21 ms·

Web3 Is Not Decentralization

201 points by goranmoomin 5y ago

drenvuk 5y ago
nfts are just as bad as copyrights. both require unnatural systems in order to exist. both attempt to reduce freedom of speech and the proliferation of ideas. both need to be removed.
- spinny 5y ago
  not really sure what you mean by "unnatural systems", but nfts are just a way to represent a unique thing on a blockchain. EIP721 defines the interface to this unique thing. It's nothing more than a set of functions that enable you to transfer it to another account and approve (and revoke) operators to manage it for you. what makes nfts "good" or "bad" is how it is getting used. I'm implementing an order-book based dex. Every order is a unique thing, implementing ERC721 adds that extra bit of standardized functionality.
- ohCh6zos 5y ago
  The internet provides us with post-scarcity for some goods. NTFs are adding scarcity back into the system.
  - _jal 5y ago
    It is an intentional scarcity, however. In the physical world, you build strategies around natural scarcities. Here, you build scarcities to support your strategies. Still thinking about how I feel about that. Right now, people mainly seem to be using it as a sort of proxy for fine art-style exclusivities people already understand.
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    NFTs don't add scarcity. Anyone can create an NFT of anything. Any number of times. An NFT isn't a copyright or anything else. It's just a token that has no inherent meaning. Just like any fiat currency. By convention, it embeds an image -- just like a dollar bill has a picture of George.
- DennisP 5y ago
  NFTs only do that if people buy into the weird idea that just because there's an NFT, you can't just download the file anyway. If people just see it as a collectible with its own special legitimacy and provenance, they don't do any harm.
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    NFT promoters want to resolve that by having platforms build in integration so they can DRM their NFTs. But why is this a world we want. What benefit did we create by making profile pictures paid for. NFTs represent the worst of capitalism imo.
    - DennisP 5y ago
      Yep. One day someone will invent a cheap, compact device that makes whatever food you want from air, water and dirt, and half of humanity will starve to death.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  The thing I’d ask for both is how I get paid to make games if we abolished copyright. NFTs are obviously silly but there is scarcity involved in the production of digital things even though the marginal cost is effectively zero. It’s just effectively zero is doing a lot of work when no one is paying and you need to feed your family under a capitalist system for everything else. A system that time limits some scarcity in order that creative people can make a living under capitalism before returning things to their natural state is humane.
Acrobatic_Road 5y ago
Is there any point in writing a real response when this guy puts IRC and IPFS in the same category? How is IPFS not web3?
- threeseed 5y ago
  > How is IPFS not web3? It is. Web3 is whatever you want it to be at this point.
nostrademons 5y ago
I thought this would be about a bigger and more obvious problem with web3, namely that by default all traffic going through MetaMask runs through Infura and hence through Consensys's servers. If you think you're getting privacy or resilience because you're interacting with a DApp, think again. All your transactions are going through a single organization, which might have logs linking the IP, your ETH address, the smart contract address, and timestamp, and if it goes down web3 won't work for a significant number of users. [It is possible to configure MetaMask to use a different gateway, but how many users fiddle with the defaults or even know what a web3 gateway is?] Ethereum as a whole and the raw smart contracts of most DApps actually are decentralized, but there are SPOFs in the UI, name service, and transaction gateway. If you aren't willing to run your own geth instance and understand Solidity/EVM, it's not really decentralized for you.
- thr0wawayf00 5y ago
  > If you aren't willing to run your own geth instance and understand Solidity/EVM, it's not really decentralized for you. This is how I feel about the exchanges generally, which wield an incredible amount of influence in the crypto markets, for better or worse. It's a complete tangent, but reading about Tether's shifting story around its capital reserves terrifies me. I have yet to see a blockchain implementation that's easy enough to use on its own that it could achieve widespread adoption without a strong market desire to have someone else manage the complexity of it for you. People talk about decentralization all day long while completely ignoring the fact that we've just shifted the centralized authority from one entity to another.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    That summarizes a lot. The system is not simple at all. The benefits are only potentially here (eth fees are wild). The solution involves the opposite of religious principles the mob believes in.
    - fragmede 5y ago
      It's more than the mob believes it to be an ecumenical matter and you want it to be otherwise. If you want to participate, but aren't willing to trust someone else (which no one would blame you for), then your move is to run your own node. Like, that's the entire premise of blockchain technology - no one trusts each other - but no one has to!
serverholic 5y ago
As a crypto and web3 fan I actually agree with the article but not with the title. To me decentralization is a value. It's a goal, and yes, a goal that almost every web3 project falls short of in some way. But I think values are important. Values play a huge part in guiding human behavior. And the human side of web3 is MASSIVELY underrated in my opinion. I don't think people realize that we can shape web3 by building up the right culture around it. By teaching people what things they should look out for. Because without that, they'll just be drawn in by blind profits and screwed over because we didn't tell them how to think about web3. To a certain extent web3 critics are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. They are simultaneously criticizing web3 for valuing decentralization while also criticizing web3 for not being decentralized enough. It creates apathy around decentralization and other web3 ideas. I think web3 critics would serve people better not by criticizing web3 but instead criticizing projects for not being web3 enough. What I don't think people on HN or Twitter understand is that right now web3 is a foundation. We can build technology and culture around it to help people.
- thr0wawayf00 5y ago
