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My First Impressions of Web3

moxie.org

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Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#971

Post by searchableguy »

acdha wrote: post #910
searchableguy wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is arweave which is trying to bring permanent storage. You could store the nft on arweave chain and mint the NFT on the same. https://www.arweave.org/ Though, I'm not sure how this will "scale".

It’ll scale like S3, et al.: replicated storage requires ongoing payments because sysadmins need to be paid, storage needs to be bought & replaced, network bandwidth is metered, etc. It could be cheaper if someone can finally make a P2P network which becomes and stays popular[1] but it’ll always require more than a one-time payment. That could be donor funded (Internet Archive) but I’d be leery of assuming anything l…

> It’ll scale like S3, et al.: replicated storage requires ongoing payments because sysadmins need to be paid, storage needs to be bought & replaced, network bandwidth is metered, etc.

That's what they are trying to solve with their tokenomics model.

The value of token will appreciate over time whereas the price of storage will keep getting cheaper.

It's simpler than s3 in many aspects so I'm not sure you would need a system administrator. Everyone can run a node and things are replicated many times over. The failover model is to look for the next node. There are no API, security, access, etc consideration to be maintained at the node level.

Data itself is public by default.

> Abuse is the hard problem here: if I host a node, when the police download something illicit my IP is the one they see and I have to prove that it was done without my knowledge. This is why nobody does this except for known sources

Yeah, that's important.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#972

Post by _heimdall »

tim333 wrote: post #909
_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…

I don't recall that argument in practice. In Kazakhstan just now for the leader has recently used the argument "Those who don't surrender will be eliminated" which seem more common than "centralization is easier and often cheaper" as far as I can tell in such situations.

I was speaking generally not to any one authoritarian. I can't imagine many, if any, authoritarian leaders would be using the "it's easier and cheaper" argument when grabbing more power, but its a very common argument used in more general and philosophical debates.

Look into any of the writings that led to the USSR and you'll find it all over. The goal was total government control would be the best way to optimize resource allocation. They were making the case that Soviet communism would win out against fascism because they could make everything faster and cheaper.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#973

Post by _heimdall »

unkulunkulu wrote: post #924
_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…

I might be crazy, but reading this I imagine a blockchain based temporary democracy: full proof-of-whatever correct voting scheme choosing a temporary centralized “government” with measurable goals to move the system to eventual decentralization.

This is actually one of the few uses I know of that I have a lot of hope for. I worked on a digital voting system in college a decade ago, we were researching accessibility concerns mainly related to visually impaired voters. The voting industry in the US is just as much of a tire fire now as it was then but it could easily be improved.

A blockchain based voting system with each state acting as a PoW validator could actually work. The main challenge is how to centralize key distribution in a way that is accessible to everyone without compromising anonymity. If anyone knows your public key they know exactly who you voted for in every election.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#974

Post by ShamelessC »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #935
ShamelessC wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average user (the same user that doesn't want to be bothered with running a server at home) doesn't care about this, I don't think. Most people would prefer to rely on a trusted authority or expert for this sort of thing. When talking about democratization, the average user is probably the only user that matters.

Yes but the fact that the user will do what's convenient does not mean it is better. The thing about Bitcoin (as an example) is that 99% of people using can't parse the source code, but they all know that if there was an issue in it the alarm would have been sounded by now by someone who could.

> Yes but the fact that the user will do what's convenient does not mean it is better.

This is irrelevant if it doesn't gain traction.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#975

Post by ShamelessC »

TimJRobinson wrote: post #735
ShamelessC wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"social cost" sounds like another way of saying "real-world trust".

Yes. The point of blockchains is to be able to trade value without middlemen. You still have to verify that what you're buying is legitimate.

> You still have to verify that what you're buying is legitimate

That it is challenging to evaluate the legitimacy of a seller with a potentially obfuscated identity living who-knows-where is the reason middlemen are inevitable. Even with blockchains.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#977

Post by brewmarche »

gorgoiler wrote: post #780

“Protocols move slowly. After 30 years, email is still unencrypted.” OK, so I know what moxie means but in terms of sniffability: how much SMTP traffic is actually conducted in plaintext these days? Could someone put a ballpark value on the amount? For starters: 50% must be big-webmail-provider to either themselves or another big-webmail-provider. Do the long tail not have their LetsEncrypt certificates configured?

I can’t speak for him, but I think whenever moxie talks about encrypted mail/messengers he means E2EE. And the state of E2EE for email is not good. SMIME is hard to set up for regular users (dearth of free certificates [0], lack of SMIMEA support [1]), PGP support is lacking out of the box in most mail clients.

And maintaining your contacts’ keys is quite a nuisance, using key servers requires trust (I have no control over who submits keys in my name, revoking can be hard). Regardless of whether you go for SMIME or PGP you will always have to sync your private keys when you use more than one mail client (web mail especially is a problem).

[0] Only one I know is Actalis, supporting catch-all is impossible with it and you need to request a new certificate every year but cannot request before it is expired.

[1] I can’t set a SMIMEA record on Namecheap’s name servers. And mail client support seems hard to check.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#978

Post by wpietri »

temp8964 wrote: post #271
wpietri wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. I ran my own servers for many years. And I still enjoy playing with hardware at home. But a couple years back I shut down my last colocated physical server and I do not miss it. The background stress of knowing that at any point I might have to wake up, haul my ass down to a colo, and swap a motherboard just got to me. Now all my must-stay-up stuff is built via Terraform in a a public cloud. If there's a ha…

Is hardware failure a common problem making you can't sleep? I don't get it. I run several desktops and servers at home for decades. Other than my baby pulled keys out of keyboards, I never had any hardware problem at all. And some of computers are more than ten years old.

It's not a particularly common problem. But it's one I always had to plan for. I was, in effect, always on call. If I was going to be out of town, I had to have somebody to cover for me. Somebody who was on the list for physical access and knew what to do enough that I could talk them through it.

Re: My First Impressions of Web3

#980

Post by GreenWatermelon »

vishnugupta wrote: post #653
codehalo wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like you (and a vast majority of HN including Moxie) is tying web3 to several centralized front ends (Metamask/OpenSea). I saw this back in the 90's when a lot of people thought the internet was "Internet Explorer".

For a non-tech regular user who just want to get some work done Internet Explorer was indeed the internet. In India even to this day for a vast majority YouTube/FB/WA is all the internet is. It's not at all unusual for people to walk up to a mom-and-pop store to top-up their data plan asking them to "recharge my WhatsApp balance". Even carriers have specialised data packs that are tied to a specific product/service.…

The Xerox-copy thing is pretty interesting. Here in Egypt, Pampers is the word used for diapers, and for a while, IPad meant any kind of tablet.

I wonder what type of cultural memes exist for other cultures, similar to these examples.

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