7 ms·

I'm always happy to be convinced that someone has seen something I've missed in all of this hype about crypto, but when you say things like... 'imagine if you

by rajeck 8y ago

I'm always happy to be convinced that someone has seen something I've missed in all of this hype about crypto, but when you say things like... 'imagine if you could fork Amazon and launch a direct competitor' ..you've lost me. Amazon is not a code base. It has over 500,000 employees who work hard to serve its customers. How do you fork that? I would offer another, better example but I can't think of one. Web 2.0 companies are so far ahead that web 3.0 is going to have to come up with something completely different to be commercially interesting.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Web 2.0 companies are so far ahead that web 3.0 is going to have to come up with something completely different to be commercially interesting Web 1.0 (e.g. e-mail, http, et cetera) was more de-centralised than any token-based company I see today.
- jsutton 8y ago
  It started out decentralized but quickly consolidated. Cryptocurrencies in theory should enable a sustainable decentralized network.
  - urda 8y ago
    Yeah but in practice today they are far from sustainable, and have done significant environmental damage due to their ridiculous energy consumption.
    - ghthor 8y ago
      This argument is absurb. The damage done by crypto mining is nothing compared to the environmental damage that government(aka weapons) backed fiat currencies have brought upon the world.
      - urda 8y ago
        One of those provide value, protection, and an exportable / importable product. This actually progresses nations and communities, which is not a waste of energy at all. The other is crypto mining and crypto currency. > This argument is absurb [sic]. Your entire argument here is indeed absurd, as demonstrated in this thread.
roymurdock 8y ago
The author is arguing that decentralizing the control of compute power and compute-as-a-service is valuable and should be invested in. It is valuable if we ever reach a point where say, AWS has a monopoly on all compute power, and starts making bad/unfair/predatory decisions that hurt customers. Otherwise running decentralized payment networks to exchange compute power is much less efficient and much more costly than relying on purchasing services directly from a few competing (read: non-colluding) service providers using USD, GBP, EUR, credit cards, etc. There's really no need to decentralize compute-as-a-service. This person is getting paid to talk their book because their employer has placed a lot of bets in the cryptocurrency/blockchain world and is trying to brainstorm ways to turn them into actual viable products and exit these investments. Blockchains / decentralized ledgers are almost always solutions looking for a problem. They solve the very niche issue of exchange between untrusted parties, with caveats, and with extra performance/cost added to a centralized solution. There's currently no reason to implement a decentralized ledger solution for exchanging compute-as-a-service.
- dsr_ 8y ago
  "It is valuable if we ever reach a point where say, AWS has a monopoly on all compute power, and starts making bad/unfair/predatory decisions that hurt customers." Or... we could use intermediate libraries that translated our desires into whatever backends were currently cheap or fashionable, thus making it relatively easy to deploy across multiple infrastructure companies and just possibly preventing this monopoly from happening in the first place. I encourage my competitors to code directly for Amazon APIs, though. I'm sure it gives them a performance advantage.
- tlrobinson 8y ago
  And you don't even mention the biggest issue: why would I ever trust my data to some random compute provider in a "decentralized compute-as-a-service" system. At least with applications like storage you can encrypt your data. AFAIK homomorphic encryption isn't general or efficient enough to be very useful yet.
berberous 8y ago
Amazon is too big of an example. But look at Filecoin. They are trying to create a competitor to S3 -- a decentralized file storage service. Today, that is much more expensive and slower than Amazon's offering. But with all of the scaling solutions in the pipeline (sharding, alternative consensus algorithms like dPOS, sidechains, etc.), perhaps that will change. And I don't see why that couldn't be forked, in the same way that BCH forked from BTC. Here's another example. Peepeth.com is creating a decentralized twitter, with IPFS for storage and indexing on the Ethereum blockchain. Since all that storage is open and public, the creater of peepeth.com is trying to build a business based on his front-end. People can freely create alternate front-ends or apps, and leverage the existing open database of tweets without being limited by Twitter's policy whims regarding its API.
- simias 8y ago
