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Ask HN: What Is the “HN” of “Web3”, Crypto, DeFi, NFT, etc
These technologies have mindshare and will be part of our world’s future. As an engineer, where can I read about these technologies discussed regularly, so I can learn & understand through exposure? Is HN that venue? (If not, why not? What are the boundaries of our bubble here). I’m interested in the tech/practical applications, as opposed to the hype/emotion.
- spir 5y agoTwitter is extremely important in the crypto industry. But, twitter isn't just the "HN" of crypto. r/ethereum may be closer to the HN of crypto. In crypto, Twitter is the town square, the watering hole, the stadium, the newspaper, the social club, and so much more. It's very hard to overstate the importance of twitter to the crypto industry.
- nyxaiur 5y agoIt's also the asylum there is not much of worthy discussion anywhere around the web. It's just false gospel and get rich quick schemes. If you really want information look at the white papers and they tell you a damming story.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- vibrato2 5y agoNothing, those guys aren’t nearly as sensitive and attention seeking as hners
- shiftoutbox 5y agoReality here: stop trying to promote your nonsense. Tune out log off zone out ….
- TigeriusKirk 5y agoHN has collectively decided not to be that venue. I doubt that's going to change any time soon. It's a newsletter blurb-and-link format, but Week In Ethereum is a great resource for keeping up with a lot of what's happening. From the core ethereum development to defi and nft techs to some broader social and legal issues, that newsletter keeps you up to date. https://weekinethereum.substack.com/ https://weekinethereum.substack.com/
- havkd 5y agoReddit I guess but you’ll have to comb through the hype
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hh3k0 5y ago> I’m interested in the tech/practical applications, as opposed to the hype/emotion. https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-good-reason-to-trust-blockchain-technology/ https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-good-reason-to-trust-b... (Wired paywall can be circumvented with: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome)
- qeternity 5y agoTwitter is going to be the best resource to discover projects, and DYOR Wiki (https://dyor-crypto.fandom.com/ https://dyor-crypto.fandom.com/) is really good to get plain english understanding and history of various projects. To understand technically, you'll need to read docs or code.
- 0x64 5y agoHN has a hateboner for cryptos, which most of the time is based on purely illogical assumptions of tech they have no understanding of. Reddit is fine, but it heavily depends on what you want. r/ethdev is good if you're interested in creating something, and r/ethfinance for quality discussion focused on what you can do on Ethereum.
- radicalbyte 5y agoIt's not that - it's that a lot of us remember the time the bubble burst in 2000 and cryptocurrencies are in a very similar place right now. There are also a lot of us who are strongly against Proof of Work because it is not only extremely inefficient, it is also extremely irresponsible in the face of Climate Change. PoS will solve that - but like nuclear fusion, it is always a year away.
- anaisbetts 5y agoYep, seconded. I would find cryptocurrency and NFTs merely amusing or maybe even interesting, if it weren't doing the environmental equivalent of dumping out N gallons of gasoline per transaction and setting it on fire
- 0x64 5y agoI agree about the energy use of PoW. On Ethereum, the PoS beacon chain has been live for almost a year now [1], with the merging of the PoW and PoS networks happening next year. We're now at the point where the specs for the merge transition are ready [2], clients are already being modified to target the release-spec [3], and the first long-lived testnet will go live by December. I'd personally expect the Merge to happen by May. [1] https://beaconcha.in https://beaconcha.in [2] https://github.com/ethereum/annotated-spec/blob/master/merge/beacon-chain.md https://github.com/ethereum/annotated-spec/blob/master/merge... [3] https://notes.ethereum.org/@djrtwo/kintsugi-milestones https://notes.ethereum.org/@djrtwo/kintsugi-milestones
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nyxaiur 5y ago
- carlosdp 5y agoHonestly, most of us are on Twitter right now, that's the best place to see discussions at the moment. I try to optimize for higher signal rather than hype, feel free to look at who I follow and build out from there: https://twitter.com/the_carlosdp/following https://twitter.com/the_carlosdp/following . HN isn't going to be that venue at the moment, seems pretty hostile to web3/crypto. That'll change eventually, but for now you gotta look elsewhere.
