20 ms·

Web3 is not going to change the world

140 points by cal2016 5y ago

pjc50 5y ago
I mean, he's right about the downsides, but I suspect we're going to be stuck with the web3 changes for a while yet. We're going to see a lot of companies go through the grift/backlash cycle. And the consumption of ~ 110 TWh/year is going to produce some changes to the climate.
- ehnto 5y ago
  Many companies will take it on in earnest, thinking they "should" do it, not realizing that it provides their core business with no value add. They'll search for "web3 developers" and hire them, get them to "web3" enable their product, and be dumfounded by the way that it's exactly the same as before. If your product is based on the value provided by blockchains then that is one thing, but Web3 simply can't be like Web2.0 because so few use cases actually benefit from it.
rocgf 5y ago
Apologies, but this is a very weak an unsubstantiated article, despite agreeing with its premise full heartedly. > Third, immutability has its downsides. Blocks in the blockchain are for all intents and purposes completely fixed. This means that a transaction that happened erroneously or illegally can never be changed. Or bad data can never be changed. Imagine if you move house and the gas company says: “There is literally no way to change your address in our database.” I mean... does the author actually believe this is some unsolved problem in Blockchains?
- smoyer 5y ago
  My opinion is that web3 has greater promise with distributed content - IPFS, the DAT protocol and the Hyper protocols will allow individuals to publish content without the restrictions imposed by infrastructure providers.
  - dumbfounder 5y ago
    If that's all it does then it's a massive success.
  - cuddlecake 5y ago
    But the infrastructure must be <somewhere>, right?
    - cle 5y ago
      Of course, but the useful property is that it could be anywhere.
      - cuddlecake 5y ago
        But over long enough time it _must_ be somewhere where somebody can provide Computational power and evergrowing storage capacity, right? So.. not anywhere. Or can the data be available in a highly fragmented fashion _and_ still be useful? I just can't imagine any content system that does not end up being centralized or highly inconvenient.
        cle 5y ago
        If someone cares about a piece of content's availability on IPFS, they can host it and anyone in the network can pull it from them without having to know a priori that they provide the content. That's what I mean by "anywhere". Anyone can provide any content they want, from anywhere, on whatever infrastructure they want, as long as there's a communication channel open with the rest of the network. If you care about high availability of a piece of content, you will dedicate infrastructure to hosting it on IPFS, just like you would on the Internet.
        cuddlecake 5y ago
        Is there any need for the Blockchain for that? Like... Setup a server and host the content. I can't imagine it being simpler than that. Why would I engage in the dance of crypto just to host some content no one will read anyway? What's IPFS?
- PeledYuval 5y ago
  I'm a crypto novice. My impression is that the author is correct (though the metaphor with the gas company is terrible) - there is no way to reverse a bad transaction. Is this not an unsolved problem in blockchain?
- gitfan86 5y ago
  Obviously you can create a blockchain that allows edits. Git is a crypto tree technology and it allows rebases. But the whole point of Bitcoin is that no one should have the authority to reverse transactions or print new coins. And all of Web3/Eth/NFT crypto shares the idea that this technology is useful because it removes the need for trusting a central authority (you trust the code and the distributed network instead) The idea is that you have the coins and NFTs in your own wallet and no one can take those away from you. So if you are going to add a layer that allows transactions to be immutable you are literally describing a bank or a credit card and there is no need for crypto.
  - PretzelPirate 5y ago
    I think this is a mischaracterization of what immutability is. Immutability means you can’t change history not that you can’t update state. If my utility company needs my new home address and they use a blockchain for some reason (maybe part of a near-realtime electricity payment system), I can always sign a transaction to associate my blockchain address with my new home address. Perhaps the electricity equipment itself can sign my signature to ensure that I am physically located with it and have authority to change who it’s representing.
    - gitfan86 5y ago
      If you have your keys then yes, you can sign a new transaction. But what happens if you lost your keys and no central authority has the ability to change your address?
      - notreallyserio 5y ago
        And perhaps worse, what happens if someone steals/copies your private key (say your paper backup) and signs a change of address in your name? Can you convince authorities that you didn't actually make the change? Maybe if it is a physical address. After all, you presumably live there. But what if it's just some payment contract? As far as they care you yourself signed it, and they have the proof. If you can get them to cancel the contract, what was the point of using blockchain anyway?
- m00dy 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - can16358p 5y ago
    He probably already left and missed many opportunities and is trying to catch up by being at the other side of the "war" just like many old-minded banks.
  - xorandor 5y ago
    Your comment is ageist, derogatory and smacks of fanboism.
  - mrnotcrazy 5y ago
    If the tech is good it will speak for itself, you shouldn't need to ask people to leave you alone....
  - notpachet 5y ago
    These sorts of comments really drag down the quality of discussion on HN. Not only that, they bolster a lot of readers' antipathy to your position (whatever that might be). I hope you quickly get to the point in your life when you realize the wealth of knowledge and wisdom that you can learn from boomers (and folks even older than that).
- dotancohen 5y ago
  Immutability is the natural state of the past. In the real world, if I give someone money erroneously, the erroneous transfer is not "undone" but rather a new transfer that has the reverse effect of the original transfer is performed. Double-entry bookkeeping doesn't allow for penciling-in corrections. In git this is a revert commit.
- ID1452319 5y ago
  Can I ask how this has been solved? I see a number of companies in the HR domain offering "blockchain-based" solutions. However, it seems to be that the immutable nature of blockchain is incompatible with data protection regulation's right to be forgotten.
denton-scratch 5y ago
> immutable, trustless databases It's a ledger, not a database. The author is critiqueing blockchain, and broadly I agree with the critique. But it's pretty shallow. It just regurgitates what we already know. Perhaps the salient observation is that Web3 is just blockchain hype with a new name; but the author doesn't actually make a case for that at all.
- tommica 5y ago
  > It just regurgitates what we already know. What about people that do not know much about the topic?
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    Well, I guess they're not HN readers. And I don't suppose they're the ones reading the article.
    - tomrod 5y ago
      \o HN reader here. Blockchain jargon gets passed around without clear definitions, a lot. Reminding of fundamentals is helpful for clear communication.
    - jvanderbot 5y ago
      Well ... most people would (usually) get access to an article without HN. It's here exclusively for HN readers. So, downvote as bad HN submission, but don't critique article for not catering to HN readers. I guess?
      - solveit 5y ago
        I would not mind a culture of people dunking on the submitter rather than the article. (Of course, it would be best if we didn't dunk at all, but that doesn't seem to be happening...)
      - denton-scratch 5y ago
smokey_circles 5y ago
Web3 and the 4th industrial revolution are just marketing phrases. Web3 is just web2 with a different focus. it's not decentralised, it runs on web2 stacks, it does none of the thing it purports. Just like the lack of any real revolution in this supposed 4th iteration
- pupdogg 5y ago
  lol, especially when you couple that with "Hackers steal $320 million in wETH cryptocurrency from Wormhole DeFi project"
- knownjorbist 5y ago
  I'm sorry but this take is pure ignorance. https://www.psl.com/feed-posts/web3-engineer-take https://www.psl.com/feed-posts/web3-engineer-take
  - pupdogg 5y ago
    As a web dev since 1996 and having lived through the entire revolution of web0.0, web1.0, and web2.0, I'm going to side with @smokey_circles here!
    - knownjorbist 5y ago
      That's a symptom of the poor signal-to-noise ratio in the space, not that it's a correct assertion. The cypherpunk thing is happening now, not in the 90s like you might have hoped. It's startling to me how poorly received it is on HN from people who would ostensibly be a part of it otherwise.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        The signal-to-noise ratio is a symptom of there not really being any significant signal to begin with. You keep posting vague statements about how valuable the technology is but haven't shown any examples of how it is doing anything useful that isn't a) a hype-to-money scheme, or b) easily replaceable by existing technologies, as far as I can tell.
elevenoh 5y ago
