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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.

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!
  - dexter89_kp3 5y ago
    Depends on whether the NFT is on-chain or off-chain. Both are valid.
toomuchtodo 5y ago
Hot take: The proponents of decentralized systems feel disenfranchised by those who own and govern centralized systems, therefore decentralized systems are their way around what they consider injustice. It is a grasp for control and power where they feel they have none. They don’t feel they have a seat at the table, so they argue for building their own table, which is, naturally, “superior” to the existing table (why would you use it if it wasn’t superior?). It’s not about “open finance” versus “centralized finance”, it’s about “our finance” vs “their finance”, our ledgers versus their databases. This is no different than Silicon Valley starting as David and turning into West Coast Goliath, wrestling with the East Coast Hegemony for status and power. I get the sentiment, but code doesn’t fix people problems. I am not without curiosity, but web3 still has much work to do to show both novel and meaningful use cases.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  I think this is a toxic way to look at it. Casting it as "they", you're implicitly condoning partisanship/tribalism and putting people into bins. Discussions around this would be guaranteed to be vile and full of hatred. Not just from "your" side, but "they" will also see you in the same way. As technologists, we ought to be better than this. Think about this like we do with on-prem vs cloud. It is decentralization vs. centralization, but far more muted and less political. We should approach this with a mature contemplation, not cheap tribalism.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Crypto isn’t about technology. It’s about wealth and power (literally!) on top of a (slow) distributed database. As technologists, we ought to recognize the difference and see the forests for the trees. As a technologist, I cannot unsee the patterns nor look away. I’m sure you’d find similar musings in 2600 or Phrack decades ago.
    - systemvoltage 5y ago
mannerheim 5y ago
> 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 Torrents?
- endisneigh 5y ago
  You think torrents are a better way to distribute files compared to alternatives?
  - mannerheim 5y ago
    Depends on what files you're distributing. There are some legal uses that they're a good fit for, but there's no better way to pirate content.
  - DannyBee 5y ago
    They'll reply as soon as some seed provides the final few words of the sentence they are constructing.
  - abernard1 5y ago
    Yes. Because the files are actually there. Twitter won't allow you to say what the CDC says on viral transmission. They won't allow you to say that men aren't women. They hide posts as "sensitive content" that show crime in the cities that people of the same mindset run. Their CEO doesn't believe in freedom of speech. Blockchain is currently a set of underwhelming technologies, but in a world of 0 or 1 existentials, it's a driving force to allow the open expression 90s tech people said they wanted but lied about.
bawolff 5y ago
the value proposition of all the crypto nonsense is that some people don't like trusted entities. I tend to think its not worth the trade off (and the "decentralization" is questionable in practise), but this line of criticism is basically begging the question.
- menzoic 5y ago
  >the value proposition of all the crypto nonsense is that some people don't like trusted entities. Becoming a trusted entity is hard. Crypto allows for the creation of systems that don't require trusted entites. That's a huge win for the little guy and catalyst for innovation.
  - bawolff 5y ago
    I'm not saying there aren't rational reasons to dislike trusted entities. At a minimum they are single points of failure. But all this does come at a high cost. The real questions to ask with blockchain stuff: - at what cost does this lack of trusted entitids come at? I don't just mean in terms of money but also engineering complexity - what are the hidden trust relationships? Plenty of blockchain stuff still involved trusted entities, its just hidden through layers of indirection. The only thing worse than a trusted entity you dont trust is a trusted entity you don't even know exists.
v64 5y ago
> 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 For many use cases, BitTorrent is a superior file distribution mechanism compared to centralized alternatives.
- Elegant-Ad2200 5y ago
  Would it still be a superior system if you had to pay some amount to every person you download from for the bandwidth you're using? That seems to be the case with web3, unless I'm completely misunderstanding how it works.
- esjeon 5y ago
  BT, as a community, is actually being challenged by cheap streaming services, like Netflix, Spotify, Youtube, Steam, etc. They are so cheap and convenient that even simple torrenting feels very slow and cumbersome.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  It's not. CDNs have proven better for use cases that aren't piracy.
- paxys 5y ago
  BitTorrent is a terrible file distribution mechanism. I can't think of a single instance where I have had better performance downloading a torrent than a simple FTP/HTTP transfer or video stream from a web server or CDN.
