3 ms·

I'm having trouble understanding what problem Web3 is attempting to solve

by okareaman 5y ago

ehutch79 5y ago
It's trying to solve the problem of crypto bros not being rich enough?
- loceng 5y ago
  A solution looking for a problem to solve, so they can try to realize their artificially inflated paper profits - so they're not left holding the bag.
winddude 5y ago
A bit like usenet of old, information could be recreated on everyone running a full node. Making it much harder to censor. Now this makes sense for a number of industries, particularly financial, where the data is small, and the rewards are large. Storing petabites of porn on a distributed blockchain, probably not efficient.
- okareaman 5y ago
  So extrapolating here, web3 is a new kind of anti-censorship system with blockchain that ensures the original information isn't corrupted and replaced with misinformation? It's an interesting topic, but it seems in relation to finances, we're talking about a system that enables financial crime. Telex (anti-censorship system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telex_(anti-censorship_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telex_(anti-censorship_system) Internet censorship circumvention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_circumvention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_circumvent...
okareaman 5y ago
Right after I posted this I logged onto Twitter to read this by Kimbal Musk tweeted 20 hours ago: "Web3 reminds me of 1995 Internet days. So many older people (younger than I am now) just could not get it. It was clear as a bell to 22yr old me. Now I understand those older people better and I'm working as fast as possible to be a better old person" https://twitter.com/kimbal/status/1465425295393976321 https://twitter.com/kimbal/status/1465425295393976321
- angryasian 5y ago
  I read about how people are making the claim of how this will bring back the web of the early days. The web was always introduced as walled gardens and people love walled gardens. From the beginning if was Yahoo telling you what links to click or aol portals. Today its Apple's curated ecosystem and Facebook. I don't see how decentralizing anything helps.
  - mosdl 5y ago
    Indeed, most people talking about how different "web1.0" don't seem to have ever used it.
- GDC7 5y ago
  > It was clear as a bell to 22yr old me For sure! Pumping and dumping overvalued equity to bigger fools together with his cousin.
  - okareaman 5y ago
    I hope this isn't an indication of how easy it is to manipulate young people
  - drsnow 5y ago
    People are legitimately making a living trading crypto, you know. It's actually putting food on people's tables. It's a tradable asset like any other, and its value is dictated by supply and demand, like any other. How is someone a fool for profiting from trading it?
    - okareaman 5y ago
      I see nothing wrong with that. Bookies have been making a living for a long time trading numbers on slips of paper. Gamblers in Las Vegas make a living in the games. The stock market has been described as a casino. The skepticism I feel is about the web3 meme and the additional meme that it must be good because old people don't understand it. Web3 is a basket of experimental technologies that may or may not bear fruit, but don't tell me it's so new that skeptics are people who are incapable of understanding it. I'm looking for more detail and I get a lot of hand waving. But I'm open to it.
beepbooptheory 5y ago
One theory I have is that the gravity of capital is pushing things towards a world where users pay for more and more web infrastructure costs. Decentralization, it appears, does not lead to democracy, but it does lead to less monolithic servers, and more shared mesh/edge computation. Just good business sense to offload computation on regular users, if the tech is there.
- seeking_future 5y ago
  as usual smartest comment in HN thread has no replies
wan23 5y ago
There are a few things that people find exciting, but for me the idea of being able to pay for content frictionlessly is pretty neat. I'd love, for example, if when you get one of those ad blocker blocker popups if there was an option to pay .005 cents to bypass it.
landemva 5y ago
Double spend and censorship resistance are a couple big ones. Privileged westerners have courts and banking which are good enough, so not much reason for them to be interested. Probably nothing.
fumplethumb 5y ago
I often find it useful to relate the Web3 movement to the introduction of the internet. What problem was did that attempt to solve? The internet solved problems that were only apparent in hindsight. The same could be true of Web3. It could also be nonsense, but I don’t think so. The absence of a particular problem to solve doesn’t necessarily render it useless.
tim333 5y ago
I'm not sure it's trying to solve a specific problem. It's basically the web plus cryptocurrency and related technology which you can use to make a variety of stuff for better or worse. IPFS is cool in principle - being able to store stuff indefinitely on the web without needing ongoing payments to some hoster.