>But unless you’re trying to create a cryptocurrency, buy drugs or blackmail a company using ransomware there aren’t really any sensible use cases for a blockchain God bless this fella. I bought tesla stock futures in a country that wouldn't allow it via blockchain. I reduced a portion of my ecommerce store checkout fees to <1% by using a crypto payment processor > stripe's highway robbery of 3% per sale. Ps: [should i redact the word 'stripe' on here to avoid shadowbanning?] etc.
- mchusma 5y ago
  Can you say more about the crypto payments you use? I was under the impression that crypto payments had a very high transaction cost so am curious about your setup.
  - knownjorbist 5y ago
    Bitcoin and Ethereum Mainnet can have high transaction fees. Virtually nothing else has fees even close to that high, however
    - phasnox 5y ago
      Even bitcoin on-chain no longer has those high fees it had in 2017. Also, Bitcoin has lightning now. A second layer protocol that allows fast and cheap payments. Like less of a penny cheap.
      - CryptoPunk 5y ago
        Lightning has very little adoption, is hard to use because 1. you need to always be online to receive transactions and 2. routing is failure-prone, and costly in capital lock up - in an internet-connected hot-wallet no less - for payment channel collateral requirements. Ethereum Rollups are much more promising L2 solutions.
        Melting_Harps 5y ago
throwaway22032 5y ago
The article reads as some sort of pub conversation rant rather than anything serious. The guy claims that Bitcoin is "playing Numberwang", for christ's sake. Then there are some hilarious misgivings. > Blocks in the blockchain are for all intents and purposes completely fixed. This means that a transaction that happened erroneously or illegally can never be changed. Or bad data can never be changed. Imagine if you move house and the gas company says: “There is literally no way to change your address in our database". Er, no, you just submit a correction to the address. Exactly the same as issuing an SQL UPDATE, it's just that at the lower level the SQL transaction of the UPDATE is stored, rather than the updated final result.
- 0xcde4c3db 5y ago
  > The guy claims that Bitcoin is "playing Numberwang", for christ's sake. Numberwang is an absurd game show featured in the sketch comedy series That Mitchell and Webb Look. The basic "game" consists of the contestants repeatedly calling out numbers -- apparently at random most of the time -- until one of the numbers "is Numberwang", for which the contestant is (presumably) awarded points. Aren't Bitcoin nodes also guessing numbers until one of them passes a meaningless test, for which the node is then rewarded? The metaphor is imperfect (like all metaphors), but I think this one is a better fit than you're giving it credit for.
  - throwaway22032 5y ago
    Yes, it's pub chat. I know what it is. Me writing this comment to you is playing snooker, because the protons are bouncing off each other and stuff. It's an attempt to discredit the network by using low-brow humour as a comparison.
    - 0xcde4c3db 5y ago
      People in the tech world pretty regularly use expressions like "dead trees" for print and "spinning rust" for magnetic disks, both of which were undeniably revolutionary and whose modern embodiments are marvels of engineering and logistics. I guess we just have very different expectations about tone in the context of this particular article.
iamnotarobotman 5y ago
> No doubt others will say their own favourite blockchain is more efficient and is the future of Web3. But all blockchains are much more inefficient than literally any alternative. For example, ethereum... Please attack and critique the 'alleged' state of the art blockchains of today that don't use PoW. Once again, only attacking the easiest examples in the blockchain industry (which use PoW). Everyone knows that Bitcoin, and Ethereum are both destroying the planet. Not all cryptocurrencies are the same as those two and many do not use PoW today. It's very easy to criticise the environmental impacts of the first commercial petrol car and use that as an argument to say that all cars should not be used or that cars will not change the world, since petrol cars are more hostile to the environment. The author is doing the same thing, but generalising and bundling all cryptocurrencies having the same environmental negatives as PoW cryptocurrencies (Including Bitcoin, and Ethereum).
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  No, PoW is not destroying the planet. Bitcoin uses less energy than pet food production. Pets are destroying the planet! It’s not some “upgrade” to PoS. It’s a huge downgrade in security of your coin. I think a combination of PoS and PoW chains, with PoW being a base layer in public chains, with PoS chains anchoring commitments. Only when the probabilistic finality from PoW commits this, the house of cards political game that is PoS txs become final. PoS is fakery. Human failings. Everything of value in this universe takes work.
knownjorbist 5y ago
It's already changing the world. Here's a much more even-handed view of what is(and isn't!) interesting in the nascent "web3" space: https://www.psl.com/feed-posts/web3-engineer-take https://www.psl.com/feed-posts/web3-engineer-take
- VHRanger 5y ago
  It's changing the world of scams and Ponzi schemes Apart from that were yet to see something people use because they like to use it
  - knownjorbist 5y ago
    > Apart from that were yet to see something people use because they like to use it An absolute claim that is easily disproven by doing even a modicum of research into the space.
    - kspacewalk2 5y ago
      Can you do that modicum of research for me and provide a few examples?
      - knownjorbist 5y ago
        Sure, here's a thread of people who enjoy participating in the space: https://twitter.com/willyuwaychang/status/1489033938836213763 https://twitter.com/willyuwaychang/status/148903393883621376... Here's another fun project: https://www.poapathon.com/ https://www.poapathon.com/
        kspacewalk2 5y ago
        The word 'use' is quite ambiguous. I didn't take it to mean 'use' as in 'play around for funzies', I meant more akin to useful products that make a tangible difference in my life (or any life).
nateabele 5y ago
> I trust my bank not to steal my money This is the literal stated intent of the Federal Reserve (your bank's bank) at a rate of 2% a year.
- rd_police 5y ago
  - nateabele 5y ago
    Excuse me?
- cletus 5y ago
  This comment belies such a fundamental misunderstanding of the modern financial system it's hard to know where to begin. Moderate inflation is a feature not a bug. It drives investment and increases the money supply. On the opposite side, major coins (including BTC and ETH) are massively deflationary, so much so that there's a day to celebrate the purchase of a pizza for $800 million [1]. We shouldn't even call them "currencies" because they're not. They're assets and hugely speculative ones at that. It's really just as well it's an asset because deflationary currencies aren't good for anyone. Ostensibly your money goes up in value over time but no one spends it so the economy just grinds to a halt. [1]: https://interestingengineering.com/bitcoin-pizza-day-celebrates-guy-who-spent-800-million-dollars-on-supreme-pies https://interestingengineering.com/bitcoin-pizza-day-celebra...
  - nateabele 5y ago
    > Moderate inflation is a feature not a bug. It drives investment and increases the money supply. Hah! Indeed. By 'drives investment' do you mean massively inflated asset prices (you may have heard the term 'Everything Bubble') and wild speculation (i.e. crypto, VCs) such as hasn't been seen since the Roaring 20s? > We shouldn't even call them "currencies" because they're not. They're assets and hugely speculative ones at that. Quite. I was going to point out that there's a difference between 'currency' and 'money', but I can see you're busy trying to school me. Please continue. > It's really just as well it's an asset because deflationary currencies aren't good for anyone. Ostensibly your money goes up in value over time but no one spends it so the economy just grinds to a halt. Well, I'll take that over the USD dollar, which has collapsed in value by almost 99% since 1913 (when the Fed was created), and is about to collapse even further. All of your bullet points are perfectly in line with government and central bank propaganda—I mean, talking points. Overall, I would posit the complexity of our 'modern financial system' is a great way to obfuscate the truth about it—don't confuse knowledge of facts with understanding. Plenty of people smarter than you have both, and have come to the opposite conclusion[0]. [0] https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/henry_ford_136294 https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/henry_ford_136294
douglaswlance 5y ago
