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It's fascinating how on hacker news one typically finds detailed, reasoned and thoughtful comments. However on the topic of crypto and web3 the comments reliabl

It's fascinating how on hacker news one typically finds detailed, reasoned and thoughtful comments. However on the topic of crypto and web3 the comments reliably degenerate into partisan tit for tat, consisting mainly of poorly researched, unreasoned sound bytes. It's a pity because I'd love to hear quality thought on the space. My personal view is that crypto and Web3 "are a thing" (Mean Girls) and will continue to be a thing. But the sector is very very new, and supercharged by capital, leading to tumerous horrors. People get burnt, robbed, and jealous, and it leads to nasty feelings. I find the space interesting and exciting, over all. Also massively frustrating of course. But I try to judge all things not by the worst cases of them (Daniel Dennet - I.e. cars are often good, they aren't always murder boxes). Looking at good examples also gives perspective on what work still needs to be done in the rest. Can someone recommend places to read or be involved in non partisan discussion about these topics?

CJefferson 5y ago
To me, web3 is just the "tech bro" version of LuLaRoe or beany babies. There is plenty of thoughtful discussion of both, but none of it positive.
baxtr 5y ago
I feel the same. There is only hate and despise for crypto. I’m also skeptical but I’d love to see a more nuanced discussion. To your question, I like https://www.rekt.news/ https://www.rekt.news/
vmception 5y ago
People mostly email me about very specific topics. Nobody "still doing research™" about the broad topic of crypto is getting anywhere because they get bounced from the funnel immediately and paint the whole space with an equally as broad brush. Its decade 3 and this is where we are, so what do people really want to know? To me, there's lots of killer apps, to others I don't really care to debate any longer, who cares about "mainstream" when there's already 2-3 trillion dollars of value to attract to any product you release. It's not 2009 any more when most of this level of depth (or lack thereof) was relevant. I personally wouldn't know where to point you, and sadly its more likely you too will run into disillusioning use cases from your own exploration (or wind up in a cult to bolster an implementation that is going nowhere). For me, it's been more interesting to accept that no state of the these technologies is set in stone, that I can influence the future state, and that the monetary incentives to build and influence the future state are phenomenal. Better option than smugly exploiting myself at an adtech conglomerate, for less money. There is room for more specific things to be discussed, like if you look at the frontpage right now, there is a thread about "Deserializing JSON fast" or "A comparison of Rust and Zig". There could just as easily be discussions about "Solidity vs Vyper" or a thread every time a new version of one of those languages used in Ethereum Virtual Machines is out. Or node technology and processing transactions faster. Things that can inspire, but instead we just get these broad think pieces from wannabe angel investors and some influential VCs. As this is what makes it, it shows that this isn't the community to expect a deeper discussion right now.
- kortilla 5y ago
  > or a thread every time a new version of one of those languages used in Ethereum Virtual Machines is out. But the majority of people interested in crypto don’t care about the technology, they are in it to get rich. Articles talking about the new technologies underpinning crypto do exist and get submitted, it’s just that to a rough approximation nobody cares about the actual technology. Look at the level of discussion bitcoin had when it wasn’t realistically exchangeable for USD. That’s the equivalent level of interest from a pure technology perspective. All of the noise today (including this article) are about the societal implications of disrupting this or that or enabling some other business/grift that wasn’t possible before. The technology is almost irrelevant at this point.
  - mattwilsonn888 5y ago
    > But the majority of people interested in crypto don’t care about the technology, they are in it to get rich. So too are the majority of investors in anything there to make money; you think they care about 'The Project' past its profits for shareholders? Developers who are only in it to make money is another thing, but even that group has nuance - some of them understand that the best way to make money long term is to build something valuable, and don't expect to get rich in one month.
  - vmception 5y ago
    > As this is what makes it, it shows that this isn't the community to expect a deeper discussion right now. As I wrote, I’m acutely aware of the signals for consensus formation, it is important for other people to know what kind of conversation is possible
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    > But the majority of people interested in crypto don’t care about the technology, they are in it to get rich. "But the majority of people interested in TikTok don't care about the technology, they are on it to watch people dance and laugh." The majority of people on the planet don't care about technology except what it can do for them. Having nuanced discussions about technology usually only interesting to a small subset of people. For many other technologies, HN is a place to have that discussion. But it hasn't been for crypto. > Look at the level of discussion bitcoin had when it wasn’t realistically exchangeable for USD. Bitcoin's first block was January 3, 2009. 10,000 bitcoin were famously exchanged for two Papa John's pizzas on May 22, 2010. The first bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, was launched July 18, 2010. So you're talking about a year and a half window since it was first conceived to have such discussion, less than 12% of the entire time bitcoin has been in existence. And considering the name of the bitcoin paper is "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System", there was probably some talk about it eventually being exchanged for USD right from the start. > nobody cares about the actual technology Yeah that's not true. On HN that may be more or less true (although I care about the tech and I'm on HN), but there's plenty of people that care about the tech and are discussing it in other channels. It's crazy, I've had much deeper discussions about the tech with people who can't even program on channels on Discord than I've had on HN, ever, about this space. I'm still desperately trying to play catchup, they keep dropping articles and talking about things and concepts I haven't heard of before. And intelligently, too, not just "I like the web3 makes me money go fast moon please." like it seems everyone on HN assumes these people think. There are people legitimately trying to do new and interesting (to me anyway) things with the space, and donating their time and energy and cash to try to build it and make it happen.
