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> A lot of Web3 platforms are in fact centralized. Your wallet (MetaMask), marketplaces (OpenSea), APIs (Alchemy) are all central platforms. Sure, they use a di

> A lot of Web3 platforms are in fact centralized. Your wallet (MetaMask), marketplaces (OpenSea), APIs (Alchemy) are all central platforms. Sure, they use a distributed database (blockchain), but before that it’s still a Go app on AWS, meaning its centralized. > Your wallet (MetaMask) Run your own node. This is lazy reporting to reach the end point about fawning over FreeBSD (its in the article, literally an article about having fun staying poor), when you can just as easily inspire and teach people how to use custom RPCs. There is an opportunity to inspire people with the tools to know what to look for, even if it's absurd to suggest people actually compile and run a node themselves. Tell them why the default behavior is a convenience and if they are interested in the decentralized parts then here is what to do. > marketplaces (OpenSea) Yep. It is a GUI ontop of their smart contracts (public access backend code). You don't have to use their GUI. You should inspect their smart contracts for centralized control, or at least look to see if anyone else has. There is an opportunity to inspire people with the tools to know what to look for, even if its absurd to suggest people actually do all the analysis themselves. > APIs (Alchemy) are all central platforms a fine example. don't use Alchemy or Infura as your RPC endpoints? Why not just make blog posts about that? This kind of energy could just as easily be steered into "how to improve the concept of Web3" which lots of people are actually doing. It could just as easily be "This isn't decentralized! Let me fix that!"

