8 ms·

Making Sense of Web3

43 points by gregdoesit 5y ago

leifg 5y ago
> Concretely, our approach starts with collecting and steel-manning the key claims made for web3 through conscious, critical and open dialog with a diverse set of experts. This is something that is desperately needed. More often than not I try to assess bold claims like "Blockchains will solve X". I try to follow the thought process of these claims and arrive at the solution: "Blockchains will most likely NOT solve X". The first comment to that is usually: "It was never supposed to solve X it is rather about Y which is loosely related to X". There is no way to have a proper debate if one side if flip flopping about claims.
- okwubodu 5y ago
  There's no debate to be had most of the time. Something about this particular topic makes people so prone to decide they're right first, then debate as if making the smallest concession means defeat. Any discussion on the basis of "X will solve Y" or "X will most likely NOT solve Y" predictably spirals on and on because the parties chose hypothetical claims that can't be falsified so it's easier to play with semantics and pretend the other doesn't get it yet.
  - pavlov 5y ago
    The onus is on those making extraordinary claims to prove them, not on others to prove them wrong. Blockchain is cold fusion for tech bros.
    - okwubodu 5y ago
      Any claim about the future needs backing. That’s the only thing separating a thesis from a magic 8-ball. > Blockchain is cold fusion for tech bros. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-always-work?s=r https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/heuristics-that-almost...
    - jklm 5y ago
      Extraordinary is subjective though, no? If I were working at a dot-com company at the turn of century, it would have been extraordinary to me that there were people that didn't believe in the internet and still used white/yellow pages. Soon after, with the crash, I would have been very wrong. And a few years after that, I would have been very right again. As soon as any discussion becomes the 'other side' needing to prove something, it's likely already terminal.
searchableguy 5y ago
A simple overview of current technical trends in web3. 1. Identity Wallets are required to interact with chain. This means every user has one which is great because you can use wallets to sign message and authenticate people. People's transaction history are public so you can fetch that and do authenticate on a micro level. Say, you want to authenticate people who have a particular nft or spent money somewhere specific. 2. Tokenomics Encourage contribution and investing by providing financial motivation in the form of tokens through technical means. Take example of torrent protocol. A big problem with torrent is there are not enough seeders because there is no incentive to seed which means many useful torrents go down. 3. Public ledger This one doesn't need much explanation. Use cases like DNS or voting fits the area where every record needs to be publicly available and verified. 4. Financial & payments Prediction markets, Programmable finance, cross bridges, AMMs, lending, yield farming, etc. Some are cool, some are almost scam but there are some novel ideas tested in practice here. AMMs are one successful example. 5. Collectibles and scarcity This one is controversial. If you know the traditional gacha and pay to play industry is huge, then you understand the applications where trading and uniqueness is built in. The items can be made unique and be used outside the game which increases their value.
- leifg 5y ago
  How does any of that sound appealing to anyone? Especially for the first two points, how do you not see the absolute dystopian downsides?
  - searchableguy 5y ago
    > how do you not see the absolute dystopian downsides? Sorry, I'm not commenting on the good or bad. I wanted to provide a dense technical overview of what web3 is being used for since it's HN.
    - leifg 5y ago
      OK fair point. If you want a concise definition of web3 the website provides this as well: https://web3.lifeitself.us/concepts/web3 https://web3.lifeitself.us/concepts/web3
dmitriid 5y ago
Many people have alaready made sense of web3. The problem with web3? People involved in the space don't care. They are either gullible or know exactly what they are doing (scamming and claiming something that has nothing to do blockchains). One of the earliest articles that already made sense is 5 years old this year: - Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain, https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100 https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/ten-years-in-nobody-has-c... - And the follow up, Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future, https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustless-crypto-paradise-is-actually-a-medieval-hellhole-c1ca122efdec https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustle... We've yet to see a single "making sense" cryptobro engage with any of the points in the article. I'm not even talking about the more recent ones like Moxie Marlinspike's My first impressions of web3, https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html, or Molly White's collection of posts on blockchains and web3, https://blog.mollywhite.net/ https://blog.mollywhite.net/ There are more, of course. But they are all dismissed by crypto people because they don't care as long as crypto is useful for getting rich quick schemes. It's not here to save the world, or help the disadvantaged, or whatever other bullshit they sling your way.