  > To me decentralization is a value. It's a goal, and yes, a goal that almost every web3 project falls short of in some way. But the whole point of building these systems is to get away from the entrenched interests of centralized authority, and if these systems can't actually deliver on that, then what's the point of adopting them? At least my bank accounts are insured if the bank fails and transactions have to clear ACH. If my credit card gets stolen, I call Visa and they make it go away in a matter of minutes. If someone gets access to my private key, that's it, there's nothing I can do to get my crypto back. I don't want "kinda decentralized", I want "definitely decentralized". This attitude represents a major goalpost shift for this kind of movement. > But I think values are important. Values play a huge part in guiding human behavior. This seems to be a bit romantic to me. The community can talk about values all they want, but it doesn't change the fact that shitcoins are everywhere. We can all agree murder is bad, but that isn't going to stop murders from happening.
  - serverholic 5y ago
    There is still a lot of value in "kinda decentralized". For example, you can download smart-contract bytecode and verify it. Go ahead and call up visa and ask for their source code. Another example is the immutability of smart contracts. If someone updates a contract and you don't like it then you can keep using the old one. Go ask robinhood if you can use an old version of their app. As far as private keys, I really don't know what to tell you. People lose their passwords all the time. Also smart wallets will help you recover you crypto wallet. UX is moving in the right direction here. > This seems to be a bit romantic to me. The community can talk about values all they want, but it doesn't change the fact that shitcoins are everywhere. We can all agree murder is bad, but that isn't going to stop murders from happening. So should we stop using email because of phishing? Or stop using phones because of spam calls? We educate people on phishing. We educate people on scam calls. We educate people on the dangers of investing in penny stocks. We educate people on the dangers of options trading. Why can't we educate people on shitcoins and decentralization? That's my point, crypto is a wild place but we can absolutely create a culture that moves things in the right direction.
ccamrobertson 5y ago
Confounding DAOs as web3 is a little odd. They may use web3 tooling...but obviously most are "DOs" (distributed organizations) today and they don't really comprise web3. IPFS is a great example the author points to as to what I understand web3 infrastructure to be; it seems to be a very strong example of decentralization.
- gizmo385 5y ago
  Except many Web3 proponents consider DAOs to be a part of Web3. A bit of a "no true scotsman"
DennisP 5y ago
I've been kicking around the Ethereum community since the early days, and what people were calling "web3" back then is not what we have now. The original idea was for everything to be hosted on IPFS or Swarm[1]. The latter was to be an Ethereum-native protocol similar to IPFS; it turned out to be harder than expected and hasn't gotten traction so far but it's still an active project. One of its goals was to enable payments for keeping files available. Still, decentralized naming and digital signatures go a long way towards turning p2p filesharing into something more. I think it'll all come together eventually. [1] https://www.ethswarm.org/ https://www.ethswarm.org/
- gfodor 5y ago
  Exactly. It’s been weird seeing so many people who have lived through several technology curves failing to imagine where these current trends are pointing.
  - kody 5y ago
    So, the next wave of DRM
  - throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
    What proportion of people who had the perspective/foresight to predict "several technology curves" (and potentially profit off of them) will waste their time fighting battles in the comments of hacker news threads about the potential next one?
    - DennisP 5y ago
      If they did it well enough, they might have plenty of time to waste. Just because you made a few good investments doesn't mean you have to dedicate every waking hour to making more of them.
- preseinger 5y ago
  What are some decentralized naming initiatives?
riffic 5y ago
I can't stand anything about a "Web3" that is not inclusive of existing ecosystems using actual, working, standardized protocols like those adopted by the IndieWeb and Fediverse communities. "A resource arrangement that works in practice can work in theory" as the adage goes coined by Elinor Ostrom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom#Ostrom's_law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom#Ostrom's_law). You don't need blockchains to be decentralized. Continuing to dunk on "web3" over here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Web3Skepticism/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Web3Skepticism/
- rapnie 5y ago
  Web3 has been co-opted to such extent by cryptocurrencies and blockchain tech that it may be better to come up with a different name for sane open-standards based decentralized technologies. The whole Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 has never been a good fit anyway and used quite arbitrarily. How long has the 3.0 versioning been in use already?
  - genezeta 5y ago
    > The whole Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 has never been a good fit anyway and used quite arbitrarily The actual problem is that there's a fundamental distinction between the "2.0" -and "1.0"- tag and the "3.0" tag. "Web 2.0" was a term coined to describe something which had already occurred, at least to a substantial extent. This is made obvious by the fact that it was coined in conjunction with "Web 1.0". It was defined on some -more or less defined- characteristics that were there already and were used to point out a change that had already happened. It was "Ok, this has happened; let's call it 2.0 (and, for contrast, let's call 1.0 what existed previously)". People generally agreed on the name and that was it. "Web 3.0" was never anything like that. It has always been co-opted to promote someone's ideas/hopes/vision/technologies. It is always "Ok, I/we want to go in that direction; I/we will call that "3.0" and hope the world shares my view and allows me to use that name for my vision". As a fairly old example: > The Semantic Web (sometimes known as Web 3.0) ... [0] But, of course, being something which isn't there just yet, a lot of groups want to own the term for their thing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web
- 5y ago
