3 ms·

Real world problems that Web3 could solve – at least for me

1 points by adrian_mrd 5y ago

Daishiman 5y ago
Having run through the exercise of replacing every instance of "Blockchain" with "a very slow database", I did not find any of his examples convincing. Just more grasping at straws.
smoldesu 5y ago
None of these problems have to be minted on the blockchain to be fixed. Every single issue you've listed here is pervasive because of bad business practices and lateral decision-making that fails to benefit everyone in their preexisting systems. Web3 is not a miracle band-aid for these problems: it's just shifting the paradigm to a playing field where the haves and the have-nots are driven further apart. Also, I have no idea where people are coming from on this "it makes it easier to hire people" idea. I think it's confirmation bias: if you care enough to implement a Web3 hiring process, you're only going to find people who are equally as interested in the field as you are. Meanwhile, I could list the number of good software developers I know who care about the blockchain on 0 hands. I know self-made crypto millionaires, genius disassembly workers and the sorts of lumpenprogrammers that everyone dreams of hiring: not a single one of them cares even a little bit about this garbage. You're missing out on a massive portion of the labor force, and expecting people to just start caring about this new and redundant hiring method because it's "cool". I realize a lot of this has come off rather hostile, but it stems from a single reason: I'm tired of people conflating decentralization with "Web3". The blockchain is a niche tool, much like a linked list, and it solves very specific problems very well. Trying to shoehorn a technical implementation into the real-world is how we foster bad design though, and it's no coincidence that we've yet to see a single truly successful real-world blockchain solution yet. The best thing we got out of it was a transparent fiat currency, and even that got ruined by people who misconstrued it as a speculative asset. All signs point towards this expansion of the protocol layer being an astronomically bad idea, and while I'm no 10x developer, I'm frankly inclined to agree.

1 points by adrian_mrd 5y ago

Having run through the exercise of replacing every instance of "Blockchain" with "a very slow database", I did not find any of his examples convincing. Just more grasping at straws.

smoldesu 5y ago

None of these problems have to be minted on the blockchain to be fixed. Every single issue you've listed here is pervasive because of bad business practices and lateral decision-making that fails to benefit everyone in their preexisting systems. Web3 is not a miracle band-aid for these problems: it's just shifting the paradigm to a playing field where the haves and the have-nots are driven further apart. Also, I have no idea where people are coming from on this "it makes it easier to hire people" idea. I think it's confirmation bias: if you care enough to implement a Web3 hiring process, you're only going to find people who are equally as interested in the field as you are. Meanwhile, I could list the number of good software developers I know who care about the blockchain on 0 hands. I know self-made crypto millionaires, genius disassembly workers and the sorts of lumpenprogrammers that everyone dreams of hiring: not a single one of them cares even a little bit about this garbage. You're missing out on a massive portion of the labor force, and expecting people to just start caring about this new and redundant hiring method because it's "cool". I realize a lot of this has come off rather hostile, but it stems from a single reason: I'm tired of people conflating decentralization with "Web3". The blockchain is a niche tool, much like a linked list, and it solves very specific problems very well. Trying to shoehorn a technical implementation into the real-world is how we foster bad design though, and it's no coincidence that we've yet to see a single truly successful real-world blockchain solution yet. The best thing we got out of it was a transparent fiat currency, and even that got ruined by people who misconstrued it as a speculative asset. All signs point towards this expansion of the protocol layer being an astronomically bad idea, and while I'm no 10x developer, I'm frankly inclined to agree.