>...it’s clear that Web3 is just a new spin on the same blockchain tech that we’ve been discussing for the last decade. The important difference being that the EVM allows us to add logic to transactions. >Web3 enthusiasts want to add a blockchain layer to our internet infrastructure ...Rather than online services and data being delivered from centralised servers owned by the likes of Amazon, Google, and Facebook, it will be delivered from the blockchain... It is a new layer, and that obviously means other services are not replaced. You can't add a layer that replaces what's below it. A new layer is always built on top. >Blockchains are generally defined as distributed, public, immutable, trustless databases. No they're not. Blockchains are a cryptographic means of achieving distributed consensus. They can be private, mutable, and require trust. >...there aren’t really any sensible use cases for a blockchain — and Web3 doesn’t change that. OpenSea did $1 billion in transactions last month. Ethereum moved more value than Visa last year. People are using it. >...who needs every user of a database to have their own copy? This is wrong in many different ways. >...The web is really a giant public database. No it isn't. >But if you’re wanting to store your invoices, customer lists or financial data, having a public database is a very bad idea indeed.... If it isn't a good use-case, then use an actual database...? >... Imagine if you move house and the gas company says: “There is literally no way to change your address in our database.” You can just update the data in a new block... This makes no sense. >Finally, trust is an important aspect of all transactions. Apart from crypto assets, there is no activity that operates in a trust-free environment.... I trust the gas company to bill me correctly... You trust, but verify. You wouldn't blindly pay your gas company no matter what the bill amount. If it shot up 100x, you wouldn't just pay it. You'd investigate what's going on. >...most crypto enthusiasts put their trust in incredibly dodgy exchanges and blatantly fraudulent crypto assets. Most of them do this? Really? How do you know? In my experience, most crypto enthusiasts are just holding BTC or ETH. >And this is without getting to the damage that blockchains are causing the environment. Not all blockchains run on energy intensive Proof of Work. Ethereum will soon run on Proof of Stake, which will reduce energy costs dramatically. >There is an argument that the blockchain is increasingly using electricity from renewable sources, but that’s a red herring. If bitcoin is using that renewable power, then somebody else is having to use coal and gas to power their house. This does not make logical sense. It isn't a 1:1 rate of electricity that is generated to electricity used. There is waste. Proof of Work is using waste electricity first. It is a constant load on the system. It is also seeking the cheapest electricity, so it is incentivized to operate at off-hours to use more waste, and then slow at peak times to allow that waste to go to other uses. It's like a battery that uses social/financial means to store energy rather than electrons.
thereddaikon 5y ago
Web2.0 for all of its buzzword bs did actually represent a fairly major change in the way websites are designed and used. Web3 is just an attempt by crypto bros to legitimize their scams. Just like the Metaverse it means nothing and consists entirely of hot air.
billpg 5y ago
"Here's a picture of ape." "It looks awful." "Someone paid a million dollars for it." "Did they buy some tulips as well?"
sjcsjc 5y ago
Stunningly poor article, regardless of the veracity of the premise. I wonder if a human wrote it.
mordehaus 5y ago
- can16358p 5y ago
  He's just probably late to the game and doesn't want to accept. Ignore and continue.
cybdestroyer 5y ago
> Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you will have undoubtedly heard of Web3. Please send these articles back to Reddit; I haven't been living under a rock and barely know what Web3 is. What a nothingburguer piece.
Kiro 5y ago
What hype? All I see is people bashing it.
whitepaint 5y ago
> “Unless you’re trying to create a cryptocurrency, buy drugs or blackmail a company using ransomware there aren’t really any use cases for a blockchain” It's time for the OP and people agreeing with the article look deeper into DeFI. https://compound.finance/ https://compound.finance/ & https://pooltogether.com/ https://pooltogether.com/ are two great examples. Borrow or lend (and earn interest (on dollars if you wish so by using stablecoins like USDC or DAI) much higher than in banks), or participate in no-loss lotteries. All you need is an internet connection and you can use it without any arbitrary rules imposed by governments or companies. If you are into technology and finance, you should be in awe with this stuff in my opinion.
- Tenoke 5y ago
  For me DEXs are an even better example - having p2p exchanges where you require much less trust from other parties (nobody holds your funds, you just trade via a single function call which you can read the code of as your only interaction) and with profits going to users instead of necessarily a central party - that's just something you can't do outside of blockchains.
- pavlov 5y ago
  > interest much higher than in banks > no-loss lotteries The Ponzi hallmarks are getting more obvious by the day, aren’t they.
  - whitepaint 5y ago
    Have you actually looked into it? Have you used it? Do you know how it works on the deep level? Do you know what smart contracts are? Are you able to read them? If you answered yes to these questions, you wouldn't be saying what you're saying; I guarantee it.
    - Coding_Cat 5y ago
      you replied to a comment saying "[t]he Ponzi hallmarks are getting more obvious by the day" by... reguritating the typical reply given by Ponzi/scam artists when called out as scams?
can16358p 5y ago
Not being to change state _is_ a desired feature, not a shortcoming. Sure not for every application, but for many, including totally legal activities.
iRomain 5y ago
Really getting tired of all those zero substance hate articles against blockchain by people who have no vision and zero clue of how long it takes for new technologies to reach maturity. This is a shitpost for all I care.
fleddr 5y ago
Whilst I believe the term Web3 rightfully receives a lot of criticism, this article is one of the dumbest I've yet seen. "But unless you’re trying to create a cryptocurrency, buy drugs or blackmail a company using ransomware there aren’t really any sensible use cases for a blockchain" This is just incorrect and plain lazy. If you take the entire space of crypto, there's no evidence that "buying drugs" or ransomware are the dominant use cases. Further, there's a well known list of actual web3 use cases: decentralized storage, DAOs, NFTs, crypto gaming, Defi (which has tons of individual use cases), yield farming and more. You may believe that all of these use cases are worthless and never make it into the mainstream. It's fine to think that. But they are use cases, and it's where most activity is. Failing to even mention them and wrapping it up as "buying drugs" is ridiculous. "So most people who use the bitcoin blockchain don’t actually have their own copy. As such, it’s not widely distributed." Here the author contradicts his own point. He argues that scaling a distributed ledger is hard, implying it can't work due to inefficiencies. The very fact that the typical user does not run their own node whilst Bitcoin is still widely distributed directly negates this point as well as the scaling point. "But if you’re wanting to store your invoices, customer lists or financial data, having a public database is a very bad idea indeed." Nobody, including blockchain proponents, ever made the point that you should use it for this. "Or bad data can never be changed. Imagine if you move house and the gas company says: “There is literally no way to change your address in our database." That's not at all how this works. To correct data in a block chain, you add to it. The history entry with the incorrect data will persist, as it should. Incorrect data is not the issue, illegal data is. "Finally, trust is an important aspect of all transactions" This is a very complex topic which I won't fully explore. But the counter point here is that crypto proponents aim to cut out powerful monopolist middlemen for particular use cases. The idea of trustless in this context does not mean absence of trust, it means putting trust in protocols, smart contracts, the like. "There is an argument that the blockchain is increasingly using electricity from renewable sources, but that’s a red herring. If bitcoin is using that renewable power, then somebody else is having to use coal and gas to power their house." This is another dumbed down generalization. This depends entirely on how and where the renewable energy is generated. In an urban area with mixed out grid, Bitcoin mining would compete with mainstream energy consumers, which is bad. If Bitcoin mining is instead done in a remote area with a surplus of renewable energy, then it typically does not compete, because said energy can't be transported anyway. "For example, ethereum, the current go-to blockchain for Web3, uses the same amount of energy as the Netherlands." Correct, and it's bad. But an honest author would include the pretty essential statement that ethereum merges to PoS in less than 6 months from now. "Bitcoin produces nothing" It produces and settles about 1T$ in value. It provides new use cases for the unbanked. It doesn't matter what your political stance on it is, clearly it's not nothing. To be clear, you might find my counter points to be biased towards pro-crypto. They are, but the point is not to claim absolute truth, rather that the original article lacks any substance. It makes sweeping statements without any basis, it offers no counter points, no pros and cons, important information is left out, it's just pure garbage. I find it shocking that a "Dr" gets away with writing this drivel. It seems to me has absolutely no idea what he's talking about, yet presents himself as an authoritative voice.
echopurity 5y ago
traveler01 5y ago
I cringe so hard when I see someone with these type of opinions. Why you just don't shut up. If it actually doesn't change the world, you were just one of the critics, if it actually does, the size of the change will be the same as the size of your foolness.
- DanHulton 5y ago