__MatrixMan__ 5y ago
> A lot of the reason why I detest NFTs in particular is because I detest the concept of artificial scarcity, something that has been plauging the digital world long before the invention of NFTs I agree with this, artificial scarcity is a lousy way to get anything done. The end-game of economics ought to be to eliminate scarcity, artificial or otherwise. But if the alternative to NFT's is the status quo, then you're choosing between a system where only the privileged get to set up artificial scarcity games (usually there are lawyers...) versus one where anyone can do so. It still sucks, but it sucks less. > Naturally, the exploitation of natural resources and absurd energy demands solely to enforce the value of made up internet items would be the endgame [of NFTs]. I think that the endgame is to exchange NFTs as proofs of contribution to the public good. I minted this NFT by sequestering a kilogram of carbon, by filling this pothole, by serving in a jury, that sort of thing. As it stands it's not really clear why I should accept a dollar from a stranger--for all I know, they made that dollar by making the world worse. Why should I participate in a scheme that enables them to continue doing so? But with NFT's I can look at the circumstances of its minting and decide for myself whether that's the kind of thing I want to see more of.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > But if the alternative to NFT's is the status quo, then you're choosing between a system where only the privileged get to set up artificial scarcity games (usually there are lawyers...) versus one where anyone can do so. It still sucks, but it sucks less. This doesn’t really follow. Why would NFTs be the only way to generate artificial scarcity when people have been doing it forever with one-off art, private experiences and concerts, and limited edition runs? NFTs seem like a step in the wrong direction: You still don’t have the original art or thing that the NFT supposedly represents. You just have a new blockchain entry that says “This NFT represents <thing>“ > As it stands it's not really clear why I should accept a dollar from a stranger--for all I know, they made that dollar by making the world worse. Why should I participate in a scheme that enables them to continue doing so? But with NFT's I can look at the circumstances of its minting and decide for myself whether that's the kind of thing I want to see more of. This doesn’t make any sense either. Why do you implicitly trust what people tell you about an NFT but not a dollar? There’s nothing magical about NFTs that solves the social problems you’re describing. An NFT is just a blockchain entry with associated cryptographic procedures for changing said blockchain entry. It doesn’t give you insight into the circumstances around it. You still have to take whatever people say at face value, just as you would with the dollar example. But with the NFT you have to pay a lot of money just to accept it. Money which goes to miners who are burning energy at a furious pace just to keep the NFT existing, in a system that becomes ever less efficient as more miners join. That’s probably not what people had in mind when it comes to making the world a better place.
YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
It's Beanie Babies for crypto bros.
kody 5y ago
Nope, but a whole lot of ancap bros are going to get very rich from this fad. More power to them I guess.
boxmonster 5y ago
Can someone explain to me how something with a single source of truth (the blockchain database) can be considered decentralized?
- seibelj 5y ago
  The blockchain database doesn't have an owner. Users (public keys) can only modify very specific things related to them, and no node can arbitrarily modify it.
- chroem- 5y ago
  I will answer your question with another question: would a more traditional DHT with a built-in p2p consensus mechanism stop being decentralized because it has said consensus mechanism?
  - boxmonster 5y ago
    I use the BitTorrent DHT all the time but I don't expect it to be consistent, not even eventually. With money you need something that is 100% accurate 100% of the time. Miners compete to calculate the one true blockchain. That smacks of centralization to me.
    - chroem- 5y ago
      Which is why I said > DHT with a built-in p2p consensus mechanism The notion that a p2p network stops being decentralized because it has consensus is silly.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  Because like trustlessness and claims to remove middlemen they’re true but only in a very specific context. Every time you see a grandiose crypto claim that doesn’t make sense just add “for a technicality” to the end.
- ultra_nick 5y ago
  Blockchain is like scientific research. Anyone can announce anything, but only verifiable findings are trusted.
jacobjjacob 5y ago
Interesting at the beginning, but then the author rants a lot about their personal opinions. This goes on for many paragraphs.
jimjimjim 5y ago
if we ever invent Star Trek replicators a whole bunch of grifters would demand artificial scarcity for Picard's earl grey!
d--b 5y ago
Would people please stop with that web3 non-sense. It doesn't even exist.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
  The scammers are trying to meme it into existence.
- Quindecillion 5y ago
  It's a marketing term used to sell products/services Like "superfoods"
- almostkorean 5y ago
  web3 has existed since 2015, see here: https://github.com/ChainSafe/web3.js/releases?page=14 https://github.com/ChainSafe/web3.js/releases?page=14 How does it not exist to you?
  - remram 5y ago
    The fact that somebody published a package named "web3" doesn't mean that "web3", the movement/revolution/direction, exists. I can create a package right now, call it "web4", and return an empty web page. Inferring the future of the web from it would be foolish. The web is used daily by billions of people who use the word to mean something specific, and a few cryptocurrency enthusiasts don't get to decide what it should now be.
    - almostkorean 5y ago
      This feels kinda pointless, but I wasn't trying to say that the package "web3" existing means the concept of "web3" exists. It would have been better for me to post npm download trends, see here: https://www.npmtrends.com/web3-vs-ethers https://www.npmtrends.com/web3-vs-ethers These are both libraries for frontend code to interact with smart contracts. All I'm trying to say is that they do exist and developers have been using them for years.
randomsearch 5y ago
As a rule, every decentralised system in computing eventually becomes centralised. This is usually because it is more efficient to employ a hierarchical structure when implementing some functions. Crypto is just like every other system - ostensibly distributed but centralised in practice. The great exception to this seems to be BitTorrent. It remains decentralised and I wonder - what is so special about BitTorrent that means it hasn’t been replaced by a hierarchical system? Is it just “piracy” or is there something deeper we can learn from it?
- pjc50 5y ago