Freskis 5y ago
For most people, crypto is about money, not tech. Easy money, quick money. Therefore the spam level of any crypto discussion is so huge that the opinion gets drowned out by the propaganda.
- cryptica 5y ago
  I've worked in the crypto space for several years as a software developer and I can confirm that this is true. Most projects have no interest in developing the technology. Some communities will actively go out of their way to suppress innovation. There is a lot of 'busy work' going on with many projects going in circles.
  - inter_netuser 5y ago
    can give an example of innovation suppression? very curious.
    - cryptica 5y ago
      Like for example, you work for a company which claims to be working towards certain goals, then when you make some significant progress towards one of the main technical goals as an employee; instead of the project founders being pleased and giving you a bonus and rolling out the new tech to the community, they cancel everything, fire you from your job (or put you in a situation where you are forced to quit) and then they turn the entire community and their social network against you to ensure that you don't succeed outside the company... All against the stated goals of the company/project. True story BTW.
- prox 5y ago
  It smells like the .com boom/bust all over again. Like you say, money drives the discussion, not tech. Which is indeed unfortunate.
  - baxtr 5y ago
    It’s just human nature. It’s nothing to be sad about.
darawk 5y ago
Agree completely. There is a ton to criticize about crypto and "Web3" (I hate the term, tbh). It's rife with scams and unearned wealth. Even the things that aren't outright scams are mostly people selling hype. But this technology does enable something novel. Digital self-custody of scarce assets is a new thing. A thing that nobody could do before this stuff. And if that has utility, then the infrastructure for trading, lending, and all the rest related to those things has value. Even if you don't personally find it valuable, it should be clear that it is a thing that people could, in principle, legitimately prefer to traditional systems. That being said, a huge percentage of what's happening in the space is bullshit, an outright scam or an "essentially scam" project. All those things deserve heaps of scorn and criticism. Investigate Tether, regulate ICOs, do all the things. But don't go so far as to deny that there's anything there, or say ridiculous things like "Web3 is more centralized". Even if it's true that web3 is more centralized than the internet, that isn't the basis of comparison here. Web3 isn't competing with the internet, it's competing with traditional finance. And there should be no question that Web3 is substantially more decentralized than that.
- root_axis 5y ago
  Over the years I've witnessed a lot of heated debates on HN... Is the JS ecosystem actually too complex? Is PHP really a fractal of bad design? Is learning vim worth the effort or is it all hype? Is golang fundamentally broken because it lacks(lacked) generics? Does anyone ever actually need k8s? Is nosql always the wrong choice? Is the linux desktop experience truly productive or should you just use a mac? Types or no types? 100% test coverage or overkill? X or Wayland? Gnome2 or Unity? Android or iPhone etc... Yet, only in the cryptocurrency debate do defenders have to offer up a disclaimer about all the scams, hype, vaporware, fraud, waste, hacks, speculation, crime and other insanity before proceeding to make an appeal to the nebulous hope of future possibilities, as if cryptocurrency isn't older than instagram....
  - cryptica 5y ago
    I suspect that big corporations and big investment firms are pumping a lot of money into the cryptocurrency space to prevent innovation and to encourage scams in order to discredit the space. They want to buy it up, hype it up, then dump their bags on mom-and-pop investors while attempting a controlled demolition of the space. This might sound far-fetched to outsiders, but not so far-fetched to those who have worked inside the industry and seen the waste. I've seen obvious shitcoins repeatedly succeed while legitimate tokens never get any attention. In this industry, you can feel the unlimited currency coming straight off the money printers. It's just like Wall Street Bets in reverse except it's worth over a $ trillion and they're going after regular people instead of big hedge funds.
BrissyCoder 5y ago
- jacobmischka 5y ago
  "Calling somebody else fat won’t make you any skinnier. Calling someone stupid doesn’t make you any smarter."
vpilcx 5y ago
This isn't specific to web3 but more crypto but the idea of having an integrated method of collecting royalties on resale of an item indefinitely is pretty exciting. That said, the hype seems a little bit overblown. When people are so focused on "overthrowing Big Tech" as to why web3 will be the next wave, it just seems like hype over substance. I forgot what the name of it was, but I tried to sign up to some web3 social media site. In order to even post, you had to drop $80 on the relevant crypto to post on the site. I understand the justification but that made me immediately just lost interest in the web3 space. Seems kinda like a pyramid scheme. The people who are already in get richer while the newcomers just get magic beans.
- SoldShort22 5y ago
  > This isn't specific to web3 but more crypto but the idea of having an integrated method of collecting royalties on resale of an item indefinitely is pretty exciting. Exciting for who though? The only party who benefits from resale royalties is the creator of the NFT and/or the beneficiaries they designate. But what value do they offer the buyer and seller to earn this? In almost all cases, the creators of the NFTs aren't conveying any rights beyond ownership of the token itself. They're not even selling ownership of or rights to the digital assets (GIF, etc.) their tokens point to. When you buy and sell an asset, you might very well pay a fee to a party who facilitates the transaction, like a broker. The fee is to compensate the broker for the value they provided in facilitating a deal. These middlemen are often maligned for the fees they charge even when the facilitation they provide seems minimal but that doesn't mean that giving creators of an asset a perpetual royalty every time the asset is resold is any better. To me NFT resale royalties are actually one of those things that look worse than traditional finance. Imagine if a company sold stock to the public and as part of the deal, stipulated that each time a share was sold, it would receive a royalty of 10% of the new share price. Would buyers and sellers see that as a benefit or predation? And at least in the case of company stock, your share would give you actual ownership of a piece of the company and rights that come along with ownership. With NFTs, you just get a token with a pointer to a digital asset that isn't yours. And for that, you might get to pay the NFT creator a "royalty". I haven't seen any articulation of why this is a good thing.