  Right? All those people who spoke out about Madoff's scheme look like IDIOTS now, just one of the critics. It's the ones who were hyping him up even as federal charges were being laid that were real geniuses. /sarcasm "Web3" needs MORE critics, not fewer. With brand-new multi-million dollar consequence-free hacks, rug-pulls, and general pyramid schemery happening seemingly on the daily, the critics need to be _louder_ than all of the hucksters and deluded hopefuls.
  - traveler01 5y ago
    > "Web3" needs MORE critics, not fewer. With brand-new multi-million dollar consequence-free hacks, rug-pulls, and general pyramid schemery happening seemingly on the daily, the critics need to be _louder_ than all of the hucksters and deluded hopefuls. So... in your opinion something deserves to be critizised because people use it for crimes? So, FIATs should also be critized because of that? Since people have been using those to commit all sort of crimes for decades. Your argument is kinda invalid because it says a technology should be critized because someone are using to commit crimes.
    - traveler01 5y ago
      Don't take me wrong, I'm all in for you to critize it, but using those arguments it's pretty much saying everything, even the e-mail could be criticized for that.
    - UncleMeat 5y ago
      > FIATs Where did this trend of capitalizing this in crypto communities come from? It isn't an acronym or initialism. Is this some kind of weird shibboleth?
Zachsa999 5y ago
This reads like a poorly put together smear attempt.
birracerveza 5y ago
Dropbox is never going to be popular. Anyone can trivially build the same system with SSH, FTP and curlftpfs, not to mention all of the problems caused by the fact that it's still in its early stages. [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- pmarreck 5y ago
  I never liked Dropbox, but this is quite funny history
- vichle 5y ago
  Bad analogy. Dropbox solved a problem in a simpler way than doing it yourself. What problem is web3 solving? And is it really simpler to use than the alternative?
  - birracerveza 5y ago
    My analogy was to point out how wrong HN can be when judging things in their current early state, not to mention the tech bias. To answer you, Web3 is solving both the data ownership problem and the centralization problem, and currently there is no other solution that is even remotely comparable to what Web3 is achieving. > And is it really simpler to use than the alternative? I understand why it can be daunting for a new user, but UX is improving each and every day, and I imagine that eventually you'll be able to use it without even needing to install Metamask or using a wallet somehow. ICP is doing something similar, so that you can use dapps without approving each and every single transaction. However, as a developer I can tell you that it's MUCH simpler to use than the legacy web. I developed a dapp that essentially uses no backend and requires me to host nothing. It is much, much better, even though the infrastructure is essentially nonexistent.
am33 5y ago
How is this front page of HN? These are the most basic arguments that have repeated ad infinitum
- TAKEMYMONEY 5y ago
  Any article that says "crypto bad" hits the front page, but wow you weren't exaggerating > buy drugs > ransomware > uses the same amount of energy as the Netherlands There's nothing here but trite clichés. The most nuanced criticisms of Web3 come from its proponents these days. I wonder if there's any conflict of interest for the author? > founder of Cantab Capital Partners [a hedge fund] hmm
- exdsq 5y ago
  I’ve been saying this for months but the easiest way to get front page HN is to repeat this argument. Those who are interested in the space defend it (including me), those who aren’t interested in the space attack it, and that activity pushes it further up.
5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
let's be real, "web 3" is just a euphemism for the next gold rush. it's all about having the guile to get into stuff early and out before it collapses on itself. follow the fool kind of situation. it's nothing more than unprincipled greed disguised as a new paradigm. nothing new about greed and redirecting money from bottom to the top.
- 015a 5y ago
  Even reaching for an analogy like the "gold rush" is bad discussion: the American gold rush was directly responsible for the rapid colonization of the west, which had negatives, but today is home to the most economically prosperous regions in the entire world. San Francisco wouldn't exist anything near its current form without the gold rush having happened; arguing Web3 is like the gold rush is tantamount to saying "its a bubble, it'll pop, but it won't disappear and it'll eventually become a stable, critical component of our society". If you believe it'll pop and disappear, at least use a better analogy, like the dutch tulip bubble.
sackerhews 5y ago
You can say two things about a piece of technology. "It's going to change the world". Yeah right. It's written by a marketing dept. to generate hype. "It's not going to change the world". Now, who writes that and why? There's definitely something interesting about this tech.
- criddell 5y ago
  Calling it Web3 implies it is a world changing technology. There may be something interesting about it, but I have no idea what that could be. It's possible that the cryptocurrency promoters are like the Homebrew Computer Club people of the late '70's and Visicalc hasn't been invented yet.
mrkramer 5y ago
Web3 already exists it's called browser extensions plus all other software solutions that can be embedded inside browsers and websites. The thing is it all has to be standardized.
015a 5y ago
Web3 has already changed the world. Not by much, but the statement doesn't make promises as to how much it has to in order to qualify for "changing the world". > it’s clear that Web3 is just a new spin on the same blockchain tech that we’ve been discussing for the last decade. Web3 is everything blockchain. Queue the astronaut holding a gun "always has been" meme. Its adopted a new label, but the core commerce frameworks (Bitcoin, ETH) and the applications of those frameworks (NFT, DeFi, .eth, etc) are inextricable, technically and philosophically. I mean, really, Web3 sucks, but this article is clearly written by a 60 year old who has been slowly following its developments through Bloomberg articles. The clearest signal that someone hasn't put much critical thinking at all into why Web3 is bad, is prioritizing a complaint about the environmental impact, because that is a problem, but one the community will fix. Its an argument about implementation, not philosophy. > But unless you’re trying to create a cryptocurrency, buy drugs or blackmail a company using ransomware there aren’t really any sensible use cases for a blockchain As bearish as I am on most Web3 technologies; the one that I feel does have use-cases are the core currencies. Look, if you believe the only use-cases for crypto are illegal, and obviously you aren't buying anything illegal with it (I'd bet this guy even drives the speed limit), then you just by-definition outed yourself as being critically misinformed. Because (1) illegal use-cases are still use-cases, and won't stop growth, and (2) there are plenty of legitimate use-cases. What an ass. Just watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
danlugo92 5y ago
No, but the uncensorable content in it will.
vmception 5y ago
Its only a matter of time before more nuanced posts with optimistic conclusions get traction on HN The people that are fine using and working with Web3 are here and numerous, just not paying attention well enough to bring traction to better posts
- rchaud 5y ago
  Moxie Marlinspike's article at the start of the year got plenty of traction, and it was far more nuanced than most, not least because the author actually went through the process of creating and NFT and dApp, evaluating the tools from a software engineer standpoint, and from the consumer standpoint. What in your opinion would count as an optimistic conclusion? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29845208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29845208
  - vmception 5y ago
    Optimism to me is noticing that you can contribute to fixing all the painpoints you encounter, and can optionally monetize all those fixes such that if you care about money the market is saying this is the only thing to focus on. The barrier to entry is in many ways lower than trying to do the same as a Web 2 style SaaS product, because the infrastructure demands are lower and the funnel is basically 1 step, as every interaction in this space already is a transaction. For example, the article spends a lot of time on OpenSea and how their wallet was using the OpenSea API, to bolster their "hey that doesn't match the ideal from proponents" crux of the article. What do you think the people that built OpenSea did when they decided to build OpenSea? So build another OpenSea, or submit a pull request to the wallet to render NFTs differently, use your own node, make a better node software, make an infura competitor which is a CDN of nodes, improve the build tools.... any part of the stack is up for grabs. Thats what permissionless is. Pretty easy to get traction for any variant you release because there is immediate utility from it from other people looking for painpoints improved upon. There are plenty of developer blog posts from people doing those specific things, they're just not posted on HN or moving up very high often. We could post conversations in github issues, or pull requests all day here. Easily shift the discussion. It's out of character that the HN audience as an aggregate only considers a few parts to make a conclusion on this specific topic.