I'm having trouble understanding what problem Web3 is attempting to solve

ehutch79 5y ago

It's trying to solve the problem of crypto bros not being rich enough?

loceng 5y ago
A solution looking for a problem to solve, so they can try to realize their artificially inflated paper profits - so they're not left holding the bag.

winddude 5y ago

A bit like usenet of old, information could be recreated on everyone running a full node. Making it much harder to censor. Now this makes sense for a number of industries, particularly financial, where the data is small, and the rewards are large. Storing petabites of porn on a distributed blockchain, probably not efficient.

okareaman 5y ago
So extrapolating here, web3 is a new kind of anti-censorship system with blockchain that ensures the original information isn't corrupted and replaced with misinformation? It's an interesting topic, but it seems in relation to finances, we're talking about a system that enables financial crime. Telex (anti-censorship system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telex_(anti-censorship_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telex_(anti-censorship_system) Internet censorship circumvention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_circumvention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_circumvent...

okareaman 5y ago

Right after I posted this I logged onto Twitter to read this by Kimbal Musk tweeted 20 hours ago: "Web3 reminds me of 1995 Internet days. So many older people (younger than I am now) just could not get it. It was clear as a bell to 22yr old me. Now I understand those older people better and I'm working as fast as possible to be a better old person" https://twitter.com/kimbal/status/1465425295393976321 https://twitter.com/kimbal/status/1465425295393976321

angryasian 5y ago
I read about how people are making the claim of how this will bring back the web of the early days. The web was always introduced as walled gardens and people love walled gardens. From the beginning if was Yahoo telling you what links to click or aol portals. Today its Apple's curated ecosystem and Facebook. I don't see how decentralizing anything helps.
- mosdl 5y ago
  Indeed, most people talking about how different "web1.0" don't seem to have ever used it.
GDC7 5y ago
> It was clear as a bell to 22yr old me For sure! Pumping and dumping overvalued equity to bigger fools together with his cousin.
- okareaman 5y ago
  I hope this isn't an indication of how easy it is to manipulate young people
- drsnow 5y ago
  People are legitimately making a living trading crypto, you know. It's actually putting food on people's tables. It's a tradable asset like any other, and its value is dictated by supply and demand, like any other. How is someone a fool for profiting from trading it?
  - okareaman 5y ago
    I see nothing wrong with that. Bookies have been making a living for a long time trading numbers on slips of paper. Gamblers in Las Vegas make a living in the games. The stock market has been described as a casino. The skepticism I feel is about the web3 meme and the additional meme that it must be good because old people don't understand it. Web3 is a basket of experimental technologies that may or may not bear fruit, but don't tell me it's so new that skeptics are people who are incapable of understanding it. I'm looking for more detail and I get a lot of hand waving. But I'm open to it.

beepbooptheory 5y ago

One theory I have is that the gravity of capital is pushing things towards a world where users pay for more and more web infrastructure costs. Decentralization, it appears, does not lead to democracy, but it does lead to less monolithic servers, and more shared mesh/edge computation. Just good business sense to offload computation on regular users, if the tech is there.

seeking_future 5y ago
as usual smartest comment in HN thread has no replies

wan23 5y ago

There are a few things that people find exciting, but for me the idea of being able to pay for content frictionlessly is pretty neat. I'd love, for example, if when you get one of those ad blocker blocker popups if there was an option to pay .005 cents to bypass it.

landemva 5y ago

Double spend and censorship resistance are a couple big ones. Privileged westerners have courts and banking which are good enough, so not much reason for them to be interested. Probably nothing.

fumplethumb 5y ago

I often find it useful to relate the Web3 movement to the introduction of the internet. What problem was did that attempt to solve? The internet solved problems that were only apparent in hindsight. The same could be true of Web3. It could also be nonsense, but I don’t think so. The absence of a particular problem to solve doesn’t necessarily render it useless.

tim333 5y ago

I'm not sure it's trying to solve a specific problem. It's basically the web plus cryptocurrency and related technology which you can use to make a variety of stuff for better or worse. IPFS is cool in principle - being able to store stuff indefinitely on the web without needing ongoing payments to some hoster.