  - hammyhavoc 5y ago
    Resilio Sync for Business worked way better for us than Dropbox and OneDrive with their CDN.
    - webmaven 5y ago
      Were your use cases intra- or inter-organizational?
menzoic 5y ago
Establishing yourself as a trusted entity is a huge barrier to entry. Decentralized, trustless systems allow small teams with little to no money achieve things that only institutions and heavily funded companies could do in the past. Technologies like blockchain are a great accelerator for innovations in this area and will also spark a new category of use cases that weren't possible before.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  Examples where you he innovations are better than centralized alternatives?
- Elegant-Ad2200 5y ago
  Is the immense cost cited in the article not a barrier to entry?
Animats 5y ago
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 Usenet.
- mjevans 5y ago
  Usenet is *semi-centralized. It's much more like a series of co-operative BBS with shared inboxes (read only, auto-expire based on storage).
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  That scaled to about 100k active users from a highly-gated potential community of about 1 million and was replaced by ... centralised systems. Usenet itself was more centralised in most regards than Reddit is today. And even then it proved nonviable.
rvz 5y ago
> I don’t understand what problem web3 can solve that a trusted entity cannot So that means HN really loved the .org takeover [0], and the price increases for .io [1] and now the holder of all our beloved trendy top level domains are going into the hands of the great Ethos Capital (again) who are going to do all of the above again. [2] /s Nothing terrible to see here folks, its for your own good! /s [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611677 [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/04/ethos-capital-grabbing-power-over-domain-names-again-risking-censorship-profit https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/04/ethos-capital-grabbing... [2] https://www.geekwire.com/2021/domain-name-registry-donuts-acquired-time-ethos-capital/ https://www.geekwire.com/2021/domain-name-registry-donuts-ac...
- endisneigh 5y ago
  Web3 wouldn’t stop that scenario from happening though.
  - rvz 5y ago
    Care to elaborate further as to why?
dexter89_kp3 5y ago
I don't understand what problem email can solve that mail cannot. Sorry to be sarcastic. I am still skeptical of most web3 use cases touted on twitter, but have personally experienced a few that have made me pause and be a bit more open minded. Personal experiences: - Transferring money was in seconds, compared to Fidelity/Venmo which took 3 days!!! - Very easy to loan money against crypto holdings vs stocks - ResearchDao's like ResearchHub
- skellera 5y ago
  Transferring money is faster if you pay a fee. You’re paying fees to transfer crypto. That said, it’s free and instant with services like Zelle.
- brandonmenc 5y ago
  > Transferring money was in seconds, compared to Fidelity/Venmo which took 3 days!!! This is a problem that can be solved sans web3.
- esjeon 5y ago
  > I don't understand what problem email can solve that mail cannot. I think it's a wrong example. Email provides light-speed delivery, dirt-cheap cost, and brain-dead convenience on top of also being able to mail. So email actually never competed with mail. Web3 is yet to strike any decisive blow against today's web (or it may never). It's more like another part of the web. > Transferring money was in seconds, compared to Fidelity/Venmo which took 3 days!!! - Very easy to loan money against crypto holdings vs stocks - ResearchDao's like ResearchHub For a smaller amount of money (<$100k), banks already can transfer money within seconds. I've seen people sending $1Ms only using their phones, but, IIRC, you need a good record to do that.
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    Here in the NL, we’ve been able to send money for free to each other instantly, for at least half a decade. We use apps like Tikkie to mask each other’s bank account numbers and automate some of the book keeping for many transactions, but we don’t technically need the app in the first place. The US is very slow to move money, I still dread any time I have to use my old US bank accounts to get things done.
nexuist 5y ago
I think part of this may be that the Internet is a Western world invention and we're used to somewhat functional governance in the West. In developing countries finding a trust-able entity is far more difficult, and in those instances it makes sense for people to come together and pool capital into these virtual institutions that can only operate according to their script(s). We assume everyone in the world has access to non-rug-pulling companies like, say, BofA or TD Ameritrade but that's really not the case. These institutions have become trustworthy through decades of lawsuits and regulations. Anecdote: My parents immigrated to the US from Albania, a few months before our planned move my dad's bank just decided to stop existing and the owners fled the country with all the (paper) money. My parents came to a new country with no money to their name because the FDIC is an American invention that a bunch of other countries still haven't copied. So, I can see how it would work in that context, but I would agree here in the US where our tech overlords are generally benevolent it doesn't seem much more useful over web2.
