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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

by 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
[deleted]
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.
  - agrajag 5y ago
    This is a perfectly reasonable use case, but also completely infeasible right now due to transaction costs - it could cost hundreds of dollars just to mint and transfer the NFT. Ticketmaster charges outrageous fees, but they’re nothing compared to eth transaction costs.
    - exdsq 5y ago
      This is true for Ethereum, but if you look at other top 10 chains like Cardano the fees are much smaller! And proof-of-stake so it's not destroying the planet (I know Eth is going that way soon too).
      - webmaven 5y ago
        > This is true for Ethereum, but if you look at other top 10 chains like Cardano the fees are much smaller! Isn't this a temporary state of affairs? As a chain gets more popular, the fees will necessarily go up. A Dapp that must continually migrate to newer chains to provide a similar value proposition is vulnerable to being shut down, is it not? For technologies that have gatekeepers, popularity eventually drives down costs. The tradeoff for these gatekeeper-less platforms is that popularity must drive costs up for them to work. While it is possible to imagine use cases whose value equals or exceeds the cost at any point in time, it is difficult to imagine a use-case that scales in value at a rate equal to or exceeding the rate at which the costs do. Blockchains must continually find new higher value use cases or collapse in value. This isn't exactly the greater fool dynamic, but instead a 'greater foolishness'. > And proof-of-stake so it's not destroying the planet (I know Eth is going that way soon too). Proof-of-stake substitutes assets under management for transaction costs, but there is still an adverse selection problem that only gets worse over time.
  - rank0 5y ago
    The tickets are already in closed ecosystems like Ticketmaster. It would be orders if magnitudes more efficient for them to just add resale functionality to their platform. Problem is they don’t want third party resellers. And herein lies the problem. At some point cyrpto tokens have to come back into the real world. If you can’t get $centralized_authority onboard you’re screwed. And if it’s not “decentralized” just make a freaking web app.

by exdsq 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

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.
- agrajag 5y ago
  This is a perfectly reasonable use case, but also completely infeasible right now due to transaction costs - it could cost hundreds of dollars just to mint and transfer the NFT. Ticketmaster charges outrageous fees, but they’re nothing compared to eth transaction costs.
  - exdsq 5y ago
    This is true for Ethereum, but if you look at other top 10 chains like Cardano the fees are much smaller! And proof-of-stake so it's not destroying the planet (I know Eth is going that way soon too).
    - webmaven 5y ago
      > This is true for Ethereum, but if you look at other top 10 chains like Cardano the fees are much smaller! Isn't this a temporary state of affairs? As a chain gets more popular, the fees will necessarily go up. A Dapp that must continually migrate to newer chains to provide a similar value proposition is vulnerable to being shut down, is it not? For technologies that have gatekeepers, popularity eventually drives down costs. The tradeoff for these gatekeeper-less platforms is that popularity must drive costs up for them to work. While it is possible to imagine use cases whose value equals or exceeds the cost at any point in time, it is difficult to imagine a use-case that scales in value at a rate equal to or exceeding the rate at which the costs do. Blockchains must continually find new higher value use cases or collapse in value. This isn't exactly the greater fool dynamic, but instead a 'greater foolishness'. > And proof-of-stake so it's not destroying the planet (I know Eth is going that way soon too). Proof-of-stake substitutes assets under management for transaction costs, but there is still an adverse selection problem that only gets worse over time.
- rank0 5y ago
  The tickets are already in closed ecosystems like Ticketmaster. It would be orders if magnitudes more efficient for them to just add resale functionality to their platform. Problem is they don’t want third party resellers. And herein lies the problem. At some point cyrpto tokens have to come back into the real world. If you can’t get $centralized_authority onboard you’re screwed. And if it’s not “decentralized” just make a freaking web app.