djur 5y ago
When a product has a lot of negative externalities, and you also notice that it doesn't deliver on the promise that's meant to counterbalance those externalities, it's entirely reasonable and appropriate to conclude that the project should be rejected, rather than joining in to try to fix it. I don't know why anyone would want to build a "Web3" with people who use "have fun staying poor" as a catchphrase, or whose understanding of existing technology allows them to refer to "BSD linux". I don't want to empower or enrich those people. We already have enough of them.
- vmception 5y ago
  *FreeBSD, BSD Desktop is what was used in the article Many people join in to fix it, that's exactly what Alchemy, Infura, OpenSea are and were, many people that would be interested are first exposed to offputting characters that don't know anything but who believe every sales pitch. I mostly think the lack of standardized education on this is what creates these outcomes of the latter population. Since some of them would be useful to have in that space.
wrl 5y ago
> Run your own node. Which platforms are doing that? Any you can name offhand? > You don't have to use their GUI. Who's doing that? > don't use Alchemy or Infura as your RPC endpoints? Who's doing that? > It could just as easily be "This isn't decentralized! Let me fix that!" Write the post, then. I'd read it.
- cdiddy2 5y ago
  Things like otterscan that are a locally run instance of an etherscan like site are a step in the right direction, but there is still a lot to do in this regard for sure. https://github.com/wmitsuda/otterscan https://github.com/wmitsuda/otterscan
  - vmception 5y ago
    Woah! This is great! I’m glad I held space for this thread! I’ll absolutely be using this tool with Erigon
taywrobel 5y ago
You’re falling into the same trap as tech enthusiasts in web1. Sure, you could scan blockchains and extract NFT data yourself, and sure you could run your own node for every blockchain that interests you (paying god only know how much for storage and bandwidth). Just like how in web1 you could run your own email server to handle email and have your own blog server to publish info and your own git server to host your code and your own domain name to put it all under… But it turns out that exceptionally few users actually care about putting in the time/effort/money to do that. Hence the rise in web2 and platforms. The people who run their own infra now are all doing it more as a hobby than anything else. Like it or not, recentralization is the future of web3 for the average consumer. You can be a crypto decentralization purist, but I hope you realize that you’ll be the minority in that, if crypto/web3 actually is to gain widespread adoption. For the average consumer, convenience is the real feature, and true decentralization is inconvenient.
- vmception 5y ago
  But I don't care about that the impractical enthusiast stuff, I care about the bloggers that make these flippant dismissals instead of talking about the impractical things that are possible. I simultaneously observe that the impractical things can be made more practical. For example, Metamask with a non-default RPC node is great compared to using crypto before Metamask. Phantom wallet on Solana is even further improved than Metamask in what a browser-extension wallet can do! Just keep pushing in that direction and wean people off of the default nodes! Node software mostly sucks! There is great room for improvement there and it will keep happening. For example, for Ethereum Mainnet, a Go-Ethereum (Geth) archive node takes like 10 Terabytes and most people just accepted that absurdity, while someone else said "hm that data structure is not optimal" and made Erigon which can do the same in 1/3rd the time and around 1.8 Terabytes. Node software still sucks! It can be improved! The people that like FreeBSD would like tinkering with that kind of stuff too (the author admits that, but chooses to adopt a different perspective unrelated to how they would actually be contributing to the space)
  - smackeyacky 5y ago
    This sort of argument reminds me of the old doctrinaire Marxists, who insisted communism could work if only it could be done without authoritarianism. Turns out Web3, in theory, sounds fine, but the implementations and uses of it all fall back to centralised networks and nefarious purposes. I think it's time to recognise Web3 for what it is: a massive con fronted by people who sell a fantasy of open, decentralised computing designed to free everybody from the excesses of government, but are actually implementing something far worse than the system it's supposed to replace.
mbesto 5y ago
> Yep. It is a GUI ontop of their smart contracts (public access backend code). You don't have to use their GUI. So what happens if someone just copies the JPG and puts on their web host? Isn't that essentially what OpenSea is...a hosted service for the JPG.
- vmception 5y ago
  You'd have to be conflating about half a dozen different concepts to write that sentence. I can't help you. If you want to learn, you can.
  - mbesto 5y ago
    So then explain it instead of the personal attack. You guys seem fun.
    - vmception 5y ago
      > So what happens if someone just copies the JPG and puts on their web host? Isn't that essentially what OpenSea is...a hosted service for the JPG. The question then is whose problem is that? “What happens” to who? There are about 6 or 7 distinct parties in the NFT market, so which person are you thinking about? Who would care and why? What does the rehoster get out of it? That’s a good start
      - mbesto 5y ago
        Random example I found on reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/MichaelReeves/comments/js1ib8/someone_stole_my_art/ https://old.reddit.com/r/MichaelReeves/comments/js1ib8/someo... Now let's say instead of Reddit he posted it on OpenSea. The person that owns it OpenSea then lists the image on Redbubble for financial gain. Who then owns it? Clearly the person who owns it on OpenSea? How do we know the person that posted it on Redbubble isn't the true owner and bblaineC isn't the scammer?
        vmception 5y ago
TheCowboy 5y ago
> Run your own node. This is lazy reporting It isn't practical for the majority of people to run their own node. Even Vitalik Buterin acknowledges[1] this isn't realistic for the current state of things. Last year I was interested in running a sidechain node and I was shocked when I looked at minimum system requirements. I can't just run it in the background and I have a 5600X Ryzen. Plus my NVMe drive needed to be much bigger. It also can eat through SSDs, and HDDs are considered too slow. Worse to me: It looks like another time consuming hobby. I spent a lot of time even just getting up to speed on the current ecosystem, the jargon, best practices, etc. It often seems like crypto is trying to take something less complicated and make it complicated. It just seems like people are simply pushing a technology that isn't ready yet for what people in the scene think is currently possible. My interest for running a node was for prediction market trading to attempt to counter frontrunning aka sandwich attacks. Another ridiculous problem that many people in the scene act like isn't a big deal. 1. https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/05/23/scaling.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/05/23/scaling.html