  > what is so special about BitTorrent that means it hasn’t been replaced by a hierarchical system? Every time a top of hierarchy node pops up too high it gets whacked by copyright enforcement. This is an effective pressure against centralisation. Otherwise every decentralised system tends to converge into central systems, like planets forming out of an accretion disk. Surprisingly the copyright industry is far more effective at driving global law enforcement to do its bidding than the financial regulators are.
  - marderfarker2 5y ago
    There isn’t a “top of the hierarchy node” in BitTorrent. Everyone gets treated the same less some tit for tat rules which usually don’t apply because a swarm usually has that 1 or 2 altruistic seeders.
    - pjc50 5y ago
      But where do you get your list of torrents from? TPB is what I had in mind as the top of the hierarchy.
      - marderfarker2 5y ago
        Those are torrent indexes, which is not part of BitTorrent. They’re not essential to function. BitTorrent do come with centralized trackers but they are designed to not hold any payload.
VoodooJuJu 5y ago
You're probably right, but you're too late. "Decentralized" already made its way into the minds of the players. And decentralized is associated with "something good" and "something to throw money at because maybe it will make me rich". And those players will all lose while those at the top of the pyramids will all win and then you can say "I told you so" to all those greater fools, but they'll still say you were wrong, that you're not even a player, and so you know nothing. I wish I could convince them otherwise too, but it's too late for that. A fool and his money.... At this point, I'd rather just make them my fools - better mine than someone else's. Take their money first, then say "I told you so". Then they might start listening to you.
- api 5y ago
  I hate how cryptocurrency sucked all the air out of the room with decentralization to the point that the term is now hopelessly linked to it.
  - vmception 5y ago
    I can relate to the frustration with that, whenever I had "algorithmic" in a pitch for a trading service or fund, literally everyone derailed the conversation to high frequency trading in all of their interest or rebuttals. Because HFT was hopelessly linked to algorithmic.
kapsteur 5y ago
"Amazon's Server Outage Took Down a 'Decentralized' Crypto Exchange" => https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdnxy/amazons-server-outage-took-down-a-decentralized-crypto-exchange https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdnxy/amazons-server-outage...
vmception 5y ago
It's just a platform to build and offer financial services without having to ask anyone, or have ongoing overhead costs. Some are calling it OpenFinance to step over the optional decentralization. "Check out my OF" penetrates a much broader audience than "DeFi service"
- taytus 5y ago
  your OnlyFans?
  - vmception 5y ago
    OpenFinance
    - NoGravitas 5y ago
      Far more people will read OF as OnlyFans than as OpenFinance.
      - vmception 5y ago
        Thats the point
Sevii 5y ago
Web3 is about having your own private keys. It's not about decentralization, it's about having control over your digital identity. If I log into HN and make comments here, HN owns my identity. If I log into a web3 site and make comments there, I own the identity on that site. Moving authentication to the user removes the need for 3rd party websites to store passwords. It eliminates the need to sign up for websites. You just give websites access to your identity. Decentralization is a feature of cryptocurrency. Web3 is about owning your identity, which is enabled by people having their own keys.
- gitfan86 5y ago
  You are describing "Login with Google" HN could easily support that, but one of the features of HN is that anonymity is optional.
  - k__ 5y ago
    Login with Google is Login with Google, not login with your own private keys.
    - gitfan86 5y ago
      You do have your own private keys when you enable authenticator on your mobile device for TWO-Factor auth.
    - acdha 5y ago
      How is that meaningfully different? Technically, yes, Google could give your account to someone else but that would have significant business impacts unless it was done following a court order or something similar, which would also apply to a blockchain key. Similarly, unless the plan is to tell people that one mistake or hardware failure means they irrecoverably lose their identity, the same process which allows replacing an old key with a new one can be used to replace you. Finally, there appears to be either no benefit or a big privacy impact mapping keys to profiles on sites. If I go to a website and see “J. Random User” I have to trust that the owner of that site verified their identity against the expected source; if I see something like a signature against a particular key, there's a privacy issue from making it so easy to link you across sites and other activity (yes, people can use ), and if you don't trust the site operator you still have the problem of them showing a different ID when they're doing something dodgy.
lousyd 5y ago
I think of web3 in a different way than I see it commonly talked about. I think the idea behind the changes in the Internet that people identified as "Web 2.0" was that the Internet was opening up to more people with the creation of sites that allowed user participation. It was a recognition that although the early public Internet allowed anyone to participate, in reality the cost, effort, and know-how involved in setting up a website was a hurdle most people couldn't overcome. So with Web 2.0 the internet was opening up to more people. We now know that this led to a perverse centralization of power. Yes, more people could now participate, but mostly on a few corporate-controlled platforms. Web 3.0 is supposed to be a continuation of the trend of making the Internet "of the people". Web 1.0 was open to anyone. Web 2.0 was more open. Web 3.0 will be even more open. (In theory.) Web 3.0 isn't about Reddit or the other sites this person mentions. It's about all the new technologies people are coming up with to enable participation on the Internet free from the control of a few centralized corporate platforms. Blockchain is a big part of that, and cryptocurrencies. But so is tildeverse and Mastodon and Gemini and all that stuff. Also, it's not the case that ARPANET was designed to stay up "if the Soviets took down important cities or strategic datacenters". Bob Taylor, the man who literally made the decision to authorize and fund the ARPANET, has said so himself. "The creation of the ARPAnet was not motivated by considerations of war."
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
Isn't decentralization just a definition of Web3? After web2 has been hijacked by a handful of companies, with associated surveillance, censorship and manipulation, people just want some freedom.

