7 ms·

I respect your healthy mentality, but if that’s the most interest you can muster, I think it demonstrates how little attention Web3 should be getting. The orig

I respect your healthy mentality, but if that’s the most interest you can muster, I think it demonstrates how little attention Web3 should be getting. The original promise of the Internet and Web 2.0 had clear use cases, where you could understand and appreciate the improvements to every day life. There’s no denying that there were grifters there, and the whole thing got a little hot with dot com bubble. But, on the whole, the potential could be seen. Just as calculators made lives better in the 70s and 80s, spreadsheet as well, there was a natural and relatable drive to incorporating more technology. I don’t see any of that with the web three.

f0e4c2f7 5y ago
Many people were about as blind to the internet then as they are to crypto now. If you Google news stories from then you get a lot of confused newscasters going "but what is internet?" Or people like Bill Gates trying with little success to explain it.[0] In those early days where it was pretty much just irc and bbs's it was pretty hard to see any kind of value for most people. I also remember a time when people would essentially complain about ".com" do you remember this? "Commercials. Billboards. Everybody has a dot com now!" That feels a bit like the complaining about Blockchain now to me and I tend to see it as a pretty good sign. I don't actually know very much about blockchain / smart contract stuff. I've been digging into it lately because it seems like there could be something interesting there. If there is, I haven't really found it just yet. [0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=gipL_CEw-fk https://youtube.com/watch?v=gipL_CEw-fk
- tibbar 5y ago
  It’s depressing, honestly. A few years ago I read a graduate textbook about Bitcoin as well as the original white paper and some papers about ethereum, etc. My main takeaway is that Bitcoin itself (although not all blockchain proposals) is a horrible medium for almost all useful products. The privacy properties are bad, it’s incredibly inefficient, and everyone ends up going to a middleman instead of interacting in a decentralized way as it is. Almost always, a regular database is what you want. The drumbeat of cries ‘let’s build X, but on a blockchain!’ rarely even make sense. This is compounded by the fact that the people who promote Bitcoin the most in my personal circles are known to be experts in wishful thinking and outlandish claims about the world in general. Having said that, smart contracts are actually really cool. In practice a bank is probably just as good in the developed world but — darn it, I want to make clever money programs too. Also, there are alt coins that have much better privacy preserving properties and superior (energy efficient) consensus algorithms so there are still reasons to be hyped. It’s just that most of the web3 stuff doesn’t seem to touch the actually interesting possibilities in favor of ‘go blockchain, Bitcoin to the moon!’
- ekanes 5y ago
  I think a case can be made that Ticketmaster will be replaced (or replace itself) with blockchain tech that will eliminate scalpers. Visa and Mastercard will most likely be replaced or dramatically lower fees. Banks will be upended.
  - gjulianm 5y ago
    > I think a case can be made that Ticketmaster will be replaced (or replace itself) with blockchain tech that will eliminate scalpers. Blockchain does not do too much to eliminate scalpers. One could easily make thousands of wallets, buy the tickets and then resell them. What stops scalpers is tickets tied to personal identity, and blockchain can't really tie wallets to personal identity without a central physical authority. > Visa and Mastercard will most likely be replaced Visa and Mastercard won't be replaced as long as cryptocurrencies do not provide fraud protection or chargebacks (that seems a little bit impossible given the irreversibility of crypto transactions) or credit lines that require less than 100% collateral.
    - ekanes 5y ago
      To eliminate scalpers, I don't need to know who's behind a wallet, I just need to look at the wallet and see it's a first-time buyer from me (Ticketmaster) or the performer. Either way, it can go to towards the back of the line. Someone who buys lots of tickets (and I can see they don't re-sell them!) moves to the front of the line. Happy venues, happy fans, happy performers! For Visa: Smart contracts that hold the money for 30 days and a real-world interface for customer service (new companies will be borth to offer this I bet) will mean lower fees.
      - gjulianm 5y ago
        > Happy venues, happy fans, happy performers Except for the fans that couldn’t get a ticket because it’s the first time they do and they go to the back of the line, or the ones that sold a ticket because they couldn’t attend and now they can’t buy tickets. > Smart contracts that hold the money for 30 days and a real-world interface for customer service (new companies will be borth to offer this I bet) will mean lower fees. Which means a 30-day payment lag for everyone and is far more prone to abuse if the client can unilaterally charge back any transaction. Also doesn’t help when credentials are stolen.
- thrwy_918 5y ago
  >In those early days where it was pretty much just irc and bbs's it was pretty hard to see any kind of value for most people. I don't agree that it was hard to understand the value of services like electronic mail, forums or text chat. People may have been confused about how these services worked, or how they could personally use such services. But in a world where the best way to contact someone far away was an expensive telephone call, it was easy to spend two minutes talking to someone and have them understand the value of cheap, near-instant text-based communication. It's really hard to explain the value of "web3" in a two minute conversation because almost everything it lets you do is either i) something most people don't actually want to do, or ii) something people can already do in a much easier and user-friendly way
azangru 5y ago
> The original promise of the Internet and Web 2.0 had clear use cases, where you could understand and appreciate the improvements to every day life. How is an international currency (or currencies) allowing direct peer-to-peer transactions without the need of middlemen or central authorities not a clear use case with a potential to improve at least some people's everyday lives? What's more everyday than money?
RestlessMind 5y ago
> I think it demonstrates how little attention Web3 should be getting Let people decide for themselves where to pay attention to? I remember "Internet" receiving a lot of hype in 1998 when most of the people didn't have any clue about what that actually entailed. > The original promise of the Internet and Web 2.0 had clear use cases, where you could understand and appreciate the improvements to every day life Hahaha, but no. Where I was in 1998, hardly anyone had any idea what Internet was about and yet there was a lot of hype. In the early days, I remember using it only for porn, random email forwards and chats. The way I use it now (searching for anything and everything, buying majority of the stuff I need, payments of all kinds, investments, ...) was unimagined. > I don’t see any of that with the web three. Have you ever considered that you could be wrong and that in a couple of decades, there might be something really interesting out of Crypto / Web3?

