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Why web3 distributed libraries will change the world
- uberman 5y agoSo in theory, I can pay a small premium to rob you. Is that the basic premise of how this works? You (assuming you are the author of the service) challenge people to find a flaw in your game theory. Here it is. The world if full of trolls. You have a 1000 dollar camera and I want to borrow it. I put up 1100 bucks and you put up your camera and 100 bucks. If I'm a troll and enjoy making internet people suffer and happen to actually want a camera. Then I can get yours and for an extra 100 bucks cause you to personally lose your camera and 100 bucks. Sounds like the dream scheme for affluent trolls to leverage 100 bucks into 1100 of pain.
- pmoncada 5y agoYou’re right! The issue with these trolls is that all that history exists publicly on the blockchain So if someone is a troll you’ll see their transaction history of multiple blown up contracts and you’ll know to stay away Not everyone is “rational” given the incentives, but you can choose who you play with based on how they’ve treated others
- beached_whale 5y agoThat provides another mechanism for abuse that cannot be fixed, or will not. Abuse via other’s id and they are left with the perpetual fallout
- chillfox 5y agoCan’t they just create multiple accounts?
- exdsq 5y agoYou can limit account creation with KYC and have a ratings system where you can choose who to do business with (taking less risk by staying with high-rated people etc)
- dvt 5y agoYou're just moving goalposts here. A distributed "ratings system" has the exact same problems: fixing ratings, spamming someone with fake ratings, etc.
- pmoncada 5y agoA rating system isn’t needed here. Just a history of transactions (% contracts successfully completed is a good metric) + Communities can decide who they let into these groups, or boot people who are multiple offenders So it’s not all anonymous trolls, there’s context around each person that allows you to filter who is a troll
- rnotaro 5y agoCan't you just game the metric and do transaction with yourself? (With other fake accounts)
- saurik 5y agoThat doesn't sound very decentralized at all, lol.
- exdsq 5y agoWhy not? These are researched areas in the field and people are finding solutions to things like decentralized identities, multi-chain ratings, etc...
- saurik 5y agoKYC != decentralized identities. I have never heard of anyone working on an actually-decentralized system capable of proving that you are Fred, as opposed to merely rate limiting the speed at which you can create accounts (which one might argue is sufficient, but isn't KYC). It might be that you are merely misusing the term, and meant something like sybil-resistant pseudonyms?
- 5y ago
- superfad 5y agoThat's where something like BrightID would help. https://www.brightid.org/ https://www.brightid.org/
- InsomniacL 5y agoDon't make it a small premium then, or make yourself the beneficiary, you're in control of the terms, the other party can choose to accept them or not. "It’s important to note as well that each of the fields in the contract are totally open for customization. You can make the “Agreed upon 3rd party” the lender. Or you can change the collateral amounts based on trust levels. If you feel like there’s an asymmetry of risk, you can up the collateral on either side of the contract before signing. It’s all in your hands."
- qeternity 5y agoSometimes I read things from crypto maxis and wonder if they’ve ever read what history was like when there was no trust (and thus no credit) and everything operated in manners such as the above. Like, I get it, I do: the Fed is out of control (ahem, my username) and inflation yada yada. But in no way is this better from a capital efficiency/economic utility/user experience perspective. I’d rather just book a hotel or airbnb where my credit card can play the role of escrow, or judge and jury (or an actual judge and jury if things really go sideways).
- kristjansson 5y agoI'd suppose the maxis would argue that services would spring up to take a small fee, post the collateral, negotiate fair resolution to disputes, etc ... but then they're halfway to reinventing rental agencies, insurance and credit cards and all that with sprinkling of operational and exchange rate risk thrown on top.
- qeternity 5y agoWould you be surprised that there is a “justice as a service” startup that is reinventing the court system on blockchain?
- brunoqc 5y agoWhy does web3 insist on using cryptocurrencies? I'm a huge fan of offline-first collaborative apps, but I don't care at all about the crypto bullshit.
- brezelgoring 5y ago>I'm a huge fan of offline-first collaborative apps You and me both, Bruno. We're last on the consideration list though, always-online software and crypto integrations are the future whether we like it or not. There's money to be made there, why would they reject it?
- grey-area 5y agoIt’s just another story to keep the con going a little longer - they failed as currency, payment system, asset tracking, app platforms, smart contracts, and now this. None if it makes any sense, nor does it have to as long as it convinces new marks that their ‘tokens’ are going to the moon because they are the future of x.
