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The usefulness of web3/crypto/blockchain is said to be in decentralization. However it is not the blockchain and crypto algorithm that enable decentralization.

by janci 5y ago

The usefulness of web3/crypto/blockchain is said to be in decentralization. However it is not the blockchain and crypto algorithm that enable decentralization. It is not even the distributed ledger. We do not need these things to be able to make distributed services. What we need is standard public interfaces. Take an example of NFTs. They are increasingly popular, even if they are meaningless tokens not representing ownership of physical item nor protecting against digital copies and distribution. What makes NFTs useful is that any token can be manipulated by any wallet/marketplace/exchange. This is enabled by using a standard ERC-721 interface. The interface is simple and well-designed. The adoption of the interface is high in crypto-software. Imagine all e-shops would implement the same public API for querying products, creating orders, calculating discounts and shipping prices and making payments. We would need no Amazon to be the largest e-commerce website. We would need no e-bay. Anyone would be able to make a product-selling website or one-off auction on they own or using a 3rd party service/hosting. And everyone would be able to use their preferred front-end. Aggregators and price comparators would be created, with no need for web scraping. The orders do not need to be on public immutable ledger, nor the payments. Every entity can implement the API on its own, host is on its own, but is not required to. Every entity can decide to use 3rd party implementation and/or hosting of the API. The same as with crypto tokens and smart contracts.

mdaniel 5y ago
> Imagine all e-shops would implement the same public API Very idealistic, but if you have ever heard the acronym "EDI" then it will become quickly apparent how incredibly fraught it is to try and map ones "local" taxonomy onto a "global standard" taxonomy. Let's just take https://schema.org/brand https://schema.org/brand -- should this property be the legal brand (Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.), the marketing brand (Sony), some URI that everyone agrees upon and can readily look up from their desktop? What is the verification process a fivrr contractor can use at the end of their php work for Middleville Cakes and Cookies to know that the result conforms to the global taxonomy and thus will be consumed correctly by the aggregators and price comparison engines mentioned? I do recognize this may have a tone of "pfft, what a terrible idea" but I promise I don't mean it in such a dismissive way. I was similarly thrilled back when I learned about the semantic web, too. But having been down in the muck for as long as I have, trying to implement loosey-goosey specifications, has made me realize it's not the idea that's flawed, it's the assumption that all actors have good intentions, perfect knowledge, and infinite time to conform to perfect standards. And don't even get me wound up about the semantic law markup / legislation as code ... > with no need for web scraping. That will only ever be true in some mythical future where the HTML contains only presentation structure and is populated by the aforementioned public API. There are countless examples of some parts of the data being statically embedded in the HTML that are not part of the API response

by janci 5y ago

mdaniel 5y ago

> Imagine all e-shops would implement the same public API Very idealistic, but if you have ever heard the acronym "EDI" then it will become quickly apparent how incredibly fraught it is to try and map ones "local" taxonomy onto a "global standard" taxonomy. Let's just take https://schema.org/brand https://schema.org/brand -- should this property be the legal brand (Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.), the marketing brand (Sony), some URI that everyone agrees upon and can readily look up from their desktop? What is the verification process a fivrr contractor can use at the end of their php work for Middleville Cakes and Cookies to know that the result conforms to the global taxonomy and thus will be consumed correctly by the aggregators and price comparison engines mentioned? I do recognize this may have a tone of "pfft, what a terrible idea" but I promise I don't mean it in such a dismissive way. I was similarly thrilled back when I learned about the semantic web, too. But having been down in the muck for as long as I have, trying to implement loosey-goosey specifications, has made me realize it's not the idea that's flawed, it's the assumption that all actors have good intentions, perfect knowledge, and infinite time to conform to perfect standards. And don't even get me wound up about the semantic law markup / legislation as code ... > with no need for web scraping. That will only ever be true in some mythical future where the HTML contains only presentation structure and is populated by the aforementioned public API. There are countless examples of some parts of the data being statically embedded in the HTML that are not part of the API response