f0e4c2f7 5y ago

Many people were about as blind to the internet then as they are to crypto now. If you Google news stories from then you get a lot of confused newscasters going "but what is internet?" Or people like Bill Gates trying with little success to explain it.[0] In those early days where it was pretty much just irc and bbs's it was pretty hard to see any kind of value for most people. I also remember a time when people would essentially complain about ".com" do you remember this? "Commercials. Billboards. Everybody has a dot com now!" That feels a bit like the complaining about Blockchain now to me and I tend to see it as a pretty good sign. I don't actually know very much about blockchain / smart contract stuff. I've been digging into it lately because it seems like there could be something interesting there. If there is, I haven't really found it just yet. [0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=gipL_CEw-fk https://youtube.com/watch?v=gipL_CEw-fk

tibbar 5y ago
It’s depressing, honestly. A few years ago I read a graduate textbook about Bitcoin as well as the original white paper and some papers about ethereum, etc. My main takeaway is that Bitcoin itself (although not all blockchain proposals) is a horrible medium for almost all useful products. The privacy properties are bad, it’s incredibly inefficient, and everyone ends up going to a middleman instead of interacting in a decentralized way as it is. Almost always, a regular database is what you want. The drumbeat of cries ‘let’s build X, but on a blockchain!’ rarely even make sense. This is compounded by the fact that the people who promote Bitcoin the most in my personal circles are known to be experts in wishful thinking and outlandish claims about the world in general. Having said that, smart contracts are actually really cool. In practice a bank is probably just as good in the developed world but — darn it, I want to make clever money programs too. Also, there are alt coins that have much better privacy preserving properties and superior (energy efficient) consensus algorithms so there are still reasons to be hyped. It’s just that most of the web3 stuff doesn’t seem to touch the actually interesting possibilities in favor of ‘go blockchain, Bitcoin to the moon!’
ekanes 5y ago
I think a case can be made that Ticketmaster will be replaced (or replace itself) with blockchain tech that will eliminate scalpers. Visa and Mastercard will most likely be replaced or dramatically lower fees. Banks will be upended.
- gjulianm 5y ago
  > I think a case can be made that Ticketmaster will be replaced (or replace itself) with blockchain tech that will eliminate scalpers. Blockchain does not do too much to eliminate scalpers. One could easily make thousands of wallets, buy the tickets and then resell them. What stops scalpers is tickets tied to personal identity, and blockchain can't really tie wallets to personal identity without a central physical authority. > Visa and Mastercard will most likely be replaced Visa and Mastercard won't be replaced as long as cryptocurrencies do not provide fraud protection or chargebacks (that seems a little bit impossible given the irreversibility of crypto transactions) or credit lines that require less than 100% collateral.
  - ekanes 5y ago
    To eliminate scalpers, I don't need to know who's behind a wallet, I just need to look at the wallet and see it's a first-time buyer from me (Ticketmaster) or the performer. Either way, it can go to towards the back of the line. Someone who buys lots of tickets (and I can see they don't re-sell them!) moves to the front of the line. Happy venues, happy fans, happy performers! For Visa: Smart contracts that hold the money for 30 days and a real-world interface for customer service (new companies will be borth to offer this I bet) will mean lower fees.
    - gjulianm 5y ago
      > Happy venues, happy fans, happy performers Except for the fans that couldn’t get a ticket because it’s the first time they do and they go to the back of the line, or the ones that sold a ticket because they couldn’t attend and now they can’t buy tickets. > Smart contracts that hold the money for 30 days and a real-world interface for customer service (new companies will be borth to offer this I bet) will mean lower fees. Which means a 30-day payment lag for everyone and is far more prone to abuse if the client can unilaterally charge back any transaction. Also doesn’t help when credentials are stolen.
thrwy_918 5y ago
>In those early days where it was pretty much just irc and bbs's it was pretty hard to see any kind of value for most people. I don't agree that it was hard to understand the value of services like electronic mail, forums or text chat. People may have been confused about how these services worked, or how they could personally use such services. But in a world where the best way to contact someone far away was an expensive telephone call, it was easy to spend two minutes talking to someone and have them understand the value of cheap, near-instant text-based communication. It's really hard to explain the value of "web3" in a two minute conversation because almost everything it lets you do is either i) something most people don't actually want to do, or ii) something people can already do in a much easier and user-friendly way

azangru 5y ago

> The original promise of the Internet and Web 2.0 had clear use cases, where you could understand and appreciate the improvements to every day life. How is an international currency (or currencies) allowing direct peer-to-peer transactions without the need of middlemen or central authorities not a clear use case with a potential to improve at least some people's everyday lives? What's more everyday than money?

RestlessMind 5y ago

> I think it demonstrates how little attention Web3 should be getting Let people decide for themselves where to pay attention to? I remember "Internet" receiving a lot of hype in 1998 when most of the people didn't have any clue about what that actually entailed. > The original promise of the Internet and Web 2.0 had clear use cases, where you could understand and appreciate the improvements to every day life Hahaha, but no. Where I was in 1998, hardly anyone had any idea what Internet was about and yet there was a lot of hype. In the early days, I remember using it only for porn, random email forwards and chats. The way I use it now (searching for anything and everything, buying majority of the stuff I need, payments of all kinds, investments, ...) was unimagined. > I don’t see any of that with the web three. Have you ever considered that you could be wrong and that in a couple of decades, there might be something really interesting out of Crypto / Web3?