- rvz 5y ago
  I don't regard what security researchers like saurik: [0] and cryptographers like Matthew Green [1] to be the typical 'cryptobros' these days since they seem to know what they are talking about when it comes to 'web3' and the technologies behind it. Heck I even initially hated crypto (and still hate some NFTs), but even I recognise that 'critics' like Stephen Diehl, Molly White, Nicholas Weaver, etc have all deliberately been ignoring the eco-friendly cryptocurrencies and technologies for years. As soon as one is mentioned on Twitter, there are no counter responses or refutations. They are immediately silent. It seems that even Stripe [2] has recognised that change as well as Moxie, who is also pushing MobileCoin [3], a private and encrypted cryptocurrency into Signal (which he rarely talks about) and pissed off one of his critics. [4] I think they are finding it very difficult to ignore it. For them, it is only going to get harder. [0] https://twitter.com/saurik https://twitter.com/saurik [1] https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green [2] https://stripe.com/gb/use-cases/crypto https://stripe.com/gb/use-cases/crypto [3] https://mobilecoin.com https://mobilecoin.com [4] https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/signal.html https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/signal.html
riffic 5y ago
A lot of web3 people don't seem to be open to much criticism of the space. As a whole this has kind of soured me towards anyone involved. The (shameless plug) /r/Web3skepticism subreddit[0] is an open place for critical web3 thought. Feel free to drop by and say hi. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Web3Skepticism/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Web3Skepticism/
- exdsq 5y ago
  I see the same the other way round though where people who are critical of web3 argue all the way down to semantics rather than admit a use case.
- jklm 5y ago
  Maybe a little direct, but you don’t see the irony in being soured towards anyone in the space because they’re not open to criticism?
  - smt88 5y ago
    Skepticism is not necessarily hostility or closed-mindedness. It is by definition an introduction of doubt (not denial, but doubt) in situations where it's lacking -- like religion.
    - jklm 5y ago
      My comment was a rearranging of the first paragraph of the GP. To be very clear, I feel souring on someone because of their beliefs is a form of closed-mindedness. I’m not sure how a productive discussion can happen when both sides pre-judge each other. Skepticism itself is a charged term. /r/ReligionSkepticism and /r/AtheismSkepticism already self-select for audiences - one segment is clearly defending, and another is attacking. A more neutral phrasing would be /r/ReligionChangeMyView. I initially wrote this without opening up the GP's link, but I encourage you to check it out to see if this tracks. To your point about religion, I’m atheist but have a few very religious friends. Them being religious didn’t sour me on them when we first met, though I’ll likely always disagree with them on that point.
- 5y ago
Uptrenda 5y ago
The conflicts are mostly coming from a few loud-mouthed individuals who feel the need to add their worthless opinions to everything (as is typical with most 'thought-leaders' and 'bloggers.') Protip: if you work in tech it doesn't mean you automatically know shit about [p2p networking, decentralized incentive structures, consensus algorithms, decentralized property registers, smart contracts, economics, cryptography, economic-security, 'dapps' / web3, valid use-cases thereof, and so on] Worse still: if you are only an 'expert' in one of the topics above it also doesn't mean you understand the totality of how it fits in to 'Defi' / 'ledger tech startups.' But I guess it's fun pretending to be an expert by only pointing only the historical bad things and posting retarded strawmans about dapps. Go ahead, with no understanding at all: you too can be a 'blockchain expert.'
- lifeplusplus 5y ago
  Doesn't matter how much you flip out Blockchain/crypto/web3 is inferior tech, does everything worse, costs more and have been not successful in last 10 years beside gambling, money laundering and scamming
rufuspollock 5y ago
Hi, I'm one of the folks behind this project and happy to answer any questions. If you want to know more about motivation and approach there is quite a bit of detail on https://web3.lifeitself.us/about https://web3.lifeitself.us/about