- hooande 5y ago
jmspring 5y ago
This is a very specific to Hedera Hashgraph link. But they are based on ABFT based consensus algorithm and they have a governing council that includes Google and other entities. Their consensus mechanism requires a majority of nodes outside the control of Hedera - specifically from the Hedera governing council. It’s all public. I’d start there. The latest buzz, like Ethereum is on NFTs. Not a fan myself. I hold hbars, but wanted to share one example. https://medium.com/hashgraph/formal-methods-the-importance-of-being-abft-in-a-world-with-bad-actors-7308a4997fdd https://medium.com/hashgraph/formal-methods-the-importance-o...
- jmspring 5y ago
  As expected HN seems to have animosity towards Hedera. I was only pointing out their tech is actually pretty distributed.
xchaotic 5y ago
Perhaps the quality of arguments is an indicator here. At this point in time I am tired of explaining the basics to new, naive newcomers who somehow think that distributed chains of hashes are some kind of new, breakthrough science. I am tired in the same way as explaining to people that statistically they should vaccinate - the scientific base is already established but it looks like reasonable arguments no longer work. There’s opportunity cost and I feel like a lot of web3 efforts to reinvent the wheel could be better spent on research into fighting cancer or genetic diseases.
- jakupovic 5y ago
  - kortex 5y ago
    > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. > Eschew flamebait. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
spiddy 5y ago
I tend to look closely into projects that are outside of the echo chamber that can provide real world value and better economic models than web2 solutions. My two favorites are: helium where they build IoT global network, I use a helium GPS-alternative tracker for my moto which costs 10 times less than GPS tracker. scPrime (although there are other storage alternatives) which build global S3-compatible storage using available disk space on HDs. There is a lot of real estate that is sitting right now that can be harvested for money easily with networks like this.
- captn3m0 5y ago
  Helium is very much centralised because it has to (by the nature of their offering) lock down the end-user devices heavily. They have a single approved manufacturer last I checked. It essentially operates as a unregistered and unregulated ISP and that isn’t something to be taken lightly. It does that by pushing all legal and regulatory liability to operators. There’s also a lot of scams with operators faking their signal etc. Running a node also likely violates your ISPs ToS - can you contractually resell bandwidth?, so it has similar concerns as what AirBnB etc for the housing market. There’s nothing stopping something large ISPs from blocking Helium traffic and/or suspending customers for running a node. Alternatively, if this gets big enough, you’ll see ISPs offer LORA hotspots of their own. Ultimately, it is a very much VC-funded company running regulatory arbitrage on a global scale by using crypto instead. It’s the same if Uber decided to pay drivers in UberBucks a decade ago - that doesn’t change the offering, it just makes it easier to scale while pushing off any regulatory liabilities (including taxation).
  - spiddy 5y ago
    > Helium is very much centralised because it has to (by the nature of their offering) lock down the end-user devices heavily. They have a single approved manufacturer last I checked. As far as I can see there are currently 19 approved device manufacturers [0]. > It essentially operates as a unregistered and unregulated ISP and that isn’t something to be taken lightly. It does that by pushing all legal and regulatory liability to operators. There’s also a lot of scams with operators faking their signal etc. Scams faking their signal will only help improve the robustness of the network on the long run as these are fixable issues. Regulation seems to be spurring on every web3 conversation. I believe regulation is lagging behind user adoption and is a pending conversation. As for the exact scenario (LORA network) what kind of regulation do we __want__ the network to have? I don't think blocking user traffic is something we want to have, as an example you mentioned with current ISPs. [0]: https://www.helium.com/mine https://www.helium.com/mine
cunidev 5y ago
I am sorry, but that is like expecting a medical community built for the most parts by experts to be "positive" and have every day in-depth discussion on astrology or homeopathy. We have just seen so much of this lately, and can spot the obvious flaws in the technical basis of this "concept" that is, let us be honest, nothing more than a contradictory "brand" that is being pushed to all media in the name of freedom and decentralization, neither of which it actually provides. When there is just so much on a flawed concept, you cannot expect discussion to keep rehearsing the same old "Web3 is a scam" talk, and seeing its promoters discourages further from any healthy discussion.
manojlds 5y ago
And Vitalik has a good blog post on what kind of decentralisation we are talking of with crypto and blockchain. He says blockchain is logically centralized, which is what this post here is essentially talking about. https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentralization-a0c92b76a274 https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentrali...
- mattwilsonn888 5y ago
  HN crypto skeptics don't like realizing that there critiques aren't original, even less that there is progress being made on them.
foxhop 5y ago
mmcnl 5y ago
Apparently it's unfathomable that detailed, reasoned and thoughtful comments are actually critical of web 3. Here's a thought: could it be that web 3 actually deserves some legitimate criticism? Maybe HN is right and you're wrong?
- agloeregrets 5y ago
  This. There isn't a Web 3, at least right now. No concept in the Web 3 craze would currently be possible or practical and if it was you can be very sure that the existing powers that be would shut it down to defend their position. Also valuing digital scarcity is sad and just a way the "haves" distinguish themselves from the "have-nots". The fact that anything can be copied freely and shared is the best part of the internet. Plus all NFTs are a hilarious game of what marketplace it is published on. Give it 6 months, there will be massive fragmentation of the marketplaces and you'll see "NFT Artists" listing the "Original" on 50 marketplaces at the same time.
