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Re "early days," servers as clients, etc: There are a lot of very real problems with crypto, and the solution always lies in new technologies. Slow settlement

by luhn 5y ago

Re "early days," servers as clients, etc: There are a lot of very real problems with crypto, and the solution always lies in new technologies. Slow settlement and high gas fees? L2 networks. Limited global TPS? More L2 networks or alternative L1 chains. Wasteful energy use? Proof-of-stake. No connection to real world data? Oracles. Relying on centralized APIs? Light clients are in the works. Can't trust that you'll get an untampered version of the dapp? I don't even know the solution for this but I saw a very complicated flowchart about it, so I assume there is one. Every layer adding more complexity and more fingers in the pie. All the while, nothing ever actually seems to get fixed. Like, high gas fees has been a conversation for years and clever people have made dozens of solutions, but everybody seems to still use vanilla Ethereum. And these problems don't seem to be the usual problems of new technologies dealing with limited feature sets and primitive tooling, these problems fundamentally undermine the whole point of blockchain. It's not like you can only make simple distributed apps and more advance stuff will arrive as the space matures, you literally can't make a practical, truly distributed app at the moment. The more I learn about web3 the more it seems like vaporware, and the end result will be a bunch of web3-in-name-only, VC cash-grab apps.

lekevicius 5y ago
I'm sorry, it's difficult for me to find a truly charitable interpretation of this response. But I'll do my best. Blockchains started very simply. Famously, Bitcoin's whitepaper is just a couple of pages long. Simple systems are nice, but they can't solve every problem. As problems were discovered, solutions were proposed. Most solutions were themselves the simplest solutions to a given problem, so naturally, as new problems are found, new solutions almost always introduce complexity. This is not unique to crypto - see, for example, HTTP, or HDMI… I can't see a world where this wouldn't happen. Ideas usually start small and simple. Additional capabilities introduce complexity. That is not a bad thing. Also not a bad thing: people taking different approaches to identified problems. Ethereum saw congested L1 and didn't want to sacrifice decentralization, so they focused their effort on L2. Other developers thought differently, and adopted faster, less decentralized L1s. Great! > you literally can't make a practical, truly distributed app at the moment Another issue is that the goalpost is ever-shifting. We have truly distributed apps. Because they were successful, they got used, and on one particular L1 that meant expensive competition for block space. Does that make the achievement invalid? Or does the fact that most popular browsers currently don't have built-in integration with ENS and IPFS, allowing for decentralized frontends, also make the effort invalid? Again, I struggle with truly charitable interpretation of your argument.
- preseinger 5y ago
  "Successful" is an ambiguous descriptor. What do you have in mind when you say that? From where I sit, ENS and IPFS are unambiguous failures. Do you disagree?
  - serverholic 5y ago
    Ok I'll bite. Why are ENS and IPFS failures?
    - preseinger 5y ago
      Because they don't work. They're too slow and unavailable to meaningfully address the goals they were meant to solve. That's my opinion. But you didn't give me yours.
- yed 5y ago
  > This is not unique to crypto - see, for example, HTTP, or HDMI… HTTP and HDMI provided actually useful things to regular people despite their shortcomings. Crypto has been solving technical problem after technical problem for over a decade but has yet to offer anything useful to a non-enthusiast. > Another issue is that the goalpost is ever-shifting. We have truly distributed apps. And the only thing they are useful for is moving crypto around between enthusiasts. "Make something useful for regular people" should not be difficult goalpost for something that claims to be world changing.
  - yawnxyz 5y ago
    Enough tooling has been built (IPFS, Polygon, etc) that we're starting to use these tools for computational biology, as part of @lab_dao This wasn't possible 2 years ago! So I think they have made strides; it's just hard to see
  - nemothekid 5y ago
    >Crypto has been solving technical problem after technical problem for over a decade but has yet to offer anything useful to a non-enthusiast. This is too dismissive of Crypto. I’m not a crypto bro but Bitcoin did actually solve a real problem: a completely digital decentralized immutable record. I hesitate to call it a currency, but it created something that was digitally scarce . The economic value it created can be seen in the Silk Road or in ransomware. At one point the internet was also a problem looking for a solution too so I don’t think it’s a fair criticism of the technology.
kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
"All the while, nothing ever actually seems to get fixed." Meanwhile, Bitcoin just works, and it is fairly easy to understand. Every once in a while I try to get excited about Ethereum. They really do seem to think about a lot of interesting things and try to address them. But at the end of the day, it all just seems way too complex. As for NFTs, I think they could just be colored coins on the Bitcoin Blockchain, which would also be easy to understand.
- pixel_tracing 5y ago
  I’m sorry but to clarify a few points here, Bitcoin “works” technically, and it works as a speculation and black market vehicle. It has not replaced the US dollar. I don’t see people having a need to use it when shopping groceries, paying for concert tickets, etc even when the option to do so is there. This is precisely the authors point.
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    The comment I was replying to was about technical problems, like high gas fees. You can use fiat for speculation and black markets. It would be weird to define "crypto works" as "people have to use it for shopping". It would be nice to be able to use it with more shops, but that is another matter. I know people who keep their savings in crypto and pay with credit cards that are backed by crypto. Whether you "need" for example becomes an ideological question. If you agree with governments monetary politics, I guess you don't need it.

