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I think Web3 is still a solution in search of a problem at this point. I personally remain unconvinced. This presentation proposes Helium as a suitable applicat
by arbuge 5y ago
I think Web3 is still a solution in search of a problem at this point. I personally remain unconvinced. This presentation proposes Helium as a suitable application but it seems to me you could do everything Helium does just as well with an old-fashioned centralized network controlling the whole thing. Collect usage fees on one side from the users, and pay them out to the "miners" (AP providers) on the other... and you don't need any stakers. If the network is too stingy with paying out the proceeds to the AP providers, you won't attract AP providers, so the whole thing self-balances in the same way Google Adsense does.
- mercutio2 5y agoHelium comes the closest to being "actually potentially useful" of all the cryptocurrency gobbledygook. But, amusingly re: your point that it could be done in a centralized way: recently my wife's (sigh) Helium miner stopped working for a few days because... centralized stuff failed! So as far as I can tell, it's a bit of huckster speculation on top of a centralized protocol. Which, theoretically, might one day compensate random people for putting up 20 watt transmitters to spread ultra-low-bandwidth internet access around (right now we get compensated in VC-funded scrip aimed at expanding the network). Not terrible, but the crypto bits do seem only lightly glued on top of the basic business proposition.