- gitfan86 5y ago
  HN isn't being criticized for being wrong, but for being too critical and too partisan. That kind of proves that there is no substance behind Web3, other than a hype train, saying that the technology will be useful someday. "get in now before it is too late."
hda2 5y ago
My feelings exactly. I'm also frustrated and disappointed with how discussions always end up stuck on the same tried and well-hashed points. I don't want a "pro-crypto" echo chamber, but I also don't want what hn devolves into whenever these topics are brought up. If you manage to find this reasonable place, please, please post it here as reply to your comment. I've favorited your comment and will check any replies to it for a month or two. What a pity :(
agumonkey 5y ago
It is a thing but it's caught up in the viral mobthink of the web (amplified by the finance aspect) which makes it hard to evaluate unless you poke deep (groups like the one behind Cardano publish a lot)
headmelted 5y ago
I think at this point we’re just so far past the point of having reasonable discourse on this topic that it will not be possible to have a reasoned discussion about it ever again, anywhere, regardless. Personally I have to fight my own rising blood temperature to even discuss it as being “a thing”, because people have such fundamentally different views on what that thing is, and I believe the argument is made in bad faith (not by you or your comment by the way, just in general). Adherents would have you believe that the current price, whatever it is at a given point, must mean some variant of “can all these people really be wrong? That’s ridiculous”. It’s not a reasonable starting point for a discussion, and then it immediately breaks down again. The tldr of it is that to have a discussion we’d need to agree a common set of facts as a starting point. To me, it’s a collection of distributed ponzi schemes based on signed linked lists, but it seems the whole world wants to agree that regardless of whether or not cryptocurrency is the future of money, blockchain is a really transformative and revolutionary breakthrough without any evidence to support that claim. Also stop trying to make fetch happen.
- jakupovic 5y ago
  >Adherents would have you believe that the current price, whatever it is at a given point, must mean some variant of “can all these people really be wrong? That’s ridiculous”. It’s not a reasonable starting point for a discussion, and then it immediately breaks down again. But it is reasonable to dismiss the whole field because you think it's a scam? Please read what you write before you post, as this is meaningless and illogical.
  - headmelted 5y ago
    This is simply saying “can all these people be wrong?” in other words. What I wrote is absolutely logical as best I can tell. I didn’t say it’s a scam (although that community is riddled with those too). I said it’s a collection of ponzi schemes (for which there is far more evidence to support than it being a financial revolution). Charles Ponzi genuinely believed he had revolutionised finance, too. All you’ve essentially said here is “Lots of people hyping on social media, therefore no scam, shut up fool”.
jaggs 5y ago
It's likely that you will not find any 'agnostic' crypto tech discussion in public, simply because these conversations inevitably quickly attract speculators and those armchair experts who love the sound of their own voice. I suspect it will need something like a private r/cryptotech sub on Reddit to keep things relevant?
dave_sullivan 5y ago
> Can someone recommend places to read or be involved in non partisan discussion about these topics? The ethereum developers mailing list or something, I'd expect? I agree with your sentiment, I find the cutoff is "programming crypto stuff" vs "not doing that". Actually I find the same is true of AI, if you don't know how to train a classifier or what a vector space is, your comment about AI is probably dumb. Everyone's got opinions I guess, I just find builders have more varied, interesting things to say.
mbesto 5y ago
> Can someone recommend places to read or be involved in non partisan discussion about these topics? When there is literal money involved with <insert any topic> I think it's basically impossible to have a forum that is unbiased. Good luck.
NicoJuicy 5y ago
I disagree. If crypto is a thing, then I'm really wondering what happened in 2018 - 2020. When it went from 20 k to 4,5k. Everyone always seems to be forgetting this. It took a pandemic to get crypto interest back up. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=Bitcoin,Crypto,Corona https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=... Ps. With crypto, i just think we are in a loop where the end result is failure. And the news flow/discussions are literally the same as in 2017 but with more buzzwords that even techies don't understand it anymore without spending ( significant) time investigating it. The average population doesn't really care and i need more arguments than "i think it's a thing". Just like in 2017, one of the main problems is that the people vested in crypto want to convince people that don't care. And because of their money involved, they can't let it go. Eg. The surreal spectacle of a president 'fixing' his country by shouting: "bought the dip" on Twitter every month. Also for the web 3, i don't really see a reason for it. They claim decentralization, but if you look at eg. OpenSea, the power is not with the "people" and it's really expensive to "mint".
almost 5y ago
Please do write up and/or share more sensible articles of what “web3” is and what it does. I’ve read a few and they’re always the best arguments against it. Sure it might all sound good when all you have to say is vague things about it being interesting and exciting. But as soon as you pin it down to and show what you actually mean when you use the word then things are a little different.
pinouchon 5y ago
Look for Vitalik, balaji srinivasan, naval ravikant podcasts, also chris dixon
mritchie712 5y ago
Some people will lose a lot of money if "web3" burns to the ground. People that don't have money to lose have massive FOMO. Thus, two very split sides.
dimgl 5y ago
I don't know; I'm surprised you think this is non-partisan. You should visit /r/buttcoin. These are all valid arguments, IMO, and I share their sentiment. Web3, whatever it is, is looking like a massive mistake. But yet the money continues to flow in. People who know nothing about technology in general are now investing in companies specializing in this technology. Why? Clearly, there's something there. Or maybe there really isn't. And this is the biggest grift ever seen. All led by ridiculous marketing. I really do think this is all going to collapse. There's no way this clown car just continues endlessly without some repercussions.

