24 ms·

The Web3 Fraud

238 points by aaronbrethorst 5y ago

vmception 5y ago
What if you just dropped all the ideology speak and just called them platforms? Theyre open finance platforms. Everyone building bullshit on Shopify’s platform is the exact audience that would be better off building on an open finance platform (the shopify apps that are sold to merchants). That crowd just wants to launch a product, have users, and make money passively. Thats what defi builders are doing on web3 platforms waaaaay more effectively. If you actually thought anybody cared about the consensus then haha yeah you’re the one that fell for it, not them.
- throwaway2048 5y ago
  Better in what sense? Its extremely difficult to actually use cryptocurrency for selling things beyond cryptocurrency related instruments. You need both your vendors and your customers to be able to easily transfer money in and out, and as things stand, that's an absolutely massive pain in the ass compared to using USD, and approximately nobody does it. But that is only the start of the problems, not factoring in things like wild exchange value swings, and huge gas/processing fees.
  - amluto 5y ago
    But it’s fairly easy to use “cryptocurrency” to pay for things, e.g. if you have a cryptocurrency-denominated account at the same provider as your vendor. This is, of course, not open finance in any meaningful respect.
    - smt88 5y ago
      It's easy-ish (far harder than using a credit card), but it's also: - possible the transaction won't happen immediately or happen at all - extremely expensive - stupid (if you expect your particular cryptocurrency to increase in value over time) - missing all the protections and benefits of a credit card
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        - Introduces exchange risk and tax complexities for most merchants.
      - amluto 5y ago
        If I transfer from my Coinbase account to yours, the transaction is not subject to the vagaries of the blockchain. It’s more or less like transferring from my PayPal account to yours.
        smt88 5y ago
        Are you suggesting it's sidechain? Or that our funds in Coinbase are pooled? Either way, it completely defeats the purpose of decentralization, consensus, etc. Coinbase, in that case, is exactly like a traditional bank except that you're trading non-money instead of money.
        amluto 5y ago
        If you are depositing anything in an online Bitcoin account and you’re making transactions that aren’t insanely expensive, they’re either side chain or pooled.
    - MBCook 5y ago
      Ah yes. The solution to “normal people can’t easily get cryptocurrency to pay with” is “well if they already had cryptocurrency…”. I just noticed I read that wrong. I missed the same provider as your vendor part. So I guess the solution for using cryptocurrency to buy things at Amazon is “if you already bought cryptocurrency at Amazon…”. But I’m trying to buy something. So how does the intermediatory step help at all? This post may sound somewhat hostile. I TRUELY don’t understand how cryptocurrency helps any of this. It only seems to help cryptocurrency people. The author nailed my feelings 100%.
  - post_from_work 5y ago
    >>>Better in what sense? Its extremely difficult to actually use cryptocurrency for selling things beyond cryptocurrency related instruments. https://cryptoemporium.eu/ https://cryptoemporium.eu/ https://www.chainbytes.com/ https://www.chainbytes.com/ Sell physical assets for crypto, then cash out at a Crypto ATM in your currency of choice, if you absolutely need to. A big part of the problem is Crypto ATMs aren't prolific enough. Restrictions on money-handling businesses come into play there, which is argued as anti-terrorism/organized crime measures but is really just gatekeeping/rent-seeking by the established players.
  - vmception 5y ago
    I’m referring to shopify apps that merchants try to integrate.
- simonw 5y ago
  How is building against defi better than building on Shopify if you want to sell things to regular people who just want to exchange their money for things that they want?
  - vmception 5y ago
    The shopify apps on their app marketplace is what I’m referring to. These are sold to merchants hoping to do something easier. All defi products help people already in the defi ecosystem do something easier.
- smt88 5y ago
  None of your post makes sense to me. Why are you comparing DeFi platforms to Shopify? Who are the developers choosing between these options, and what are they trying to sell? How does a DeFi platform (or any blockchain) help me to sell physical products? Also, it seems like you're arguing that blockchain platforms are better developer experiences, which seems untrue. There are a lot of extra hurdles, costs, and scaling issues on blockchains, but enthusiasts say it's worth it for the consensus. Now you're saying the consensus is unimportant. So what is the benefit of building on a platform (please let me know a specific one you've used and liked) and why it can't be done elsewhere? I have seen so many HN posts like yours, but no one will give me specifics. Who are all these builders launching apps that aren't just speculation frenzies (e.g. Axie Infinity)?
  - smt88 5y ago
    Not surprised that, when asked for specifics, there is no response. This is how every crypto thread goes. "Crypto is going to revolutionize ____." "OK, what is a use case where it provides some value that wasn't possible without it?" ...
- acdha 5y ago
  Okay, so how does it compare to Shopify? If I sell coffee beans, what’s my situation for cost of transaction (including conversion into the currency I need to pay my bills), ease of use for customers, transaction speed, difficulty of doing my taxes, etc.? If this is better, that should be easy to quantify.
endisneigh 5y ago
I don’t understand what problem web3 can solve that a trusted entity cannot. And let’s keep in mind your reply to this comment will be using a trusted entity. In fact in the history of the internet I cannot find a single example of any technology working better in a decentralized fashion compared to centralized for the end user
- esjeon 5y ago
  > I don’t understand what problem web3 can solve that a trusted entity cannot. Trust cannot solve the problem of giving too much power to trustee. The fact that IT giants are collecting people's data to manipulate people's mind is one good example. We should be able to control the level of trust we can provide to other parties.
- slimsag 5y ago
  I will mint NFTs of your comment, $300 pop so anybody who wants to prove you wrong can do so by buying the NFT of your comment that will surely age well. :) /s
  - kibibu 5y ago
    Wouldn't that NFT point to a comment on a central service though? Or would the NFT contain the actual comment itself? Is there a difference between buying a "comment on HN" and the text of that comment?
    - kibibu 5y ago
      Checking the Opensea API: https://docs.opensea.io/reference/asset-object https://docs.opensea.io/reference/asset-object NFTs require at least one of two centralized services to remain functional - the original URL and the Opensea cached URL. So proof of ownership is decentralized, but the actual image is not.
      - miracle2k 5y ago
        People make this mistake because they think there is a "function" part to NFTs. It's a ledger, and you want to remember what media an entry refers to. You can do that by just keeping it in your community's collective memory, or you can use a hash of the file, or both. People can then choose to value that ledger entry, or not. Everything else, such as the ability of n app to figure out an image URL for the NFT, is just sugar on top. NFT people will value a Bored Ape token whether the URL is valid or not - and they are entirely right to do so. The Cryptopunks don't even have a URL!
nihonde 5y ago
You reach for Web3 when your requirements include: (a) self-sovereign ID/auth, and/or (b) hosted materials that can't be censored via a centralized hosting provider. Horses for courses. ps. Does he think Web3 is about storing data on the blockchain network? It's not. Ex. https://ceramic.network/ https://ceramic.network/
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  Sometimes bloggers gotta blog, even when they just know a little bit and are just regurgitating an iteration of their preconceived notions. Edit: Of course you get voted down because you make a substantive comment. Welcome to Hacker News' Crytpo Hater Crowd.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    You know what Carl Sagan said about Bozo the clown? > "The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." Sometimes, Haters Gonna Hate and there's nothing more to it. But sometimes, Haters hate because they and you should hate what they hate, and one day, it will be clear to all. Problem is, of course, knowing if we're talking the equivalent of powered flight or Bozo the clown.
  - dang 5y ago
    Please don't break the site guidelines like this. I realize it's frustrating when you feel surrounded by a lot of people who you feel are wrong, but there's a guideline for that too: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - SubiculumCode 5y ago
      As my post was one of the first in this these threads, the topic had not yet gotten divisive. Moreover, my comment about moderation did not regard my comment but regarded the parent comment, which I felt made a substantive contribution and got downvoted for it for, I am guessing, ideological reasons.
ar7hur 5y ago
This article misses the point, it sees web3 decentralization as purely technical and makes performance comparisons with existing systems. The power of web3 decentralization is about control, not more powerful computing. Yes your raspberry pi runs faster than the EVM, but can you give me any guarantee about what code it runs?
- jjnoakes 5y ago