- tchock23 5y agoCrypto world has also co-opted the word ‘metaverse.’ I always thought that term meant some cool VR future, but I guess I’m getting NFTs instead.
- jbigelow76 5y agoAll I've been able to glean from a Chris Dixon twitter thread and Cloudflare's HTTP-to-crypto thing-a-ma-bob announcement is that web3 is all about putting crypto based paywalls everywhere right?
- qeternity 5y agoJust jump through the overcollateralized hoops of our game theoretic Rube Goldberg machine and voila!
- WarOnPrivacy 5y agoAn xyz tld. . . It's like the Wankel engine of TLDs. You're literally buying trouble. ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28554400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28554400
- byhemechi 5y agoI really don't think crypto will go anywhere beyond hobbyist territory until transaction fees drop dramatically. There's no way i'm going to use cryptocurrency to do anything at all when I have to make an $8 transaction fee
- afavour 5y agoOne thing I keep coming back to with all this “web3” guff: the premise is openness and freedom, right? How does that square with the way the vast majority of people now use the internet: on smartphones controlled by one of two of the biggest companies in the world? This seems to me like a fundamental issue for anything claiming to be “web 3” in a way that “web 2.0” never had to deal with. A totally open library sounds like a fascinating concept, but Google or Apple are ultimately going to gatekeeper access to it.
- pmoncada 5y ago100% agreed. This is why we’re building it for mobile web and not as an AppStore app
- afavour 5y ago…and who controls the mobile web browsers?
- throwawaycities 5y agoWeb3 enabled browsers like metamask, coinbase wallet, trust wallet, brave. Safari and chrome mobile browsers are not compatible with web3 or dapps.
- afavour 5y agoSo we’re back to square one: they’re not usable on mobile devices almost everyone uses.
- throwawaycities 5y agoUm…all the web3 mobile browsers I listed are…mobile browsers. So yes the all work on mobile devices that everyone uses.
- 5y ago
- nbzso 5y agoLet's focus on fixing the bullshit of web2, if we want a real change. Distributed systems are the future, but call me a "skeptic", for me blockchain stuff is not prerequisite for this change. We don't need to introduce another layer of complexity and vector for abuse. We just need one big infrastructural change - to remove our dependency of big and centralized silos of cloud computing. Do it and put on top of it <whatever marketing lingo you want>.:)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- brandonmenc 5y agoSo if I want to rent a Ferrari, now I need quarter million dollars lying around and also be fine with locking it up for the duration of the rental. And this is all a smart contract, so if there's a bug and I lose my quarter mil, tough luck. This proposed system is worse in all ways compared to the current system of laws and insurance that facilitate affordable, mostly friction-free rentals.
- hbosch 5y agoWhat would stop someone from loaning guns out on this distributed library? Would loaning guns like this be an issue? I'm not trying to troll the discussion, I'm honestly curious. In the case of "peer to peer" loaning it sounds to me like insurance and liability are kind of important. If I loan out a laptop to you, and you put malware on that laptop, and I take it back and loan it out to others who then get compromised somehow... how do I explain to authorities that it's not my fault? Or in maybe a more realistic sense let's say I want to be a Very Good Guy and loan out my car. You put up the "reasonable value" of my car + 10% as collateral and I loan it to you, and it gets impounded. Now we both are out a car and our collateral is locked up, and neither of us wants to nuke the contract but neither of us can agree on who should pay the towing company. How does that resolve itself?
- jmull 5y agoIt seems like there is some risk around the timing of when the contract goes into effect vs when the physical good is delivered. If the contract is signed before Lisa hands over the $10 item, she has leverage over Bob because she’s on the hook for $5 and he’s on the hook for $15. If Lisa hands over the item before the contract is signed, she might have just given Bob the item. There needs to be a mechanism outside the contract to make this work… and if there’s such a mechanism, maybe it can handle the whole thing, so I’m not sure what the importance of the Junto contract itself is.
- joosters 5y agoThe ‘how it works’ example is terrible. Bob can borrow $10 but he first needs to loan $15 to the smart contract? That makes no sense at all: if he had $15 spare, he wouldn’t need to borrow $10 in the first place!