CJefferson 5y ago

To me, web3 is just the "tech bro" version of LuLaRoe or beany babies. There is plenty of thoughtful discussion of both, but none of it positive.

baxtr 5y ago

I feel the same. There is only hate and despise for crypto. I’m also skeptical but I’d love to see a more nuanced discussion. To your question, I like https://www.rekt.news/ https://www.rekt.news/

vmception 5y ago

People mostly email me about very specific topics. Nobody "still doing research™" about the broad topic of crypto is getting anywhere because they get bounced from the funnel immediately and paint the whole space with an equally as broad brush. Its decade 3 and this is where we are, so what do people really want to know? To me, there's lots of killer apps, to others I don't really care to debate any longer, who cares about "mainstream" when there's already 2-3 trillion dollars of value to attract to any product you release. It's not 2009 any more when most of this level of depth (or lack thereof) was relevant. I personally wouldn't know where to point you, and sadly its more likely you too will run into disillusioning use cases from your own exploration (or wind up in a cult to bolster an implementation that is going nowhere). For me, it's been more interesting to accept that no state of the these technologies is set in stone, that I can influence the future state, and that the monetary incentives to build and influence the future state are phenomenal. Better option than smugly exploiting myself at an adtech conglomerate, for less money. There is room for more specific things to be discussed, like if you look at the frontpage right now, there is a thread about "Deserializing JSON fast" or "A comparison of Rust and Zig". There could just as easily be discussions about "Solidity vs Vyper" or a thread every time a new version of one of those languages used in Ethereum Virtual Machines is out. Or node technology and processing transactions faster. Things that can inspire, but instead we just get these broad think pieces from wannabe angel investors and some influential VCs. As this is what makes it, it shows that this isn't the community to expect a deeper discussion right now.

kortilla 5y ago
> or a thread every time a new version of one of those languages used in Ethereum Virtual Machines is out. But the majority of people interested in crypto don’t care about the technology, they are in it to get rich. Articles talking about the new technologies underpinning crypto do exist and get submitted, it’s just that to a rough approximation nobody cares about the actual technology. Look at the level of discussion bitcoin had when it wasn’t realistically exchangeable for USD. That’s the equivalent level of interest from a pure technology perspective. All of the noise today (including this article) are about the societal implications of disrupting this or that or enabling some other business/grift that wasn’t possible before. The technology is almost irrelevant at this point.
- mattwilsonn888 5y ago
  > But the majority of people interested in crypto don’t care about the technology, they are in it to get rich. So too are the majority of investors in anything there to make money; you think they care about 'The Project' past its profits for shareholders? Developers who are only in it to make money is another thing, but even that group has nuance - some of them understand that the best way to make money long term is to build something valuable, and don't expect to get rich in one month.
- vmception 5y ago
  > As this is what makes it, it shows that this isn't the community to expect a deeper discussion right now. As I wrote, I’m acutely aware of the signals for consensus formation, it is important for other people to know what kind of conversation is possible
- cableshaft 5y ago
  > But the majority of people interested in crypto don’t care about the technology, they are in it to get rich. "But the majority of people interested in TikTok don't care about the technology, they are on it to watch people dance and laugh." The majority of people on the planet don't care about technology except what it can do for them. Having nuanced discussions about technology usually only interesting to a small subset of people. For many other technologies, HN is a place to have that discussion. But it hasn't been for crypto. > Look at the level of discussion bitcoin had when it wasn’t realistically exchangeable for USD. Bitcoin's first block was January 3, 2009. 10,000 bitcoin were famously exchanged for two Papa John's pizzas on May 22, 2010. The first bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, was launched July 18, 2010. So you're talking about a year and a half window since it was first conceived to have such discussion, less than 12% of the entire time bitcoin has been in existence. And considering the name of the bitcoin paper is "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System", there was probably some talk about it eventually being exchanged for USD right from the start. > nobody cares about the actual technology Yeah that's not true. On HN that may be more or less true (although I care about the tech and I'm on HN), but there's plenty of people that care about the tech and are discussing it in other channels. It's crazy, I've had much deeper discussions about the tech with people who can't even program on channels on Discord than I've had on HN, ever, about this space. I'm still desperately trying to play catchup, they keep dropping articles and talking about things and concepts I haven't heard of before. And intelligently, too, not just "I like the web3 makes me money go fast moon please." like it seems everyone on HN assumes these people think. There are people legitimately trying to do new and interesting (to me anyway) things with the space, and donating their time and energy and cash to try to build it and make it happen.

