5 ms·

I invite you all to open your eyes a little. Sure, NFTs are a little ridiculous... but there's an evolving marriage between crypto and IPFS which I find very ex

by fny 5y ago

I invite you all to open your eyes a little. Sure, NFTs are a little ridiculous... but there's an evolving marriage between crypto and IPFS which I find very exciting. We've all been complaining about the dangers of centralization, censorship, and impermanence on the modern web for years, and now there's billions flowing into an absolutely ridiculous application of decentralized tech. Crypto is currently a very expensive toy, but I think there's immense opportunity for those who can help it mature. Edit: If you're still arguing about whether NFTs are useful or cypto is currency, you're missing the point. We have a new substrate. It's fun, it's interesting. Go play! And yes, paying millions for a jpeg is dumb.

packetlost 5y ago
Sure. Let me know when crypto isn't consuming the energy of a mid-sized nation and then we'll talk.
- motioncuty 5y ago
  Then can you appreciate take about the non energy abusing blockchains or will you paint them all with the same brush?
  - packetlost 5y ago
    blockchain as a mechanism for doing things that are not financial speculation, scams, energy-waste-machines, etc., sure. IPFS seems like a legitimately interesting concept, as do many other things you could have on a blockchain like identity management. I want to be clear here: cryptocurrencies and blockchain are both not the same thing and should not be talked about in the same way.
serverholic 5y ago
Personally, I believe in the long-term applications of crypto and NFTs. The NFT craze is weird but if it leads to mass adoption then fine by me. I'm more interested in things like CityDAO where you can buy land and get a city-minted NFT that represents land ownership.
- zkldi 5y ago
  And who determines who can distribute those NFTs? Can I mint my own land ownership token? Obviously not, which means there's still a centralised authority on who owns what. The game client could just change how it interprets address 0x32c12... as a plot of land and point it somewhere entirely different. This is still completely centralised! The client for the game still has to explicitly only acknowledge a set of NFTs. Why do you even need the blockchain when the client already has a hardcoded list of NFTs it's willing to accept? An SQL database, some APIs for trading, and the same set of things you can buy solve the problem infinitely more efficiently.
  - serverholic 5y ago
    I'm not talking about a video game. I'm talking about real-life land. The answer to your first question is in the name. The city would run via a DAO and there will be some sort of democratic process that governs the city. Ran on the blockchain. Using the blockchain is important for a few reasons: 1. Infrastructure. Minting NFTs is an easy process and transferring ownership via an NFT transaction is super simple. The blockchain is the SQL database and it's already there ready to use. 2. Transparency. If I sell you my land via NFT then it's easy for others to verify. Same thing with the DAO that manages the city. People can see what the DAO is doing because it's all on the blockchain. People can raise a red flag if something looks wrong. 3. Efficiency. Running all of this via software is much more efficient than normal government processes and a higher level of automation is possible. Yes you could do this via SQL database but you sacrifice the above two points.
- nradov 5y ago
  What's the point of that? I can already buy land and get the title deed recorded by the county. It works fine.
unclebucknasty 5y ago
>We've all been complaining about the dangers of centralization, censorship, and impermanence on the modern web This a social/economic problem, not a technological one. The Internet itself is built on open protocols and could well be decentralized. Instead we've allowed corporations to build walled gardens on top of it. Blockchains won't magically solve this. They're just infrastructure, like a cloud database. From a meaningful decentralization perspective, it doesn't matter who's offering their computing resources to make it work. What matters is the applications and access points that are built on top of the infra. Like the modern Web, this is exactly where we'll see centralization, censorship, etc. happen. Again.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  And of course in the NFT space you already see this with the marketplaces and blacklisting NFTs.
danShumway 5y ago
If NFTs actually solved problems around centralization, FAANG companies wouldn't be interested in them. Twitter isn't promoting Mastodon, it's promoting NFTs. Reddit isn't opening up its APIs to 3rd parties, it's minting tokens. The fact that the same sites that centralized the web in the first place are interested in NFTs is strong evidence that they don't see NFTs as a threat to their control.
- fny 5y ago
  Stop being so fixated on NFTs. Think about the ecosystem. Think about how you could potentially use it to do something real. We actually have real money flowing into a space that no one ever cared about. There is new possibility here. Just brainstorm for a while. Maybe you get nowhere. Maybe you get somewhere. It's the wild west. Have fun, and stop being a grouch!
  - danShumway 5y ago