43 points by gregdoesit 5y ago

> Concretely, our approach starts with collecting and steel-manning the key claims made for web3 through conscious, critical and open dialog with a diverse set of experts. This is something that is desperately needed. More often than not I try to assess bold claims like "Blockchains will solve X". I try to follow the thought process of these claims and arrive at the solution: "Blockchains will most likely NOT solve X". The first comment to that is usually: "It was never supposed to solve X it is rather about Y which is loosely related to X". There is no way to have a proper debate if one side if flip flopping about claims.

okwubodu 5y ago
There's no debate to be had most of the time. Something about this particular topic makes people so prone to decide they're right first, then debate as if making the smallest concession means defeat. Any discussion on the basis of "X will solve Y" or "X will most likely NOT solve Y" predictably spirals on and on because the parties chose hypothetical claims that can't be falsified so it's easier to play with semantics and pretend the other doesn't get it yet.
- pavlov 5y ago
  The onus is on those making extraordinary claims to prove them, not on others to prove them wrong. Blockchain is cold fusion for tech bros.
  - okwubodu 5y ago
    Any claim about the future needs backing. That’s the only thing separating a thesis from a magic 8-ball. > Blockchain is cold fusion for tech bros. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-always-work?s=r https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/heuristics-that-almost...
  - jklm 5y ago
    Extraordinary is subjective though, no? If I were working at a dot-com company at the turn of century, it would have been extraordinary to me that there were people that didn't believe in the internet and still used white/yellow pages. Soon after, with the crash, I would have been very wrong. And a few years after that, I would have been very right again. As soon as any discussion becomes the 'other side' needing to prove something, it's likely already terminal.

searchableguy 5y ago

A simple overview of current technical trends in web3. 1. Identity Wallets are required to interact with chain. This means every user has one which is great because you can use wallets to sign message and authenticate people. People's transaction history are public so you can fetch that and do authenticate on a micro level. Say, you want to authenticate people who have a particular nft or spent money somewhere specific. 2. Tokenomics Encourage contribution and investing by providing financial motivation in the form of tokens through technical means. Take example of torrent protocol. A big problem with torrent is there are not enough seeders because there is no incentive to seed which means many useful torrents go down. 3. Public ledger This one doesn't need much explanation. Use cases like DNS or voting fits the area where every record needs to be publicly available and verified. 4. Financial & payments Prediction markets, Programmable finance, cross bridges, AMMs, lending, yield farming, etc. Some are cool, some are almost scam but there are some novel ideas tested in practice here. AMMs are one successful example. 5. Collectibles and scarcity This one is controversial. If you know the traditional gacha and pay to play industry is huge, then you understand the applications where trading and uniqueness is built in. The items can be made unique and be used outside the game which increases their value.

leifg 5y ago
How does any of that sound appealing to anyone? Especially for the first two points, how do you not see the absolute dystopian downsides?
- searchableguy 5y ago
  > how do you not see the absolute dystopian downsides? Sorry, I'm not commenting on the good or bad. I wanted to provide a dense technical overview of what web3 is being used for since it's HN.
  - leifg 5y ago
    OK fair point. If you want a concise definition of web3 the website provides this as well: https://web3.lifeitself.us/concepts/web3 https://web3.lifeitself.us/concepts/web3

dmitriid 5y ago

Many people have alaready made sense of web3. The problem with web3? People involved in the space don't care. They are either gullible or know exactly what they are doing (scamming and claiming something that has nothing to do blockchains). One of the earliest articles that already made sense is 5 years old this year: - Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain, https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100 https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/ten-years-in-nobody-has-c... - And the follow up, Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future, https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustless-crypto-paradise-is-actually-a-medieval-hellhole-c1ca122efdec https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustle... We've yet to see a single "making sense" cryptobro engage with any of the points in the article. I'm not even talking about the more recent ones like Moxie Marlinspike's My first impressions of web3, https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html, or Molly White's collection of posts on blockchains and web3, https://blog.mollywhite.net/ https://blog.mollywhite.net/ There are more, of course. But they are all dismissed by crypto people because they don't care as long as crypto is useful for getting rich quick schemes. It's not here to save the world, or help the disadvantaged, or whatever other bullshit they sling your way.