  >with all of the scaling solutions in the pipeline That's a big problem for me, many cryptocurrency/blockchain projects (IOTA, filecoin, the lightning network, basically every ICO ever) are basically saying "sure, this is barely usable as it is, but in the future YOU'LL SEE!" Given the ridiculous amount of investment in the blockchain/cryptocurrency space these past years how long do we have to wait until we see the actual results? I remember when I first used Google Search all those years ago my first reaction was "uh, that's a weird name", my 2nd reaction was "damn, that's so much better than the search engines I've used so far". How long until we reach this stage with blockchain apps? How many years, how many billions of dollars? I'm not asking for a polished product, just something that makes me think "that's actually better than what I've used before". >Peepeth.com is creating a decentralized twitter, with IPFS for storage and indexing on the Ethereum blockchain. Remember Usenet? Remember email? Remember IRC? I think there's a false dichotomy in the mind of many nowadays, mainly that the internet is either centralized or "blockchain based", whatever that means. It's a lie. The internet is fundamentally decentralized, the centralization is a relatively new phenomenon that started in the early '00s. You want to "fix" the internet? Get people to use IPv6, not the Blockchain.
  - berberous 8y ago
    >> "Given the ridiculous amount of investment in the blockchain/cryptocurrency space these past years how long do we have to wait until we see the actual results?" This kind of thing is obviously extremely hard to say without any sort of accuracy, but my best guess, within a year or two. Specifically, you will start to see scaling solutions finally launch (lightning network, the numerous ETH initiatives, etc.), and you will start to see some dapps gain actual usage or traction (DEXs, collectibles, etc.). >> "It's a lie. The internet is fundamentally decentralized, the centralization is a relatively new phenomenon that started in the early '00s." Yes, obviously there is nothing _technically_ stopping the Internet from being decentralized. But I think what you are missing is the incentive structures and the realities. Here is an interesting post from Chris Dixon arguing that what's unique about cryptocurrencies is that they provide an alternative structure that will encourage decentralized protocols to flourish: https://medium.com/@cdixon/why-decentralization-matters-5e3f79f7638e https://medium.com/@cdixon/why-decentralization-matters-5e3f.... It's not that Twitter can't be coded to be more decentralized without blockchains. It's that in reality, the economic reality is that such a service eventually closes off its API, bait-and-switching users into their walled garden. Like open source software, cryptocurrencies may be a means of aligning people to work towards a different paradigm.
snissn 8y ago
AFAIK the author means imagine "Amazon" as a concept around a popular marketplace for books, food and computers. Not imagine that tomorrow amazon is supplanted. Amazon is not built as a blockchain competitor. If you imagine that it is, then imagine forking it...
- simias 8y ago
  As for most things the blockchain solves .1% of the problems Amazon solves. Dealing with delivery issues alone is something the blockchain cannot solve on its own. Dealing with warehouses, making deals with shipping companies, managing stock, providing results tailored to the user etc... The Blockchain isn't magic, it can't deal with that. You might be able to build a complex system of oracles and smart contracts to reimplement all that functionality but I posit that it won't be more effective or cheaper than a centralized system. Think about the price you're paying for your Amazon prime subscription or your Visa card. Now think about the amount of complexity these companies have to deal with, handling thousands of third parties that are willing to take advantage of the system if given the chance. Dealing with human error. Dealing with scammers. Think how well it works on average. Now you want to undercut that using slow, inefficient and redundant distributed trustless technology? Good luck. I could be wrong, but the burden of proof is on the cryptocurrency enthusiasts' shoulders because Amazon and Visa work today while Openbazaar and the Lightning network are still highly experimental. >If you imagine that it is, then imagine forking it... Can you imagine if we had 100THz computers? How cool would that be.
  - snissn 8y ago
    it feels like we're speaking two separate languages, I don't know how to tell you what you want to hear > the burden of proof is on the cryptocurrency enthusiasts' shoulders It feels very unfair to walk into a conversation with an internet stranger who believes that. If you feel so strongly, who am I to try to change your mind?
    - simias 8y ago
      I don't think it's unfair to say that the proponents of a technology that does not yet exist have the burden to prove that it's superior to the technology that does exist and work today. "Imagine if you could fork Amazon" is not a reasonable premise.
IncRnd 8y ago
There may be more of these unrealized potential presentations about cryptonetworks then there are companies which accept cryptocoins.