140 points by cal2016 5y ago

I mean, he's right about the downsides, but I suspect we're going to be stuck with the web3 changes for a while yet. We're going to see a lot of companies go through the grift/backlash cycle. And the consumption of ~ 110 TWh/year is going to produce some changes to the climate.

ehnto 5y ago
Many companies will take it on in earnest, thinking they "should" do it, not realizing that it provides their core business with no value add. They'll search for "web3 developers" and hire them, get them to "web3" enable their product, and be dumfounded by the way that it's exactly the same as before. If your product is based on the value provided by blockchains then that is one thing, but Web3 simply can't be like Web2.0 because so few use cases actually benefit from it.

rocgf 5y ago

Apologies, but this is a very weak an unsubstantiated article, despite agreeing with its premise full heartedly. > Third, immutability has its downsides. Blocks in the blockchain are for all intents and purposes completely fixed. This means that a transaction that happened erroneously or illegally can never be changed. Or bad data can never be changed. Imagine if you move house and the gas company says: “There is literally no way to change your address in our database.” I mean... does the author actually believe this is some unsolved problem in Blockchains?

smoyer 5y ago
My opinion is that web3 has greater promise with distributed content - IPFS, the DAT protocol and the Hyper protocols will allow individuals to publish content without the restrictions imposed by infrastructure providers.
- dumbfounder 5y ago
  If that's all it does then it's a massive success.
- cuddlecake 5y ago
  But the infrastructure must be <somewhere>, right?
  - cle 5y ago
    Of course, but the useful property is that it could be anywhere.
    - cuddlecake 5y ago
      But over long enough time it _must_ be somewhere where somebody can provide Computational power and evergrowing storage capacity, right? So.. not anywhere. Or can the data be available in a highly fragmented fashion _and_ still be useful? I just can't imagine any content system that does not end up being centralized or highly inconvenient.
      - cle 5y ago
        If someone cares about a piece of content's availability on IPFS, they can host it and anyone in the network can pull it from them without having to know a priori that they provide the content. That's what I mean by "anywhere". Anyone can provide any content they want, from anywhere, on whatever infrastructure they want, as long as there's a communication channel open with the rest of the network. If you care about high availability of a piece of content, you will dedicate infrastructure to hosting it on IPFS, just like you would on the Internet.
        cuddlecake 5y ago
        Is there any need for the Blockchain for that? Like... Setup a server and host the content. I can't imagine it being simpler than that. Why would I engage in the dance of crypto just to host some content no one will read anyway? What's IPFS?
PeledYuval 5y ago
I'm a crypto novice. My impression is that the author is correct (though the metaphor with the gas company is terrible) - there is no way to reverse a bad transaction. Is this not an unsolved problem in blockchain?
gitfan86 5y ago
Obviously you can create a blockchain that allows edits. Git is a crypto tree technology and it allows rebases. But the whole point of Bitcoin is that no one should have the authority to reverse transactions or print new coins. And all of Web3/Eth/NFT crypto shares the idea that this technology is useful because it removes the need for trusting a central authority (you trust the code and the distributed network instead) The idea is that you have the coins and NFTs in your own wallet and no one can take those away from you. So if you are going to add a layer that allows transactions to be immutable you are literally describing a bank or a credit card and there is no need for crypto.
- PretzelPirate 5y ago
  I think this is a mischaracterization of what immutability is. Immutability means you can’t change history not that you can’t update state. If my utility company needs my new home address and they use a blockchain for some reason (maybe part of a near-realtime electricity payment system), I can always sign a transaction to associate my blockchain address with my new home address. Perhaps the electricity equipment itself can sign my signature to ensure that I am physically located with it and have authority to change who it’s representing.
  - gitfan86 5y ago
    If you have your keys then yes, you can sign a new transaction. But what happens if you lost your keys and no central authority has the ability to change your address?
    - notreallyserio 5y ago
      And perhaps worse, what happens if someone steals/copies your private key (say your paper backup) and signs a change of address in your name? Can you convince authorities that you didn't actually make the change? Maybe if it is a physical address. After all, you presumably live there. But what if it's just some payment contract? As far as they care you yourself signed it, and they have the proof. If you can get them to cancel the contract, what was the point of using blockchain anyway?
m00dy 5y ago
[flagged]
- can16358p 5y ago
  He probably already left and missed many opportunities and is trying to catch up by being at the other side of the "war" just like many old-minded banks.
- xorandor 5y ago
  Your comment is ageist, derogatory and smacks of fanboism.
- mrnotcrazy 5y ago
  If the tech is good it will speak for itself, you shouldn't need to ask people to leave you alone....
- notpachet 5y ago
  These sorts of comments really drag down the quality of discussion on HN. Not only that, they bolster a lot of readers' antipathy to your position (whatever that might be). I hope you quickly get to the point in your life when you realize the wealth of knowledge and wisdom that you can learn from boomers (and folks even older than that).
dotancohen 5y ago
Immutability is the natural state of the past. In the real world, if I give someone money erroneously, the erroneous transfer is not "undone" but rather a new transfer that has the reverse effect of the original transfer is performed. Double-entry bookkeeping doesn't allow for penciling-in corrections. In git this is a revert commit.
ID1452319 5y ago
Can I ask how this has been solved? I see a number of companies in the HR domain offering "blockchain-based" solutions. However, it seems to be that the immutable nature of blockchain is incompatible with data protection regulation's right to be forgotten.

denton-scratch 5y ago

> immutable, trustless databases It's a ledger, not a database. The author is critiqueing blockchain, and broadly I agree with the critique. But it's pretty shallow. It just regurgitates what we already know. Perhaps the salient observation is that Web3 is just blockchain hype with a new name; but the author doesn't actually make a case for that at all.

tommica 5y ago
> It just regurgitates what we already know. What about people that do not know much about the topic?
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  Well, I guess they're not HN readers. And I don't suppose they're the ones reading the article.
  - tomrod 5y ago
    \o HN reader here. Blockchain jargon gets passed around without clear definitions, a lot. Reminding of fundamentals is helpful for clear communication.
  - jvanderbot 5y ago
    Well ... most people would (usually) get access to an article without HN. It's here exclusively for HN readers. So, downvote as bad HN submission, but don't critique article for not catering to HN readers. I guess?
    - solveit 5y ago
      I would not mind a culture of people dunking on the submitter rather than the article. (Of course, it would be best if we didn't dunk at all, but that doesn't seem to be happening...)
    - denton-scratch 5y ago

smokey_circles 5y ago

Web3 and the 4th industrial revolution are just marketing phrases. Web3 is just web2 with a different focus. it's not decentralised, it runs on web2 stacks, it does none of the thing it purports. Just like the lack of any real revolution in this supposed 4th iteration

pupdogg 5y ago
lol, especially when you couple that with "Hackers steal $320 million in wETH cryptocurrency from Wormhole DeFi project"
knownjorbist 5y ago
I'm sorry but this take is pure ignorance. https://www.psl.com/feed-posts/web3-engineer-take https://www.psl.com/feed-posts/web3-engineer-take
- pupdogg 5y ago
  As a web dev since 1996 and having lived through the entire revolution of web0.0, web1.0, and web2.0, I'm going to side with @smokey_circles here!
  - knownjorbist 5y ago
    That's a symptom of the poor signal-to-noise ratio in the space, not that it's a correct assertion. The cypherpunk thing is happening now, not in the 90s like you might have hoped. It's startling to me how poorly received it is on HN from people who would ostensibly be a part of it otherwise.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      The signal-to-noise ratio is a symptom of there not really being any significant signal to begin with. You keep posting vague statements about how valuable the technology is but haven't shown any examples of how it is doing anything useful that isn't a) a hype-to-money scheme, or b) easily replaceable by existing technologies, as far as I can tell.