    > Think about the ecosystem. Again, if the ecosystem provided an opportunity for real decentralization, FAANG companies wouldn't be investing in it. I can brainstorm about federated technologies and Open clients that actually solve problems: Peertube, Mastodon, Nitter. I can brainstorm about legislation that actually opens up APIs and makes it easier to move data around. There is a ton of stuff to be excited about on the web, you don't need to waste your time trying to turn NFTs into something positive. There are already interesting things to invest time and money into. > We actually have real money flowing into a space that no one ever cared about We have real money flowing into a specific space that is fundamentally not designed to democratize the web, and that in some cases may actually be harmful to attempts to build real subversive technologies. Be more of a grouch about this, and focus your attention on efforts and paradigm shifts that have more potential. If the people running around having "fun" with NFTs took that energy and devoted it instead into exploring/developing more federated communities and technologies that actively repel centralization, we could radically transform the web.
bodge5000 5y ago
This would be more valid if crypto didn't start as something accessible by everyone (I remember many years ago mining bitcoin, successfully, on a macbook) and become an expensive toy over time. Sure, it might go back down to being a genuine decentralised currency as it was always meant to be, but the same could be said for the old currencies that became investment vehicles like gold. As for NFT's, I'm steering clear of them for now, but from what I know they're actually quite centralised, even though from a technical standpoint they don't have to be.
kall 5y ago
I actually agree about the fun new substrate part. It‘s a shame that was basically ruined by the huge value pop. If ethereum was 0.001 as valuable and thus could be x1000 more resource efficient and x1000 more affordable to build on, it would be neat. At this point the only thing that seems worth building are things to further pump value, and POW is a monster that we will not be able to get back into it‘s cage.
zemo 5y ago
the whole "centralization = bad, decentralization = good" argument strikes me as very half-baked. The assumption is that decentralization is inherently liberatory. That assumption isn't guaranteed. Every cryptocurrency that exist is built on the same fundamental principle: people with the most existing wealth (hash power in PoW, existing crypto in PoS, storage space in PoST) make the most income (whatever crypto in question). All cryptocurrency fundamentally is built on the basis of enriching the already-rich. Yes, cryptocurrency is decentralized, but decentralization alone is not a magical recipe for something being of benefit to all mankind. Take BAYC, for example. Tradeable membership to a "community" whose only significance is that you purchased membership into an ever-expensive community to belong to. We can say what the price of a membership is quite easily, but can we say what the value of that membership is? If the price of membership goes up, does that make the community "better"? It is decentralized, is it therefore good? The drug trade is decentralized, is it therefore good? In non-crypto assets, what percentage of wealth is owned by the top 1%? How about in crypto assets? as for IPFS: You put something on IPFS, what is the guarantee that it will continue to exist on IPFS? It's entirely consensual; there's no guarantee that such a thing will continue to exist on the network unless someone consents to store it. So if you want to actually deliver on that guarantee, what do you do, run an IPFS node that always hosts that file? Feels like you're back at square one, needing to run a server to guarantee that a given file continues to be available. Now, that's not to say IPFS isn't useful at all! It's very cool! The promise of duplicability and the way in which frequently-accessed data will be more widely replicated is incredibly fascinating on its own, and has tremendous value. I'm a server operator, so the notion of setting up a node to permanently host a particular item in IPFS doesn't bother me. But we shouldn't pretend that IPFS is a magic solution that guarantees the permanent storage of everything put on it. It's a nice addressing and content replication system. I'm really optimistic about the concept of NFTs in the long run, and about the applications of solutions to the double-spend problem generally. My pessimism is not in the concept of NFTs, it's in the concept of blockchains, which are fundamentally only capable of increasing inequality. The entire concept of what makes blockchains secure is "in order to attack it, you have to have a lot of wealth, so you'd be destroying your own wealth": the security paradigm is "a rich person would not elect to sacrifice their own riches". The entire system is based on this premise. When we have non-blockchain solutions to the double-spend problem, or NFTs that can be implemented without this promise of increasing inequality, I'll be excited about the space.
kmeisthax 5y ago
The problem is that the blockchain substrate you're talking about is actually a very poor fit for decentralized applications. Let's compare it to it's earliest predecessor technology: Git[0]. This is a very useful technology within the problem domain of how to store and synchronize source code repositories (although it's UI sucks). However, individual users still need to choose who to synchronize with and what commits to accept. What blockchains add are restrictions to this model that make sense for the problem domain of digital currency: namely, you need to burn energy in order to commit, and you have to follow specific validity rules in order for your commit to be valid. These rules are specifically crafted to ensure scarcity and control over the resource the blockchain ledger tracks. The problem is that most decentralized applications do not need a notion of scarcity. The whole damned point of P2P is to punish artificial scarcity. If I want to communicate to someone else over a decentralized network, I don't need a Sybil-resistant ledger to do so. I just need a private/public key pair and some means to match interested recipients and senders. Same with a lot of other decentralized use cases, which also don't need to be able to track scarce assets.