201 points by goranmoomin 5y ago

nfts are just as bad as copyrights. both require unnatural systems in order to exist. both attempt to reduce freedom of speech and the proliferation of ideas. both need to be removed.

spinny 5y ago
not really sure what you mean by "unnatural systems", but nfts are just a way to represent a unique thing on a blockchain. EIP721 defines the interface to this unique thing. It's nothing more than a set of functions that enable you to transfer it to another account and approve (and revoke) operators to manage it for you. what makes nfts "good" or "bad" is how it is getting used. I'm implementing an order-book based dex. Every order is a unique thing, implementing ERC721 adds that extra bit of standardized functionality.
ohCh6zos 5y ago
The internet provides us with post-scarcity for some goods. NTFs are adding scarcity back into the system.
- _jal 5y ago
  It is an intentional scarcity, however. In the physical world, you build strategies around natural scarcities. Here, you build scarcities to support your strategies. Still thinking about how I feel about that. Right now, people mainly seem to be using it as a sort of proxy for fine art-style exclusivities people already understand.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  NFTs don't add scarcity. Anyone can create an NFT of anything. Any number of times. An NFT isn't a copyright or anything else. It's just a token that has no inherent meaning. Just like any fiat currency. By convention, it embeds an image -- just like a dollar bill has a picture of George.
DennisP 5y ago
NFTs only do that if people buy into the weird idea that just because there's an NFT, you can't just download the file anyway. If people just see it as a collectible with its own special legitimacy and provenance, they don't do any harm.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  NFT promoters want to resolve that by having platforms build in integration so they can DRM their NFTs. But why is this a world we want. What benefit did we create by making profile pictures paid for. NFTs represent the worst of capitalism imo.
  - DennisP 5y ago
    Yep. One day someone will invent a cheap, compact device that makes whatever food you want from air, water and dirt, and half of humanity will starve to death.
meheleventyone 5y ago
The thing I’d ask for both is how I get paid to make games if we abolished copyright. NFTs are obviously silly but there is scarcity involved in the production of digital things even though the marginal cost is effectively zero. It’s just effectively zero is doing a lot of work when no one is paying and you need to feed your family under a capitalist system for everything else. A system that time limits some scarcity in order that creative people can make a living under capitalism before returning things to their natural state is humane.

Acrobatic_Road 5y ago

Is there any point in writing a real response when this guy puts IRC and IPFS in the same category? How is IPFS not web3?

threeseed 5y ago
> How is IPFS not web3? It is. Web3 is whatever you want it to be at this point.

nostrademons 5y ago

I thought this would be about a bigger and more obvious problem with web3, namely that by default all traffic going through MetaMask runs through Infura and hence through Consensys's servers. If you think you're getting privacy or resilience because you're interacting with a DApp, think again. All your transactions are going through a single organization, which might have logs linking the IP, your ETH address, the smart contract address, and timestamp, and if it goes down web3 won't work for a significant number of users. [It is possible to configure MetaMask to use a different gateway, but how many users fiddle with the defaults or even know what a web3 gateway is?] Ethereum as a whole and the raw smart contracts of most DApps actually are decentralized, but there are SPOFs in the UI, name service, and transaction gateway. If you aren't willing to run your own geth instance and understand Solidity/EVM, it's not really decentralized for you.

thr0wawayf00 5y ago
> If you aren't willing to run your own geth instance and understand Solidity/EVM, it's not really decentralized for you. This is how I feel about the exchanges generally, which wield an incredible amount of influence in the crypto markets, for better or worse. It's a complete tangent, but reading about Tether's shifting story around its capital reserves terrifies me. I have yet to see a blockchain implementation that's easy enough to use on its own that it could achieve widespread adoption without a strong market desire to have someone else manage the complexity of it for you. People talk about decentralization all day long while completely ignoring the fact that we've just shifted the centralized authority from one entity to another.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  That summarizes a lot. The system is not simple at all. The benefits are only potentially here (eth fees are wild). The solution involves the opposite of religious principles the mob believes in.
  - fragmede 5y ago
    It's more than the mob believes it to be an ecumenical matter and you want it to be otherwise. If you want to participate, but aren't willing to trust someone else (which no one would blame you for), then your move is to run your own node. Like, that's the entire premise of blockchain technology - no one trusts each other - but no one has to!

serverholic 5y ago

As a crypto and web3 fan I actually agree with the article but not with the title. To me decentralization is a value. It's a goal, and yes, a goal that almost every web3 project falls short of in some way. But I think values are important. Values play a huge part in guiding human behavior. And the human side of web3 is MASSIVELY underrated in my opinion. I don't think people realize that we can shape web3 by building up the right culture around it. By teaching people what things they should look out for. Because without that, they'll just be drawn in by blind profits and screwed over because we didn't tell them how to think about web3. To a certain extent web3 critics are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. They are simultaneously criticizing web3 for valuing decentralization while also criticizing web3 for not being decentralized enough. It creates apathy around decentralization and other web3 ideas. I think web3 critics would serve people better not by criticizing web3 but instead criticizing projects for not being web3 enough. What I don't think people on HN or Twitter understand is that right now web3 is a foundation. We can build technology and culture around it to help people.