elevenoh 5y ago

>But unless you’re trying to create a cryptocurrency, buy drugs or blackmail a company using ransomware there aren’t really any sensible use cases for a blockchain God bless this fella. I bought tesla stock futures in a country that wouldn't allow it via blockchain. I reduced a portion of my ecommerce store checkout fees to <1% by using a crypto payment processor > stripe's highway robbery of 3% per sale. Ps: [should i redact the word 'stripe' on here to avoid shadowbanning?] etc.

mchusma 5y ago
Can you say more about the crypto payments you use? I was under the impression that crypto payments had a very high transaction cost so am curious about your setup.
- knownjorbist 5y ago
  Bitcoin and Ethereum Mainnet can have high transaction fees. Virtually nothing else has fees even close to that high, however
  - phasnox 5y ago
    Even bitcoin on-chain no longer has those high fees it had in 2017. Also, Bitcoin has lightning now. A second layer protocol that allows fast and cheap payments. Like less of a penny cheap.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      Lightning has very little adoption, is hard to use because 1. you need to always be online to receive transactions and 2. routing is failure-prone, and costly in capital lock up - in an internet-connected hot-wallet no less - for payment channel collateral requirements. Ethereum Rollups are much more promising L2 solutions.
      - Melting_Harps 5y ago

throwaway22032 5y ago

The article reads as some sort of pub conversation rant rather than anything serious. The guy claims that Bitcoin is "playing Numberwang", for christ's sake. Then there are some hilarious misgivings. > Blocks in the blockchain are for all intents and purposes completely fixed. This means that a transaction that happened erroneously or illegally can never be changed. Or bad data can never be changed. Imagine if you move house and the gas company says: “There is literally no way to change your address in our database". Er, no, you just submit a correction to the address. Exactly the same as issuing an SQL UPDATE, it's just that at the lower level the SQL transaction of the UPDATE is stored, rather than the updated final result.

0xcde4c3db 5y ago
> The guy claims that Bitcoin is "playing Numberwang", for christ's sake. Numberwang is an absurd game show featured in the sketch comedy series That Mitchell and Webb Look. The basic "game" consists of the contestants repeatedly calling out numbers -- apparently at random most of the time -- until one of the numbers "is Numberwang", for which the contestant is (presumably) awarded points. Aren't Bitcoin nodes also guessing numbers until one of them passes a meaningless test, for which the node is then rewarded? The metaphor is imperfect (like all metaphors), but I think this one is a better fit than you're giving it credit for.
- throwaway22032 5y ago
  Yes, it's pub chat. I know what it is. Me writing this comment to you is playing snooker, because the protons are bouncing off each other and stuff. It's an attempt to discredit the network by using low-brow humour as a comparison.
  - 0xcde4c3db 5y ago
    People in the tech world pretty regularly use expressions like "dead trees" for print and "spinning rust" for magnetic disks, both of which were undeniably revolutionary and whose modern embodiments are marvels of engineering and logistics. I guess we just have very different expectations about tone in the context of this particular article.

iamnotarobotman 5y ago

> No doubt others will say their own favourite blockchain is more efficient and is the future of Web3. But all blockchains are much more inefficient than literally any alternative. For example, ethereum... Please attack and critique the 'alleged' state of the art blockchains of today that don't use PoW. Once again, only attacking the easiest examples in the blockchain industry (which use PoW). Everyone knows that Bitcoin, and Ethereum are both destroying the planet. Not all cryptocurrencies are the same as those two and many do not use PoW today. It's very easy to criticise the environmental impacts of the first commercial petrol car and use that as an argument to say that all cars should not be used or that cars will not change the world, since petrol cars are more hostile to the environment. The author is doing the same thing, but generalising and bundling all cryptocurrencies having the same environmental negatives as PoW cryptocurrencies (Including Bitcoin, and Ethereum).

randomhodler84 5y ago
No, PoW is not destroying the planet. Bitcoin uses less energy than pet food production. Pets are destroying the planet! It’s not some “upgrade” to PoS. It’s a huge downgrade in security of your coin. I think a combination of PoS and PoW chains, with PoW being a base layer in public chains, with PoS chains anchoring commitments. Only when the probabilistic finality from PoW commits this, the house of cards political game that is PoS txs become final. PoS is fakery. Human failings. Everything of value in this universe takes work.

knownjorbist 5y ago

It's already changing the world. Here's a much more even-handed view of what is(and isn't!) interesting in the nascent "web3" space: https://www.psl.com/feed-posts/web3-engineer-take https://www.psl.com/feed-posts/web3-engineer-take

VHRanger 5y ago
It's changing the world of scams and Ponzi schemes Apart from that were yet to see something people use because they like to use it
- knownjorbist 5y ago
  > Apart from that were yet to see something people use because they like to use it An absolute claim that is easily disproven by doing even a modicum of research into the space.
  - kspacewalk2 5y ago
    Can you do that modicum of research for me and provide a few examples?
    - knownjorbist 5y ago
      Sure, here's a thread of people who enjoy participating in the space: https://twitter.com/willyuwaychang/status/1489033938836213763 https://twitter.com/willyuwaychang/status/148903393883621376... Here's another fun project: https://www.poapathon.com/ https://www.poapathon.com/
      - kspacewalk2 5y ago
        The word 'use' is quite ambiguous. I didn't take it to mean 'use' as in 'play around for funzies', I meant more akin to useful products that make a tangible difference in my life (or any life).

nateabele 5y ago

> I trust my bank not to steal my money This is the literal stated intent of the Federal Reserve (your bank's bank) at a rate of 2% a year.

rd_police 5y ago
- nateabele 5y ago
  Excuse me?
cletus 5y ago
This comment belies such a fundamental misunderstanding of the modern financial system it's hard to know where to begin. Moderate inflation is a feature not a bug. It drives investment and increases the money supply. On the opposite side, major coins (including BTC and ETH) are massively deflationary, so much so that there's a day to celebrate the purchase of a pizza for $800 million [1]. We shouldn't even call them "currencies" because they're not. They're assets and hugely speculative ones at that. It's really just as well it's an asset because deflationary currencies aren't good for anyone. Ostensibly your money goes up in value over time but no one spends it so the economy just grinds to a halt. [1]: https://interestingengineering.com/bitcoin-pizza-day-celebrates-guy-who-spent-800-million-dollars-on-supreme-pies https://interestingengineering.com/bitcoin-pizza-day-celebra...
- nateabele 5y ago
  > Moderate inflation is a feature not a bug. It drives investment and increases the money supply. Hah! Indeed. By 'drives investment' do you mean massively inflated asset prices (you may have heard the term 'Everything Bubble') and wild speculation (i.e. crypto, VCs) such as hasn't been seen since the Roaring 20s? > We shouldn't even call them "currencies" because they're not. They're assets and hugely speculative ones at that. Quite. I was going to point out that there's a difference between 'currency' and 'money', but I can see you're busy trying to school me. Please continue. > It's really just as well it's an asset because deflationary currencies aren't good for anyone. Ostensibly your money goes up in value over time but no one spends it so the economy just grinds to a halt. Well, I'll take that over the USD dollar, which has collapsed in value by almost 99% since 1913 (when the Fed was created), and is about to collapse even further. All of your bullet points are perfectly in line with government and central bank propaganda—I mean, talking points. Overall, I would posit the complexity of our 'modern financial system' is a great way to obfuscate the truth about it—don't confuse knowledge of facts with understanding. Plenty of people smarter than you have both, and have come to the opposite conclusion[0]. [0] https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/henry_ford_136294 https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/henry_ford_136294