VirusNewbie 5y ago
so do you not have an email address and only use slack/fb to talk to people on the internet?
_aavaa_ 5y ago
The entire point is to remove the trusted entity. To build a way of doing things that isn’t dependent on trusted entities to work. That’s it.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  Seems like a tautology- the things built will inherently be centralized
  - _aavaa_ 5y ago
    I don't see the tautology. I think we can analogize to open source and closed source software: "I don’t understand what problem [web3] can solve that [a trusted entity] cannot." "I don’t understand what problem [open source software] can solve that [close source software maintained by a well funded and benevolant company] cannot." A point of open source software isn't that it can create software that would be impossible given the correct closed-source company, the point is to not be beholden to them in the first place. You want to make a change to the software, make it. It's your right. The same idea for web3. Want to make an application to do something and accept payments for it? Release it as a dapp and charge for each interaction. Nobody can stop you from doing that. As for the second part, "the things built will inherently be centralized". I'm not sure what you mean. The dapp gets published, you can now interact with it and it doesn't run on any one specific machine. The interaction consists of you and the dapp (and the miners who adds your transaction to the chain). What part is centralized?
bee_rider 5y ago
The internet was better before Social Media, but I guess that was a kind of different decentralization.
- jsemrau 5y ago
  While I agree with you that the Internet was better before Social Media, these service are highly centralized. Although, for most normal users decentral or central doesn't really matter.
  - tim333 5y ago
    I on the other hand prefer the internet post social media, in which I would include HN and similar.
notriddle 5y ago
I think Web3 is a stupid idea unworthy of the name, but this is not a strong objection. > I don’t understand what problem web3 can solve that a trusted entity cannot. The lack of trustworthy entities. > And let’s keep in mind your reply to this comment will be using a trusted entity. https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342.png https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342... > 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. Strong objections to most Web3 concepts can actually be derived from the idea that “there is no algorithm for truth.” We can imagine an NFT that claims to be a deed for a house. We can also imagine: * Someone with a fleet of tanks forcing me to leave the house, and then keeping me and my heirs from moving back in. Regardless of what the NFT says, by no means do I own the house. * I might guess someone’s password and give their NFT to myself, and if it was government binding, convince the rest of society to go along with this. Maybe this counts as owning the house, but it definitely shouldn’t. Political tools can live or die by being realistic, or by being just and fair. Etherium has managed the astonishing feat of being popular without achieving either. So, how do we actually ensure that the database reflects the underlying social reality? That’s the part where all these supposedly “decentralized” applications punt, either by explicitly relying on a centralized entity, hoping the government goes along with it, or not having the database really reflect anything outside itself (a very small niche).
- endisneigh 5y ago
  Your comment still doesn't actually illustrate any example in which web3 is superior to a centralized entity. You must always trust something. Civilization is already inherently centralized.
- webmaven 5y ago
  > > I don’t understand what problem web3 can solve that a trusted entity cannot. > The lack of trustworthy entities. Note that trusted != trustworthy. In security parlance a trusted entity is one you must trust, that can fuck you over (eg. 'Control' in popular culture, handlers in actual HUMINT, a bank that has your deposited money, etc.). In that same parlance, trustworthy isn't really a thing. You can raise the cost of violating that trust in various ways (assets held by a theoretically disinterested third party with different incentives, reputational costs that foreclose future participation in the system, credible threats of legal action, etc.), but there isn't anything that you can do if the trusted entity is willing to pay that cost (or is unwilling to pay the cost of not violating that trust) to prevent the trust violation.
koonsolo 5y ago
Ok, so now we're all agreeing that we want central trusted entities. And on the next post, we will all agree that something needs to be done about the power of Google, Meta, Twitter, YouTube, ... . HN is really obsessed about anti web3, like crazy obessed. You will never see any nice thing top voted here. Ok HN, you don't like web3, I get it. Now can you all please shut the fuck up about it? If I don't like something, I just avoid it, stop talking about it.