rvz 5y ago
I don't regard what security researchers like saurik: [0] and cryptographers like Matthew Green [1] to be the typical 'cryptobros' these days since they seem to know what they are talking about when it comes to 'web3' and the technologies behind it. Heck I even initially hated crypto (and still hate some NFTs), but even I recognise that 'critics' like Stephen Diehl, Molly White, Nicholas Weaver, etc have all deliberately been ignoring the eco-friendly cryptocurrencies and technologies for years. As soon as one is mentioned on Twitter, there are no counter responses or refutations. They are immediately silent. It seems that even Stripe [2] has recognised that change as well as Moxie, who is also pushing MobileCoin [3], a private and encrypted cryptocurrency into Signal (which he rarely talks about) and pissed off one of his critics. [4] I think they are finding it very difficult to ignore it. For them, it is only going to get harder. [0] https://twitter.com/saurik https://twitter.com/saurik [1] https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green [2] https://stripe.com/gb/use-cases/crypto https://stripe.com/gb/use-cases/crypto [3] https://mobilecoin.com https://mobilecoin.com [4] https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/signal.html https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/signal.html

riffic 5y ago

A lot of web3 people don't seem to be open to much criticism of the space. As a whole this has kind of soured me towards anyone involved. The (shameless plug) /r/Web3skepticism subreddit[0] is an open place for critical web3 thought. Feel free to drop by and say hi. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Web3Skepticism/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Web3Skepticism/

exdsq 5y ago
I see the same the other way round though where people who are critical of web3 argue all the way down to semantics rather than admit a use case.
jklm 5y ago
Maybe a little direct, but you don’t see the irony in being soured towards anyone in the space because they’re not open to criticism?
- smt88 5y ago
  Skepticism is not necessarily hostility or closed-mindedness. It is by definition an introduction of doubt (not denial, but doubt) in situations where it's lacking -- like religion.
  - jklm 5y ago
    My comment was a rearranging of the first paragraph of the GP. To be very clear, I feel souring on someone because of their beliefs is a form of closed-mindedness. I’m not sure how a productive discussion can happen when both sides pre-judge each other. Skepticism itself is a charged term. /r/ReligionSkepticism and /r/AtheismSkepticism already self-select for audiences - one segment is clearly defending, and another is attacking. A more neutral phrasing would be /r/ReligionChangeMyView. I initially wrote this without opening up the GP's link, but I encourage you to check it out to see if this tracks. To your point about religion, I’m atheist but have a few very religious friends. Them being religious didn’t sour me on them when we first met, though I’ll likely always disagree with them on that point.
5y ago

Uptrenda 5y ago

The conflicts are mostly coming from a few loud-mouthed individuals who feel the need to add their worthless opinions to everything (as is typical with most 'thought-leaders' and 'bloggers.') Protip: if you work in tech it doesn't mean you automatically know shit about [p2p networking, decentralized incentive structures, consensus algorithms, decentralized property registers, smart contracts, economics, cryptography, economic-security, 'dapps' / web3, valid use-cases thereof, and so on] Worse still: if you are only an 'expert' in one of the topics above it also doesn't mean you understand the totality of how it fits in to 'Defi' / 'ledger tech startups.' But I guess it's fun pretending to be an expert by only pointing only the historical bad things and posting retarded strawmans about dapps. Go ahead, with no understanding at all: you too can be a 'blockchain expert.'

lifeplusplus 5y ago
Doesn't matter how much you flip out Blockchain/crypto/web3 is inferior tech, does everything worse, costs more and have been not successful in last 10 years beside gambling, money laundering and scamming

rufuspollock 5y ago

Hi, I'm one of the folks behind this project and happy to answer any questions. If you want to know more about motivation and approach there is quite a bit of detail on https://web3.lifeitself.us/about https://web3.lifeitself.us/about