- xiphias2 5y ago
  Regarding Ethereum you’re right, it’s centralized. With Bitcoin I run my node and check the incoming transactions with it whenever I make a big money transfer (for outgoing transactions a full node is not really needed, as I don’t care if the network doesn’t accept it as long as my counterparty does). Running a Bitcoin node is practical (less than a day of running in the background on the first run) if the amount of money is significant.
  - TheCowboy 5y ago
    If we limit ourselves to Bitcoin then we're at a sliver of the web3 ecosystem everyone is casting their hopes upon. And Bitcoin in its current state still seems more like a blockchain working prototype and isn't 'feature-ful' enough to replace centralized finance. But proof-of-work's energy consumption is what kills Bitcoin for me. For what it's worth, I consider myself crypto agnostic. If a tech delivers something better then great.
    - 5y ago
shp0ngle 5y ago
Lol have you tried running own Ethereum node?
uncomputation 5y ago
> literally an article about having fun staying poor And here it is. When the technical merits of “web3” fail to illicit genuine change (networks effects are powerful and matter [0]), its advocates fall back on the “get in or stay out” mentality, which is frankly a red flag for a supposedly technical project. > could just as easily be steered into "how to improve the concept of Web3" If web3 cannot sustain itself due to its technical merits and if there clearly are centralized effects at work here, then every person brought in with the threat that they better help out or “stay poor” (a truly disgusting phrase) is just another brick in the pyramid, another dollar to VCs. Just admit you are trying to coerce free labor to prop up your own bags. Many are not impressed by the so called merits of web3 for good reason. > Run your own node Literally, in Satoshi’s original white paper in 2008, he pointed out that running a node is prohibitive and could result in centralization over time, which is exactly why he coined SPV (simple payment verification) (aka light clients). > [OpenSea] is a GUI ontop of their smart contracts (public access backend code) Blatantly false. OpenSea can and has taken down various tokens minted on their platform for reasons ranging from copyright infringement to sanctions compliance (Iran is the only country I am familiar with at the time). You can mint an NFT without OpenSea but to say that you can just use OpenSea’s “backend code” without their consent is false. > There is an opportunity to inspire people with the tools to… This crypto grift talk is frustrating, dishonest, and hand-wave-y coming from the cypherpunks to what we have now. Cryptocurrency and the space around it was never about “inspiration,” but about liberation and action. We don’t need to be inspired, we need to be empowered. [^0]: Coinbase complies with sanctions. OpenSea removes artwork. MetaMask uses Infura as an RPC so any NFT removed on OpenSea will not show up in MetaMask wallets (using default RPC). Bridge hacks result in many accounts losing their money unless saved by an injection of VC funding, completely defeating the “be your own bank” mentality. Centralized platforms extreme usage relative to the rest of the network (Uniswap, OpenSea, MetaMask) result in high gas prices for everyone else. Billionaires like Justin Sun Tron can take out massive loans to influence distributed governance like he did for the Compound vote on collateral rates.
- vmception 5y ago
  > And here it is. When the technical merits of “web3” fail to illicit genuine change (networks effects are powerful and matter [0]), its advocates fall back on the “get in or stay out” mentality, which is frankly a red flag for a supposedly technical project. Interesting thing to focus on over and over, OPs article had the non sequiturs about having fun not getting rich. The irony being that it’s a meme in crypto and they chose to be a caricature of that meme, personified. I feel like you didn't read the article. What you responded to is for people that read the article. Opensea is 2 products. One is a storefront for technophobes to try and configure their art on the opensea platform before turning it into an NFT. The other is an NFT reader for NFTs made by people that know what theyre doing. Only the latter is relevant because thats the whole NFT economy, but the former is the thing more people try their hand at so I can see how that is distracting to conversation. The latter NFTs cannot be taken down by OpenSea they can be hidden from their GUI. They would not be hidden by your GUI.
grensley 5y ago
With 16% of Americans saying they have invested in cryptocurrency in some form, coupled with the classic adoption graph (https://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/99A2/curve.JPG https://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/99A2/curve.JPG), crypto is begging for ways to burst into the mainstream early majority, and the way to do that is with the familiar. They want Coinbase, and OpenSea, and low friction experiences.
yahn00 5y ago
> Run your own node Until ISPs block you like they did with DNS. That’s what really should change; ISPs should be required to let anyone run services, bill for consumption. But then the internet would be truly decentralized. Most people just want messaging, calendar, and maps anyway. The rest of these apps serve first world tech bros who didn’t want a real job.
- anthk 5y ago
  >That’s what really should change; ISPs should be required to let anyone run services, bill for consumption. Check Yggdrasil.
5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
> suggest people actually compile and run a node themselves yeah just buy an 86TB drive every year and run the node 24/7 to avoid penalties >You should inspect their smart contracts how many people are actually able to do this I'm not against crypto and i'm not sure yet about web3 but if it requires buying some kind of token to participate then i am skeptical.
- vmception 5y ago
