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Somehow all of these articles choose to ignore what is for me the most critical point of web3: The fact that interacting with the blockchain costs real money.

Somehow all of these articles choose to ignore what is for me the most critical point of web3: The fact that interacting with the blockchain costs real money. If HN was a web3 app, then posting a comment would cost you money. I can't find anywhere how web3-enthusiasts justify this or what are the potential improvements around this. EDIT: After some small research it looks like this is an Ethereum thing and that other platforms differ sligthly. But still seems to be a considerable drawback compared to the current web.

BlueTemplar 5y ago
There is one silver lining here : spam being priced out (while hopefully still staying cheap enough for everyone to use). Note how the hassle of dealing with spam is one of the aspects pushing centralization - also it's getting kind of scary how well spambots these days can just pass for a somewhat clueless user...
- timeon 5y ago
  > There is one silver lining here : spam being priced out (while hopefully still staying cheap enough for everyone to use). This may be true but so may be the opposite. We are already spammed with ads everywhere and someone pays for them.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> If HN was a web3 app, then posting a comment would cost you money. [ ... ] But still seems to be a considerable drawback compared to the current web. This elides the way the current web works, though. On the one hand, you've got some places like HN, that are coupled to revenue generators of sufficient magnitude that they can (AFAICT on my uBlock-Origin'ed browser) run without ads. And then you've got the rest of the web, which has taken the old ad-funded model of publishing and turned it up to 11. So when we say "the current web" in a context like this, it's important to differentiate between which of these (at least two) segments you're referring to. [ EDIT: granted, there are a few new models creeping around the edges now. For all of its faults, substack is a mostly previously unseen thing. ]
- hk__2 5y ago
  If I understood correctly, this comparison is wrong. The money GP talks about is needed to interact with the infrastructure (blockchain), not the content publisher. If HN were a web3 app, posting a comment would cost you money even if HN runs without ad, because as a web3 app it needs blockchain interactions that cost money.
StewardMcOy 5y ago
When I first read about Web3, I thought the exact same thing. The fact that there are fees to deploy and run dapps is right there in the design. And yes, it does seem like it's the intended design to have users pay the ether to do so. But that requires users to download and learn how to use a dapp browser, and to front the ether for running them. That's going to be a non-starter, because with the possible exception of a very small number of people, nobody wants to do any of those things. But hypothetically, an app developer could developer their backend as a dapp, and a HTML/CSS/Javascript frontend, essentially using the blockchain as a replacement for AWS. Is this useful? I suspect it isn't. One could argue that blockchains have better uptime than AWS, but I bet the price would be higher and the performance lower. The only other benefits you get are that anyone can audit the dapp (if they trust your Web server to actually be using it), and that you're no longer beholden to a socially-destructive giant company like Amazon. As Moxie's original article pointed out though, you'd still be beholden to the few companies or individuals that run etherium nodes. This is, again, something that approximately nobody wants to do, and if Web3 ever took off, I suspect the bandwidth and storage requirements of running a node would increase to the point where only socially-destructive giant companies could afford to do so.

BlueTemplar 5y ago

There is one silver lining here : spam being priced out (while hopefully still staying cheap enough for everyone to use). Note how the hassle of dealing with spam is one of the aspects pushing centralization - also it's getting kind of scary how well spambots these days can just pass for a somewhat clueless user...

timeon 5y ago
> There is one silver lining here : spam being priced out (while hopefully still staying cheap enough for everyone to use). This may be true but so may be the opposite. We are already spammed with ads everywhere and someone pays for them.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

> If HN was a web3 app, then posting a comment would cost you money. [ ... ] But still seems to be a considerable drawback compared to the current web. This elides the way the current web works, though. On the one hand, you've got some places like HN, that are coupled to revenue generators of sufficient magnitude that they can (AFAICT on my uBlock-Origin'ed browser) run without ads. And then you've got the rest of the web, which has taken the old ad-funded model of publishing and turned it up to 11. So when we say "the current web" in a context like this, it's important to differentiate between which of these (at least two) segments you're referring to. [ EDIT: granted, there are a few new models creeping around the edges now. For all of its faults, substack is a mostly previously unseen thing. ]

hk__2 5y ago
If I understood correctly, this comparison is wrong. The money GP talks about is needed to interact with the infrastructure (blockchain), not the content publisher. If HN were a web3 app, posting a comment would cost you money even if HN runs without ad, because as a web3 app it needs blockchain interactions that cost money.

StewardMcOy 5y ago

When I first read about Web3, I thought the exact same thing. The fact that there are fees to deploy and run dapps is right there in the design. And yes, it does seem like it's the intended design to have users pay the ether to do so. But that requires users to download and learn how to use a dapp browser, and to front the ether for running them. That's going to be a non-starter, because with the possible exception of a very small number of people, nobody wants to do any of those things. But hypothetically, an app developer could developer their backend as a dapp, and a HTML/CSS/Javascript frontend, essentially using the blockchain as a replacement for AWS. Is this useful? I suspect it isn't. One could argue that blockchains have better uptime than AWS, but I bet the price would be higher and the performance lower. The only other benefits you get are that anyone can audit the dapp (if they trust your Web server to actually be using it), and that you're no longer beholden to a socially-destructive giant company like Amazon. As Moxie's original article pointed out though, you'd still be beholden to the few companies or individuals that run etherium nodes. This is, again, something that approximately nobody wants to do, and if Web3 ever took off, I suspect the bandwidth and storage requirements of running a node would increase to the point where only socially-destructive giant companies could afford to do so.