by fny 5y ago

packetlost 5y ago

Sure. Let me know when crypto isn't consuming the energy of a mid-sized nation and then we'll talk.

motioncuty 5y ago
Then can you appreciate take about the non energy abusing blockchains or will you paint them all with the same brush?
- packetlost 5y ago
  blockchain as a mechanism for doing things that are not financial speculation, scams, energy-waste-machines, etc., sure. IPFS seems like a legitimately interesting concept, as do many other things you could have on a blockchain like identity management. I want to be clear here: cryptocurrencies and blockchain are both not the same thing and should not be talked about in the same way.

serverholic 5y ago

Personally, I believe in the long-term applications of crypto and NFTs. The NFT craze is weird but if it leads to mass adoption then fine by me. I'm more interested in things like CityDAO where you can buy land and get a city-minted NFT that represents land ownership.

zkldi 5y ago
And who determines who can distribute those NFTs? Can I mint my own land ownership token? Obviously not, which means there's still a centralised authority on who owns what. The game client could just change how it interprets address 0x32c12... as a plot of land and point it somewhere entirely different. This is still completely centralised! The client for the game still has to explicitly only acknowledge a set of NFTs. Why do you even need the blockchain when the client already has a hardcoded list of NFTs it's willing to accept? An SQL database, some APIs for trading, and the same set of things you can buy solve the problem infinitely more efficiently.
- serverholic 5y ago
  I'm not talking about a video game. I'm talking about real-life land. The answer to your first question is in the name. The city would run via a DAO and there will be some sort of democratic process that governs the city. Ran on the blockchain. Using the blockchain is important for a few reasons: 1. Infrastructure. Minting NFTs is an easy process and transferring ownership via an NFT transaction is super simple. The blockchain is the SQL database and it's already there ready to use. 2. Transparency. If I sell you my land via NFT then it's easy for others to verify. Same thing with the DAO that manages the city. People can see what the DAO is doing because it's all on the blockchain. People can raise a red flag if something looks wrong. 3. Efficiency. Running all of this via software is much more efficient than normal government processes and a higher level of automation is possible. Yes you could do this via SQL database but you sacrifice the above two points.
nradov 5y ago
What's the point of that? I can already buy land and get the title deed recorded by the county. It works fine.

unclebucknasty 5y ago

>We've all been complaining about the dangers of centralization, censorship, and impermanence on the modern web This a social/economic problem, not a technological one. The Internet itself is built on open protocols and could well be decentralized. Instead we've allowed corporations to build walled gardens on top of it. Blockchains won't magically solve this. They're just infrastructure, like a cloud database. From a meaningful decentralization perspective, it doesn't matter who's offering their computing resources to make it work. What matters is the applications and access points that are built on top of the infra. Like the modern Web, this is exactly where we'll see centralization, censorship, etc. happen. Again.

meheleventyone 5y ago
And of course in the NFT space you already see this with the marketplaces and blacklisting NFTs.

danShumway 5y ago

If NFTs actually solved problems around centralization, FAANG companies wouldn't be interested in them. Twitter isn't promoting Mastodon, it's promoting NFTs. Reddit isn't opening up its APIs to 3rd parties, it's minting tokens. The fact that the same sites that centralized the web in the first place are interested in NFTs is strong evidence that they don't see NFTs as a threat to their control.

fny 5y ago
Stop being so fixated on NFTs. Think about the ecosystem. Think about how you could potentially use it to do something real. We actually have real money flowing into a space that no one ever cared about. There is new possibility here. Just brainstorm for a while. Maybe you get nowhere. Maybe you get somewhere. It's the wild west. Have fun, and stop being a grouch!
- danShumway 5y ago
  > Think about the ecosystem. Again, if the ecosystem provided an opportunity for real decentralization, FAANG companies wouldn't be investing in it. I can brainstorm about federated technologies and Open clients that actually solve problems: Peertube, Mastodon, Nitter. I can brainstorm about legislation that actually opens up APIs and makes it easier to move data around. There is a ton of stuff to be excited about on the web, you don't need to waste your time trying to turn NFTs into something positive. There are already interesting things to invest time and money into. > We actually have real money flowing into a space that no one ever cared about We have real money flowing into a specific space that is fundamentally not designed to democratize the web, and that in some cases may actually be harmful to attempts to build real subversive technologies. Be more of a grouch about this, and focus your attention on efforts and paradigm shifts that have more potential. If the people running around having "fun" with NFTs took that energy and devoted it instead into exploring/developing more federated communities and technologies that actively repel centralization, we could radically transform the web.