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!
- dexter89_kp3 5y ago
  Depends on whether the NFT is on-chain or off-chain. Both are valid.

toomuchtodo 5y ago

Hot take: The proponents of decentralized systems feel disenfranchised by those who own and govern centralized systems, therefore decentralized systems are their way around what they consider injustice. It is a grasp for control and power where they feel they have none. They don’t feel they have a seat at the table, so they argue for building their own table, which is, naturally, “superior” to the existing table (why would you use it if it wasn’t superior?). It’s not about “open finance” versus “centralized finance”, it’s about “our finance” vs “their finance”, our ledgers versus their databases. This is no different than Silicon Valley starting as David and turning into West Coast Goliath, wrestling with the East Coast Hegemony for status and power. I get the sentiment, but code doesn’t fix people problems. I am not without curiosity, but web3 still has much work to do to show both novel and meaningful use cases.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
systemvoltage 5y ago
I think this is a toxic way to look at it. Casting it as "they", you're implicitly condoning partisanship/tribalism and putting people into bins. Discussions around this would be guaranteed to be vile and full of hatred. Not just from "your" side, but "they" will also see you in the same way. As technologists, we ought to be better than this. Think about this like we do with on-prem vs cloud. It is decentralization vs. centralization, but far more muted and less political. We should approach this with a mature contemplation, not cheap tribalism.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Crypto isn’t about technology. It’s about wealth and power (literally!) on top of a (slow) distributed database. As technologists, we ought to recognize the difference and see the forests for the trees. As a technologist, I cannot unsee the patterns nor look away. I’m sure you’d find similar musings in 2600 or Phrack decades ago.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago

mannerheim 5y ago

> 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 Torrents?

endisneigh 5y ago
You think torrents are a better way to distribute files compared to alternatives?
- mannerheim 5y ago
  Depends on what files you're distributing. There are some legal uses that they're a good fit for, but there's no better way to pirate content.
- DannyBee 5y ago
  They'll reply as soon as some seed provides the final few words of the sentence they are constructing.
- abernard1 5y ago
  Yes. Because the files are actually there. Twitter won't allow you to say what the CDC says on viral transmission. They won't allow you to say that men aren't women. They hide posts as "sensitive content" that show crime in the cities that people of the same mindset run. Their CEO doesn't believe in freedom of speech. Blockchain is currently a set of underwhelming technologies, but in a world of 0 or 1 existentials, it's a driving force to allow the open expression 90s tech people said they wanted but lied about.

bawolff 5y ago

the value proposition of all the crypto nonsense is that some people don't like trusted entities. I tend to think its not worth the trade off (and the "decentralization" is questionable in practise), but this line of criticism is basically begging the question.

menzoic 5y ago
>the value proposition of all the crypto nonsense is that some people don't like trusted entities. Becoming a trusted entity is hard. Crypto allows for the creation of systems that don't require trusted entites. That's a huge win for the little guy and catalyst for innovation.
- bawolff 5y ago
  I'm not saying there aren't rational reasons to dislike trusted entities. At a minimum they are single points of failure. But all this does come at a high cost. The real questions to ask with blockchain stuff: - at what cost does this lack of trusted entitids come at? I don't just mean in terms of money but also engineering complexity - what are the hidden trust relationships? Plenty of blockchain stuff still involved trusted entities, its just hidden through layers of indirection. The only thing worse than a trusted entity you dont trust is a trusted entity you don't even know exists.

v64 5y ago

> 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 For many use cases, BitTorrent is a superior file distribution mechanism compared to centralized alternatives.

Elegant-Ad2200 5y ago
Would it still be a superior system if you had to pay some amount to every person you download from for the bandwidth you're using? That seems to be the case with web3, unless I'm completely misunderstanding how it works.
esjeon 5y ago
BT, as a community, is actually being challenged by cheap streaming services, like Netflix, Spotify, Youtube, Steam, etc. They are so cheap and convenient that even simple torrenting feels very slow and cumbersome.
dehrmann 5y ago
It's not. CDNs have proven better for use cases that aren't piracy.
paxys 5y ago
BitTorrent is a terrible file distribution mechanism. I can't think of a single instance where I have had better performance downloading a torrent than a simple FTP/HTTP transfer or video stream from a web server or CDN.
- hammyhavoc 5y ago
  Resilio Sync for Business worked way better for us than Dropbox and OneDrive with their CDN.
  - webmaven 5y ago
    Were your use cases intra- or inter-organizational?