Freskis 5y ago

For most people, crypto is about money, not tech. Easy money, quick money. Therefore the spam level of any crypto discussion is so huge that the opinion gets drowned out by the propaganda.

cryptica 5y ago
I've worked in the crypto space for several years as a software developer and I can confirm that this is true. Most projects have no interest in developing the technology. Some communities will actively go out of their way to suppress innovation. There is a lot of 'busy work' going on with many projects going in circles.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  can give an example of innovation suppression? very curious.
  - cryptica 5y ago
    Like for example, you work for a company which claims to be working towards certain goals, then when you make some significant progress towards one of the main technical goals as an employee; instead of the project founders being pleased and giving you a bonus and rolling out the new tech to the community, they cancel everything, fire you from your job (or put you in a situation where you are forced to quit) and then they turn the entire community and their social network against you to ensure that you don't succeed outside the company... All against the stated goals of the company/project. True story BTW.
prox 5y ago
It smells like the .com boom/bust all over again. Like you say, money drives the discussion, not tech. Which is indeed unfortunate.
- baxtr 5y ago
  It’s just human nature. It’s nothing to be sad about.

darawk 5y ago

Agree completely. There is a ton to criticize about crypto and "Web3" (I hate the term, tbh). It's rife with scams and unearned wealth. Even the things that aren't outright scams are mostly people selling hype. But this technology does enable something novel. Digital self-custody of scarce assets is a new thing. A thing that nobody could do before this stuff. And if that has utility, then the infrastructure for trading, lending, and all the rest related to those things has value. Even if you don't personally find it valuable, it should be clear that it is a thing that people could, in principle, legitimately prefer to traditional systems. That being said, a huge percentage of what's happening in the space is bullshit, an outright scam or an "essentially scam" project. All those things deserve heaps of scorn and criticism. Investigate Tether, regulate ICOs, do all the things. But don't go so far as to deny that there's anything there, or say ridiculous things like "Web3 is more centralized". Even if it's true that web3 is more centralized than the internet, that isn't the basis of comparison here. Web3 isn't competing with the internet, it's competing with traditional finance. And there should be no question that Web3 is substantially more decentralized than that.

root_axis 5y ago
Over the years I've witnessed a lot of heated debates on HN... Is the JS ecosystem actually too complex? Is PHP really a fractal of bad design? Is learning vim worth the effort or is it all hype? Is golang fundamentally broken because it lacks(lacked) generics? Does anyone ever actually need k8s? Is nosql always the wrong choice? Is the linux desktop experience truly productive or should you just use a mac? Types or no types? 100% test coverage or overkill? X or Wayland? Gnome2 or Unity? Android or iPhone etc... Yet, only in the cryptocurrency debate do defenders have to offer up a disclaimer about all the scams, hype, vaporware, fraud, waste, hacks, speculation, crime and other insanity before proceeding to make an appeal to the nebulous hope of future possibilities, as if cryptocurrency isn't older than instagram....
- cryptica 5y ago
  I suspect that big corporations and big investment firms are pumping a lot of money into the cryptocurrency space to prevent innovation and to encourage scams in order to discredit the space. They want to buy it up, hype it up, then dump their bags on mom-and-pop investors while attempting a controlled demolition of the space. This might sound far-fetched to outsiders, but not so far-fetched to those who have worked inside the industry and seen the waste. I've seen obvious shitcoins repeatedly succeed while legitimate tokens never get any attention. In this industry, you can feel the unlimited currency coming straight off the money printers. It's just like Wall Street Bets in reverse except it's worth over a $ trillion and they're going after regular people instead of big hedge funds.

BrissyCoder 5y ago

jacobmischka 5y ago
"Calling somebody else fat won’t make you any skinnier. Calling someone stupid doesn’t make you any smarter."

vpilcx 5y ago

This isn't specific to web3 but more crypto but the idea of having an integrated method of collecting royalties on resale of an item indefinitely is pretty exciting. That said, the hype seems a little bit overblown. When people are so focused on "overthrowing Big Tech" as to why web3 will be the next wave, it just seems like hype over substance. I forgot what the name of it was, but I tried to sign up to some web3 social media site. In order to even post, you had to drop $80 on the relevant crypto to post on the site. I understand the justification but that made me immediately just lost interest in the web3 space. Seems kinda like a pyramid scheme. The people who are already in get richer while the newcomers just get magic beans.

SoldShort22 5y ago
> This isn't specific to web3 but more crypto but the idea of having an integrated method of collecting royalties on resale of an item indefinitely is pretty exciting. Exciting for who though? The only party who benefits from resale royalties is the creator of the NFT and/or the beneficiaries they designate. But what value do they offer the buyer and seller to earn this? In almost all cases, the creators of the NFTs aren't conveying any rights beyond ownership of the token itself. They're not even selling ownership of or rights to the digital assets (GIF, etc.) their tokens point to. When you buy and sell an asset, you might very well pay a fee to a party who facilitates the transaction, like a broker. The fee is to compensate the broker for the value they provided in facilitating a deal. These middlemen are often maligned for the fees they charge even when the facilitation they provide seems minimal but that doesn't mean that giving creators of an asset a perpetual royalty every time the asset is resold is any better. To me NFT resale royalties are actually one of those things that look worse than traditional finance. Imagine if a company sold stock to the public and as part of the deal, stipulated that each time a share was sold, it would receive a royalty of 10% of the new share price. Would buyers and sellers see that as a benefit or predation? And at least in the case of company stock, your share would give you actual ownership of a piece of the company and rights that come along with ownership. With NFTs, you just get a token with a pointer to a digital asset that isn't yours. And for that, you might get to pay the NFT creator a "royalty". I haven't seen any articulation of why this is a good thing.
hooande 5y ago

jmspring 5y ago

This is a very specific to Hedera Hashgraph link. But they are based on ABFT based consensus algorithm and they have a governing council that includes Google and other entities. Their consensus mechanism requires a majority of nodes outside the control of Hedera - specifically from the Hedera governing council. It’s all public. I’d start there. The latest buzz, like Ethereum is on NFTs. Not a fan myself. I hold hbars, but wanted to share one example. https://medium.com/hashgraph/formal-methods-the-importance-of-being-abft-in-a-world-with-bad-actors-7308a4997fdd https://medium.com/hashgraph/formal-methods-the-importance-o...