douglaswlance 5y ago

>...it’s clear that Web3 is just a new spin on the same blockchain tech that we’ve been discussing for the last decade. The important difference being that the EVM allows us to add logic to transactions. >Web3 enthusiasts want to add a blockchain layer to our internet infrastructure ...Rather than online services and data being delivered from centralised servers owned by the likes of Amazon, Google, and Facebook, it will be delivered from the blockchain... It is a new layer, and that obviously means other services are not replaced. You can't add a layer that replaces what's below it. A new layer is always built on top. >Blockchains are generally defined as distributed, public, immutable, trustless databases. No they're not. Blockchains are a cryptographic means of achieving distributed consensus. They can be private, mutable, and require trust. >...there aren’t really any sensible use cases for a blockchain — and Web3 doesn’t change that. OpenSea did $1 billion in transactions last month. Ethereum moved more value than Visa last year. People are using it. >...who needs every user of a database to have their own copy? This is wrong in many different ways. >...The web is really a giant public database. No it isn't. >But if you’re wanting to store your invoices, customer lists or financial data, having a public database is a very bad idea indeed.... If it isn't a good use-case, then use an actual database...? >... Imagine if you move house and the gas company says: “There is literally no way to change your address in our database.” You can just update the data in a new block... This makes no sense. >Finally, trust is an important aspect of all transactions. Apart from crypto assets, there is no activity that operates in a trust-free environment.... I trust the gas company to bill me correctly... You trust, but verify. You wouldn't blindly pay your gas company no matter what the bill amount. If it shot up 100x, you wouldn't just pay it. You'd investigate what's going on. >...most crypto enthusiasts put their trust in incredibly dodgy exchanges and blatantly fraudulent crypto assets. Most of them do this? Really? How do you know? In my experience, most crypto enthusiasts are just holding BTC or ETH. >And this is without getting to the damage that blockchains are causing the environment. Not all blockchains run on energy intensive Proof of Work. Ethereum will soon run on Proof of Stake, which will reduce energy costs dramatically. >There is an argument that the blockchain is increasingly using electricity from renewable sources, but that’s a red herring. If bitcoin is using that renewable power, then somebody else is having to use coal and gas to power their house. This does not make logical sense. It isn't a 1:1 rate of electricity that is generated to electricity used. There is waste. Proof of Work is using waste electricity first. It is a constant load on the system. It is also seeking the cheapest electricity, so it is incentivized to operate at off-hours to use more waste, and then slow at peak times to allow that waste to go to other uses. It's like a battery that uses social/financial means to store energy rather than electrons.

thereddaikon 5y ago

Web2.0 for all of its buzzword bs did actually represent a fairly major change in the way websites are designed and used. Web3 is just an attempt by crypto bros to legitimize their scams. Just like the Metaverse it means nothing and consists entirely of hot air.

billpg 5y ago

"Here's a picture of ape." "It looks awful." "Someone paid a million dollars for it." "Did they buy some tulips as well?"

sjcsjc 5y ago

Stunningly poor article, regardless of the veracity of the premise. I wonder if a human wrote it.

mordehaus 5y ago

can16358p 5y ago
He's just probably late to the game and doesn't want to accept. Ignore and continue.

cybdestroyer 5y ago

> Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you will have undoubtedly heard of Web3. Please send these articles back to Reddit; I haven't been living under a rock and barely know what Web3 is. What a nothingburguer piece.

Kiro 5y ago

What hype? All I see is people bashing it.

whitepaint 5y ago

> “Unless you’re trying to create a cryptocurrency, buy drugs or blackmail a company using ransomware there aren’t really any use cases for a blockchain” It's time for the OP and people agreeing with the article look deeper into DeFI. https://compound.finance/ https://compound.finance/ & https://pooltogether.com/ https://pooltogether.com/ are two great examples. Borrow or lend (and earn interest (on dollars if you wish so by using stablecoins like USDC or DAI) much higher than in banks), or participate in no-loss lotteries. All you need is an internet connection and you can use it without any arbitrary rules imposed by governments or companies. If you are into technology and finance, you should be in awe with this stuff in my opinion.

Tenoke 5y ago
For me DEXs are an even better example - having p2p exchanges where you require much less trust from other parties (nobody holds your funds, you just trade via a single function call which you can read the code of as your only interaction) and with profits going to users instead of necessarily a central party - that's just something you can't do outside of blockchains.
pavlov 5y ago
> interest much higher than in banks > no-loss lotteries The Ponzi hallmarks are getting more obvious by the day, aren’t they.
- whitepaint 5y ago
  Have you actually looked into it? Have you used it? Do you know how it works on the deep level? Do you know what smart contracts are? Are you able to read them? If you answered yes to these questions, you wouldn't be saying what you're saying; I guarantee it.
  - Coding_Cat 5y ago
    you replied to a comment saying "[t]he Ponzi hallmarks are getting more obvious by the day" by... reguritating the typical reply given by Ponzi/scam artists when called out as scams?

can16358p 5y ago

Not being to change state _is_ a desired feature, not a shortcoming. Sure not for every application, but for many, including totally legal activities.

iRomain 5y ago

Really getting tired of all those zero substance hate articles against blockchain by people who have no vision and zero clue of how long it takes for new technologies to reach maturity. This is a shitpost for all I care.

fleddr 5y ago

Whilst I believe the term Web3 rightfully receives a lot of criticism, this article is one of the dumbest I've yet seen. "But unless you’re trying to create a cryptocurrency, buy drugs or blackmail a company using ransomware there aren’t really any sensible use cases for a blockchain" This is just incorrect and plain lazy. If you take the entire space of crypto, there's no evidence that "buying drugs" or ransomware are the dominant use cases. Further, there's a well known list of actual web3 use cases: decentralized storage, DAOs, NFTs, crypto gaming, Defi (which has tons of individual use cases), yield farming and more. You may believe that all of these use cases are worthless and never make it into the mainstream. It's fine to think that. But they are use cases, and it's where most activity is. Failing to even mention them and wrapping it up as "buying drugs" is ridiculous. "So most people who use the bitcoin blockchain don’t actually have their own copy. As such, it’s not widely distributed." Here the author contradicts his own point. He argues that scaling a distributed ledger is hard, implying it can't work due to inefficiencies. The very fact that the typical user does not run their own node whilst Bitcoin is still widely distributed directly negates this point as well as the scaling point. "But if you’re wanting to store your invoices, customer lists or financial data, having a public database is a very bad idea indeed." Nobody, including blockchain proponents, ever made the point that you should use it for this. "Or bad data can never be changed. Imagine if you move house and the gas company says: “There is literally no way to change your address in our database." That's not at all how this works. To correct data in a block chain, you add to it. The history entry with the incorrect data will persist, as it should. Incorrect data is not the issue, illegal data is. "Finally, trust is an important aspect of all transactions" This is a very complex topic which I won't fully explore. But the counter point here is that crypto proponents aim to cut out powerful monopolist middlemen for particular use cases. The idea of trustless in this context does not mean absence of trust, it means putting trust in protocols, smart contracts, the like. "There is an argument that the blockchain is increasingly using electricity from renewable sources, but that’s a red herring. If bitcoin is using that renewable power, then somebody else is having to use coal and gas to power their house." This is another dumbed down generalization. This depends entirely on how and where the renewable energy is generated. In an urban area with mixed out grid, Bitcoin mining would compete with mainstream energy consumers, which is bad. If Bitcoin mining is instead done in a remote area with a surplus of renewable energy, then it typically does not compete, because said energy can't be transported anyway. "For example, ethereum, the current go-to blockchain for Web3, uses the same amount of energy as the Netherlands." Correct, and it's bad. But an honest author would include the pretty essential statement that ethereum merges to PoS in less than 6 months from now. "Bitcoin produces nothing" It produces and settles about 1T$ in value. It provides new use cases for the unbanked. It doesn't matter what your political stance on it is, clearly it's not nothing. To be clear, you might find my counter points to be biased towards pro-crypto. They are, but the point is not to claim absolute truth, rather that the original article lacks any substance. It makes sweeping statements without any basis, it offers no counter points, no pros and cons, important information is left out, it's just pure garbage. I find it shocking that a "Dr" gets away with writing this drivel. It seems to me has absolutely no idea what he's talking about, yet presents himself as an authoritative voice.

echopurity 5y ago

traveler01 5y ago

I cringe so hard when I see someone with these type of opinions. Why you just don't shut up. If it actually doesn't change the world, you were just one of the critics, if it actually does, the size of the change will be the same as the size of your foolness.