menzoic 5y ago

Establishing yourself as a trusted entity is a huge barrier to entry. Decentralized, trustless systems allow small teams with little to no money achieve things that only institutions and heavily funded companies could do in the past. Technologies like blockchain are a great accelerator for innovations in this area and will also spark a new category of use cases that weren't possible before.

endisneigh 5y ago
Examples where you he innovations are better than centralized alternatives?
Elegant-Ad2200 5y ago
Is the immense cost cited in the article not a barrier to entry?

Animats 5y ago

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 Usenet.

mjevans 5y ago
Usenet is *semi-centralized. It's much more like a series of co-operative BBS with shared inboxes (read only, auto-expire based on storage).
dredmorbius 5y ago
That scaled to about 100k active users from a highly-gated potential community of about 1 million and was replaced by ... centralised systems. Usenet itself was more centralised in most regards than Reddit is today. And even then it proved nonviable.

rvz 5y ago

> I don’t understand what problem web3 can solve that a trusted entity cannot So that means HN really loved the .org takeover [0], and the price increases for .io [1] and now the holder of all our beloved trendy top level domains are going into the hands of the great Ethos Capital (again) who are going to do all of the above again. [2] /s Nothing terrible to see here folks, its for your own good! /s [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611677 [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/04/ethos-capital-grabbing-power-over-domain-names-again-risking-censorship-profit https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/04/ethos-capital-grabbing... [2] https://www.geekwire.com/2021/domain-name-registry-donuts-acquired-time-ethos-capital/ https://www.geekwire.com/2021/domain-name-registry-donuts-ac...

endisneigh 5y ago
Web3 wouldn’t stop that scenario from happening though.
- rvz 5y ago
  Care to elaborate further as to why?

dexter89_kp3 5y ago

I don't understand what problem email can solve that mail cannot. Sorry to be sarcastic. I am still skeptical of most web3 use cases touted on twitter, but have personally experienced a few that have made me pause and be a bit more open minded. Personal experiences: - Transferring money was in seconds, compared to Fidelity/Venmo which took 3 days!!! - Very easy to loan money against crypto holdings vs stocks - ResearchDao's like ResearchHub

skellera 5y ago
Transferring money is faster if you pay a fee. You’re paying fees to transfer crypto. That said, it’s free and instant with services like Zelle.
brandonmenc 5y ago
> Transferring money was in seconds, compared to Fidelity/Venmo which took 3 days!!! This is a problem that can be solved sans web3.
esjeon 5y ago
> I don't understand what problem email can solve that mail cannot. I think it's a wrong example. Email provides light-speed delivery, dirt-cheap cost, and brain-dead convenience on top of also being able to mail. So email actually never competed with mail. Web3 is yet to strike any decisive blow against today's web (or it may never). It's more like another part of the web. > Transferring money was in seconds, compared to Fidelity/Venmo which took 3 days!!! - Very easy to loan money against crypto holdings vs stocks - ResearchDao's like ResearchHub For a smaller amount of money (<$100k), banks already can transfer money within seconds. I've seen people sending $1Ms only using their phones, but, IIRC, you need a good record to do that.
- withinboredom 5y ago
  Here in the NL, we’ve been able to send money for free to each other instantly, for at least half a decade. We use apps like Tikkie to mask each other’s bank account numbers and automate some of the book keeping for many transactions, but we don’t technically need the app in the first place. The US is very slow to move money, I still dread any time I have to use my old US bank accounts to get things done.

nexuist 5y ago

I think part of this may be that the Internet is a Western world invention and we're used to somewhat functional governance in the West. In developing countries finding a trust-able entity is far more difficult, and in those instances it makes sense for people to come together and pool capital into these virtual institutions that can only operate according to their script(s). We assume everyone in the world has access to non-rug-pulling companies like, say, BofA or TD Ameritrade but that's really not the case. These institutions have become trustworthy through decades of lawsuits and regulations. Anecdote: My parents immigrated to the US from Albania, a few months before our planned move my dad's bank just decided to stop existing and the owners fled the country with all the (paper) money. My parents came to a new country with no money to their name because the FDIC is an American invention that a bunch of other countries still haven't copied. So, I can see how it would work in that context, but I would agree here in the US where our tech overlords are generally benevolent it doesn't seem much more useful over web2.