  Why can't you verify the code you run locally?
- fabrice_d 5y ago
  You could, if the code came from a signed blob that is verified. No need for a blockchain to allow that, it's basically what Mobile OSes are doing, and with multisig you can verify both the developer and the OS vendor.
  - DesiLurker 5y ago
    well then you are trusting the signer, that is the ultimate promise of decentralization. especially coupled with deterministic builds by gcc you could have a end-to-end verified firmware running on a device.
- pavlov 5y ago
  The comparison between Raspberry Pi and EVM is off by many, many orders of magnitude. What Ethereum marketing likes to call a “global supercomputer” is slower than a 1950s computer built out of vacuum tubes, and running programs is more expensive than it was in 1955. (Programming ergonomics are also nearly punch card level.) There are very few applications you’d actually want to execute on a platform like that. And every attempt to improve the design (including the long-promised PoS transition) is going to turn it into a centralized plutocracy. It’s a fascinating science experiment that doesn’t have much purpose as an application environment. But because people are stubborn and the marketing was successful enough, “blockchain” is to this decade what “object-oriented” was in 1990s: a token gesture towards it will make managers and journalists happy.
v64 5y ago
Many criticisms of blockchain apps, comparing their use cases to conventional technologies (databases, conventional separation of services such as that described in the article, etc) all seem to miss a major point: Dapps running on the blockchain are immutable and highly resistant to being shutdown. Immutability is important because it's guaranteed that no matter how many times you interact with a contract address, you can be assured that at no point has the code in that contract ever changed. This is not an assurance you can typically get, as backend code for traditional endpoints can change at any time. Even more important IMO is the difficulty in shutting down a contract that's deployed to the blockchain. In the case of this article, the reliance on external services such as AWS opens up possibilities for your app to be shut down, whether it's through non-payment to your AWS account, AWS decides you've violated their terms of service, or legal action compels AWS to shut down your app. In the case of dapps deployed to the blockchain (combined optionally with frontends deployed to a service like IPFS, but this isn't a requirement, as one can always interact directly with contracts), the ability to shutdown these apps would rely on somehow breaking the blockchain itself. Whether or not you see these aspects as bugs or features is a matter of opinion. Yes, blockchains are slower and more expensive. This is the current cost of enabling the two facets above. If we're not comparing blockchain dapps to other systems that offer the same assurances, then we're comparing apples and oranges.
- jjnoakes 5y ago
  I get mostly the same features with self-hosted and local traditional apps for a fraction of the price and much lower general financial risk as well.
  - selestify 5y ago
    The person you're replying to has already addressed your points: > Yes, blockchains are slower and more expensive. This is the current cost of enabling the two facets above. If we're not comparing blockchain dapps to other systems that offer the same assurances, then we're comparing apples and oranges. Could you please respond more meaningfully to the conversation?
rvz 5y ago
> So what does the supposed “web3” add to this vision? The cryptocurrency web3 starts with all our existing infrastructure. To some degree, the author is not wrong. Some of these so-called 'defi' apps were still sitting on AWS, GCP, and Azure and were affected by the outage underlying the decentralization illusion they created. The same thing with NFTs stored on OpenSea and not even being tied to the blockchain itself. Right now, the only reason that Ethereum is hyped for this is because the defi hype squad has their investments in the cryptocurrency; even when it is not the best cryptocurrency to use for this. Not even I can use it to pay for my groceries without over paying for the fees just for it to go faster. This all proves that web3 is not ready. (yet)
josephmoniz 5y ago
As a 13 year old programmer learning to code in 2005, transferring money online seemed impossible, this was pre-stripe after all. A 13 year old getting a bank partnership or a payment processor deal seemed a bit out of reach as well. These days though, sending money online via stable coins like $USDC over a fast and cheap block chain like Solana, Polygon, avalanche, etc is not only possible but flat out inevitable.
- evan_ 5y ago
  13 year olds used PayPal in 2005 just like everyone else.
- aroman 5y ago
  And, Stripe now exists, so the problem is mostly solved on "web2", no? What does Stripe (and similar products) not offer that $USDC could?
  - josephmoniz 5y ago
    Stripe fees are higher than Solana $USDC transaction fees. You also don’t have to worry about getting your account shut down or funds frozen. I once worked for a YC company, LendUp, and we started off using Stripe for accepting payment but had to stop because the policies of their partner bank at the time disallowed servicing of our types of transactions. We spent a large chunk of time integrating with many different payments processors on and off, it was rough. In summary, web3 has the potential to be and already is, cheaper, faster, and permissionless.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  As a 14 year old programmer and tinkerer in 2004, I had no problem buying a Helium-Neon laser for an experiment and paying via PayPal. As an 18 year old tinkerer and hacker in 2008, I had no problem signing up to take payments via PayPal and running a little side thing selling home-assembled widgets out of my bedroom. And as horrible as PayPal is, cryptocurrencies have even more friction and risk.
  - 5y ago
meowkit 5y ago
> So I still need a DNS name, Ethereum Name Service (ENS) https://forkast.news/what-is-ens-ethereum-name-service-how-does-it-work/ https://forkast.news/what-is-ens-ethereum-name-service-how-d... > After all, a programmer doing the most basic test of a web3 prototype is going to need to get the cryptocurrency, spend the cryptocurrency, and any application will require all users to get the cryptocurrency as well. If this gets abandoned quickly due to the inevitable technical failure “web3” still accomplished its goal of getting more suckers in and extracting their money. Hard to take serious the rest of the blog when he doesn't seem to be aware of development testnets that exist for exactly the above reason. Or familiar with scaling efforts, or some of the long term ethos of the crypto developer community. https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/networks/#testnets https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/networks/#testnets
- stanislavb 5y ago
  I dunno, it still looks like a big ponzi scheme in many angles.
  - 3np 5y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
- dogecoinbase 5y ago
  > or some of the long term ethos of the crypto developer community. Do you mean "the code is the contract unless the contract would cause a substantial number of wealthy stakeholders to lose money, in which case the code is no longer the contract" (a stance, I might add, that is _formalized_ by PoS systems, if anyone ever manages to get one online)?
- 3np 5y ago
  Besides ENS, there is also https://www.hdns.io/ https://www.hdns.io/
mediocregopher 5y ago
The reason I'm hyped about crypto (which in this article seems to be incorrectly equated to "web3") is because of the new possibilities it brings. The reason I put my money into stupid shit in crypto is because I don't know if it will work or not, but I'm excited to know if it will. Some of it does, most doesn't. I learn, progress has been made. Imagine a whole new continent is discovered, and all the people back home are criticizing those who go there because it's not particularly safe at the moment, and look how warm and cozy they could be back in civilization. No one's asking you to go to web3, stay here if you like. Hell, I found out today there's still people using gopher. There's room for all of us.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > Imagine a whole new continent is discovered, and all the people back home are criticizing those who go there because it's not particularly safe at the moment, and look how warm and cozy they could be back in civilization. Imagine a whole new black hole is discovered, and all the people back home are like "but it just absorbs everything that crosses the event horizon" and "it will destroy everything you put near it" and "it's the end of everything you care about" and saying you shouldn't try to spend any more time getting close to it. Someone is going out of that scenario (or not) looking (or not) a little the worse for wear. So the question is: do you feel lucky?
- romeros 5y ago
  the reason people put money into crypto is to get rich quick. Imagine you put $1000 and got 1000 BTC as an early adopter. Now, you are a multimillionaire many times over. Most refuse to acknowledge the truth and it is almost a meme now about being there for "the tech"
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  > Some of it does, most doesn't I don't know of anything in crypto which actually works (read: does something better/cheaper than pre-existing technologies). The single value of it is speculation.
serverholic 5y ago
