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> I don't think we've seen that fast consolidation in other early tech I actually struggled with this point throughout the article. I'm not sure I see this as

> I don't think we've seen that fast consolidation in other early tech I actually struggled with this point throughout the article. I'm not sure I see this as a parallel trend toward centralization like we saw with web2 - but rather that this is how software is built today and this is what we're comfortable with. It doesn't seem unnatural or problematic to me that we will start with something that approximates the world around us today and move toward the decentralized end state that apologists are hoping for.

betterunix2 5y ago
Why would we ever move toward decentralization? It is almost always easier to have at least some central point of control in any distributed system, even the Internet (IANA, RIRs, etc.). It is also very difficult to remove a centralized control point after a system is already deployed, especially if the system supports heterogenous clients (as it is likely that some clients will be slow to switch to the new design, and many will make bad assumptions about the system architecture).
- baby 5y ago
  decentralization in the blockchain world is really to provide security and interoperability by emulating centralized services. So essentially it looks like a centralized service, but it's more secure than a centralized service.
  - cuteboy19 5y ago
    From a cryptographic perspective, centralized and decentralised services are equally secure. From a user perspective, blockchains are less secure as there is no authority you can approach for chargebacks The point of blockchain was removing trust from a single person and spreading it around over a network
    - baby 5y ago
      > From a cryptographic perspective, centralized and decentralised services are equally secure That’s just not true
    - _heimdall 5y ago
      > From a user perspective, blockchains are less secure as there is no authority you can approach for chargebacks This actually proves the point that security is relative. There are instances when I would feel more secure when an outside party can refund my money, say when the seller never ships the product I ordered. There are also times when I would feel less secure with chargebacks, like when I sell something on eBay and the buyer files a complaint with PayPal after taking delivery of exactly what they ordered. Security wasn't an original goal of bitcoin. Privacy, anonymity, and immutability were, though the first to were lost a decade ago and immutibly is pretty well solved but also the primary cause for so much wasted resource consumption.
      - yunohn 5y ago
        > There are instances when I would feel more secure Your comparative examples make no sense - you like refunds as a customer and hate refunds as a vendor. Surprise, surprise…? I mean this is already the case in web2/fiat.
        _heimdall 5y ago
        It sounds like you did understand my two examples, not sure how they could have made no sense. The two scenarios point to competing ideas of what "secure" would mean, and my point was that security can't be a goal because its relative
        shaklee3 5y ago
        can you explain how web3 solves your issue?
        _heimdall 5y ago
        Oh it doesn't, I haven't found any value in web3 yet. I may just be missing something, but I still don't get what problem web3 can solve that isn't solved easier with web1 or web2 technologies.
- distrill 5y ago
  > Why would we ever move toward decentralization? for all of the reasons that web3 apologists are excited about decentralization. I'm not really one of them, so I'm not going to advocate on their behalf, but lots of people are very excited about this. > It is almost always easier to have at least some central point of control I don't think anyone is going to argue that decentralization is the easiest solution. I agree that it's hard to remove this point of centralization once it's there. My guess would be that, if this goes the way many are hoping, new places emerge over time with increasing levels of independence from these central providers.
- spiddy 5y ago
  There is a point to be made here that is an important difference between web2 and web3+centralized apis. On the latter companies do not have lock-in of the data, which provides a big incentive to not be evil. the moment someone can make a case for bad play they have the advantage to shift the market to a different platform. Unfortunately this is not so easy on web2 because of the data that locks users on those platforms.
  - robbiep 5y ago
    This is probably the best argument I have seen in favour of web3
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > the moment someone can make a case for bad play they have the advantage to shift the market to a different platform. As we have clearly seen with OpenSea and rampant fakes, copies, plagiarism etc. Oh wait...
  - manmal 5y ago
    I don't think making all data public is the best solution for preventing companies from selling my data, or withholding it from me.
  - acdha 5y ago
    > There is a point to be made here that is an important difference between web2 and web3+centralized apis. On the latter companies do not have lock-in of the data This is only true of the data stored on the blockchain itself. As described in the article, that isn’t anywhere near enough to replace the centralized systems being billed as “web3”, and it’s completely unworkable for data which can’t be public, which is updated frequently, or which needs to be deleted. Combined with blockchains being unavoidably quite expensive and slow, and the challenges of standardizing protocols while the competition is shipping it seems quite unlikely that this will change. It doesn’t reduce lock-in meaningfully if Google were to continue to store and process all of your data but now you’re using an outside authentication system. I’m sure they would love, however, the way “web3” makes their job of tracking users so much easier.