- davidmurdoch 5y agoI work in crypto as well (Consensys) but find that I enjoy the minor hostility towards crypto here on HN, as crypto Twitter sometimes looks like one giant circle jerk (or pub brawl if you find yourself on the "{insert-cryptocurrency-flavor-here} maximalist" side of the camp).
- carlosdp 5y agoI used to as well, but these days I find sorting through optimism much more useful than sorting through pessimism when building in the space. It's much more fruitful to talk down someone buying too much hype and learning the one component that maybe isn't hype than arguing with someone on HN that is stuck in 2017 and still thinks there's absolutely no value in web3/crypto tech.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago> as crypto Twitter sometimes looks like one giant circle jerk (or pub brawl if you find yourself on the "{insert-cryptocurrency-flavor-here} maximalist" side of the camp). Strongly agree. It’s hard to find anyone honestly discussing crypto things on Twitter because any mention of a project or currency becomes a magnet for low-effort pump efforts. Saying anything negative results in weird, low-effort pile ons and attacks. It’s also just plain boring. Everyone is posting “how NFTs will change _____” threads now that don’t even make sense. That’s because they’re not interested in actually using NFTs, they’re only interested in collecting followers and “selling shovels” in the latest iteration of the crypto gold rush.
- TigeriusKirk 5y ago
- pcthrowaway 5y agoI'd really like this as well, I haven't been able to find anything besides discord, cryptopanic, and subreddits. And there's a lot more noise to cut through in the space than on Hacker News
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- yokem55 5y agoOn reddit, r/ethfinance is a good, well moderated resource from the user perspective. From there once you find a particular protocol niche you are interested in, the community discords for each app are also frequently quite informative and helpful. As for HN, the conversations here bring in a lot of folks that have a very low opinion of crypto assets in general, so that makes it harder to have more detailed conversations about the underlying technology.
- tayo42 5y agoWhat's the positive opinion/perspective of crypto thats missing? Maybe like a tldr of this opposite view point?
- yokem55 5y agoIt's less that the positives are not represented it's that it's difficult to get into the finer details of a protocol if (just as an example) you are hung up arguing whether proof is stake is good or not.
- DocFeind 5y agoI look at this aggregator https://cryptopanic.com/ https://cryptopanic.com/ daily to see a bit of the blockchain buzz. Rather basic, but there is a decent bit of discussion and a variety of sources I don't get from reddit/twitter or MSM sites.
- skinnyasianboi 5y agohttps://cryptopanic.com/ https://cryptopanic.com/ is good. I have build something similar with a slightly different approach https://coindodo.io/ https://coindodo.io/
- DocFeind 5y agointeresting, i'm adding it to my list of skim for news food spot
- SimonDorfman 5y agoWould you consider adding an RSS feed? I tried adding it to Feedly and it didn’t find an RSS feed.
- shoto_io 5y agoHave you checked-out this: https://gm.xyz https://gm.xyz
- 0x008 5y agoI think there is no such thing as HN for a lot of different domains. Apart from the technical aspect, also politically and philosophically the discussions here are on a very high level I have not been exposed to anywhere else on the internet. However, HN seems to be in large anti-crypto, so I think you will not be exposed here to anything "bleeding edge", more like major news. Also I have not seen any Show HN or similar of people developing applications for the crypto space. So I have been asking myself the same question as you. There are a lot of websites with great resources for crypto (similar to the regular finance world, the amount of free websites with good information is substantial). There are also some really good substack newsletters (however, some of the writers are invested, so I take their information with a grain of salt). But there is no forum or similar venue that I know of where actual users or contributors discuss or share experiences (except for some discord servers maybe).