by rajeck 8y ago

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> Web 2.0 companies are so far ahead that web 3.0 is going to have to come up with something completely different to be commercially interesting Web 1.0 (e.g. e-mail, http, et cetera) was more de-centralised than any token-based company I see today.

jsutton 8y ago
It started out decentralized but quickly consolidated. Cryptocurrencies in theory should enable a sustainable decentralized network.
- urda 8y ago
  Yeah but in practice today they are far from sustainable, and have done significant environmental damage due to their ridiculous energy consumption.
  - ghthor 8y ago
    This argument is absurb. The damage done by crypto mining is nothing compared to the environmental damage that government(aka weapons) backed fiat currencies have brought upon the world.
    - urda 8y ago
      One of those provide value, protection, and an exportable / importable product. This actually progresses nations and communities, which is not a waste of energy at all. The other is crypto mining and crypto currency. > This argument is absurb [sic]. Your entire argument here is indeed absurd, as demonstrated in this thread.

roymurdock 8y ago

The author is arguing that decentralizing the control of compute power and compute-as-a-service is valuable and should be invested in. It is valuable if we ever reach a point where say, AWS has a monopoly on all compute power, and starts making bad/unfair/predatory decisions that hurt customers. Otherwise running decentralized payment networks to exchange compute power is much less efficient and much more costly than relying on purchasing services directly from a few competing (read: non-colluding) service providers using USD, GBP, EUR, credit cards, etc. There's really no need to decentralize compute-as-a-service. This person is getting paid to talk their book because their employer has placed a lot of bets in the cryptocurrency/blockchain world and is trying to brainstorm ways to turn them into actual viable products and exit these investments. Blockchains / decentralized ledgers are almost always solutions looking for a problem. They solve the very niche issue of exchange between untrusted parties, with caveats, and with extra performance/cost added to a centralized solution. There's currently no reason to implement a decentralized ledger solution for exchanging compute-as-a-service.

dsr_ 8y ago
"It is valuable if we ever reach a point where say, AWS has a monopoly on all compute power, and starts making bad/unfair/predatory decisions that hurt customers." Or... we could use intermediate libraries that translated our desires into whatever backends were currently cheap or fashionable, thus making it relatively easy to deploy across multiple infrastructure companies and just possibly preventing this monopoly from happening in the first place. I encourage my competitors to code directly for Amazon APIs, though. I'm sure it gives them a performance advantage.
tlrobinson 8y ago
And you don't even mention the biggest issue: why would I ever trust my data to some random compute provider in a "decentralized compute-as-a-service" system. At least with applications like storage you can encrypt your data. AFAIK homomorphic encryption isn't general or efficient enough to be very useful yet.

berberous 8y ago

Amazon is too big of an example. But look at Filecoin. They are trying to create a competitor to S3 -- a decentralized file storage service. Today, that is much more expensive and slower than Amazon's offering. But with all of the scaling solutions in the pipeline (sharding, alternative consensus algorithms like dPOS, sidechains, etc.), perhaps that will change. And I don't see why that couldn't be forked, in the same way that BCH forked from BTC. Here's another example. Peepeth.com is creating a decentralized twitter, with IPFS for storage and indexing on the Ethereum blockchain. Since all that storage is open and public, the creater of peepeth.com is trying to build a business based on his front-end. People can freely create alternate front-ends or apps, and leverage the existing open database of tweets without being limited by Twitter's policy whims regarding its API.