This has got to be trolling. Almost every point is nonsense or at best uninformed vitriol. I literally don't know where to start with a comment so I'll just make a series of points related to claims in the article. Nobody has ever claimed that you can run normal computer programs on the Ethereum blockchain. It isn't meant to run fucking Doom. Smart-contracts are more like financial protocols. Blockchains are a form of database but they are not meant to store large amounts of data. That's more a job for IPFS. Ethereum is migrating to a layered architecture and users are meant to stay on Layer 2's which provide substantially cheaper transactions. I'm a fan of cryptocurrencies because I think there should be a spectrum of centralization <-> decentralization. If someone wants to stay centralized then fine but I should be able to handle my own money without a bank. I also believe that cryptocurrencies reduce financial friction and overhead. Taking donations is as simple as posting your public address. Taking payments means just integrating a library in your application instead of signing up with a service. I'm a fan of NFTs because I think people should have ownership of digital items. I think if I pay money for Hearthstone cards then I should be able to sell them on my own terms just like Pokemon cards in real life.
- streetcat1 5y ago
  No it is not. There is no inherit value to bitcoin or any other token or coin. Those are just some hash values printed on a digital marker. Imagine that I assign value to my monopoly money (as in the game), and it is traded in a stock exchange. Yes, it could reach 60K, but it is still monopoly money.
  - abaga129 5y ago
    How is that any different from Fiat money? Or anything for that matter. It holds no real value beyond the paper it is printed on. It is valuable because we all agree as a society to give it value.
    - acdha 5y ago
      Yes, cryptocurrency is the purest form of fiat currency, which is to say a very weak one. The difference is that almost all other fiat currencies are backed by an organization with real world power: for example, the US dollar is required to pay taxes in one of the largest world economies, which guarantees trillions of dollars in demand, and it’s what the US government uses to pay millions of people and buy all kinds of different things. Other countries currencies follow that pattern to varying degrees which is also why we’ve seen efforts like the Euro to, among other reasons, increase the overall volume. Cryptocurrencies lack sovereignty and don’t have an alternative source of baseline demand, which is why they’re volatile on a level normally associated with collapsing states — especially if they’re like Bitcoin where the deflationary model encourages everyone not to spend. When anyone can easily set up a functional equivalent, there isn’t much to anchor the valuation. This is why people created things like NFTs to give others a reason to buy their tokens rather than someone else’s but that’s not especially stable until those NFTs are accompanied by legal contracts conveying tangible value.
sbazerque 5y ago
Forget blockchains. TCP/IP, BGP, DNS, etc. they are all fantastic. What they give us is _connectivity_. The problem is commerce (Amazon et al), search (Google), social (Facebook), etc. or, in general, the information layer built on top. David Clark said (in 1992!) "The network as an Information Mesh. An old goal, not yet achieved." The information theoretic and algorithmic ideas have matured (in no small part due to cryptocurrencies, yes, among other things).It's time to build that information mesh. I want a social identity that's not tied to a particular product/company. I want to shop online using a distributed protocol where reputation is independent of the platform. I want a search engine that can validate the identity and verify the integrity of the content it indexes. We can build such a thing now.
DevKoala 5y ago
Wait what? Why is a centralized system being compared to a decentralized one? I understand Web3 isn't there yet, but this comparison is egregious.
nraynaud 5y ago
I’m not a crypto bro, but I don’t think it’s fair to criticize a prototype on its cost. Airplanes were very bad at the beginning. I think the valid criticism would be if there is some kind of physical limitation that prevents the system from evolving to something useful (think of the rocket equation, the ratio of useful mass/propellant is stuck at a ridiculous number).
- mattwilsonn888 5y ago
  Nah man. Its been ten years! Time to shut it all down because after ten years if its not perfect yet its not a good technology. I would know, I'm a computer programmer on HackerNews!
- QuadrupleA 5y ago
  Always these comparisons to wildly successful products. Airplanes, smartphones, the internet, the computer. A great hype technique. Any day now, just you wait, once we have PoS or Zkp or Cardano launches X or people adopt Solana, etc... crypto is going to do something amazing and unforseen, indescribable and worldchanging besides trading it for more crypto.
sb057 5y ago
Something that I think a lot of Web3 (and metaverse, et al) proponent types don't understand is that you can't plan out a revolutionary technology. By definition, any wide-reaching society-wide overturning of the current order will behave in ways you can't anticipate. For example, HTTP code 402 "Payment Required" was standardized in 1999 when the W3C anticipated that people would be paying for things over the web, but didn't realize that such an error message wouldn't ever really be used because of how such payments were eventually implemented.
- DannyBee 5y ago
  I mean, this is true, but it feels like there is a more basic issue of product/market fit here. Even given the comments here about what this stuff is supposed to provide, it's really unclear anyone did even basic diligence. Something as simple as "we went around to different focus groups of developers and said "what are your biggest problems and pain points". Things like "immutability" and "not being shut down" would not be the top 2 for most groups of developers, and i'd bet not in the top 10, either. As a result, every time i hear about "web3" i can't stop hearing the simpsons clip where Stephen Hawking says "i wanted to see your utopia, but now i see it is more of a fruitopia" Don't get me wrong, there are certainly types of apps, etc out there where they are going to say "being shut down" is their biggest problem, but that seems like a really small portion of the total addressable market.
- plokiju 5y ago
  Why do you feel they don’t understand that?
- chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago
  There's not much central planning going on. For example, the smart contract standards for NFTs came out of existing smart contracts; they standardized a lot of already-existing practices like creating a `transferFrom` function. Emergent standards like that exist to tamp down on contracts creating functions with slightly different function names, behaviors, etc.
gfodor 5y ago
This is a nice example of the tech consensus anti-web3 perspective. Of course, it openly claims everyone promoting web3 technologies are scam artists, that it is a ponzi scheme, and that nobody in the space has considered "DNS and AWS are cheap, the EVM is way slow and expensive." I guess we'll just have to wait and see which it is: the above claim, or that the authors writing these pieces are missing something. I'll admit I do respect the bravery to post something like this, lacking all humility, and fairly falsifiable, that will result in embarrassment if left up and disproven. One thing that is interesting about these critiques is they mirror identically the early critiques of Bitcoin. And now, ironically, they take it as a given that cryptocurrencies are here to stay and are no longer going to eventually crash to zero, which was the claim made in these kinds of posts 5-10 years ago.
riffic 5y ago
It'd be great if USENIX as an organization had a Fediverse presence, thereby showing their commitment to an open web. by the way, shameless plug for /r/Web3Skepticism, where we take a long hard look at this "ecosystem", question its benefits and examine its failings.
jjordan 5y ago
Looks like the daily "hate on web3" article has arrived. Yes, there are problems that need solving in blockchain / crypto / web3. We're doing something that has never been done before, i.e. building censorship resistant trustless systems. It's come a long way but it also has a long way to go before its potential is fulfilled. I don't know that a daily thread of people complaining about well known issues in the space is useful.
QuadrupleA 5y ago
I once had a lot of excitement about it, but the closer I looked at and used "web3" tech the more I came to the conclusion this is all a big pump and dump scheme. What's crypto been good for in its 10+ year span? Financing terrorism and ransomware, selling meaningless jpeg certificates of ownership, ICO scams, totally empty and greedy "number go up" speculation consuming the money and attention of potentially creative and productive fellow human beings, and Cryptokitties. Meanwhile it's already irrevocably wasted, and continues wasting daily, tragic amounts of our world's resources and electricity. Crypto is a cancer - it thrives because the earlier Ponzi participants are working overtime to hype it to the later ones, with mainly emotional and ideological appeals, plus plenty of technical handwaving. If you get deep enough down the rabbit hole technically and structurally, you discover basically what this article is saying.
- mattwilsonn888 5y ago
  You are incredibly confused like many on this site. Confused about the difference between marketing and actual technology. You've basically stepped into a metaphorical convention center with no aid for beginners, been hit with 99 sale's pitches that are genuinely empty and made the conclusion that the whole industry is a scam without realizing that your inability to discern the 1% of actual value makes you conflate aggressive false advertising with the entire space's promise.
  - QuadrupleA 5y ago