thr0wawayf00 5y ago
> To me decentralization is a value. It's a goal, and yes, a goal that almost every web3 project falls short of in some way. But the whole point of building these systems is to get away from the entrenched interests of centralized authority, and if these systems can't actually deliver on that, then what's the point of adopting them? At least my bank accounts are insured if the bank fails and transactions have to clear ACH. If my credit card gets stolen, I call Visa and they make it go away in a matter of minutes. If someone gets access to my private key, that's it, there's nothing I can do to get my crypto back. I don't want "kinda decentralized", I want "definitely decentralized". This attitude represents a major goalpost shift for this kind of movement. > But I think values are important. Values play a huge part in guiding human behavior. This seems to be a bit romantic to me. The community can talk about values all they want, but it doesn't change the fact that shitcoins are everywhere. We can all agree murder is bad, but that isn't going to stop murders from happening.
- serverholic 5y ago
  There is still a lot of value in "kinda decentralized". For example, you can download smart-contract bytecode and verify it. Go ahead and call up visa and ask for their source code. Another example is the immutability of smart contracts. If someone updates a contract and you don't like it then you can keep using the old one. Go ask robinhood if you can use an old version of their app. As far as private keys, I really don't know what to tell you. People lose their passwords all the time. Also smart wallets will help you recover you crypto wallet. UX is moving in the right direction here. > This seems to be a bit romantic to me. The community can talk about values all they want, but it doesn't change the fact that shitcoins are everywhere. We can all agree murder is bad, but that isn't going to stop murders from happening. So should we stop using email because of phishing? Or stop using phones because of spam calls? We educate people on phishing. We educate people on scam calls. We educate people on the dangers of investing in penny stocks. We educate people on the dangers of options trading. Why can't we educate people on shitcoins and decentralization? That's my point, crypto is a wild place but we can absolutely create a culture that moves things in the right direction.

ccamrobertson 5y ago

Confounding DAOs as web3 is a little odd. They may use web3 tooling...but obviously most are "DOs" (distributed organizations) today and they don't really comprise web3. IPFS is a great example the author points to as to what I understand web3 infrastructure to be; it seems to be a very strong example of decentralization.

gizmo385 5y ago
Except many Web3 proponents consider DAOs to be a part of Web3. A bit of a "no true scotsman"

DennisP 5y ago

I've been kicking around the Ethereum community since the early days, and what people were calling "web3" back then is not what we have now. The original idea was for everything to be hosted on IPFS or Swarm[1]. The latter was to be an Ethereum-native protocol similar to IPFS; it turned out to be harder than expected and hasn't gotten traction so far but it's still an active project. One of its goals was to enable payments for keeping files available. Still, decentralized naming and digital signatures go a long way towards turning p2p filesharing into something more. I think it'll all come together eventually. [1] https://www.ethswarm.org/ https://www.ethswarm.org/

gfodor 5y ago
Exactly. It’s been weird seeing so many people who have lived through several technology curves failing to imagine where these current trends are pointing.
- kody 5y ago
  So, the next wave of DRM
- throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
  What proportion of people who had the perspective/foresight to predict "several technology curves" (and potentially profit off of them) will waste their time fighting battles in the comments of hacker news threads about the potential next one?
  - DennisP 5y ago
    If they did it well enough, they might have plenty of time to waste. Just because you made a few good investments doesn't mean you have to dedicate every waking hour to making more of them.
preseinger 5y ago
What are some decentralized naming initiatives?

riffic 5y ago

I can't stand anything about a "Web3" that is not inclusive of existing ecosystems using actual, working, standardized protocols like those adopted by the IndieWeb and Fediverse communities. "A resource arrangement that works in practice can work in theory" as the adage goes coined by Elinor Ostrom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom#Ostrom's_law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom#Ostrom's_law). You don't need blockchains to be decentralized. Continuing to dunk on "web3" over here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Web3Skepticism/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Web3Skepticism/

rapnie 5y ago
Web3 has been co-opted to such extent by cryptocurrencies and blockchain tech that it may be better to come up with a different name for sane open-standards based decentralized technologies. The whole Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 has never been a good fit anyway and used quite arbitrarily. How long has the 3.0 versioning been in use already?
- genezeta 5y ago
  > The whole Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 has never been a good fit anyway and used quite arbitrarily The actual problem is that there's a fundamental distinction between the "2.0" -and "1.0"- tag and the "3.0" tag. "Web 2.0" was a term coined to describe something which had already occurred, at least to a substantial extent. This is made obvious by the fact that it was coined in conjunction with "Web 1.0". It was defined on some -more or less defined- characteristics that were there already and were used to point out a change that had already happened. It was "Ok, this has happened; let's call it 2.0 (and, for contrast, let's call 1.0 what existed previously)". People generally agreed on the name and that was it. "Web 3.0" was never anything like that. It has always been co-opted to promote someone's ideas/hopes/vision/technologies. It is always "Ok, I/we want to go in that direction; I/we will call that "3.0" and hope the world shares my view and allows me to use that name for my vision". As a fairly old example: > The Semantic Web (sometimes known as Web 3.0) ... [0] But, of course, being something which isn't there just yet, a lot of groups want to own the term for their thing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web
5y ago