simias 8y ago
>with all of the scaling solutions in the pipeline That's a big problem for me, many cryptocurrency/blockchain projects (IOTA, filecoin, the lightning network, basically every ICO ever) are basically saying "sure, this is barely usable as it is, but in the future YOU'LL SEE!" Given the ridiculous amount of investment in the blockchain/cryptocurrency space these past years how long do we have to wait until we see the actual results? I remember when I first used Google Search all those years ago my first reaction was "uh, that's a weird name", my 2nd reaction was "damn, that's so much better than the search engines I've used so far". How long until we reach this stage with blockchain apps? How many years, how many billions of dollars? I'm not asking for a polished product, just something that makes me think "that's actually better than what I've used before". >Peepeth.com is creating a decentralized twitter, with IPFS for storage and indexing on the Ethereum blockchain. Remember Usenet? Remember email? Remember IRC? I think there's a false dichotomy in the mind of many nowadays, mainly that the internet is either centralized or "blockchain based", whatever that means. It's a lie. The internet is fundamentally decentralized, the centralization is a relatively new phenomenon that started in the early '00s. You want to "fix" the internet? Get people to use IPv6, not the Blockchain.
- berberous 8y ago
  >> "Given the ridiculous amount of investment in the blockchain/cryptocurrency space these past years how long do we have to wait until we see the actual results?" This kind of thing is obviously extremely hard to say without any sort of accuracy, but my best guess, within a year or two. Specifically, you will start to see scaling solutions finally launch (lightning network, the numerous ETH initiatives, etc.), and you will start to see some dapps gain actual usage or traction (DEXs, collectibles, etc.). >> "It's a lie. The internet is fundamentally decentralized, the centralization is a relatively new phenomenon that started in the early '00s." Yes, obviously there is nothing _technically_ stopping the Internet from being decentralized. But I think what you are missing is the incentive structures and the realities. Here is an interesting post from Chris Dixon arguing that what's unique about cryptocurrencies is that they provide an alternative structure that will encourage decentralized protocols to flourish: https://medium.com/@cdixon/why-decentralization-matters-5e3f79f7638e https://medium.com/@cdixon/why-decentralization-matters-5e3f.... It's not that Twitter can't be coded to be more decentralized without blockchains. It's that in reality, the economic reality is that such a service eventually closes off its API, bait-and-switching users into their walled garden. Like open source software, cryptocurrencies may be a means of aligning people to work towards a different paradigm.

snissn 8y ago

AFAIK the author means imagine "Amazon" as a concept around a popular marketplace for books, food and computers. Not imagine that tomorrow amazon is supplanted. Amazon is not built as a blockchain competitor. If you imagine that it is, then imagine forking it...

simias 8y ago
As for most things the blockchain solves .1% of the problems Amazon solves. Dealing with delivery issues alone is something the blockchain cannot solve on its own. Dealing with warehouses, making deals with shipping companies, managing stock, providing results tailored to the user etc... The Blockchain isn't magic, it can't deal with that. You might be able to build a complex system of oracles and smart contracts to reimplement all that functionality but I posit that it won't be more effective or cheaper than a centralized system. Think about the price you're paying for your Amazon prime subscription or your Visa card. Now think about the amount of complexity these companies have to deal with, handling thousands of third parties that are willing to take advantage of the system if given the chance. Dealing with human error. Dealing with scammers. Think how well it works on average. Now you want to undercut that using slow, inefficient and redundant distributed trustless technology? Good luck. I could be wrong, but the burden of proof is on the cryptocurrency enthusiasts' shoulders because Amazon and Visa work today while Openbazaar and the Lightning network are still highly experimental. >If you imagine that it is, then imagine forking it... Can you imagine if we had 100THz computers? How cool would that be.
- snissn 8y ago
  it feels like we're speaking two separate languages, I don't know how to tell you what you want to hear > the burden of proof is on the cryptocurrency enthusiasts' shoulders It feels very unfair to walk into a conversation with an internet stranger who believes that. If you feel so strongly, who am I to try to change your mind?
  - simias 8y ago
    I don't think it's unfair to say that the proponents of a technology that does not yet exist have the burden to prove that it's superior to the technology that does exist and work today. "Imagine if you could fork Amazon" is not a reasonable premise.

IncRnd 8y ago

There may be more of these unrealized potential presentations about cryptonetworks then there are companies which accept cryptocoins.