DanHulton 5y ago
Right? All those people who spoke out about Madoff's scheme look like IDIOTS now, just one of the critics. It's the ones who were hyping him up even as federal charges were being laid that were real geniuses. /sarcasm "Web3" needs MORE critics, not fewer. With brand-new multi-million dollar consequence-free hacks, rug-pulls, and general pyramid schemery happening seemingly on the daily, the critics need to be _louder_ than all of the hucksters and deluded hopefuls.
- traveler01 5y ago
  > "Web3" needs MORE critics, not fewer. With brand-new multi-million dollar consequence-free hacks, rug-pulls, and general pyramid schemery happening seemingly on the daily, the critics need to be _louder_ than all of the hucksters and deluded hopefuls. So... in your opinion something deserves to be critizised because people use it for crimes? So, FIATs should also be critized because of that? Since people have been using those to commit all sort of crimes for decades. Your argument is kinda invalid because it says a technology should be critized because someone are using to commit crimes.
  - traveler01 5y ago
    Don't take me wrong, I'm all in for you to critize it, but using those arguments it's pretty much saying everything, even the e-mail could be criticized for that.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    > FIATs Where did this trend of capitalizing this in crypto communities come from? It isn't an acronym or initialism. Is this some kind of weird shibboleth?

Zachsa999 5y ago

This reads like a poorly put together smear attempt.

birracerveza 5y ago

Dropbox is never going to be popular. Anyone can trivially build the same system with SSH, FTP and curlftpfs, not to mention all of the problems caused by the fact that it's still in its early stages. [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

pmarreck 5y ago
I never liked Dropbox, but this is quite funny history
vichle 5y ago
Bad analogy. Dropbox solved a problem in a simpler way than doing it yourself. What problem is web3 solving? And is it really simpler to use than the alternative?
- birracerveza 5y ago
  My analogy was to point out how wrong HN can be when judging things in their current early state, not to mention the tech bias. To answer you, Web3 is solving both the data ownership problem and the centralization problem, and currently there is no other solution that is even remotely comparable to what Web3 is achieving. > And is it really simpler to use than the alternative? I understand why it can be daunting for a new user, but UX is improving each and every day, and I imagine that eventually you'll be able to use it without even needing to install Metamask or using a wallet somehow. ICP is doing something similar, so that you can use dapps without approving each and every single transaction. However, as a developer I can tell you that it's MUCH simpler to use than the legacy web. I developed a dapp that essentially uses no backend and requires me to host nothing. It is much, much better, even though the infrastructure is essentially nonexistent.

am33 5y ago

How is this front page of HN? These are the most basic arguments that have repeated ad infinitum

TAKEMYMONEY 5y ago
Any article that says "crypto bad" hits the front page, but wow you weren't exaggerating > buy drugs > ransomware > uses the same amount of energy as the Netherlands There's nothing here but trite clichés. The most nuanced criticisms of Web3 come from its proponents these days. I wonder if there's any conflict of interest for the author? > founder of Cantab Capital Partners [a hedge fund] hmm
exdsq 5y ago
I’ve been saying this for months but the easiest way to get front page HN is to repeat this argument. Those who are interested in the space defend it (including me), those who aren’t interested in the space attack it, and that activity pushes it further up.

5350-uiop-1130 5y ago

let's be real, "web 3" is just a euphemism for the next gold rush. it's all about having the guile to get into stuff early and out before it collapses on itself. follow the fool kind of situation. it's nothing more than unprincipled greed disguised as a new paradigm. nothing new about greed and redirecting money from bottom to the top.

015a 5y ago
Even reaching for an analogy like the "gold rush" is bad discussion: the American gold rush was directly responsible for the rapid colonization of the west, which had negatives, but today is home to the most economically prosperous regions in the entire world. San Francisco wouldn't exist anything near its current form without the gold rush having happened; arguing Web3 is like the gold rush is tantamount to saying "its a bubble, it'll pop, but it won't disappear and it'll eventually become a stable, critical component of our society". If you believe it'll pop and disappear, at least use a better analogy, like the dutch tulip bubble.

sackerhews 5y ago

You can say two things about a piece of technology. "It's going to change the world". Yeah right. It's written by a marketing dept. to generate hype. "It's not going to change the world". Now, who writes that and why? There's definitely something interesting about this tech.

criddell 5y ago
Calling it Web3 implies it is a world changing technology. There may be something interesting about it, but I have no idea what that could be. It's possible that the cryptocurrency promoters are like the Homebrew Computer Club people of the late '70's and Visicalc hasn't been invented yet.

mrkramer 5y ago

Web3 already exists it's called browser extensions plus all other software solutions that can be embedded inside browsers and websites. The thing is it all has to be standardized.

015a 5y ago

Web3 has already changed the world. Not by much, but the statement doesn't make promises as to how much it has to in order to qualify for "changing the world". > it’s clear that Web3 is just a new spin on the same blockchain tech that we’ve been discussing for the last decade. Web3 is everything blockchain. Queue the astronaut holding a gun "always has been" meme. Its adopted a new label, but the core commerce frameworks (Bitcoin, ETH) and the applications of those frameworks (NFT, DeFi, .eth, etc) are inextricable, technically and philosophically. I mean, really, Web3 sucks, but this article is clearly written by a 60 year old who has been slowly following its developments through Bloomberg articles. The clearest signal that someone hasn't put much critical thinking at all into why Web3 is bad, is prioritizing a complaint about the environmental impact, because that is a problem, but one the community will fix. Its an argument about implementation, not philosophy. > But unless you’re trying to create a cryptocurrency, buy drugs or blackmail a company using ransomware there aren’t really any sensible use cases for a blockchain As bearish as I am on most Web3 technologies; the one that I feel does have use-cases are the core currencies. Look, if you believe the only use-cases for crypto are illegal, and obviously you aren't buying anything illegal with it (I'd bet this guy even drives the speed limit), then you just by-definition outed yourself as being critically misinformed. Because (1) illegal use-cases are still use-cases, and won't stop growth, and (2) there are plenty of legitimate use-cases. What an ass. Just watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g

danlugo92 5y ago

No, but the uncensorable content in it will.

vmception 5y ago

Its only a matter of time before more nuanced posts with optimistic conclusions get traction on HN The people that are fine using and working with Web3 are here and numerous, just not paying attention well enough to bring traction to better posts

rchaud 5y ago
Moxie Marlinspike's article at the start of the year got plenty of traction, and it was far more nuanced than most, not least because the author actually went through the process of creating and NFT and dApp, evaluating the tools from a software engineer standpoint, and from the consumer standpoint. What in your opinion would count as an optimistic conclusion? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29845208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29845208
- vmception 5y ago
  Optimism to me is noticing that you can contribute to fixing all the painpoints you encounter, and can optionally monetize all those fixes such that if you care about money the market is saying this is the only thing to focus on. The barrier to entry is in many ways lower than trying to do the same as a Web 2 style SaaS product, because the infrastructure demands are lower and the funnel is basically 1 step, as every interaction in this space already is a transaction. For example, the article spends a lot of time on OpenSea and how their wallet was using the OpenSea API, to bolster their "hey that doesn't match the ideal from proponents" crux of the article. What do you think the people that built OpenSea did when they decided to build OpenSea? So build another OpenSea, or submit a pull request to the wallet to render NFTs differently, use your own node, make a better node software, make an infura competitor which is a CDN of nodes, improve the build tools.... any part of the stack is up for grabs. Thats what permissionless is. Pretty easy to get traction for any variant you release because there is immediate utility from it from other people looking for painpoints improved upon. There are plenty of developer blog posts from people doing those specific things, they're just not posted on HN or moving up very high often. We could post conversations in github issues, or pull requests all day here. Easily shift the discussion. It's out of character that the HN audience as an aggregate only considers a few parts to make a conclusion on this specific topic.