- honkdaddy 5y agoPhilosophically and politically, there's some really great discussion on LessWrong, though it definitely leans hard into the rationalist/AI-philosophy realm. Check it out and see if it tickles the same fancy as HN, though I'll admit that in my case, absolutely no community beats this site.
- tata71 5y agoI recall finding out that billions were being transferred on DEXs and being upset that I'd never seen one posted to HN!
- Jasper_ 5y ago> I’m interested in the tech/practical applications I've studied this for about ten years, and came to the conclusion there is none, other than crazy financial structures and mechanisms that make the 2008 subprime mortgage scandal look like a Fischer-Price toy. If you find an interesting, practical application for anything blockchain or cryptocurrency, please let me know as well.
- SkyMarshal 5y ago> other than crazy financial structures and mechanisms that make the 2008 subprime mortgage scandal look like a Fischer-Price toy. Funny, my impression is the opposite. Blockchain and DeFi are still quite limited in what they can do relative to what’s going on Wall St. It’s the blockchain stuff that’s still a toy. A novel and fun toy, but still comparatively a toy. Also fwiw, so far cryptocurrency is a debtless financial system, since without identity you can’t have credit ratings or any way of enforcing repayment. So a 2008-style credit collapse is impossible. It’s highly volatile of course, but at least not subject to a GFC or Great Depression style credit collapse. (There are flash loans, but those loans are made and repaid instantly in the same smart contract, and if they can’t repaid then the smart contract fails and the loan was never made. I don’t think a buildup of risk similar 2008 can happen with those)
- VHRanger 5y agoUh, there's a ton of leverage in the ecosystem. Even DeFi creates gigantic leverage while being "debtless" - the typical usecase for DeFi is just financial leverage: - have BTC you lock up, get a stablecoins in exchange - buy volatile crypto with stablecoins - voila! You're leveraged You can see this very easily in how the Total Value Locked in various protocols is essentially an index of the price of Bitcoin
- SkyMarshal 5y agoI should clarify, I don’t consider stablecoins to be decentralized nor cryptocurrency. So when I say “cryptocurrency is a debtless financial system”, I’m not referring to stablecoins, but only to the decentralized and trustless components of the overall ecosystem. Most stablecoins are run by a centralized, trusted third party maintaining a dubious peg to the centralized USD and will probably get taken down by some Soros breaking-the-pound style attack eventually. But Bitcoin and most other major cryptocurrencies predate stablecoins, and will survive them. Additionally, most of the collateralized DeFi leverage schemes you reference require over-collateralization. Since no identity makes margin calls impossible, effectively the margin call is done up front as a contingency in the form of over-collateralization. A debtless, over-collateralized financial system is an interesting case study in financial in/stability. It’s certainly a different beast from the traditional financial system.
- PragmaticPulp 5y agoTwitter seems to be the go-to place for these discussions. Partly because many of the web3 participants are actively trying to build communities around themselves that they can leverage in their crypto activities. There isn’t much interest in anonymous discussions. Frankly, there’s not really any interest in honest discussions because the participants have all realized that telling people exactly what they want to hear and hinting that they can get rich is a golden way to collect a lot of Twitter followers right now. Many of the big personalities are launching expensive crypto courses or NFTs and they need a lot of true believer followers to sell to. The challenge with web3 is that almost nobody is actually using web3 for anything other than doing more web3 speculation. That makes this virtually impossible to find this: > I’m interested in the tech/practical applications, as opposed to the hype/emotion. Even the people discussing the potential practical applications aren’t the people who are using it. The people talking about it are the people trying to sell it or speculate on it.
- DoreenMichele 5y agoI don't think there is anything else quite like HN. I sometimes wish I knew how to better find certain things here or something. I don't really want tags or silos. I'm not great at searching the site. Given how often questions exactly like this post show up here, I'm clearly not the only one who wishes they could find HN-like discussion for a specific subject area. I'm bothering to make this comment in hopes that one of two things will happen: 1. Someone will give me a solution for how to more readily find what I want on HN. 2. Someone will create some kind of tech solution in response to seeing this observation.