bodge5000 5y ago

This would be more valid if crypto didn't start as something accessible by everyone (I remember many years ago mining bitcoin, successfully, on a macbook) and become an expensive toy over time. Sure, it might go back down to being a genuine decentralised currency as it was always meant to be, but the same could be said for the old currencies that became investment vehicles like gold. As for NFT's, I'm steering clear of them for now, but from what I know they're actually quite centralised, even though from a technical standpoint they don't have to be.

kall 5y ago

I actually agree about the fun new substrate part. It‘s a shame that was basically ruined by the huge value pop. If ethereum was 0.001 as valuable and thus could be x1000 more resource efficient and x1000 more affordable to build on, it would be neat. At this point the only thing that seems worth building are things to further pump value, and POW is a monster that we will not be able to get back into it‘s cage.

zemo 5y ago

the whole "centralization = bad, decentralization = good" argument strikes me as very half-baked. The assumption is that decentralization is inherently liberatory. That assumption isn't guaranteed. Every cryptocurrency that exist is built on the same fundamental principle: people with the most existing wealth (hash power in PoW, existing crypto in PoS, storage space in PoST) make the most income (whatever crypto in question). All cryptocurrency fundamentally is built on the basis of enriching the already-rich. Yes, cryptocurrency is decentralized, but decentralization alone is not a magical recipe for something being of benefit to all mankind. Take BAYC, for example. Tradeable membership to a "community" whose only significance is that you purchased membership into an ever-expensive community to belong to. We can say what the price of a membership is quite easily, but can we say what the value of that membership is? If the price of membership goes up, does that make the community "better"? It is decentralized, is it therefore good? The drug trade is decentralized, is it therefore good? In non-crypto assets, what percentage of wealth is owned by the top 1%? How about in crypto assets? as for IPFS: You put something on IPFS, what is the guarantee that it will continue to exist on IPFS? It's entirely consensual; there's no guarantee that such a thing will continue to exist on the network unless someone consents to store it. So if you want to actually deliver on that guarantee, what do you do, run an IPFS node that always hosts that file? Feels like you're back at square one, needing to run a server to guarantee that a given file continues to be available. Now, that's not to say IPFS isn't useful at all! It's very cool! The promise of duplicability and the way in which frequently-accessed data will be more widely replicated is incredibly fascinating on its own, and has tremendous value. I'm a server operator, so the notion of setting up a node to permanently host a particular item in IPFS doesn't bother me. But we shouldn't pretend that IPFS is a magic solution that guarantees the permanent storage of everything put on it. It's a nice addressing and content replication system. I'm really optimistic about the concept of NFTs in the long run, and about the applications of solutions to the double-spend problem generally. My pessimism is not in the concept of NFTs, it's in the concept of blockchains, which are fundamentally only capable of increasing inequality. The entire concept of what makes blockchains secure is "in order to attack it, you have to have a lot of wealth, so you'd be destroying your own wealth": the security paradigm is "a rich person would not elect to sacrifice their own riches". The entire system is based on this premise. When we have non-blockchain solutions to the double-spend problem, or NFTs that can be implemented without this promise of increasing inequality, I'll be excited about the space.

kmeisthax 5y ago

The problem is that the blockchain substrate you're talking about is actually a very poor fit for decentralized applications. Let's compare it to it's earliest predecessor technology: Git[0]. This is a very useful technology within the problem domain of how to store and synchronize source code repositories (although it's UI sucks). However, individual users still need to choose who to synchronize with and what commits to accept. What blockchains add are restrictions to this model that make sense for the problem domain of digital currency: namely, you need to burn energy in order to commit, and you have to follow specific validity rules in order for your commit to be valid. These rules are specifically crafted to ensure scarcity and control over the resource the blockchain ledger tracks. The problem is that most decentralized applications do not need a notion of scarcity. The whole damned point of P2P is to punish artificial scarcity. If I want to communicate to someone else over a decentralized network, I don't need a Sybil-resistant ledger to do so. I just need a private/public key pair and some means to match interested recipients and senders. Same with a lot of other decentralized use cases, which also don't need to be able to track scarce assets.