- UncleEntity 5y agoBob is borrowing a $10 item so he and the lender (Lisa?) put $20 between them into a smart contract until Bob’s tired of the item then the $20 goes to GreenPeace or whoever. Minus gas fees. Or maybe GreenPeace only gets the money if Bob makes off with Lisa’s blender and they both get their money back if the blender gets returned, dunno?
- satellites 5y agoMaybe it's the Silicon Valley (HBO) joke about how every startup says they're "making the world a better place," but dramatic titles like this make me automatically roll my eyes. Reading further, it seems like this is the crypto equivalent of a 3rd party service holding money in escrow while a rental agreement is carried out? Or in other words, this is crypto-enabled-rentals without the human 3rd party between owner and renter. I doubt that any average people are ever going to use this. It's a neat thought experiment, but it's a tall order to even get your average neighbor to understand how it works. And like most crypto spaces, I predict it will be dominated by a small amount of superusers, and will be prone to bugs and hidden exploits (lots of those in the smart contract world) which will deter even tech-savvy people from trying it. Cool idea, but I'm not holding my breath.
- afavour 5y agoI feel like I’m going nuts whenever I read about “web3” stuff like this. The article suggests that you could use a “web3” library to lend out a car. Later, it describes how lending is secured: > So let’s imagine Lisa wants to lend Bob her $10 item. > What if Lisa could send Bob a smart contract that asks Bob to deposit $15 in the contract? > This means that Bob would never be incentivized to steal the item, because he would lose more than the item is worth. So if I want to borrow someone’s car I’d presumably have to send them money exceeding the value of the car itself? If I want to rent someone’s spare room I’d have to place a deposit worth more than the room and every item within it? This stuff is so confusing to me because it seems to be solving the wrong problem. The difficult problem with lending someone something isn’t knowing that I’ll get it back: if they steal it I can call the police. Or I can get insurance, like Airbnb offers hosts. Or, hell, take the same principle and just get rid of the smart contract part: want to rent my car? Give me $20,000 for a few days. A startup offering that service would fall flat on its face but because crypto is involved somehow the idea is valid. The difficult part is the actual meatspace stuff like coordinating meeting with the person to hand it over. The article promises that I can “upload your items to Junto and let them make money for you while you sleep” but my expensive kitchenware item isn’t going to ship itself over to someone else’s kitchen. (also: maybe a minor aside in the grand scheme of things but describing this as a library feels particularly cringeworthy: libraries are free at the point of delivery and are a great societal good. What’s described here is “Airbnb for stuff”)
- taberiand 5y agoI've found when it comes to crypto, you're not crazy - it just really is that dumb.
- pmoncada 5y agoI think a lot of people are put off when they hear the “buzzword” web3. And that’s with good reason, it is a marketing term, and it can be used as smoke and mirrors tricks for things with no real utility. I don’t think this is the case here, smart contracts actually provide a very valuable service for this use case! The important thing to note is that these rental agreements usually cost a lot of money and logistics that are being made much more convenient using ethereum Re: Your example about the car — you would likely never lend out a car to someone you have 0 trust in. But you might keep some deposit just in case something happens, just like a regular rental service would. Automating that for people is very useful in my opinion! Logistical issues will get better over time, but this suffers from the same logistics problem as Facebook marketplace, Craigslist, etc. and these services are extremely popular Re: describing it as a library vs Airbnb — I think a library is a useful description of this. We are trying to be closer to a protocol service for people to create a library with their friends and lend things out to people. I don’t see the issue with using “library” vs “Airbnb for stuff”
- reflect 5y agoThis is an interesting thought experiment. Unfortunately i don't think this removes all the friction of having to add your items, writing descriptions, photos, getting things picked up or shipped. the author agrees there are inherent problems in this model like what happens when things break or come back damaged, how much wear is acceptable, etc. but the magic contract is the solution, and the nuke option seems like it would need to be used heavily to solve disputes. a peer to peer rent-a-center sounds cool in theory but not sure how it holds up at scale.
- moxel 5y agoLooks to me like Bob would end up with Lisa's item and a tax-deductible donation when he nukes the contract.
- kristjansson 5y agoThis controls reasonably well for the risk of theft, but fails to provide any security for damage/loss/failure to deliver/etc. It's nice to know that your counterparty is incentivized to act well - it's much, much better to know that you will be made whole in case something goes wrong, intentionally or not.
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