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In most discussions around the decentralized apps of the future I fail to get any good answers who is actually paying for the compute power and who is maintaini

by beders 5y ago

In most discussions around the decentralized apps of the future I fail to get any good answers who is actually paying for the compute power and who is maintaining it. In short: who is paying for the Ramen? Let's take a multi-user chatting app. The compute power necessary to serve 1000 users is X. Running this costs us $Y. Now we distribute this app, having the same features, I now need to spend X plus the overhead of storing data on-chain plus - likely - extra network hops since my users form a peer2peer network of sorts amounting to $Z. So now the cost is $Y + $Z: Who is paying for that?

giantrobot 5y ago
Don't you see? The blockchain crypto will disrupt the centralized gatekeepers! Then the crypto tokens will fund early adopters. Clearly new AI paradigms will foster the synergy needed for peer to peer decentralized finance. Combined with augmented VR it'll create a self perpetuating network effect. It's really almost too simple.
- qaq 5y ago
  you did not mention metaverse (_)
- suction 5y ago
  The idea that there are organised "gatekeepers" holding down humanity is nothing but a thinly veiled layer over "the zionists who control everything". This is just the tech-version of this evil old conspiracy theory that'll end up, without fail, blaming a race / religious group for all that's allegedly wrong with the world.
  - CuriousCosmic 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure that's the point. It's a very tongue in cheek/sarcastic "blockchain will liberate us and save all our problems" comment parroting what you hear a lot of less informed & overly zealous individuals claim.
mattdesl 5y ago
Web3 isn’t about to replace text messaging tech, at least not yet. A more apt example that exists already is a digital art marketplace[1]. The burden of maintenance for the media lies on the users (those publishing & collecting the assets), and hosting is done in a peer to peer manner through IPFS[2]. The maintenance for the site (servers, indexing) can be funded & incentivized through (for example) a small % cut on all trades as a maintenance fee. In an ideal platform, these fees would be directed to a wallet that is collaboratively controlled by a number of shareholders who have an interest in continuing to support the project. Most importantly though, and one of the core aspects that tends to be lost in these discussions, is that the assets themselves are typically decentralized. If the platform fails or a fork is desirable (eg: community wants a different direction than the original founders), the assets still live on the blockchain, and a new platform can easily emerge on top of the same data if there is enough interest. This is where you get the idea of “users own their data, and websites must compete to display/facilitate it”—a radically different paradigm than what we have seen in the past. [1] - https://restofworld.org/2021/inside-brazils-diy-nft-art-marketplace/ https://restofworld.org/2021/inside-brazils-diy-nft-art-mark... [2] - https://gist.github.com/mattdesl/47f4ea12ea131eed8401bdacf95a1f47 https://gist.github.com/mattdesl/47f4ea12ea131eed8401bdacf95... (I believe this guide is outdated now as I haven’t been keeping up with their tech stacks, but it gets the point across)
meheleventyone 5y ago
From what I understand it’s the users. Right now if you want to run a smart contract on something like Ethereum you have to pay ‘gas’ which is the cost of execution on the VM and on top of that you have to tip the miner who ends up executing the code. A bigger tip gets you priority. A more complex piece of code that needs to be executed sooner is more expensive. I’d guess for something like real-time chat you’d want another chain that could resolve transactions much faster and cheaper than Ethereum could and would have to buy their tokens to use it. Then hope that speculators don’t push up the price until using it for the intended purpose is in feasible.
- panarky 5y ago
  > on top of that you have to tip the miner Ethereum gas is the miner fee, they're not two separate things. More compute-intensive transactions cost more gas, and the price of gas is set in the market by supply and demand.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    This is how it used to be from what I understand of it and changed in August after "the London upgrade". A quick google took me here which explains it: https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/gas/ https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/gas/

by beders 5y ago

giantrobot 5y ago

Don't you see? The blockchain crypto will disrupt the centralized gatekeepers! Then the crypto tokens will fund early adopters. Clearly new AI paradigms will foster the synergy needed for peer to peer decentralized finance. Combined with augmented VR it'll create a self perpetuating network effect. It's really almost too simple.

qaq 5y ago
you did not mention metaverse (_)
suction 5y ago
The idea that there are organised "gatekeepers" holding down humanity is nothing but a thinly veiled layer over "the zionists who control everything". This is just the tech-version of this evil old conspiracy theory that'll end up, without fail, blaming a race / religious group for all that's allegedly wrong with the world.
- CuriousCosmic 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure that's the point. It's a very tongue in cheek/sarcastic "blockchain will liberate us and save all our problems" comment parroting what you hear a lot of less informed & overly zealous individuals claim.

mattdesl 5y ago

Web3 isn’t about to replace text messaging tech, at least not yet. A more apt example that exists already is a digital art marketplace[1]. The burden of maintenance for the media lies on the users (those publishing & collecting the assets), and hosting is done in a peer to peer manner through IPFS[2]. The maintenance for the site (servers, indexing) can be funded & incentivized through (for example) a small % cut on all trades as a maintenance fee. In an ideal platform, these fees would be directed to a wallet that is collaboratively controlled by a number of shareholders who have an interest in continuing to support the project. Most importantly though, and one of the core aspects that tends to be lost in these discussions, is that the assets themselves are typically decentralized. If the platform fails or a fork is desirable (eg: community wants a different direction than the original founders), the assets still live on the blockchain, and a new platform can easily emerge on top of the same data if there is enough interest. This is where you get the idea of “users own their data, and websites must compete to display/facilitate it”—a radically different paradigm than what we have seen in the past. [1] - https://restofworld.org/2021/inside-brazils-diy-nft-art-marketplace/ https://restofworld.org/2021/inside-brazils-diy-nft-art-mark... [2] - https://gist.github.com/mattdesl/47f4ea12ea131eed8401bdacf95a1f47 https://gist.github.com/mattdesl/47f4ea12ea131eed8401bdacf95... (I believe this guide is outdated now as I haven’t been keeping up with their tech stacks, but it gets the point across)

meheleventyone 5y ago

From what I understand it’s the users. Right now if you want to run a smart contract on something like Ethereum you have to pay ‘gas’ which is the cost of execution on the VM and on top of that you have to tip the miner who ends up executing the code. A bigger tip gets you priority. A more complex piece of code that needs to be executed sooner is more expensive. I’d guess for something like real-time chat you’d want another chain that could resolve transactions much faster and cheaper than Ethereum could and would have to buy their tokens to use it. Then hope that speculators don’t push up the price until using it for the intended purpose is in feasible.

panarky 5y ago
> on top of that you have to tip the miner Ethereum gas is the miner fee, they're not two separate things. More compute-intensive transactions cost more gas, and the price of gas is set in the market by supply and demand.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  This is how it used to be from what I understand of it and changed in August after "the London upgrade". A quick google took me here which explains it: https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/gas/ https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/gas/