- scrubs 5y ago
  This discussion would benefit from a Ramsey, graph, random matrix person to expound on "random" graphs as seen in nature. Nodes with n edges in, 1 out are around but not without some centralization. Surely not robust?
Uehreka 5y ago
But why would it do that though? I’d like to hear a falsifiable theory of how that would happen, because as of right now it’s not happening, and no one seems able to explain what big thing is going to change. If the biggest part of the change (using the blockchain) isn’t causing the dynamic to shift, what future change will?
- hattmall 5y ago
  To me the argument here is because it's easy. Even if the interaction layer is centralized the underlying tech is decentralized so everything can easily be validated and that's the key difference.
  - kllrnohj 5y ago
    But as noted in the article, that's not the case. OpenSea stores data that then isn't on any blockchain, like royalties. That's done as just a regular web2 feature, a database on OpenSea's backend. So no, it can't be validated, and it can't be migrated.
    - pshc 5y ago
      Royalties is a funny example because a) they’re being standardized, see eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2981 and b) royalties are entirely opt-in. You can happily transfer NFTs without having to pay royalties if you forgo an exchange that respects them.
      - des1nderlase 5y ago
        But there will be other features over time, that would not be standardized. As per article centralized platforms progress faster than decentralized standardization. Switching cost will grow.
      - oefrha 5y ago
        That’s literally one of the most salient points of TFA: protocols move dog slow and provide too little too late, platforms iterate fast and give people what they want right now.
sbierwagen 5y ago
>and move toward the decentralized end state that apologists are hoping for. Is there any evidence that this is actually happening? It seems rather backwards! Is the maximalist argument here that these companies are going to build out all this infrastructure, move the global financial system onto it, and then rip it apart and rewrite it to be entirely distributed afterwards? Why? If the point is to be distributed, wouldn't they want it to be distributed first? Where are the blockchains with full-fat clients that can actually run on normal mobile devices? And if they actually exist, does anybody use them? Like, for normal, actual uses, not "shilling this app makes my portfolio go up 300% before I dump it on some clueless bagholder, to the moon rocket emoji rocket emoji".
- distrill 5y ago
  > Is the maximalist argument here that these companies are going to build out all this infrastructure, move the global financial system onto it, and then rip it apart and rewrite it to be entirely distributed afterwards I haven't heard anyone articulate this as their vision lol. I would think they distribute the systems somewhere between trading monkey JPEGs and actually moving the global financial system onto it. As to why start with it centralized, it's easier to get a POC working with the systems and conventions we have in place today than alongside rethinking all of the infrastructure at the same time. Work on the UI, trade some stupid goods that finance the development of these distributed systems, etc. I just don't understand the argument that this whole thing will or should be binary. Huge migrations like that fall over all the time. Gradual rollouts take longer but are generally safer and in this case probably the only option.
  - sbierwagen 5y ago
    "You should check out my new car company, ThreeWheel. We're completely revolutionizing the business of getting around. The key innovation is that our cars have three wheels. This reduces tire cost, improves aerodynamics, and reduces rolling friction. Our three wheeled cars are the future of all wheeled transport!" "Okay." "But our prototype has four wheels, as a temporary prototype to test out the technology." "That doesn't seem like it tests the technology very well." "I don't see why you're quibbling about the details. We've sold thousands of ThreeWheels to people who are very enthusiastic about living in a three wheeled future!" "You've sold four wheeled cars to people who want three wheeled cars?" "They then resell them for tens of thousands of dollars more than they paid! They're ecstatically happy! Nobody is bigger fans of the three wheel car future than our customers." "Even though these cars, the cars they purchased, have four wheels." "Well, they could remove one wheel later, if they wanted." "Would that work?" "Oh no, absolutely not. You couldn't drive it at all, then. It would be much worse than a regular car. A lot of work remains to be done to gradually transition current ThreeWheels to a three wheeled form. We plan to send robots to each customer's garage to cut sections from the frame and re-weld them together. Then we need to swap out the steering rack, re-route the driveshaft, change suspension components, brakes..." "That sounds hard." "Yes, we think it will take hundreds of changes over years to move current generation ThreeWheels to a three wheeled mode." "Instead of just building three wheeled cars today?" "Wow John Cena bought a ThreeWheel and posted it on his instragram! My collection of ThreeWheels is going to explode in value! I love my job!"

