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My First Impressions of Web3

moxie.org

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Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#841

Post by clippablematt »

czhu12 wrote: post #541

This post really resonates with me, I've been building https://raremints.club as a way for indie, non technical artists to create NFT's, and have really had to wrestle with all things "web3" that would've been trivial in "web2". I tried to document some of the challenges here: https://chriszhu12.medium.com/the-challenges-of-building-on-... But basically: I built an app that relied on mostly stable gas fees. A single…

It requires a change in mindset from “efficiency first” to “robust first”. That’s a tough learning curve for trad web devs, the best web3 dev I know comes from aerospace engineering where resilience and redundancy are part of the process.

But ultimately succeeding in making something that can live in the sometimes hostile environment on chain means you make something that can last and is reliable. There can be awkward UX issues with that though.

Relying on stable gas fees won’t work because the network has to have a priority list when it’s busy, so those willing to pay more will be prioritised and you’ll be stuck. If you want to inherit the properties of the chain that are why you would build on it in the first place then you have to work to those constraints.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#842

Post by jstanley »

> To be clear, there is nothing particularly “distributed” about the apps themselves: they’re just normal react websites. The “distributedness” refers to where the state and the logic/permissions for updating the state lives: on the blockchain instead of in a “centralized” database.

This is one way to do it, but ideally you would host the site on IPFS so that you don't have a web server involved at all.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#843

Post by adabaed »

Do you think Cardano can aliviate some of the clear issues we are seeing with Ethereum? I've been reading a lot for the past two weeks and I must say I'm close to start developing stuff in Cardano.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#844

Post by wahnfrieden »

TekMol wrote: post #793

This is the tweet where he announced the NFT: https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1448066579611234305 I can still see it on OpenSea: https://opensea.io/assets/0x5c61afa47570ab2b562606fa57822130... Maybe it was blocked and later unblocked? Anyhow, I think he is painting too black of an image of Web3. Even if OpenSea blocks his NFT, Ethereum scanners will still show it: https://etherscan.io/address/0x5c61afa47570ab2b56260…

The value of the nft drops to near zero if it’s not accepted on dominant popular marketplaces

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#845

Post by bambax »

dopidopHN wrote: post #663
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I used Minitel for many years. It worked well.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#846

Post by _heimdall »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #817
_heimdall wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the exact argument for authoritarianism over democracy. Centralization is easier and often cheaper, but you have to trust the group in charge completely. Even then, the collective loses out on innovation and new ideas because only a small subset of the population is in a position to change anything. Centralization is often a short term win, decentralization is a long play. Unfortunately, we almost always seem…

democracies are highly centralized. delegation is not the same thing as decentralization. democracies and authoritarianism are both centralized, the difference is that one is a cooperative model, the other one is not.

My point wasn't to draw a direct line between democracy and a decentralized network. I just thought it was important to point out the risks and potentially short sidedness of giving up on decentralization because its slower and more difficult. That line of thought leads to more authoritarian control, and that's never worked out well for the average person in the long run.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#847

Post by ZephyrBlu »

ineptech wrote: post #283
pjsg wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the benefit to the average user of running their own server? Most people (maybe even on HN) just want things to work. We buy connectivity services for our phones and our homes. I certainly don't want to run my own Wireless ISP to connect up my neighbourhood even if it was marginally cheaper (until I account for my time). We buy storage services (for lots of reasons) from Amazon, Google, , etc. I don't want to…

> What is the benefit to the average user of running their own server? All the server-side use cases you can't do with a client alone. I think you misunderstood my comment; I'm not saying that running your own email server is easy, nor that it's hard but still worth it; I'm saying that the fact that it's too hard to be worth doing is a statement about the software that exists today, not some sort of immutable feature…

> not some sort of immutable feature of the universe

Except it is. Running your own server will always be more work than letting someone else do it, so unless there is a strong incentive people will let someone else run their server.

This is basically the Law of Leaky Abstractions. At some point you will have to deal with a problem yourself because no abstraction is perfect.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#848

Post by endorphine »

Disclaimer: I don't have much knowledge around web3. I would probably consider my self a skeptic, if I had to.

> People don’t want to run their own servers, and never will.

Just wanted to point out that the last part of this sentence is merely a prediction.

> If something is truly decentralized, it becomes very difficult to change, and often remains stuck in time. That is a problem for technology, because the rest of the ecosystem is moving very quickly, and if you don’t keep up you will fail.

By that logic, has email failed? I wouldn't say so.

> Eventually, all the web3 parts are gone, and you have a website for buying and selling JPEGS with your debit card. The project can’t start as a web2 platform because of the market dynamics, but the same market dynamics and the fundamental forces of centralization will likely drive it to end up there.

I find it hard to imagine that NFTs will eventually not be backed by a blockchain, since this is what provides all the hype.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#849

Post by playpause »

pkcsecurity wrote: post #754

Moxie makes so many good critiques (some are so subtle, it might be worth a second read). I got the sense he’s trying very hard to be even handed and constructive about a situation he feels pretty badly about, but his true feelings are bleeding through in some of the side points / parentheticals. One point that I disagree with is his almost axiomatic premise that decentralization is an inherent good and the implicati…

> it cannot bring us back to some golden Internet age

Why? Because trust is a human problem not a technological one? What does that actually mean?

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#850

Post by clippablematt »

hinkley wrote: post #407
bidder33 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess as some counterpoints: I kind of agree in some ways but i think he underplays the critical point that you have an option for voice and exit from the forming centralising forces (which do get established because people like convenience/reliability/familiarity) without sacrificing your data or belongings, you can leave without losses. That is a critical difference. His nft is delisted from a platform and his wa…

> Even nerds do not want to run their own servers at this point. Even organizations building software full time do not want to run their own servers at this point. I want this to be wrong. Broadband providers make it very difficult to run your own server. Server construction is also in a very bad place as well, so this has spread from consumers to companies. There are just too many externalities from all of your vend…

Groups like DappNode are doing good work here. You can buy a nuc from them with their os installed and then pick from a list of apps to install (owncloud/ eth nodes/ ipfs pinner/etc) and it handles the messyness of dyndns/openvpn/updates and all of that. Anyone can contribute docker packages with their markup for people to install new programs. I’m working on a funkwhale port so I can pull my music back locally and not digital ocean
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