__MatrixMan__ 5y ago

> A lot of the reason why I detest NFTs in particular is because I detest the concept of artificial scarcity, something that has been plauging the digital world long before the invention of NFTs I agree with this, artificial scarcity is a lousy way to get anything done. The end-game of economics ought to be to eliminate scarcity, artificial or otherwise. But if the alternative to NFT's is the status quo, then you're choosing between a system where only the privileged get to set up artificial scarcity games (usually there are lawyers...) versus one where anyone can do so. It still sucks, but it sucks less. > Naturally, the exploitation of natural resources and absurd energy demands solely to enforce the value of made up internet items would be the endgame [of NFTs]. I think that the endgame is to exchange NFTs as proofs of contribution to the public good. I minted this NFT by sequestering a kilogram of carbon, by filling this pothole, by serving in a jury, that sort of thing. As it stands it's not really clear why I should accept a dollar from a stranger--for all I know, they made that dollar by making the world worse. Why should I participate in a scheme that enables them to continue doing so? But with NFT's I can look at the circumstances of its minting and decide for myself whether that's the kind of thing I want to see more of.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> But if the alternative to NFT's is the status quo, then you're choosing between a system where only the privileged get to set up artificial scarcity games (usually there are lawyers...) versus one where anyone can do so. It still sucks, but it sucks less. This doesn’t really follow. Why would NFTs be the only way to generate artificial scarcity when people have been doing it forever with one-off art, private experiences and concerts, and limited edition runs? NFTs seem like a step in the wrong direction: You still don’t have the original art or thing that the NFT supposedly represents. You just have a new blockchain entry that says “This NFT represents <thing>“ > As it stands it's not really clear why I should accept a dollar from a stranger--for all I know, they made that dollar by making the world worse. Why should I participate in a scheme that enables them to continue doing so? But with NFT's I can look at the circumstances of its minting and decide for myself whether that's the kind of thing I want to see more of. This doesn’t make any sense either. Why do you implicitly trust what people tell you about an NFT but not a dollar? There’s nothing magical about NFTs that solves the social problems you’re describing. An NFT is just a blockchain entry with associated cryptographic procedures for changing said blockchain entry. It doesn’t give you insight into the circumstances around it. You still have to take whatever people say at face value, just as you would with the dollar example. But with the NFT you have to pay a lot of money just to accept it. Money which goes to miners who are burning energy at a furious pace just to keep the NFT existing, in a system that becomes ever less efficient as more miners join. That’s probably not what people had in mind when it comes to making the world a better place.

YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago

It's Beanie Babies for crypto bros.

kody 5y ago

Nope, but a whole lot of ancap bros are going to get very rich from this fad. More power to them I guess.

boxmonster 5y ago

Can someone explain to me how something with a single source of truth (the blockchain database) can be considered decentralized?

seibelj 5y ago
The blockchain database doesn't have an owner. Users (public keys) can only modify very specific things related to them, and no node can arbitrarily modify it.
chroem- 5y ago
I will answer your question with another question: would a more traditional DHT with a built-in p2p consensus mechanism stop being decentralized because it has said consensus mechanism?
- boxmonster 5y ago
  I use the BitTorrent DHT all the time but I don't expect it to be consistent, not even eventually. With money you need something that is 100% accurate 100% of the time. Miners compete to calculate the one true blockchain. That smacks of centralization to me.
  - chroem- 5y ago
    Which is why I said > DHT with a built-in p2p consensus mechanism The notion that a p2p network stops being decentralized because it has consensus is silly.
meheleventyone 5y ago
Because like trustlessness and claims to remove middlemen they’re true but only in a very specific context. Every time you see a grandiose crypto claim that doesn’t make sense just add “for a technicality” to the end.
ultra_nick 5y ago
Blockchain is like scientific research. Anyone can announce anything, but only verifiable findings are trusted.

jacobjjacob 5y ago

Interesting at the beginning, but then the author rants a lot about their personal opinions. This goes on for many paragraphs.

jimjimjim 5y ago

if we ever invent Star Trek replicators a whole bunch of grifters would demand artificial scarcity for Picard's earl grey!

d--b 5y ago

Would people please stop with that web3 non-sense. It doesn't even exist.

aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
The scammers are trying to meme it into existence.
Quindecillion 5y ago
It's a marketing term used to sell products/services Like "superfoods"
almostkorean 5y ago
web3 has existed since 2015, see here: https://github.com/ChainSafe/web3.js/releases?page=14 https://github.com/ChainSafe/web3.js/releases?page=14 How does it not exist to you?
- remram 5y ago
  The fact that somebody published a package named "web3" doesn't mean that "web3", the movement/revolution/direction, exists. I can create a package right now, call it "web4", and return an empty web page. Inferring the future of the web from it would be foolish. The web is used daily by billions of people who use the word to mean something specific, and a few cryptocurrency enthusiasts don't get to decide what it should now be.
  - almostkorean 5y ago
    This feels kinda pointless, but I wasn't trying to say that the package "web3" existing means the concept of "web3" exists. It would have been better for me to post npm download trends, see here: https://www.npmtrends.com/web3-vs-ethers https://www.npmtrends.com/web3-vs-ethers These are both libraries for frontend code to interact with smart contracts. All I'm trying to say is that they do exist and developers have been using them for years.

randomsearch 5y ago

As a rule, every decentralised system in computing eventually becomes centralised. This is usually because it is more efficient to employ a hierarchical structure when implementing some functions. Crypto is just like every other system - ostensibly distributed but centralised in practice. The great exception to this seems to be BitTorrent. It remains decentralised and I wonder - what is so special about BitTorrent that means it hasn’t been replaced by a hierarchical system? Is it just “piracy” or is there something deeper we can learn from it?

pjc50 5y ago
> what is so special about BitTorrent that means it hasn’t been replaced by a hierarchical system? Every time a top of hierarchy node pops up too high it gets whacked by copyright enforcement. This is an effective pressure against centralisation. Otherwise every decentralised system tends to converge into central systems, like planets forming out of an accretion disk. Surprisingly the copyright industry is far more effective at driving global law enforcement to do its bidding than the financial regulators are.
- marderfarker2 5y ago
  There isn’t a “top of the hierarchy node” in BitTorrent. Everyone gets treated the same less some tit for tat rules which usually don’t apply because a swarm usually has that 1 or 2 altruistic seeders.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    But where do you get your list of torrents from? TPB is what I had in mind as the top of the hierarchy.
    - marderfarker2 5y ago
      Those are torrent indexes, which is not part of BitTorrent. They’re not essential to function. BitTorrent do come with centralized trackers but they are designed to not hold any payload.