    I've written and deployed smart contracts, have run an ethereum node, and know most of the EVM opcodes. I'm not an expert by any means but my criticism of crypto isn't that of an "incredibly confused" beginner listening to marketing hype at a convention center.
    - mattwilsonn888 5y ago
      Well perhaps you should expand your horizons a bit. If you have a good grasp of the core issues with Ethereum then you should have a good idea of what to look for in newer projects.
exdsq 5y ago
I do really dislike this general attitude that blockchain/web3/crypto is some elaborate scam with no benefits. Everyone focuses on the same negatives but never look at the interesting elements like solving the double spend problem, safely transferring digital assets in a trustless environment, having a working global computing system with inbuilt incentives, etc.. Yes there are crap uses at the moment. NFTs are a bubble, tokens are overpriced. But the idea of taking ownership of your financial wallet, allowing atomic transactions of digital items, allowing fast cross-border transactions, are all cool ideas. The issue is people only see the cryptobro memes and videos about what coin will 100x, or being asked if they own ethereum by their hairdresser, or seeing news articles about NFTs being sold for 500k. Rather than jumping on the bandwagon of "Crypto is awesome, let's make a ton of money" or "Crypto is stupid, proof of work is bad for the environment, txs are slow" take the time to actually look at some of the underlying tech. I feel most people are just parroting issues they've heard rather than actually taking a look under the hood. Edit: I found this a particularly well-reasoned explanation of the tech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSTNhBlfV_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSTNhBlfV_s
- deleted 5y ago
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- paxys 5y ago
  The problem is that I have been hearing about all these amazing use cases for crypto/blockchain for over a decade now, and not a single one has materialized that is useful for me or any other common user who is not involved in the community. The entire ecosystem is circular. All web3 apps are about web3. And what point does it start adding value outside of pushing itself?
  - exdsq 5y ago
    This is fair, I wish more teams were working on the boring useful use-cases. One I particularly like is gig tickets. Represent them as NFTs, prove ownership of the ticket as it is in your wallet, trade them for USD with anyone around the world in a single atomic transaction, use third party tools to verify a ticket is authentic (either manually copying an NFT address onto a bands website or programatically). Suddenly I can sell you a ticket to a band we both like from a link in this message and you can guarantee if you pay you get the ticket and if I send the ticket I get the payment, and you can guarantee the ticket is authentic by checking it was one of the originally minted tickets. Boring, bad UX, but solves a multi-million dollar issue in the ticket reselling market. These are the peer-to-peer systems I wish people focused on. Sadly a couple million just isn't that cool in the web3 space.
Animats 5y ago
The technology is interesting, but so far most of the use cases involve some form of illegality. If you want to use, say, NFTs for something legitimate, it turns out they don't really work very well for that. I'd looked at using NFTs for cross-grid ownership transfers of objects in Open Simulator. That's a set of virtual worlds run by several hundred different people and organizations, but using the same software, a rewrite of Second Life in C#. There's no moderately-secure way to pass 3D models around in that system without them being copied for free, which is why most of the good stuff stays in Second Life, which is centrally managed. Such object instances have prices in the US$0.25 to US$20 range. When you go through a portal from one grid to another, and take some objects with you, a database transaction is required to transfer ownership from avatar A, grid X, to avatar A, grid Y. Otherwise, you could buy one copy and have a free copy in every grid. The assets have to be hosted somewhere. Somewhere with reliable access times in the < 1s range for a few megabytes. The blockchain systems just don't have the bandwidth and costs for that. As databases, they're far too slow, and transactions are too expensive. As storage, I've seen $5 for a gigabyte, forever. It's supposed to be funded by investing the $5 in a speculation that storage cost will decline. But the fine print says basically "until they get tired of doing this". As for NFTs generally, the art is unimpressive, to put it mildly. The NFT world is reportedly about half Axie Infinity and a quarter OpenSea, with all the little guys in the remaining quarter. (That may be bogus; there are no reliable stats on this stuff.) Axie Infinity is a Ponzi in the final stages of collapse.[1] OpenSea is becoming a stalled market. Pick some category, like "Bored Ape", which was getting news coverage a few weeks back. Look at the asking prices. Then look at "recently sold" prices. The "recently sold" prices seem to have a lot of zeros after the decimal point. [1] https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/smooth-love-potion/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/smooth-love-potion/
- derangedHorse 5y ago
  > The technology is interesting, but so far most of the use cases involve some form of illegality. If you want to use, say, NFTs for something legitimate, it turns out they don't really work very well for that. This sounds like opinion written as fact. NFTs have use cases that don’t just encompass illegal activities and work well. I personally own NFTs that are used for governance in terms of a budding project’s direction and NFTs that are even used as subscription keys to certain alpha products. Also it’s a little disingenuous to encourage looking at a contextless single data point indicating a collapse of a product without understanding other factors like there being a bear market in place for the overall cryptocurrency landscape
unityByFreedom 5y ago
> ... in ways that are several orders of magnitude more efficient and more capable. Another thing that gets bandied about, emphasis mine.
jtgi 5y ago
Every architecture makes trade offs. Creatively showing how expensive and slow Ethereum is is entertaining but not entirely relevant. It's like comparing a passenger airplane and a tank, claiming transportation is their sole purpose and since airplanes are both faster and cheaper than tanks, tanks are fraudulent. Ethereum is architected to be a decentralized, permissionless computing platform. Performance is one of the trade offs. It's much more productive, and more challenging in my opinion, to discuss whether or not the trade offs being made are worthwhile.
RichardHeart 5y ago
I did an debate with the author 6/4/2018. He lost. https://youtu.be/I9Pxv1i9W7M?list=PLN0RF11rNdP0kkklAiif2pBLvbp2Y2Ap3&t=10 https://youtu.be/I9Pxv1i9W7M?list=PLN0RF11rNdP0kkklAiif2pBLv... By the way Bitcoin was at $2530. Ethereum was at $590. Bitcoin went up $69,000 since then. Ethereum went to $5000. But pundits and critics seem to be immune to educate from years of progress, and now history. Quote from his article: "So why this hype? Because the cryptocurrency space, at heart, is simply a giant ponzi scheme where the only way early participants make money is if there are further suckers entering the space. The only “utility” for a cryptocurrency (outside criminal transactions and financial frauds) is what someone else will pay for it and anything to pretend a possible real-word utility exists to help find new suckers." The gentlemen that invented and host this forum don't believe that. Disclaimer: I've founded a few cryptocurrencies.
- rank0 5y ago
  > By the way Bitcoin was at $2530. Ethereum was at $590. Bitcoin went up $69,000 since then. Ethereum went to $5000. This is not a convincing argument to me. It tells me that the real utility is just speculation. Shiba Inu has a market cap of 10B. But you’re an idiot if you think Elon musk dog money is valuable to society. If I make a 1000000% return selling magic beans, does that mean the beans have actual utility?
  - RichardHeart 5y ago
    Best performing asset in the history of mankind. Removes counterparty risk. Removes middlemen. Privacy (if you work for it.) Better uptime than your bank and credit card network. Is a better way to login to things, self sovereign usernames and passwords, which are easy to use across all platforms (if they would stop with the lock-in.) The most transparent trading in the world. The highest yields in the world for those that want to just provide liquidity and have less risk. A platform for things I don't like, but others love, customer rewards programs, collectibles, proof of ownership, timestamping. Removing the government money printing press from free war funding, and perhaps requiring a war tax, would reduce military globally. An impossible to fake record of the past, if you pay to write to the db. You can get loans 24 hours a day with no signup that allow you to pay less tax by not selling the asset and paying capital gains, and just living off the borrowed money (like the wealthy have been doing for decades.) Shall I continue, or will you be ignoring all these features and benefits anyway?
terrycody 5y ago
Fraud or not fraud, that is pointless because so called Internet will die down very soon, I guess in less than 10 years, because when AR/VR/wearables replace the smartphone, people will soon rush into a recreational world, where everybody plays game everyday, sure, left 1% don't want to play games, they may use some traditional APPs, at that time, most those APPs do not need to implement Web3 tech stacks, so web3 has meanings, but very very few usage scenarios, IMHO.