by luhn 5y ago

lekevicius 5y ago

I'm sorry, it's difficult for me to find a truly charitable interpretation of this response. But I'll do my best. Blockchains started very simply. Famously, Bitcoin's whitepaper is just a couple of pages long. Simple systems are nice, but they can't solve every problem. As problems were discovered, solutions were proposed. Most solutions were themselves the simplest solutions to a given problem, so naturally, as new problems are found, new solutions almost always introduce complexity. This is not unique to crypto - see, for example, HTTP, or HDMI… I can't see a world where this wouldn't happen. Ideas usually start small and simple. Additional capabilities introduce complexity. That is not a bad thing. Also not a bad thing: people taking different approaches to identified problems. Ethereum saw congested L1 and didn't want to sacrifice decentralization, so they focused their effort on L2. Other developers thought differently, and adopted faster, less decentralized L1s. Great! > you literally can't make a practical, truly distributed app at the moment Another issue is that the goalpost is ever-shifting. We have truly distributed apps. Because they were successful, they got used, and on one particular L1 that meant expensive competition for block space. Does that make the achievement invalid? Or does the fact that most popular browsers currently don't have built-in integration with ENS and IPFS, allowing for decentralized frontends, also make the effort invalid? Again, I struggle with truly charitable interpretation of your argument.

preseinger 5y ago
"Successful" is an ambiguous descriptor. What do you have in mind when you say that? From where I sit, ENS and IPFS are unambiguous failures. Do you disagree?
- serverholic 5y ago
  Ok I'll bite. Why are ENS and IPFS failures?
  - preseinger 5y ago
    Because they don't work. They're too slow and unavailable to meaningfully address the goals they were meant to solve. That's my opinion. But you didn't give me yours.
yed 5y ago
> This is not unique to crypto - see, for example, HTTP, or HDMI… HTTP and HDMI provided actually useful things to regular people despite their shortcomings. Crypto has been solving technical problem after technical problem for over a decade but has yet to offer anything useful to a non-enthusiast. > Another issue is that the goalpost is ever-shifting. We have truly distributed apps. And the only thing they are useful for is moving crypto around between enthusiasts. "Make something useful for regular people" should not be difficult goalpost for something that claims to be world changing.
- yawnxyz 5y ago
  Enough tooling has been built (IPFS, Polygon, etc) that we're starting to use these tools for computational biology, as part of @lab_dao This wasn't possible 2 years ago! So I think they have made strides; it's just hard to see
- nemothekid 5y ago
  >Crypto has been solving technical problem after technical problem for over a decade but has yet to offer anything useful to a non-enthusiast. This is too dismissive of Crypto. I’m not a crypto bro but Bitcoin did actually solve a real problem: a completely digital decentralized immutable record. I hesitate to call it a currency, but it created something that was digitally scarce . The economic value it created can be seen in the Silk Road or in ransomware. At one point the internet was also a problem looking for a solution too so I don’t think it’s a fair criticism of the technology.

kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago

"All the while, nothing ever actually seems to get fixed." Meanwhile, Bitcoin just works, and it is fairly easy to understand. Every once in a while I try to get excited about Ethereum. They really do seem to think about a lot of interesting things and try to address them. But at the end of the day, it all just seems way too complex. As for NFTs, I think they could just be colored coins on the Bitcoin Blockchain, which would also be easy to understand.

pixel_tracing 5y ago
I’m sorry but to clarify a few points here, Bitcoin “works” technically, and it works as a speculation and black market vehicle. It has not replaced the US dollar. I don’t see people having a need to use it when shopping groceries, paying for concert tickets, etc even when the option to do so is there. This is precisely the authors point.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  The comment I was replying to was about technical problems, like high gas fees. You can use fiat for speculation and black markets. It would be weird to define "crypto works" as "people have to use it for shopping". It would be nice to be able to use it with more shops, but that is another matter. I know people who keep their savings in crypto and pay with credit cards that are backed by crypto. Whether you "need" for example becomes an ideological question. If you agree with governments monetary politics, I guess you don't need it.