  > yeah just buy an 86TB drive every year and run the node 24/7 to avoid penalties This is healthy skepticism, these are things the crypto community would write in jest, on twitter. For the most part this is a massive exaggeration lol. > how many people are actually able to do this Not many, but a rapidly growing number of people are. Its more of a consumer protection problem and people are getting better at it. > I'm not against crypto and i'm not sure yet about web3 but if it requires buying some kind of token to participate then i am skeptical. There are certainly node based projects like that. Some are interesting, some should be avoided, some use tokens as a prerequisite for access, some don't, some are articulately explained and have free testnets you can simulate things on. Its up to the individual or team that created the project.
- DennisP 5y ago
  I don't know where you got 86TB but the current storage required for an Ethereum full node is about 600GB. https://etherscan.io/chartsync/chaindefault https://etherscan.io/chartsync/chaindefault There's a difference between a full node and an archive node. A full node has all the data required to verify the chain from genesis up to the current state. An archive node also has all the state of all previous blocks. An archive node can be derived from a full node, and the only purpose of an archive node is to run historical queries. You can run a full node without staking ETH, in which case there are no penalties for going offline. (And if you are staking, you can be offline up to a third of the time and still be profitable.) There are efforts underway to shrink storage requirements, including very secure light clients, state expiration, and statelessness. But right now that stuff is mostly on the back burner while they focus on the proof-of-stake migration.
- thebean11 5y ago
usrbinbash 5y ago
> It could just as easily be "This isn't decentralized! Let me fix that!" First I would like to be convinced that centralization is actually a problem. Most things in our daily lives are centralized: Power Generation and Distribution, Water Distribution, the Logistics which put food in our stores, Infrastructure setup and maintenance, to name just a few. Yes, even our financial systems work fine. I get my paycheck on my account, I can pay effortless with my credit card, security, maintenance, services, customer service is taken care of. Yes, there are shitty centralized systems, and there are opressive authorities that abuse centralization. The solution to that however, is not "get rid of centralized systems".
- socksset 5y ago
  In the abstract, centralization bad, decentralization good. There is no deeper thought going on here than the above. These are barely thought out, quasi religious beliefs as moral justifications for get rich quick schemes and frauds. The same conversation about nothing, ad nauseam.
- 0ldskool 5y ago
  that will probably never happen. There is always an ongoing fight between decentralization (enduser, humanistic approach) and centralization (efficient, dictorship, monopolization approach). Centralization will almost always be more efficient but has "security" flaws in the form of bad faith actors while also acting as the central authority. Basically see any form of dictatorship over multiple generations. Ofcourse they can accomplish good, working systems. They can even be efficient as long as all orders are done exactly without fighting back. decentralization is taking back some of the control back from central authorities. The problem is people often do not want to be 100% responsible for their own well being. This in turn leads to re-centralization at some point. We have governments because people often do not believe they can easily live together with complete trust. We have laws in order to make it easier for humans to live together. Essentially offloading a cognitive function of threat detection by relying on a trusted entity (government) to create a safe environment. In a dictatorship its possible for that trusted entity to transform into a bad faith actor and no longer work towards its original purpose. We introduce democracy/republicanism (a form of decentralization) in order to protect against this flaw. This form of government itself often re-centralizes in some form or another (government parties). What I'm trying to get at is that while centralization is efficient and many things head to centralization we should still try to make the backbone decentralized whenever possible. It is a form protection against a central authority transitioning to a bad faith actor. Almost all central authorities will eventually transition to bad faith (from the end users perspective). With as much of the backbone being decentralized as possible we can at least more easily finger point and hold those central authorities responsible for their actions.
Dagonfly 5y ago
I could also not do any of that and trust an authority to provide that service for me. Society encourages specialization and most people will not start to self-host for some idealistic reasons that they might not even share. Unless self-hosting is more convenient and has better UX the majority will not adopt it. Even if you as an individual want decentralization, you will still be affected by this creeping centralization. Tokens on platforms (like OpenSea) will have more value and liquidity than trying to trade directly. If your NFT gets blacklisted on OpenSea it will lose value. Even if you never intend to use OpenSea, if the majority uses it to verify "authenticity" it will become a central authority. Just look at all the phished NFTs. The owners (not anymore) immediately rush to OpenSea trying to get the "stolen" NTF blacklisted.
topranks 5y ago
“Have fun staying poor” It’s so obnoxious to assert that poverty is a choice, or falsely claim that anyone can get rich by investing in crypto.
- user-the-name 5y ago
- vmception 5y ago
  It’s from the article you should read it and take it up with the author > Sure, I would have been much richer if I chose Bitcoin instead of FreeBSD. But I probably would have become a worse person, not having had to work hard since I’d have 10 million dollars right now
AlchemistCamp 5y ago
I'm not too experienced with this sector, but LooksRare is already a decentralized replacement for OpenSea. It has lower fees, too. Some of my friends got airdrops or invested directly in LooksRare and have talked about it quite a bit.
beaugunderson 5y ago
> Yep. It is a GUI ontop of their smart contracts (public access backend code). You don't have to use their GUI. You should inspect their smart contracts for centralized control, or at least look to see if anyone else has. There is an opportunity to inspire people with the tools to know what to look for, even if its absurd to suggest people actually do all the analysis themselves. On Polygon OpenSea took an open-access marketplace (0x V3) and gave only themselves the permission to interact with the mutable functions (e.g. filling orders). The very definition of centralized.