What if you just dropped all the ideology speak and just called them platforms? Theyre open finance platforms. Everyone building bullshit on Shopify’s platform is the exact audience that would be better off building on an open finance platform (the shopify apps that are sold to merchants). That crowd just wants to launch a product, have users, and make money passively. Thats what defi builders are doing on web3 platforms waaaaay more effectively. If you actually thought anybody cared about the consensus then haha yeah you’re the one that fell for it, not them.

throwaway2048 5y ago
Better in what sense? Its extremely difficult to actually use cryptocurrency for selling things beyond cryptocurrency related instruments. You need both your vendors and your customers to be able to easily transfer money in and out, and as things stand, that's an absolutely massive pain in the ass compared to using USD, and approximately nobody does it. But that is only the start of the problems, not factoring in things like wild exchange value swings, and huge gas/processing fees.
- amluto 5y ago
  But it’s fairly easy to use “cryptocurrency” to pay for things, e.g. if you have a cryptocurrency-denominated account at the same provider as your vendor. This is, of course, not open finance in any meaningful respect.
  - smt88 5y ago
    It's easy-ish (far harder than using a credit card), but it's also: - possible the transaction won't happen immediately or happen at all - extremely expensive - stupid (if you expect your particular cryptocurrency to increase in value over time) - missing all the protections and benefits of a credit card
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      - Introduces exchange risk and tax complexities for most merchants.
    - amluto 5y ago
      If I transfer from my Coinbase account to yours, the transaction is not subject to the vagaries of the blockchain. It’s more or less like transferring from my PayPal account to yours.
      - smt88 5y ago
        Are you suggesting it's sidechain? Or that our funds in Coinbase are pooled? Either way, it completely defeats the purpose of decentralization, consensus, etc. Coinbase, in that case, is exactly like a traditional bank except that you're trading non-money instead of money.
        amluto 5y ago
        If you are depositing anything in an online Bitcoin account and you’re making transactions that aren’t insanely expensive, they’re either side chain or pooled.
  - MBCook 5y ago
    Ah yes. The solution to “normal people can’t easily get cryptocurrency to pay with” is “well if they already had cryptocurrency…”. I just noticed I read that wrong. I missed the same provider as your vendor part. So I guess the solution for using cryptocurrency to buy things at Amazon is “if you already bought cryptocurrency at Amazon…”. But I’m trying to buy something. So how does the intermediatory step help at all? This post may sound somewhat hostile. I TRUELY don’t understand how cryptocurrency helps any of this. It only seems to help cryptocurrency people. The author nailed my feelings 100%.
- post_from_work 5y ago
  >>>Better in what sense? Its extremely difficult to actually use cryptocurrency for selling things beyond cryptocurrency related instruments. https://cryptoemporium.eu/ https://cryptoemporium.eu/ https://www.chainbytes.com/ https://www.chainbytes.com/ Sell physical assets for crypto, then cash out at a Crypto ATM in your currency of choice, if you absolutely need to. A big part of the problem is Crypto ATMs aren't prolific enough. Restrictions on money-handling businesses come into play there, which is argued as anti-terrorism/organized crime measures but is really just gatekeeping/rent-seeking by the established players.
- vmception 5y ago
  I’m referring to shopify apps that merchants try to integrate.
simonw 5y ago
How is building against defi better than building on Shopify if you want to sell things to regular people who just want to exchange their money for things that they want?
- vmception 5y ago
  The shopify apps on their app marketplace is what I’m referring to. These are sold to merchants hoping to do something easier. All defi products help people already in the defi ecosystem do something easier.
smt88 5y ago
None of your post makes sense to me. Why are you comparing DeFi platforms to Shopify? Who are the developers choosing between these options, and what are they trying to sell? How does a DeFi platform (or any blockchain) help me to sell physical products? Also, it seems like you're arguing that blockchain platforms are better developer experiences, which seems untrue. There are a lot of extra hurdles, costs, and scaling issues on blockchains, but enthusiasts say it's worth it for the consensus. Now you're saying the consensus is unimportant. So what is the benefit of building on a platform (please let me know a specific one you've used and liked) and why it can't be done elsewhere? I have seen so many HN posts like yours, but no one will give me specifics. Who are all these builders launching apps that aren't just speculation frenzies (e.g. Axie Infinity)?
- smt88 5y ago
  Not surprised that, when asked for specifics, there is no response. This is how every crypto thread goes. "Crypto is going to revolutionize ____." "OK, what is a use case where it provides some value that wasn't possible without it?" ...
acdha 5y ago
Okay, so how does it compare to Shopify? If I sell coffee beans, what’s my situation for cost of transaction (including conversion into the currency I need to pay my bills), ease of use for customers, transaction speed, difficulty of doing my taxes, etc.? If this is better, that should be easy to quantify.

endisneigh 5y ago

I don’t understand what problem web3 can solve that a trusted entity cannot. And let’s keep in mind your reply to this comment will be using a trusted entity. In fact in the history of the internet I cannot find a single example of any technology working better in a decentralized fashion compared to centralized for the end user

esjeon 5y ago
> I don’t understand what problem web3 can solve that a trusted entity cannot. Trust cannot solve the problem of giving too much power to trustee. The fact that IT giants are collecting people's data to manipulate people's mind is one good example. We should be able to control the level of trust we can provide to other parties.
slimsag 5y ago
I will mint NFTs of your comment, $300 pop so anybody who wants to prove you wrong can do so by buying the NFT of your comment that will surely age well. :) /s
- kibibu 5y ago
  Wouldn't that NFT point to a comment on a central service though? Or would the NFT contain the actual comment itself? Is there a difference between buying a "comment on HN" and the text of that comment?
  - kibibu 5y ago
    Checking the Opensea API: https://docs.opensea.io/reference/asset-object https://docs.opensea.io/reference/asset-object NFTs require at least one of two centralized services to remain functional - the original URL and the Opensea cached URL. So proof of ownership is decentralized, but the actual image is not.
    - miracle2k 5y ago
      People make this mistake because they think there is a "function" part to NFTs. It's a ledger, and you want to remember what media an entry refers to. You can do that by just keeping it in your community's collective memory, or you can use a hash of the file, or both. People can then choose to value that ledger entry, or not. Everything else, such as the ability of n app to figure out an image URL for the NFT, is just sugar on top. NFT people will value a Bored Ape token whether the URL is valid or not - and they are entirely right to do so. The Cryptopunks don't even have a URL!

nihonde 5y ago

You reach for Web3 when your requirements include: (a) self-sovereign ID/auth, and/or (b) hosted materials that can't be censored via a centralized hosting provider. Horses for courses. ps. Does he think Web3 is about storing data on the blockchain network? It's not. Ex. https://ceramic.network/ https://ceramic.network/

SubiculumCode 5y ago
Sometimes bloggers gotta blog, even when they just know a little bit and are just regurgitating an iteration of their preconceived notions. Edit: Of course you get voted down because you make a substantive comment. Welcome to Hacker News' Crytpo Hater Crowd.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  You know what Carl Sagan said about Bozo the clown? > "The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." Sometimes, Haters Gonna Hate and there's nothing more to it. But sometimes, Haters hate because they and you should hate what they hate, and one day, it will be clear to all. Problem is, of course, knowing if we're talking the equivalent of powered flight or Bozo the clown.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't break the site guidelines like this. I realize it's frustrating when you feel surrounded by a lot of people who you feel are wrong, but there's a guideline for that too: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - SubiculumCode 5y ago
    As my post was one of the first in this these threads, the topic had not yet gotten divisive. Moreover, my comment about moderation did not regard my comment but regarded the parent comment, which I felt made a substantive contribution and got downvoted for it for, I am guessing, ideological reasons.

ar7hur 5y ago

This article misses the point, it sees web3 decentralization as purely technical and makes performance comparisons with existing systems. The power of web3 decentralization is about control, not more powerful computing. Yes your raspberry pi runs faster than the EVM, but can you give me any guarantee about what code it runs?