jmspring 5y ago
As expected HN seems to have animosity towards Hedera. I was only pointing out their tech is actually pretty distributed.

xchaotic 5y ago

Perhaps the quality of arguments is an indicator here. At this point in time I am tired of explaining the basics to new, naive newcomers who somehow think that distributed chains of hashes are some kind of new, breakthrough science. I am tired in the same way as explaining to people that statistically they should vaccinate - the scientific base is already established but it looks like reasonable arguments no longer work. There’s opportunity cost and I feel like a lot of web3 efforts to reinvent the wheel could be better spent on research into fighting cancer or genetic diseases.

jakupovic 5y ago
- kortex 5y ago
  > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. > Eschew flamebait. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

spiddy 5y ago

I tend to look closely into projects that are outside of the echo chamber that can provide real world value and better economic models than web2 solutions. My two favorites are: helium where they build IoT global network, I use a helium GPS-alternative tracker for my moto which costs 10 times less than GPS tracker. scPrime (although there are other storage alternatives) which build global S3-compatible storage using available disk space on HDs. There is a lot of real estate that is sitting right now that can be harvested for money easily with networks like this.

captn3m0 5y ago
Helium is very much centralised because it has to (by the nature of their offering) lock down the end-user devices heavily. They have a single approved manufacturer last I checked. It essentially operates as a unregistered and unregulated ISP and that isn’t something to be taken lightly. It does that by pushing all legal and regulatory liability to operators. There’s also a lot of scams with operators faking their signal etc. Running a node also likely violates your ISPs ToS - can you contractually resell bandwidth?, so it has similar concerns as what AirBnB etc for the housing market. There’s nothing stopping something large ISPs from blocking Helium traffic and/or suspending customers for running a node. Alternatively, if this gets big enough, you’ll see ISPs offer LORA hotspots of their own. Ultimately, it is a very much VC-funded company running regulatory arbitrage on a global scale by using crypto instead. It’s the same if Uber decided to pay drivers in UberBucks a decade ago - that doesn’t change the offering, it just makes it easier to scale while pushing off any regulatory liabilities (including taxation).
- spiddy 5y ago
  > Helium is very much centralised because it has to (by the nature of their offering) lock down the end-user devices heavily. They have a single approved manufacturer last I checked. As far as I can see there are currently 19 approved device manufacturers [0]. > It essentially operates as a unregistered and unregulated ISP and that isn’t something to be taken lightly. It does that by pushing all legal and regulatory liability to operators. There’s also a lot of scams with operators faking their signal etc. Scams faking their signal will only help improve the robustness of the network on the long run as these are fixable issues. Regulation seems to be spurring on every web3 conversation. I believe regulation is lagging behind user adoption and is a pending conversation. As for the exact scenario (LORA network) what kind of regulation do we __want__ the network to have? I don't think blocking user traffic is something we want to have, as an example you mentioned with current ISPs. [0]: https://www.helium.com/mine https://www.helium.com/mine

cunidev 5y ago

I am sorry, but that is like expecting a medical community built for the most parts by experts to be "positive" and have every day in-depth discussion on astrology or homeopathy. We have just seen so much of this lately, and can spot the obvious flaws in the technical basis of this "concept" that is, let us be honest, nothing more than a contradictory "brand" that is being pushed to all media in the name of freedom and decentralization, neither of which it actually provides. When there is just so much on a flawed concept, you cannot expect discussion to keep rehearsing the same old "Web3 is a scam" talk, and seeing its promoters discourages further from any healthy discussion.

manojlds 5y ago

And Vitalik has a good blog post on what kind of decentralisation we are talking of with crypto and blockchain. He says blockchain is logically centralized, which is what this post here is essentially talking about. https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentralization-a0c92b76a274 https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentrali...

mattwilsonn888 5y ago
HN crypto skeptics don't like realizing that there critiques aren't original, even less that there is progress being made on them.

foxhop 5y ago

mmcnl 5y ago

Apparently it's unfathomable that detailed, reasoned and thoughtful comments are actually critical of web 3. Here's a thought: could it be that web 3 actually deserves some legitimate criticism? Maybe HN is right and you're wrong?

agloeregrets 5y ago
This. There isn't a Web 3, at least right now. No concept in the Web 3 craze would currently be possible or practical and if it was you can be very sure that the existing powers that be would shut it down to defend their position. Also valuing digital scarcity is sad and just a way the "haves" distinguish themselves from the "have-nots". The fact that anything can be copied freely and shared is the best part of the internet. Plus all NFTs are a hilarious game of what marketplace it is published on. Give it 6 months, there will be massive fragmentation of the marketplaces and you'll see "NFT Artists" listing the "Original" on 50 marketplaces at the same time.
gitfan86 5y ago
HN isn't being criticized for being wrong, but for being too critical and too partisan. That kind of proves that there is no substance behind Web3, other than a hype train, saying that the technology will be useful someday. "get in now before it is too late."

