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In the crypto space I'm most excited about the ability to have open projects where anyone who contributes can have a stake in the financial rewards of the proje

In the crypto space I'm most excited about the ability to have open projects where anyone who contributes can have a stake in the financial rewards of the project, and there are no barriers to becoming a contributor. A lot of the time the financial benefits of open-source contributors are fully captured by a "host" corporation, and open collaboration platforms for non-software projects like textbooks and IRL shared spaces are almost nonexistent. Proof-of-personhood a la BrightID is something that governments could theoretically provide, but most don't, and even if they did, there are serious privacy and interoperability concerns. SaaS companies trying to provide a free trial can prevent abuse by verifying unique personhood using web3 tech without needing to ask for any more information about the user. I'm sure you can think of other applications for that tech. Even if every government in the world provided this service, everyone who wants to use it either has to implement 195 different APIs or fork over money to a cottage industry whose sole job it is to unify those APIs. Finance and commerce on blockchains has a lot of real-world benefits that traditional finance can't or refuses to provide. You can't easily set up a 3-of-5 multisig for your photography club in traditional finance. A lot of normal people have their payments blocked or funds frozen in TradFi for arbitrary reasons. Sex workers get kicked off of platforms all the time, and a friend recently had their PayPal frozen while raising funds for a school reunion party. I'm not super into NFTs personally, but I can see them having a use case as a more consumer-friendly business model for gacha games and games with similar mechanics. There are probably other promising applications that I just don't know about because I don't follow that space very closely.

rezonant 5y ago
Not super familiar with BrightID but I took a look at the website. So I guess the idea is that other humans verify a human and issue cryptographic proof that they are a human. My question: What about BrightID stops you from verifying and creating multiple identities by simply joining these Zoom-based verification parties multiple times? If someone does that, what's to stop someone from then providing those multiple identities to other people?
rezonant 5y ago
> SaaS companies trying to provide a free trial can prevent abuse by verifying unique personhood using web3 tech without needing to ask for any more information about the user A trial is usually backed by a financial instrument. Usually that financial instrument is a credit card. A credit card can be uniquely identified, and so if you really are concerned about trial reuse, you can check reuse of the credit card, and that gets you pretty far. Folks can use prepaid cards, but you can also block those, which isn't totally unreasonable when you are talking about a subscription-- and a lot of subscription services do block them. Is it indefeatable? No. Is it good enough? Yeah actually. So why do I need to replace the concept of a credit card with an entirely new type of financial instrument that most users (especially non-technical users) don't have or understand?
- somebodythere 5y ago
  SaaS just seemed relevant to the audience here, but there are a lot of applications which want to limit one account per natural person, not just SaaS. For example, social networks want to prevent astroturfing, and video games want to prevent cheaters from ban-evasion. Anyway, a lot of people don't want to provide their credit card info for a service they are not sure if they want to use yet (purpose of a trial), and a lot of services want to allow credit card-free trials without opening themselves up to abuse. I think the vast majority of reflexive dismissals of crypto tech have two themes in common: "if the technology doesn't satisfy this use case, or the UX is not perfect yet, then surely there is no way to fix that and we should discard the whole idea;" and "why use this decentralized solution when we can use this centralized one which, in many cases, doesn't work as well?" I've reached my weekly budget on the amount of time I want to spend explaining this tech online, but maybe consider if problems you see are truly insurmountable, or if you are simply uncomfortable with the idea of an economic layer that is actually open to build on.
  - rezonant 5y ago
    > I've reached my weekly budget on the amount of time I want to spend explaining this tech online Granted, take care of yourself! I hope you feel no obligation or attack in my line of questioning, and perhaps others can fill in here if they are active over the weekend. > SaaS just seemed relevant to the audience here, but there are a lot of applications which want to limit one account per natural person, not just SaaS. For example, social networks want to prevent astroturfing, and video games want to prevent cheaters from ban-evasion That's true, so then I wonder what stops someone from farming these identities and selling them? > I think the vast majority of reflexive dismissals of crypto tech have two themes in common: "if the technology doesn't satisfy this use case, or the UX is not perfect yet, then surely there is no way to fix that and we should discard the whole idea;" The main issue for me is that quite often existing well-known problems are tackled with this new hammer that ostensibly offers no real benefit on top of solutions we already have. This is not true of all applications of blockchain technology, but it's clear that there is not a strong case that it is as generally applicable as a movement like "web3" would suggest. > and "why use this decentralized solution when we can use this centralized one which, in many cases, doesn't work as well?" It's just not clear that this is the case.

rezonant 5y ago

Not super familiar with BrightID but I took a look at the website. So I guess the idea is that other humans verify a human and issue cryptographic proof that they are a human. My question: What about BrightID stops you from verifying and creating multiple identities by simply joining these Zoom-based verification parties multiple times? If someone does that, what's to stop someone from then providing those multiple identities to other people?

rezonant 5y ago

> SaaS companies trying to provide a free trial can prevent abuse by verifying unique personhood using web3 tech without needing to ask for any more information about the user A trial is usually backed by a financial instrument. Usually that financial instrument is a credit card. A credit card can be uniquely identified, and so if you really are concerned about trial reuse, you can check reuse of the credit card, and that gets you pretty far. Folks can use prepaid cards, but you can also block those, which isn't totally unreasonable when you are talking about a subscription-- and a lot of subscription services do block them. Is it indefeatable? No. Is it good enough? Yeah actually. So why do I need to replace the concept of a credit card with an entirely new type of financial instrument that most users (especially non-technical users) don't have or understand?

somebodythere 5y ago
SaaS just seemed relevant to the audience here, but there are a lot of applications which want to limit one account per natural person, not just SaaS. For example, social networks want to prevent astroturfing, and video games want to prevent cheaters from ban-evasion. Anyway, a lot of people don't want to provide their credit card info for a service they are not sure if they want to use yet (purpose of a trial), and a lot of services want to allow credit card-free trials without opening themselves up to abuse. I think the vast majority of reflexive dismissals of crypto tech have two themes in common: "if the technology doesn't satisfy this use case, or the UX is not perfect yet, then surely there is no way to fix that and we should discard the whole idea;" and "why use this decentralized solution when we can use this centralized one which, in many cases, doesn't work as well?" I've reached my weekly budget on the amount of time I want to spend explaining this tech online, but maybe consider if problems you see are truly insurmountable, or if you are simply uncomfortable with the idea of an economic layer that is actually open to build on.
- rezonant 5y ago
  > I've reached my weekly budget on the amount of time I want to spend explaining this tech online Granted, take care of yourself! I hope you feel no obligation or attack in my line of questioning, and perhaps others can fill in here if they are active over the weekend. > SaaS just seemed relevant to the audience here, but there are a lot of applications which want to limit one account per natural person, not just SaaS. For example, social networks want to prevent astroturfing, and video games want to prevent cheaters from ban-evasion That's true, so then I wonder what stops someone from farming these identities and selling them? > I think the vast majority of reflexive dismissals of crypto tech have two themes in common: "if the technology doesn't satisfy this use case, or the UX is not perfect yet, then surely there is no way to fix that and we should discard the whole idea;" The main issue for me is that quite often existing well-known problems are tackled with this new hammer that ostensibly offers no real benefit on top of solutions we already have. This is not true of all applications of blockchain technology, but it's clear that there is not a strong case that it is as generally applicable as a movement like "web3" would suggest. > and "why use this decentralized solution when we can use this centralized one which, in many cases, doesn't work as well?" It's just not clear that this is the case.