jjnoakes 5y ago
Why can't you verify the code you run locally?
fabrice_d 5y ago
You could, if the code came from a signed blob that is verified. No need for a blockchain to allow that, it's basically what Mobile OSes are doing, and with multisig you can verify both the developer and the OS vendor.
- DesiLurker 5y ago
  well then you are trusting the signer, that is the ultimate promise of decentralization. especially coupled with deterministic builds by gcc you could have a end-to-end verified firmware running on a device.
pavlov 5y ago
The comparison between Raspberry Pi and EVM is off by many, many orders of magnitude. What Ethereum marketing likes to call a “global supercomputer” is slower than a 1950s computer built out of vacuum tubes, and running programs is more expensive than it was in 1955. (Programming ergonomics are also nearly punch card level.) There are very few applications you’d actually want to execute on a platform like that. And every attempt to improve the design (including the long-promised PoS transition) is going to turn it into a centralized plutocracy. It’s a fascinating science experiment that doesn’t have much purpose as an application environment. But because people are stubborn and the marketing was successful enough, “blockchain” is to this decade what “object-oriented” was in 1990s: a token gesture towards it will make managers and journalists happy.

v64 5y ago

Many criticisms of blockchain apps, comparing their use cases to conventional technologies (databases, conventional separation of services such as that described in the article, etc) all seem to miss a major point: Dapps running on the blockchain are immutable and highly resistant to being shutdown. Immutability is important because it's guaranteed that no matter how many times you interact with a contract address, you can be assured that at no point has the code in that contract ever changed. This is not an assurance you can typically get, as backend code for traditional endpoints can change at any time. Even more important IMO is the difficulty in shutting down a contract that's deployed to the blockchain. In the case of this article, the reliance on external services such as AWS opens up possibilities for your app to be shut down, whether it's through non-payment to your AWS account, AWS decides you've violated their terms of service, or legal action compels AWS to shut down your app. In the case of dapps deployed to the blockchain (combined optionally with frontends deployed to a service like IPFS, but this isn't a requirement, as one can always interact directly with contracts), the ability to shutdown these apps would rely on somehow breaking the blockchain itself. Whether or not you see these aspects as bugs or features is a matter of opinion. Yes, blockchains are slower and more expensive. This is the current cost of enabling the two facets above. If we're not comparing blockchain dapps to other systems that offer the same assurances, then we're comparing apples and oranges.

jjnoakes 5y ago
I get mostly the same features with self-hosted and local traditional apps for a fraction of the price and much lower general financial risk as well.
- selestify 5y ago
  The person you're replying to has already addressed your points: > Yes, blockchains are slower and more expensive. This is the current cost of enabling the two facets above. If we're not comparing blockchain dapps to other systems that offer the same assurances, then we're comparing apples and oranges. Could you please respond more meaningfully to the conversation?

rvz 5y ago

> So what does the supposed “web3” add to this vision? The cryptocurrency web3 starts with all our existing infrastructure. To some degree, the author is not wrong. Some of these so-called 'defi' apps were still sitting on AWS, GCP, and Azure and were affected by the outage underlying the decentralization illusion they created. The same thing with NFTs stored on OpenSea and not even being tied to the blockchain itself. Right now, the only reason that Ethereum is hyped for this is because the defi hype squad has their investments in the cryptocurrency; even when it is not the best cryptocurrency to use for this. Not even I can use it to pay for my groceries without over paying for the fees just for it to go faster. This all proves that web3 is not ready. (yet)

josephmoniz 5y ago

As a 13 year old programmer learning to code in 2005, transferring money online seemed impossible, this was pre-stripe after all. A 13 year old getting a bank partnership or a payment processor deal seemed a bit out of reach as well. These days though, sending money online via stable coins like $USDC over a fast and cheap block chain like Solana, Polygon, avalanche, etc is not only possible but flat out inevitable.

evan_ 5y ago
13 year olds used PayPal in 2005 just like everyone else.
aroman 5y ago
And, Stripe now exists, so the problem is mostly solved on "web2", no? What does Stripe (and similar products) not offer that $USDC could?
- josephmoniz 5y ago
  Stripe fees are higher than Solana $USDC transaction fees. You also don’t have to worry about getting your account shut down or funds frozen. I once worked for a YC company, LendUp, and we started off using Stripe for accepting payment but had to stop because the policies of their partner bank at the time disallowed servicing of our types of transactions. We spent a large chunk of time integrating with many different payments processors on and off, it was rough. In summary, web3 has the potential to be and already is, cheaper, faster, and permissionless.
marcan_42 5y ago
As a 14 year old programmer and tinkerer in 2004, I had no problem buying a Helium-Neon laser for an experiment and paying via PayPal. As an 18 year old tinkerer and hacker in 2008, I had no problem signing up to take payments via PayPal and running a little side thing selling home-assembled widgets out of my bedroom. And as horrible as PayPal is, cryptocurrencies have even more friction and risk.
- 5y ago

meowkit 5y ago

> So I still need a DNS name, Ethereum Name Service (ENS) https://forkast.news/what-is-ens-ethereum-name-service-how-does-it-work/ https://forkast.news/what-is-ens-ethereum-name-service-how-d... > After all, a programmer doing the most basic test of a web3 prototype is going to need to get the cryptocurrency, spend the cryptocurrency, and any application will require all users to get the cryptocurrency as well. If this gets abandoned quickly due to the inevitable technical failure “web3” still accomplished its goal of getting more suckers in and extracting their money. Hard to take serious the rest of the blog when he doesn't seem to be aware of development testnets that exist for exactly the above reason. Or familiar with scaling efforts, or some of the long term ethos of the crypto developer community. https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/networks/#testnets https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/networks/#testnets

stanislavb 5y ago
I dunno, it still looks like a big ponzi scheme in many angles.
- 3np 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
dogecoinbase 5y ago
> or some of the long term ethos of the crypto developer community. Do you mean "the code is the contract unless the contract would cause a substantial number of wealthy stakeholders to lose money, in which case the code is no longer the contract" (a stance, I might add, that is _formalized_ by PoS systems, if anyone ever manages to get one online)?
3np 5y ago
Besides ENS, there is also https://www.hdns.io/ https://www.hdns.io/

mediocregopher 5y ago

The reason I'm hyped about crypto (which in this article seems to be incorrectly equated to "web3") is because of the new possibilities it brings. The reason I put my money into stupid shit in crypto is because I don't know if it will work or not, but I'm excited to know if it will. Some of it does, most doesn't. I learn, progress has been made. Imagine a whole new continent is discovered, and all the people back home are criticizing those who go there because it's not particularly safe at the moment, and look how warm and cozy they could be back in civilization. No one's asking you to go to web3, stay here if you like. Hell, I found out today there's still people using gopher. There's room for all of us.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> Imagine a whole new continent is discovered, and all the people back home are criticizing those who go there because it's not particularly safe at the moment, and look how warm and cozy they could be back in civilization. Imagine a whole new black hole is discovered, and all the people back home are like "but it just absorbs everything that crosses the event horizon" and "it will destroy everything you put near it" and "it's the end of everything you care about" and saying you shouldn't try to spend any more time getting close to it. Someone is going out of that scenario (or not) looking (or not) a little the worse for wear. So the question is: do you feel lucky?
romeros 5y ago
the reason people put money into crypto is to get rich quick. Imagine you put $1000 and got 1000 BTC as an early adopter. Now, you are a multimillionaire many times over. Most refuse to acknowledge the truth and it is almost a meme now about being there for "the tech"
jfrunyon 5y ago
> Some of it does, most doesn't I don't know of anything in crypto which actually works (read: does something better/cheaper than pre-existing technologies). The single value of it is speculation.