- ALittleLight 5y agoI'm not sure this is exactly what you're looking for, or possibly you already know about this, but I always use algolia when searching hackernews (make sure to select search by comment if you want discussion). https://hn.algolia.com/ https://hn.algolia.com/
- DoreenMichele 5y agoI'm familiar with it. One of my interests is medical information. You can't put "medical" into it and have the latest "premium" articles come up. I would love an easy way to readily find recent active discussions and articles with high karma for medical topics. But you have to search on words that were actually used in the title. And that's kind of a variation of the question in this post. If there was an easy way to find "crypto related articles and discussion" right here on HN then you wouldn't need to ask "What other forum can I go to?" I've been on HN more than a decade. It's bigger than it used to be and a lot happens here. It's easy to miss out on a lot of things pertinent to your interests. I don't know of an easy fix for that.
- 0x008 5y agoI just use the search, filter by date and then I find the most recent information regarding topic or website xy.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
- timdaub 5y agoHey, I share your quest for finding the HN of "Web3". I've long been on CryptoTwitter but I've decided that I don't want to spent a lot of time on Twitter anymore. Since then, I've tried to understand where there could be a technical and philosophical community of tech+crypto people on the internet. - HN is full of haters, sadly - everything on reddit is slightly too non-technical and hype mentality - I haven't found a low noise Discord server - I haven't found a good hacker news clone either. - CT is too self-important I don't strictly want to have this totally crypto-biased community either. I'm in the camp of "'yes' to crypto but I'm critical". For the last year or so, I've simply started to foster my own community. I write a blog on crypto that you may like: https://timdaub.github.io/ https://timdaub.github.io/ My headlines are kinda clickbaity but I think they're legitbait :) Check it! I'd be up for starting a proper crypto community. I even have reserved a name for it: neoactuary.com. I checked out the lobster code base and I think it'd be a good fit too. But those things take ages to get established: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters
- Jasper_ 5y agoMaybe that nobody seems to have interesting conversations about it is a clue that it just isn't that interesting, actually.
- 0des 5y agoThe problem is the financial component. The ones who concern themselves with price drive away the ones who concern themselves with tech.
- timdaub 5y agoI think there's super interesting conversations to be had on e.g. how crypto currencies could influence our society. They're dramatically mind blowing. Even if you're not into the technology, I think simply from a rhetoric point of view, it'd be interesting to take a deeper dive into the space and explore topics not widely discussed elsewhere. Case in point - "Blockchains never forget": https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/05/25/blockchains-never-forget/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/05/25/blockchains-never-forg... - https://blog.simondlr.com/posts/decentralized-autonomous-artists https://blog.simondlr.com/posts/decentralized-autonomous-art... - https://www.notboring.co/p/crypto-bezos https://www.notboring.co/p/crypto-bezos - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1Z5BnBuFyE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1Z5BnBuFyE Potential others are: - https://www.untitledfrontier.studio/ https://www.untitledfrontier.studio/ - https://molochpilled.substack.com/ https://molochpilled.substack.com/ - https://vitalik.ca/ https://vitalik.ca/
- jamesgreenleaf 5y agoI don't know if there is one yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if a successful accelerator DAO emerges. People here always say the value of YC is in the network, and that may translate well to a decentralized model.
- devwastaken 5y agoTech forums on the internet have heavily declined in quality. Reddit took up a lot of communities that would have been independent otherwise, and over time the original mods of those communities gave control to heavily unqualified individuals whom abuse their positions for pleasure and profit. I would imagine where Bitcoin started would be one of them, perhaps there's references to other communities there. Sometimes discords are good but still suffer from bad management.
- timdaub 5y ago> Tech forums on the internet have heavily declined in quality. it's true. Nowadays all websites you're supposed to visit daily are "background-color: white" and owned by Facebook. From its wild days, the internet has become pretty boring.