VirusNewbie 5y ago

so do you not have an email address and only use slack/fb to talk to people on the internet?

_aavaa_ 5y ago

The entire point is to remove the trusted entity. To build a way of doing things that isn’t dependent on trusted entities to work. That’s it.

endisneigh 5y ago
Seems like a tautology- the things built will inherently be centralized
- _aavaa_ 5y ago
  I don't see the tautology. I think we can analogize to open source and closed source software: "I don’t understand what problem [web3] can solve that [a trusted entity] cannot." "I don’t understand what problem [open source software] can solve that [close source software maintained by a well funded and benevolant company] cannot." A point of open source software isn't that it can create software that would be impossible given the correct closed-source company, the point is to not be beholden to them in the first place. You want to make a change to the software, make it. It's your right. The same idea for web3. Want to make an application to do something and accept payments for it? Release it as a dapp and charge for each interaction. Nobody can stop you from doing that. As for the second part, "the things built will inherently be centralized". I'm not sure what you mean. The dapp gets published, you can now interact with it and it doesn't run on any one specific machine. The interaction consists of you and the dapp (and the miners who adds your transaction to the chain). What part is centralized?

bee_rider 5y ago

The internet was better before Social Media, but I guess that was a kind of different decentralization.

jsemrau 5y ago
While I agree with you that the Internet was better before Social Media, these service are highly centralized. Although, for most normal users decentral or central doesn't really matter.
- tim333 5y ago
  I on the other hand prefer the internet post social media, in which I would include HN and similar.

notriddle 5y ago

I think Web3 is a stupid idea unworthy of the name, but this is not a strong objection. > I don’t understand what problem web3 can solve that a trusted entity cannot. The lack of trustworthy entities. > And let’s keep in mind your reply to this comment will be using a trusted entity. https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342.png https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342... > 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. Strong objections to most Web3 concepts can actually be derived from the idea that “there is no algorithm for truth.” We can imagine an NFT that claims to be a deed for a house. We can also imagine: * Someone with a fleet of tanks forcing me to leave the house, and then keeping me and my heirs from moving back in. Regardless of what the NFT says, by no means do I own the house. * I might guess someone’s password and give their NFT to myself, and if it was government binding, convince the rest of society to go along with this. Maybe this counts as owning the house, but it definitely shouldn’t. Political tools can live or die by being realistic, or by being just and fair. Etherium has managed the astonishing feat of being popular without achieving either. So, how do we actually ensure that the database reflects the underlying social reality? That’s the part where all these supposedly “decentralized” applications punt, either by explicitly relying on a centralized entity, hoping the government goes along with it, or not having the database really reflect anything outside itself (a very small niche).

endisneigh 5y ago
Your comment still doesn't actually illustrate any example in which web3 is superior to a centralized entity. You must always trust something. Civilization is already inherently centralized.
webmaven 5y ago
> > I don’t understand what problem web3 can solve that a trusted entity cannot. > The lack of trustworthy entities. Note that trusted != trustworthy. In security parlance a trusted entity is one you must trust, that can fuck you over (eg. 'Control' in popular culture, handlers in actual HUMINT, a bank that has your deposited money, etc.). In that same parlance, trustworthy isn't really a thing. You can raise the cost of violating that trust in various ways (assets held by a theoretically disinterested third party with different incentives, reputational costs that foreclose future participation in the system, credible threats of legal action, etc.), but there isn't anything that you can do if the trusted entity is willing to pay that cost (or is unwilling to pay the cost of not violating that trust) to prevent the trust violation.

koonsolo 5y ago

Ok, so now we're all agreeing that we want central trusted entities. And on the next post, we will all agree that something needs to be done about the power of Google, Meta, Twitter, YouTube, ... . HN is really obsessed about anti web3, like crazy obessed. You will never see any nice thing top voted here. Ok HN, you don't like web3, I get it. Now can you all please shut the fuck up about it? If I don't like something, I just avoid it, stop talking about it.