serverholic 5y ago

This has got to be trolling. Almost every point is nonsense or at best uninformed vitriol. I literally don't know where to start with a comment so I'll just make a series of points related to claims in the article. Nobody has ever claimed that you can run normal computer programs on the Ethereum blockchain. It isn't meant to run fucking Doom. Smart-contracts are more like financial protocols. Blockchains are a form of database but they are not meant to store large amounts of data. That's more a job for IPFS. Ethereum is migrating to a layered architecture and users are meant to stay on Layer 2's which provide substantially cheaper transactions. I'm a fan of cryptocurrencies because I think there should be a spectrum of centralization <-> decentralization. If someone wants to stay centralized then fine but I should be able to handle my own money without a bank. I also believe that cryptocurrencies reduce financial friction and overhead. Taking donations is as simple as posting your public address. Taking payments means just integrating a library in your application instead of signing up with a service. I'm a fan of NFTs because I think people should have ownership of digital items. I think if I pay money for Hearthstone cards then I should be able to sell them on my own terms just like Pokemon cards in real life.

streetcat1 5y ago
No it is not. There is no inherit value to bitcoin or any other token or coin. Those are just some hash values printed on a digital marker. Imagine that I assign value to my monopoly money (as in the game), and it is traded in a stock exchange. Yes, it could reach 60K, but it is still monopoly money.
- abaga129 5y ago
  How is that any different from Fiat money? Or anything for that matter. It holds no real value beyond the paper it is printed on. It is valuable because we all agree as a society to give it value.
  - acdha 5y ago
    Yes, cryptocurrency is the purest form of fiat currency, which is to say a very weak one. The difference is that almost all other fiat currencies are backed by an organization with real world power: for example, the US dollar is required to pay taxes in one of the largest world economies, which guarantees trillions of dollars in demand, and it’s what the US government uses to pay millions of people and buy all kinds of different things. Other countries currencies follow that pattern to varying degrees which is also why we’ve seen efforts like the Euro to, among other reasons, increase the overall volume. Cryptocurrencies lack sovereignty and don’t have an alternative source of baseline demand, which is why they’re volatile on a level normally associated with collapsing states — especially if they’re like Bitcoin where the deflationary model encourages everyone not to spend. When anyone can easily set up a functional equivalent, there isn’t much to anchor the valuation. This is why people created things like NFTs to give others a reason to buy their tokens rather than someone else’s but that’s not especially stable until those NFTs are accompanied by legal contracts conveying tangible value.

sbazerque 5y ago

Forget blockchains. TCP/IP, BGP, DNS, etc. they are all fantastic. What they give us is _connectivity_. The problem is commerce (Amazon et al), search (Google), social (Facebook), etc. or, in general, the information layer built on top. David Clark said (in 1992!) "The network as an Information Mesh. An old goal, not yet achieved." The information theoretic and algorithmic ideas have matured (in no small part due to cryptocurrencies, yes, among other things).It's time to build that information mesh. I want a social identity that's not tied to a particular product/company. I want to shop online using a distributed protocol where reputation is independent of the platform. I want a search engine that can validate the identity and verify the integrity of the content it indexes. We can build such a thing now.

DevKoala 5y ago

Wait what? Why is a centralized system being compared to a decentralized one? I understand Web3 isn't there yet, but this comparison is egregious.

nraynaud 5y ago

I’m not a crypto bro, but I don’t think it’s fair to criticize a prototype on its cost. Airplanes were very bad at the beginning. I think the valid criticism would be if there is some kind of physical limitation that prevents the system from evolving to something useful (think of the rocket equation, the ratio of useful mass/propellant is stuck at a ridiculous number).

mattwilsonn888 5y ago
Nah man. Its been ten years! Time to shut it all down because after ten years if its not perfect yet its not a good technology. I would know, I'm a computer programmer on HackerNews!
QuadrupleA 5y ago
Always these comparisons to wildly successful products. Airplanes, smartphones, the internet, the computer. A great hype technique. Any day now, just you wait, once we have PoS or Zkp or Cardano launches X or people adopt Solana, etc... crypto is going to do something amazing and unforseen, indescribable and worldchanging besides trading it for more crypto.

sb057 5y ago

Something that I think a lot of Web3 (and metaverse, et al) proponent types don't understand is that you can't plan out a revolutionary technology. By definition, any wide-reaching society-wide overturning of the current order will behave in ways you can't anticipate. For example, HTTP code 402 "Payment Required" was standardized in 1999 when the W3C anticipated that people would be paying for things over the web, but didn't realize that such an error message wouldn't ever really be used because of how such payments were eventually implemented.

DannyBee 5y ago
I mean, this is true, but it feels like there is a more basic issue of product/market fit here. Even given the comments here about what this stuff is supposed to provide, it's really unclear anyone did even basic diligence. Something as simple as "we went around to different focus groups of developers and said "what are your biggest problems and pain points". Things like "immutability" and "not being shut down" would not be the top 2 for most groups of developers, and i'd bet not in the top 10, either. As a result, every time i hear about "web3" i can't stop hearing the simpsons clip where Stephen Hawking says "i wanted to see your utopia, but now i see it is more of a fruitopia" Don't get me wrong, there are certainly types of apps, etc out there where they are going to say "being shut down" is their biggest problem, but that seems like a really small portion of the total addressable market.
plokiju 5y ago
Why do you feel they don’t understand that?
chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago
There's not much central planning going on. For example, the smart contract standards for NFTs came out of existing smart contracts; they standardized a lot of already-existing practices like creating a `transferFrom` function. Emergent standards like that exist to tamp down on contracts creating functions with slightly different function names, behaviors, etc.

gfodor 5y ago

This is a nice example of the tech consensus anti-web3 perspective. Of course, it openly claims everyone promoting web3 technologies are scam artists, that it is a ponzi scheme, and that nobody in the space has considered "DNS and AWS are cheap, the EVM is way slow and expensive." I guess we'll just have to wait and see which it is: the above claim, or that the authors writing these pieces are missing something. I'll admit I do respect the bravery to post something like this, lacking all humility, and fairly falsifiable, that will result in embarrassment if left up and disproven. One thing that is interesting about these critiques is they mirror identically the early critiques of Bitcoin. And now, ironically, they take it as a given that cryptocurrencies are here to stay and are no longer going to eventually crash to zero, which was the claim made in these kinds of posts 5-10 years ago.

riffic 5y ago

It'd be great if USENIX as an organization had a Fediverse presence, thereby showing their commitment to an open web. by the way, shameless plug for /r/Web3Skepticism, where we take a long hard look at this "ecosystem", question its benefits and examine its failings.

jjordan 5y ago

Looks like the daily "hate on web3" article has arrived. Yes, there are problems that need solving in blockchain / crypto / web3. We're doing something that has never been done before, i.e. building censorship resistant trustless systems. It's come a long way but it also has a long way to go before its potential is fulfilled. I don't know that a daily thread of people complaining about well known issues in the space is useful.

QuadrupleA 5y ago

I once had a lot of excitement about it, but the closer I looked at and used "web3" tech the more I came to the conclusion this is all a big pump and dump scheme. What's crypto been good for in its 10+ year span? Financing terrorism and ransomware, selling meaningless jpeg certificates of ownership, ICO scams, totally empty and greedy "number go up" speculation consuming the money and attention of potentially creative and productive fellow human beings, and Cryptokitties. Meanwhile it's already irrevocably wasted, and continues wasting daily, tragic amounts of our world's resources and electricity. Crypto is a cancer - it thrives because the earlier Ponzi participants are working overtime to hype it to the later ones, with mainly emotional and ideological appeals, plus plenty of technical handwaving. If you get deep enough down the rabbit hole technically and structurally, you discover basically what this article is saying.

mattwilsonn888 5y ago
You are incredibly confused like many on this site. Confused about the difference between marketing and actual technology. You've basically stepped into a metaphorical convention center with no aid for beginners, been hit with 99 sale's pitches that are genuinely empty and made the conclusion that the whole industry is a scam without realizing that your inability to discern the 1% of actual value makes you conflate aggressive false advertising with the entire space's promise.
- QuadrupleA 5y ago
  I've written and deployed smart contracts, have run an ethereum node, and know most of the EVM opcodes. I'm not an expert by any means but my criticism of crypto isn't that of an "incredibly confused" beginner listening to marketing hype at a convention center.
  - mattwilsonn888 5y ago
    Well perhaps you should expand your horizons a bit. If you have a good grasp of the core issues with Ethereum then you should have a good idea of what to look for in newer projects.