VoodooJuJu 5y ago

You're probably right, but you're too late. "Decentralized" already made its way into the minds of the players. And decentralized is associated with "something good" and "something to throw money at because maybe it will make me rich". And those players will all lose while those at the top of the pyramids will all win and then you can say "I told you so" to all those greater fools, but they'll still say you were wrong, that you're not even a player, and so you know nothing. I wish I could convince them otherwise too, but it's too late for that. A fool and his money.... At this point, I'd rather just make them my fools - better mine than someone else's. Take their money first, then say "I told you so". Then they might start listening to you.

api 5y ago
I hate how cryptocurrency sucked all the air out of the room with decentralization to the point that the term is now hopelessly linked to it.
- vmception 5y ago
  I can relate to the frustration with that, whenever I had "algorithmic" in a pitch for a trading service or fund, literally everyone derailed the conversation to high frequency trading in all of their interest or rebuttals. Because HFT was hopelessly linked to algorithmic.

kapsteur 5y ago

"Amazon's Server Outage Took Down a 'Decentralized' Crypto Exchange" => https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdnxy/amazons-server-outage-took-down-a-decentralized-crypto-exchange https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdnxy/amazons-server-outage...

vmception 5y ago

It's just a platform to build and offer financial services without having to ask anyone, or have ongoing overhead costs. Some are calling it OpenFinance to step over the optional decentralization. "Check out my OF" penetrates a much broader audience than "DeFi service"

taytus 5y ago
your OnlyFans?
- vmception 5y ago
  OpenFinance
  - NoGravitas 5y ago
    Far more people will read OF as OnlyFans than as OpenFinance.
    - vmception 5y ago
      Thats the point

Sevii 5y ago

Web3 is about having your own private keys. It's not about decentralization, it's about having control over your digital identity. If I log into HN and make comments here, HN owns my identity. If I log into a web3 site and make comments there, I own the identity on that site. Moving authentication to the user removes the need for 3rd party websites to store passwords. It eliminates the need to sign up for websites. You just give websites access to your identity. Decentralization is a feature of cryptocurrency. Web3 is about owning your identity, which is enabled by people having their own keys.

gitfan86 5y ago
You are describing "Login with Google" HN could easily support that, but one of the features of HN is that anonymity is optional.
- k__ 5y ago
  Login with Google is Login with Google, not login with your own private keys.
  - gitfan86 5y ago
    You do have your own private keys when you enable authenticator on your mobile device for TWO-Factor auth.
  - acdha 5y ago
    How is that meaningfully different? Technically, yes, Google could give your account to someone else but that would have significant business impacts unless it was done following a court order or something similar, which would also apply to a blockchain key. Similarly, unless the plan is to tell people that one mistake or hardware failure means they irrecoverably lose their identity, the same process which allows replacing an old key with a new one can be used to replace you. Finally, there appears to be either no benefit or a big privacy impact mapping keys to profiles on sites. If I go to a website and see “J. Random User” I have to trust that the owner of that site verified their identity against the expected source; if I see something like a signature against a particular key, there's a privacy issue from making it so easy to link you across sites and other activity (yes, people can use ), and if you don't trust the site operator you still have the problem of them showing a different ID when they're doing something dodgy.

lousyd 5y ago

I think of web3 in a different way than I see it commonly talked about. I think the idea behind the changes in the Internet that people identified as "Web 2.0" was that the Internet was opening up to more people with the creation of sites that allowed user participation. It was a recognition that although the early public Internet allowed anyone to participate, in reality the cost, effort, and know-how involved in setting up a website was a hurdle most people couldn't overcome. So with Web 2.0 the internet was opening up to more people. We now know that this led to a perverse centralization of power. Yes, more people could now participate, but mostly on a few corporate-controlled platforms. Web 3.0 is supposed to be a continuation of the trend of making the Internet "of the people". Web 1.0 was open to anyone. Web 2.0 was more open. Web 3.0 will be even more open. (In theory.) Web 3.0 isn't about Reddit or the other sites this person mentions. It's about all the new technologies people are coming up with to enable participation on the Internet free from the control of a few centralized corporate platforms. Blockchain is a big part of that, and cryptocurrencies. But so is tildeverse and Mastodon and Gemini and all that stuff. Also, it's not the case that ARPANET was designed to stay up "if the Soviets took down important cities or strategic datacenters". Bob Taylor, the man who literally made the decision to authorize and fund the ARPANET, has said so himself. "The creation of the ARPAnet was not motivated by considerations of war."

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago

Isn't decentralization just a definition of Web3? After web2 has been hijacked by a handful of companies, with associated surveillance, censorship and manipulation, people just want some freedom.