- vimy 5y agohttps://mobile.twitter.com/magdalenakala/status/1457017007195361284 https://mobile.twitter.com/magdalenakala/status/145701700719...
- SkyMarshal 5y agoI believe you’re looking for https://ethresear.ch/ https://ethresear.ch/. Ethereum research discussions. That covers Web3, DeFi, NFT, etc. “Crypto” in your list is more broad and can also include the Development & Research sub forum of Bitcointalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=6.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=6.0 Beyond those, find the “Community” sections of the specific projects you care about. They’ll usually have either a forum or a Discord or a Telegram.
- timdaub 5y ago> I believe you’re looking for https://ethresear.ch/ https://ethresear.ch/. ethresear.ch is definitely a really great tip for technically minded people. Seconded!
- carlosdp 5y agoIt's a great forum, but it's wayyyy more technical than HN. Anyone just trying to keep up with what's being built will get lost in casual zero knowledge math very quickly.
- SkyMarshal 5y agoIf you want to learn, you’ve gotta get down into the weeds. HN used to be more like that, and still is in some threads.
- newsbinator 5y agoThe only communities that are "like" HN seem to be HN and rationalist ones, like Astral Codex, LessWrong, etc. At least as far as I've found. /r/medicine is also pretty interesting, albeit more diffuse. You have to be a certain kind of person and a certain kind of commenter to benefit from the kinds of rules and norms we have here. We reward curiosity and heavily penalize single-layer jokes and memes. But unlike heavily moderated subreddits, we also value quality asides and off-topic branches, so long as, again, they reflect curiosity. Perhaps the biggest blocker to HN-like communities for other fields is we're allowed to be wrong on the internet. And we're allowed to point it out, correct each other, and gratefully accept corrections. HN & Rationalist groups can accept and integrate new information, and we can accept that some people are misinformed or having a bad day, and that they're not malicious or trolls. Whereas in most online communities you can be either "right" or you can be gone.
- timdaub 5y agowell said. I think those are the things I appreciate about communities like HN, Astral Codex and others too!
- M0r13n 5y agoThe fact that you can find little on this subject on HN speaks for itself. There are many clever minds here and I have followed by far the most witty discussions on various topics on this platform. Whenever the topic of cryptocurrencies comes up, substantial concerns are expressed about the technology and its added value for society and the financial system. At the same time, I don't get the sense that this is unfounded reluctance. Rather, fundamental questions reveal themselves upon closer examination. And the participants in the discussion are in best of company. Many smart people have expressed concerns about crypto currencies in the past (e.g. Bjarne Stroustrup or Waren Buffet to name a few). I have the feeling that the vast majority of cryptocurrency advocates have no idea about the matter themselves. They are simply spreading slogans on Reddit and Twitter proclaiming the next big hype. I think that's one of the reasons why you can find so little neutral and highly qualitative information on the subject - there is none.
- tata71 5y agoWhat's the age of a HN reader?
- fragmede 5y agoThe same logic applied to the vast, often contradictory, purportedly science-based quantity of diet tips and the ilk, such as the health benefits of red wine and chocolate, would lead you to believe we know nothing about what a human body needs to survive. Online public discussions of cryptocurrency never get past the stage of "is crypto even real?", so it's no wonder that discussions have moved to private Discords and invite-only subreddits. If, every time you tried to ask an in-depth question that would get an informational, insightful, and highly qualitative answer, and the majority of replies are of the level "hurr durr your question is teh stupids and you're an idiot for thinking about this", wouldn't you move away from the public eye? Questions like: how does Bitcoin need to change in order to operate on an interplanetary scale (aka Mars' transmission delay)? or How best can a proof of work system be designed to be resilient to quantum computing? Both those questions are actively being worked on and have interesting answers, though they are few and far between, but that doesn't mean they aren't being worked on. The people doing the work are too busy doing the work to talk about it, and the dilettantes are too busy repeating half-truths to each other for there to be the answers you seek on Twitter.