exdsq 5y ago

I do really dislike this general attitude that blockchain/web3/crypto is some elaborate scam with no benefits. Everyone focuses on the same negatives but never look at the interesting elements like solving the double spend problem, safely transferring digital assets in a trustless environment, having a working global computing system with inbuilt incentives, etc.. Yes there are crap uses at the moment. NFTs are a bubble, tokens are overpriced. But the idea of taking ownership of your financial wallet, allowing atomic transactions of digital items, allowing fast cross-border transactions, are all cool ideas. The issue is people only see the cryptobro memes and videos about what coin will 100x, or being asked if they own ethereum by their hairdresser, or seeing news articles about NFTs being sold for 500k. Rather than jumping on the bandwagon of "Crypto is awesome, let's make a ton of money" or "Crypto is stupid, proof of work is bad for the environment, txs are slow" take the time to actually look at some of the underlying tech. I feel most people are just parroting issues they've heard rather than actually taking a look under the hood. Edit: I found this a particularly well-reasoned explanation of the tech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSTNhBlfV_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSTNhBlfV_s

deleted 5y ago
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paxys 5y ago
The problem is that I have been hearing about all these amazing use cases for crypto/blockchain for over a decade now, and not a single one has materialized that is useful for me or any other common user who is not involved in the community. The entire ecosystem is circular. All web3 apps are about web3. And what point does it start adding value outside of pushing itself?
- exdsq 5y ago
  This is fair, I wish more teams were working on the boring useful use-cases. One I particularly like is gig tickets. Represent them as NFTs, prove ownership of the ticket as it is in your wallet, trade them for USD with anyone around the world in a single atomic transaction, use third party tools to verify a ticket is authentic (either manually copying an NFT address onto a bands website or programatically). Suddenly I can sell you a ticket to a band we both like from a link in this message and you can guarantee if you pay you get the ticket and if I send the ticket I get the payment, and you can guarantee the ticket is authentic by checking it was one of the originally minted tickets. Boring, bad UX, but solves a multi-million dollar issue in the ticket reselling market. These are the peer-to-peer systems I wish people focused on. Sadly a couple million just isn't that cool in the web3 space.

Animats 5y ago

The technology is interesting, but so far most of the use cases involve some form of illegality. If you want to use, say, NFTs for something legitimate, it turns out they don't really work very well for that. I'd looked at using NFTs for cross-grid ownership transfers of objects in Open Simulator. That's a set of virtual worlds run by several hundred different people and organizations, but using the same software, a rewrite of Second Life in C#. There's no moderately-secure way to pass 3D models around in that system without them being copied for free, which is why most of the good stuff stays in Second Life, which is centrally managed. Such object instances have prices in the US$0.25 to US$20 range. When you go through a portal from one grid to another, and take some objects with you, a database transaction is required to transfer ownership from avatar A, grid X, to avatar A, grid Y. Otherwise, you could buy one copy and have a free copy in every grid. The assets have to be hosted somewhere. Somewhere with reliable access times in the < 1s range for a few megabytes. The blockchain systems just don't have the bandwidth and costs for that. As databases, they're far too slow, and transactions are too expensive. As storage, I've seen $5 for a gigabyte, forever. It's supposed to be funded by investing the $5 in a speculation that storage cost will decline. But the fine print says basically "until they get tired of doing this". As for NFTs generally, the art is unimpressive, to put it mildly. The NFT world is reportedly about half Axie Infinity and a quarter OpenSea, with all the little guys in the remaining quarter. (That may be bogus; there are no reliable stats on this stuff.) Axie Infinity is a Ponzi in the final stages of collapse.[1] OpenSea is becoming a stalled market. Pick some category, like "Bored Ape", which was getting news coverage a few weeks back. Look at the asking prices. Then look at "recently sold" prices. The "recently sold" prices seem to have a lot of zeros after the decimal point. [1] https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/smooth-love-potion/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/smooth-love-potion/

derangedHorse 5y ago
> The technology is interesting, but so far most of the use cases involve some form of illegality. If you want to use, say, NFTs for something legitimate, it turns out they don't really work very well for that. This sounds like opinion written as fact. NFTs have use cases that don’t just encompass illegal activities and work well. I personally own NFTs that are used for governance in terms of a budding project’s direction and NFTs that are even used as subscription keys to certain alpha products. Also it’s a little disingenuous to encourage looking at a contextless single data point indicating a collapse of a product without understanding other factors like there being a bear market in place for the overall cryptocurrency landscape

unityByFreedom 5y ago

> ... in ways that are several orders of magnitude more efficient and more capable. Another thing that gets bandied about, emphasis mine.

jtgi 5y ago

Every architecture makes trade offs. Creatively showing how expensive and slow Ethereum is is entertaining but not entirely relevant. It's like comparing a passenger airplane and a tank, claiming transportation is their sole purpose and since airplanes are both faster and cheaper than tanks, tanks are fraudulent. Ethereum is architected to be a decentralized, permissionless computing platform. Performance is one of the trade offs. It's much more productive, and more challenging in my opinion, to discuss whether or not the trade offs being made are worthwhile.

RichardHeart 5y ago

I did an debate with the author 6/4/2018. He lost. https://youtu.be/I9Pxv1i9W7M?list=PLN0RF11rNdP0kkklAiif2pBLvbp2Y2Ap3&t=10 https://youtu.be/I9Pxv1i9W7M?list=PLN0RF11rNdP0kkklAiif2pBLv... By the way Bitcoin was at $2530. Ethereum was at $590. Bitcoin went up $69,000 since then. Ethereum went to $5000. But pundits and critics seem to be immune to educate from years of progress, and now history. Quote from his article: "So why this hype? Because the cryptocurrency space, at heart, is simply a giant ponzi scheme where the only way early participants make money is if there are further suckers entering the space. The only “utility” for a cryptocurrency (outside criminal transactions and financial frauds) is what someone else will pay for it and anything to pretend a possible real-word utility exists to help find new suckers." The gentlemen that invented and host this forum don't believe that. Disclaimer: I've founded a few cryptocurrencies.

rank0 5y ago
> By the way Bitcoin was at $2530. Ethereum was at $590. Bitcoin went up $69,000 since then. Ethereum went to $5000. This is not a convincing argument to me. It tells me that the real utility is just speculation. Shiba Inu has a market cap of 10B. But you’re an idiot if you think Elon musk dog money is valuable to society. If I make a 1000000% return selling magic beans, does that mean the beans have actual utility?
- RichardHeart 5y ago
  Best performing asset in the history of mankind. Removes counterparty risk. Removes middlemen. Privacy (if you work for it.) Better uptime than your bank and credit card network. Is a better way to login to things, self sovereign usernames and passwords, which are easy to use across all platforms (if they would stop with the lock-in.) The most transparent trading in the world. The highest yields in the world for those that want to just provide liquidity and have less risk. A platform for things I don't like, but others love, customer rewards programs, collectibles, proof of ownership, timestamping. Removing the government money printing press from free war funding, and perhaps requiring a war tax, would reduce military globally. An impossible to fake record of the past, if you pay to write to the db. You can get loans 24 hours a day with no signup that allow you to pay less tax by not selling the asset and paying capital gains, and just living off the borrowed money (like the wealthy have been doing for decades.) Shall I continue, or will you be ignoring all these features and benefits anyway?

terrycody 5y ago

Fraud or not fraud, that is pointless because so called Internet will die down very soon, I guess in less than 10 years, because when AR/VR/wearables replace the smartphone, people will soon rush into a recreational world, where everybody plays game everyday, sure, left 1% don't want to play games, they may use some traditional APPs, at that time, most those APPs do not need to implement Web3 tech stacks, so web3 has meanings, but very very few usage scenarios, IMHO.