hda2 5y ago

My feelings exactly. I'm also frustrated and disappointed with how discussions always end up stuck on the same tried and well-hashed points. I don't want a "pro-crypto" echo chamber, but I also don't want what hn devolves into whenever these topics are brought up. If you manage to find this reasonable place, please, please post it here as reply to your comment. I've favorited your comment and will check any replies to it for a month or two. What a pity :(

agumonkey 5y ago

It is a thing but it's caught up in the viral mobthink of the web (amplified by the finance aspect) which makes it hard to evaluate unless you poke deep (groups like the one behind Cardano publish a lot)

headmelted 5y ago

I think at this point we’re just so far past the point of having reasonable discourse on this topic that it will not be possible to have a reasoned discussion about it ever again, anywhere, regardless. Personally I have to fight my own rising blood temperature to even discuss it as being “a thing”, because people have such fundamentally different views on what that thing is, and I believe the argument is made in bad faith (not by you or your comment by the way, just in general). Adherents would have you believe that the current price, whatever it is at a given point, must mean some variant of “can all these people really be wrong? That’s ridiculous”. It’s not a reasonable starting point for a discussion, and then it immediately breaks down again. The tldr of it is that to have a discussion we’d need to agree a common set of facts as a starting point. To me, it’s a collection of distributed ponzi schemes based on signed linked lists, but it seems the whole world wants to agree that regardless of whether or not cryptocurrency is the future of money, blockchain is a really transformative and revolutionary breakthrough without any evidence to support that claim. Also stop trying to make fetch happen.

jakupovic 5y ago
>Adherents would have you believe that the current price, whatever it is at a given point, must mean some variant of “can all these people really be wrong? That’s ridiculous”. It’s not a reasonable starting point for a discussion, and then it immediately breaks down again. But it is reasonable to dismiss the whole field because you think it's a scam? Please read what you write before you post, as this is meaningless and illogical.
- headmelted 5y ago
  This is simply saying “can all these people be wrong?” in other words. What I wrote is absolutely logical as best I can tell. I didn’t say it’s a scam (although that community is riddled with those too). I said it’s a collection of ponzi schemes (for which there is far more evidence to support than it being a financial revolution). Charles Ponzi genuinely believed he had revolutionised finance, too. All you’ve essentially said here is “Lots of people hyping on social media, therefore no scam, shut up fool”.

jaggs 5y ago

It's likely that you will not find any 'agnostic' crypto tech discussion in public, simply because these conversations inevitably quickly attract speculators and those armchair experts who love the sound of their own voice. I suspect it will need something like a private r/cryptotech sub on Reddit to keep things relevant?

dave_sullivan 5y ago

> Can someone recommend places to read or be involved in non partisan discussion about these topics? The ethereum developers mailing list or something, I'd expect? I agree with your sentiment, I find the cutoff is "programming crypto stuff" vs "not doing that". Actually I find the same is true of AI, if you don't know how to train a classifier or what a vector space is, your comment about AI is probably dumb. Everyone's got opinions I guess, I just find builders have more varied, interesting things to say.

mbesto 5y ago

> Can someone recommend places to read or be involved in non partisan discussion about these topics? When there is literal money involved with <insert any topic> I think it's basically impossible to have a forum that is unbiased. Good luck.

NicoJuicy 5y ago

I disagree. If crypto is a thing, then I'm really wondering what happened in 2018 - 2020. When it went from 20 k to 4,5k. Everyone always seems to be forgetting this. It took a pandemic to get crypto interest back up. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=Bitcoin,Crypto,Corona https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=... Ps. With crypto, i just think we are in a loop where the end result is failure. And the news flow/discussions are literally the same as in 2017 but with more buzzwords that even techies don't understand it anymore without spending ( significant) time investigating it. The average population doesn't really care and i need more arguments than "i think it's a thing". Just like in 2017, one of the main problems is that the people vested in crypto want to convince people that don't care. And because of their money involved, they can't let it go. Eg. The surreal spectacle of a president 'fixing' his country by shouting: "bought the dip" on Twitter every month. Also for the web 3, i don't really see a reason for it. They claim decentralization, but if you look at eg. OpenSea, the power is not with the "people" and it's really expensive to "mint".

almost 5y ago

Please do write up and/or share more sensible articles of what “web3” is and what it does. I’ve read a few and they’re always the best arguments against it. Sure it might all sound good when all you have to say is vague things about it being interesting and exciting. But as soon as you pin it down to and show what you actually mean when you use the word then things are a little different.

pinouchon 5y ago

Look for Vitalik, balaji srinivasan, naval ravikant podcasts, also chris dixon

mritchie712 5y ago

Some people will lose a lot of money if "web3" burns to the ground. People that don't have money to lose have massive FOMO. Thus, two very split sides.

dimgl 5y ago

I don't know; I'm surprised you think this is non-partisan. You should visit /r/buttcoin. These are all valid arguments, IMO, and I share their sentiment. Web3, whatever it is, is looking like a massive mistake. But yet the money continues to flow in. People who know nothing about technology in general are now investing in companies specializing in this technology. Why? Clearly, there's something there. Or maybe there really isn't. And this is the biggest grift ever seen. All led by ridiculous marketing. I really do think this is all going to collapse. There's no way this clown car just continues endlessly without some repercussions.