helped along by investors and finance companies who are drawn to buzzwords and don't understand anything about technology.

Clearly we're entering a long crypto winter now, which I think is a good thing. However, I doubt the story is over quite yet.

Re: But, aren't you folks web2?

#72
I believe the real problem is the black and white view of everything. Combined with the obsession to label things.

In a sane world, we would look at things based on their value and merit, using whatever makes sense. Whether that be web2/3 or some other buzz world tech.

Re: But, aren't you folks web2?

#73

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How do you deal with domain squatting or trademark violation? The current system does this well because of identity and web3 doesn't have any answer to this. Also I can host my own DNS server with my own domain name all decentralised without crypto scamming.

Some challenges arising out of human-meaningful names that any registry of names needs to tackle: - Inclusivity for future generations. Early adopters should not crowd out late adopters of all the desirable names - Community ownership or geographical indications or false advertising (eg: DarjeelingTea.com should only be owned collectively by farmers in that particular region) - Prevention of abuse or trademark violat…

"nestlekillsbabies.com" wouldn't be a trademark violation. If anything, it'd be libel, but the defense there would be either a) truth or b) protected opinion.

Re: But, aren't you folks web2?

#74
post #60
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, web3 is becoming strongly associated with high-profile scams, many of them likely criminal. It's also associated with people who won't stop talking about how the blockchain will make your teeth whiter, or something equally unlikely. Blockchains are just decentralized Merkle trees. Merkle trees are a cool trick (look at git!). But the cost of decentralizing them, Bitcoin-style, has been massive carbon e…

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The history of financial market regulation is written in blood. It started out very much like the crypto grift space where anything goes, until governments wised up to the negative effects and decided to regulate.

Re: But, aren't you folks web2?

#75
post #60
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, web3 is becoming strongly associated with high-profile scams, many of them likely criminal. It's also associated with people who won't stop talking about how the blockchain will make your teeth whiter, or something equally unlikely. Blockchains are just decentralized Merkle trees. Merkle trees are a cool trick (look at git!). But the cost of decentralizing them, Bitcoin-style, has been massive carbon e…

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If you're hoping "web3" is gonna negatively impact the power of well-off westerners, you're likely to be disappointed.

Re: But, aren't you folks web2?

#76
post #69

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> Mastodon is not decentralized it's federated Are you saying that this federation is not a form of decentralization? I'm pretty sure that Mastodon is not centralised like Twitter is. This is akin to the pedant/trolls who usually pop up and say "the USA is not a democracy, it's a republic!" in conversations that compare the USA's regular elections to dictatorial autocracies. https://act.represent.us/sign/democracy-re…

Federation is a very weak form of decentralization. In practice, many federated platforms turn into cartels of giant centralized providers. It's better than Twitter, but not something I'd call decentralization.

> Federation is a very weak form of decentralization ... not something I'd call decentralization ... is not decentralized

Uh, OK; this is not all the same claim.

> In practice, many federated platforms turn into cartels of giant centralized providers

Sure that's a worry; for example: email is global, so lets all use GMail. git is decentralized onto GitHub and a few other providers. I think that this tendency is not just a mastodon thing, and is a separate and wider concern though than "it is not decentralized".

Re: But, aren't you folks web2?

#78
post #69

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> Mastodon is not decentralized it's federated Are you saying that this federation is not a form of decentralization? I'm pretty sure that Mastodon is not centralised like Twitter is. This is akin to the pedant/trolls who usually pop up and say "the USA is not a democracy, it's a republic!" in conversations that compare the USA's regular elections to dictatorial autocracies. https://act.represent.us/sign/democracy-re…

Federation is a very weak form of decentralization. In practice, many federated platforms turn into cartels of giant centralized providers. It's better than Twitter, but not something I'd call decentralization.

Is there a form of decentralization not prone to this?

Blockchain certainly seems to trend towards "cartels of giant centralized providers".

Re: But, aren't you folks web2?

#79
post #65

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Are there really 10M active MetaMask users and 50M active Brave users? I mean, that's a lot. Twitter has ~200M daily active users and it's a service everybody knows. I've installed both products maybe five years ago, tried a few things and gave up, and there's no incentive in sight that would make me use them again. I suspect they're still counting me as a user on the brave web3 frontier because I have some wallets w…

Brave Browser states 50M monthly active users [1] and MetaMask states 30M monthly active users. [2] The Chrome extension shows 10M+ [3] which is the source I used. It seems like Daily Active Users (DAU) is more often used than Monthly Active Users (MAU), so I maybe should have stated that in my comment. [1] https://brave.com/2021-recap/ [2] https://decrypt.co/95039/metamask-consensys-30-million-users [3] https://chro…

Ok, thanks, that's useful! I'm glad Brave is doing well. It's not a product for me, but anything that reduces consolidation in the browser market is welcome.

To my knowledge, the Chrome Web Store user count represents the number of users with the extension installed who have opened Chrome in the past 7 days. So the 10M+ number for MetaMask includes everyone who installed the extension but isn't actually using it.

(The MetaMask reviews are pretty interesting reading. "I lost $3k", "I lost $6k" and so on.)

Re: But, aren't you folks web2?

#80
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, web3 is becoming strongly associated with high-profile scams, many of them likely criminal. It's also associated with people who won't stop talking about how the blockchain will make your teeth whiter, or something equally unlikely. Blockchains are just decentralized Merkle trees. Merkle trees are a cool trick (look at git!). But the cost of decentralizing them, Bitcoin-style, has been massive carbon e…

I think it's worth separating the technology of cryptocurrencies from the culture surrounding it. Blockchain technology was innovative and is interesting, but still early stage. I doubt that many of the early adopters of Bitcoin expected it to blow up in the way that it did, rather than just being a cyberpunk experiment that would potentially lead to some world-changing technology in the future. I would consider myse…

> Blockchain technology was innovative and is interesting, but still early stage.

[1]

- Cryptographer David Chaum first proposed a blockchain-like protocol in his 1982 dissertation

- Further work on a cryptographically secured chain of blocks was described in 1991 by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta

- In 1992, Haber, Stornetta, and Dave Bayer incorporated Merkle trees into the design

- The first decentralized blockchain was conceptualized by a person (or group of people) known as Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008.

Even the most charitable interpretation makes blockchain 14 years old. In computer tech terms it's old, and there are still no discernible use cases for it. Because, as the article succinctly puts it: "technologies, processes, people, regulations, laws, industry, and the entire legal and societal foundation that underlie an organisation, no matter how imperfect, aren’t 'web2', and that they can’t just be converted to 'web3', whatever that meant."

> don't understand anything about technology.

Oh, they understand it very well. THey also understand that humans are gullible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain

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