betterunix2 5y ago

Why would we ever move toward decentralization? It is almost always easier to have at least some central point of control in any distributed system, even the Internet (IANA, RIRs, etc.). It is also very difficult to remove a centralized control point after a system is already deployed, especially if the system supports heterogenous clients (as it is likely that some clients will be slow to switch to the new design, and many will make bad assumptions about the system architecture).

baby 5y ago
decentralization in the blockchain world is really to provide security and interoperability by emulating centralized services. So essentially it looks like a centralized service, but it's more secure than a centralized service.
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  From a cryptographic perspective, centralized and decentralised services are equally secure. From a user perspective, blockchains are less secure as there is no authority you can approach for chargebacks The point of blockchain was removing trust from a single person and spreading it around over a network
  - baby 5y ago
    > From a cryptographic perspective, centralized and decentralised services are equally secure That’s just not true
  - _heimdall 5y ago
    > From a user perspective, blockchains are less secure as there is no authority you can approach for chargebacks This actually proves the point that security is relative. There are instances when I would feel more secure when an outside party can refund my money, say when the seller never ships the product I ordered. There are also times when I would feel less secure with chargebacks, like when I sell something on eBay and the buyer files a complaint with PayPal after taking delivery of exactly what they ordered. Security wasn't an original goal of bitcoin. Privacy, anonymity, and immutability were, though the first to were lost a decade ago and immutibly is pretty well solved but also the primary cause for so much wasted resource consumption.
    - yunohn 5y ago
      > There are instances when I would feel more secure Your comparative examples make no sense - you like refunds as a customer and hate refunds as a vendor. Surprise, surprise…? I mean this is already the case in web2/fiat.
      - _heimdall 5y ago
        It sounds like you did understand my two examples, not sure how they could have made no sense. The two scenarios point to competing ideas of what "secure" would mean, and my point was that security can't be a goal because its relative
        shaklee3 5y ago
        can you explain how web3 solves your issue?
        _heimdall 5y ago
        Oh it doesn't, I haven't found any value in web3 yet. I may just be missing something, but I still don't get what problem web3 can solve that isn't solved easier with web1 or web2 technologies.
distrill 5y ago
> Why would we ever move toward decentralization? for all of the reasons that web3 apologists are excited about decentralization. I'm not really one of them, so I'm not going to advocate on their behalf, but lots of people are very excited about this. > It is almost always easier to have at least some central point of control I don't think anyone is going to argue that decentralization is the easiest solution. I agree that it's hard to remove this point of centralization once it's there. My guess would be that, if this goes the way many are hoping, new places emerge over time with increasing levels of independence from these central providers.
spiddy 5y ago
There is a point to be made here that is an important difference between web2 and web3+centralized apis. On the latter companies do not have lock-in of the data, which provides a big incentive to not be evil. the moment someone can make a case for bad play they have the advantage to shift the market to a different platform. Unfortunately this is not so easy on web2 because of the data that locks users on those platforms.
- robbiep 5y ago
  This is probably the best argument I have seen in favour of web3
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > the moment someone can make a case for bad play they have the advantage to shift the market to a different platform. As we have clearly seen with OpenSea and rampant fakes, copies, plagiarism etc. Oh wait...
- manmal 5y ago
  I don't think making all data public is the best solution for preventing companies from selling my data, or withholding it from me.
- acdha 5y ago
  > There is a point to be made here that is an important difference between web2 and web3+centralized apis. On the latter companies do not have lock-in of the data This is only true of the data stored on the blockchain itself. As described in the article, that isn’t anywhere near enough to replace the centralized systems being billed as “web3”, and it’s completely unworkable for data which can’t be public, which is updated frequently, or which needs to be deleted. Combined with blockchains being unavoidably quite expensive and slow, and the challenges of standardizing protocols while the competition is shipping it seems quite unlikely that this will change. It doesn’t reduce lock-in meaningfully if Google were to continue to store and process all of your data but now you’re using an outside authentication system. I’m sure they would love, however, the way “web3” makes their job of tracking users so much easier.
scrubs 5y ago
This discussion would benefit from a Ramsey, graph, random matrix person to expound on "random" graphs as seen in nature. Nodes with n edges in, 1 out are around but not without some centralization. Surely not robust?

