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The new Web3 stuff has been the most exciting frontier since the bitcoin whitepaper in 2009. Urbit is super cool, ETH is really interesting. There's a ton of st

The new Web3 stuff has been the most exciting frontier since the bitcoin whitepaper in 2009. Urbit is super cool, ETH is really interesting. There's a ton of stuff happening in the space - like I imagine what 1999 probably felt like. Yeah there's hype and lots of bubbles + company failures, but there's real underlying technical innovation and success too. That's what makes it an exciting frontier of new stuff. There's a lot of fun stuff going on and the future looks bright. Hopefully the domination of centralized SaaS of the last decade will mostly be an anachronism of our time, and the original hope of a decentralized p2p web will happen after all. We were trapped in a local maximum of thin clients and accounts, but maybe this will be the way out.

smoldesu 5y ago
Alternatively, maybe the proliferation of consensus-based ownership will encourage people to build even more SaaS platforms to try and capitalize on an every growing, increasingly captive audience. It's hard to say, but I'll err on the side of capitalism doing the same thing it's done for the past 100 years.
ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
1999 didn't feel like that because there wasn't scam after scam. People were willingly and freely sharing knowledge back then. The early internet felt empowering and freeing. Web3 feels scammy and a bunch of pump and dumpers.
- gonehome 5y ago
  I think a lot of 90s web banner ads would disagree. The regular web was pretty scammy back then too and the spam problem is arguably what resulted in a lot of centralization (something urbit IDs fix).
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  Bonzi Buddy might might have some thing to say about that
agumonkey 5y ago
For some reason I feel super bad every time I read someone throwing "decentralized". I think it's a naive fallacy that will break in twenty different pieces because the world is complex and there will always be a hidden hierarchy emerging from the original decentralized thing.
- gonehome 5y ago
  That's one reason I think Urbit's implementation is cool. The network hierarchy is explicit, but the minimum required in order to to have the maximum decentralization possible that can actually work (automatic lookup of p2p ids, ability to update the network/smart contracts, ability for other nodes to fork if it was necessary, etc.).

smoldesu 5y ago

Alternatively, maybe the proliferation of consensus-based ownership will encourage people to build even more SaaS platforms to try and capitalize on an every growing, increasingly captive audience. It's hard to say, but I'll err on the side of capitalism doing the same thing it's done for the past 100 years.

ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago

1999 didn't feel like that because there wasn't scam after scam. People were willingly and freely sharing knowledge back then. The early internet felt empowering and freeing. Web3 feels scammy and a bunch of pump and dumpers.

gonehome 5y ago
I think a lot of 90s web banner ads would disagree. The regular web was pretty scammy back then too and the spam problem is arguably what resulted in a lot of centralization (something urbit IDs fix).
jimmygrapes 5y ago
Bonzi Buddy might might have some thing to say about that

agumonkey 5y ago

For some reason I feel super bad every time I read someone throwing "decentralized". I think it's a naive fallacy that will break in twenty different pieces because the world is complex and there will always be a hidden hierarchy emerging from the original decentralized thing.

gonehome 5y ago
That's one reason I think Urbit's implementation is cool. The network hierarchy is explicit, but the minimum required in order to to have the maximum decentralization possible that can actually work (automatic lookup of p2p ids, ability to update the network/smart contracts, ability for other nodes to fork if it was necessary, etc.).