- capnorange 5y agoIf you are an optimist, HN is not the right place to have a "pro" discussion imo. I will outline products that i'm most excited about or use regularly . 1. Decentralized exchanges: Uniswap.org, projectserum.com. 2. Stablecoins, especially USDC. I get paid for my consulting in USD from US to India with a tx fee of $0.00025 on Solana. I'm saving a lot compared to using PP/Payoneer. 3. Supporting artists I love with NFT on foundation/ opensea/magic eden(for some reason I never did this before although there are web2 sites for it). 4. Generate yield on your stable coins. I wont mention apps here since they are new and have some smart contract risks to it, DYOR. 5. Creator monetisation using unlock-protocol.com and mirror.xyz. 6. Play to earn models in games(Axie infinity and Aurory). 7. Internet native experiments on inclusive sybil resistant identities(proofofhumanity.id) 8. Crypto powered infrastructure networks (helium.com) 9. Inflation resistant currency/Digital gold(Bitcoin & lightning network). 10. Censorship resistant social media.
- clay-dreidels 5y agoGreat question. I recently created a decentralized website to help spread best security practices in this space. I have a lot of information to share, but I'm trying to figure out how to publish the content, as I haven't done a lot of web development yet. https://unstoppabledomains.com/search?searchTerm=evilmaid.crypto&searchRef=header https://unstoppabledomains.com/search?searchTerm=evilmaid.cr... Here is a IPFS link to the website. https://abbfe6z95qov3d40hf6j30g7auo7afhp.mypinata.cloud/ipfs/Qmaf6KcqBeghsTpsNxy93pxMCKuHXQjcPGHtrTSCSQzwUm/?id=&page= https://abbfe6z95qov3d40hf6j30g7auo7afhp.mypinata.cloud/ipfs... Using a Web3 browser. https://evilmaid.crypto/ https://evilmaid.crypto/
- ohCh6zos 5y agoCrypto for me has become the opposite of the fun hack and try ethos. It's the opposite of most open source in that it is pay to play. I can't clone a repo and play around with something. I almost always need to buy some token. It's the commodification of hacking and it isn't fun so I don't participate.
- tata71 5y agoI'm going to make a fortune after seeing code I liked in my favorite token's repo(s). That's... I don't know, maybe just watch Mr. Robot?
- ohCh6zos 5y agoI'm happy you're going to make a fortune, but it's not what I want out of life. How is second related, I don't follow?
- addandsubtract 5y agoYou can clone most projects, develop new ones locally and use test networks without spending a dime. Here's a page to get you started: https://ethereum.org/en/developers/local-environment/ https://ethereum.org/en/developers/local-environment/
- ohCh6zos 5y agoI didn't know anything about this, that's really cool.
- timdaub 5y ago- /r/ethdev is sometimes OK
- ksec 5y agoI am much more interested in DAS, Decentralized Account Systems where the web would no longer requires a signup before anything to work. It should just "work". And it seems Shopify, Stripe and even Cloudflare are all hiring a team on Web3. I dont understand Crypto, NFT or DeFi, but I see DAS as an important piece of puzzle on the web.
- newacc9 5y agoThe answer to every question like this is twitter and podcasts. https://vitalik.ca/ https://vitalik.ca/ https://twitter.com/DocumentEther https://twitter.com/DocumentEther https://old.reddit.com/r/defi/ https://old.reddit.com/r/defi/ https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=raoul+pal+ethereum https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=raoul+pal+ether... Just code some smart contracts on the testnet after you've absorbed the basics.
- fab1an 5y agoCrypto Twitter is your best bet, though of course it's completely different to HN in how its content is organized. From there, it's a huge number of individual communities centered on different DeFi products on Discord. The problem with DeFi is that there's a lot of spam and shilling, making it extremely hard to have a more centralized forum like HN.
- kranke155 5y agohttps://twitter.com/lefterisjp?s=21 https://twitter.com/lefterisjp?s=21