Uehreka 5y ago

But why would it do that though? I’d like to hear a falsifiable theory of how that would happen, because as of right now it’s not happening, and no one seems able to explain what big thing is going to change. If the biggest part of the change (using the blockchain) isn’t causing the dynamic to shift, what future change will?

hattmall 5y ago
To me the argument here is because it's easy. Even if the interaction layer is centralized the underlying tech is decentralized so everything can easily be validated and that's the key difference.
- kllrnohj 5y ago
  But as noted in the article, that's not the case. OpenSea stores data that then isn't on any blockchain, like royalties. That's done as just a regular web2 feature, a database on OpenSea's backend. So no, it can't be validated, and it can't be migrated.
  - pshc 5y ago
    Royalties is a funny example because a) they’re being standardized, see eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2981 and b) royalties are entirely opt-in. You can happily transfer NFTs without having to pay royalties if you forgo an exchange that respects them.
    - des1nderlase 5y ago
      But there will be other features over time, that would not be standardized. As per article centralized platforms progress faster than decentralized standardization. Switching cost will grow.
    - oefrha 5y ago
      That’s literally one of the most salient points of TFA: protocols move dog slow and provide too little too late, platforms iterate fast and give people what they want right now.

sbierwagen 5y ago

>and move toward the decentralized end state that apologists are hoping for. Is there any evidence that this is actually happening? It seems rather backwards! Is the maximalist argument here that these companies are going to build out all this infrastructure, move the global financial system onto it, and then rip it apart and rewrite it to be entirely distributed afterwards? Why? If the point is to be distributed, wouldn't they want it to be distributed first? Where are the blockchains with full-fat clients that can actually run on normal mobile devices? And if they actually exist, does anybody use them? Like, for normal, actual uses, not "shilling this app makes my portfolio go up 300% before I dump it on some clueless bagholder, to the moon rocket emoji rocket emoji".

distrill 5y ago
> Is the maximalist argument here that these companies are going to build out all this infrastructure, move the global financial system onto it, and then rip it apart and rewrite it to be entirely distributed afterwards I haven't heard anyone articulate this as their vision lol. I would think they distribute the systems somewhere between trading monkey JPEGs and actually moving the global financial system onto it. As to why start with it centralized, it's easier to get a POC working with the systems and conventions we have in place today than alongside rethinking all of the infrastructure at the same time. Work on the UI, trade some stupid goods that finance the development of these distributed systems, etc. I just don't understand the argument that this whole thing will or should be binary. Huge migrations like that fall over all the time. Gradual rollouts take longer but are generally safer and in this case probably the only option.
- sbierwagen 5y ago
  "You should check out my new car company, ThreeWheel. We're completely revolutionizing the business of getting around. The key innovation is that our cars have three wheels. This reduces tire cost, improves aerodynamics, and reduces rolling friction. Our three wheeled cars are the future of all wheeled transport!" "Okay." "But our prototype has four wheels, as a temporary prototype to test out the technology." "That doesn't seem like it tests the technology very well." "I don't see why you're quibbling about the details. We've sold thousands of ThreeWheels to people who are very enthusiastic about living in a three wheeled future!" "You've sold four wheeled cars to people who want three wheeled cars?" "They then resell them for tens of thousands of dollars more than they paid! They're ecstatically happy! Nobody is bigger fans of the three wheel car future than our customers." "Even though these cars, the cars they purchased, have four wheels." "Well, they could remove one wheel later, if they wanted." "Would that work?" "Oh no, absolutely not. You couldn't drive it at all, then. It would be much worse than a regular car. A lot of work remains to be done to gradually transition current ThreeWheels to a three wheeled form. We plan to send robots to each customer's garage to cut sections from the frame and re-weld them together. Then we need to swap out the steering rack, re-route the driveshaft, change suspension components, brakes..." "That sounds hard." "Yes, we think it will take hundreds of changes over years to move current generation ThreeWheels to a three wheeled mode." "Instead of just building three wheeled cars today?" "Wow John Cena bought a ThreeWheel and posted it on his instragram! My collection of ThreeWheels is going to explode in value! I love my job!"