djur 5y ago

When a product has a lot of negative externalities, and you also notice that it doesn't deliver on the promise that's meant to counterbalance those externalities, it's entirely reasonable and appropriate to conclude that the project should be rejected, rather than joining in to try to fix it. I don't know why anyone would want to build a "Web3" with people who use "have fun staying poor" as a catchphrase, or whose understanding of existing technology allows them to refer to "BSD linux". I don't want to empower or enrich those people. We already have enough of them.

vmception 5y ago
*FreeBSD, BSD Desktop is what was used in the article Many people join in to fix it, that's exactly what Alchemy, Infura, OpenSea are and were, many people that would be interested are first exposed to offputting characters that don't know anything but who believe every sales pitch. I mostly think the lack of standardized education on this is what creates these outcomes of the latter population. Since some of them would be useful to have in that space.

wrl 5y ago

> Run your own node. Which platforms are doing that? Any you can name offhand? > You don't have to use their GUI. Who's doing that? > don't use Alchemy or Infura as your RPC endpoints? Who's doing that? > It could just as easily be "This isn't decentralized! Let me fix that!" Write the post, then. I'd read it.

cdiddy2 5y ago
Things like otterscan that are a locally run instance of an etherscan like site are a step in the right direction, but there is still a lot to do in this regard for sure. https://github.com/wmitsuda/otterscan https://github.com/wmitsuda/otterscan
- vmception 5y ago
  Woah! This is great! I’m glad I held space for this thread! I’ll absolutely be using this tool with Erigon

taywrobel 5y ago

You’re falling into the same trap as tech enthusiasts in web1. Sure, you could scan blockchains and extract NFT data yourself, and sure you could run your own node for every blockchain that interests you (paying god only know how much for storage and bandwidth). Just like how in web1 you could run your own email server to handle email and have your own blog server to publish info and your own git server to host your code and your own domain name to put it all under… But it turns out that exceptionally few users actually care about putting in the time/effort/money to do that. Hence the rise in web2 and platforms. The people who run their own infra now are all doing it more as a hobby than anything else. Like it or not, recentralization is the future of web3 for the average consumer. You can be a crypto decentralization purist, but I hope you realize that you’ll be the minority in that, if crypto/web3 actually is to gain widespread adoption. For the average consumer, convenience is the real feature, and true decentralization is inconvenient.

vmception 5y ago
But I don't care about that the impractical enthusiast stuff, I care about the bloggers that make these flippant dismissals instead of talking about the impractical things that are possible. I simultaneously observe that the impractical things can be made more practical. For example, Metamask with a non-default RPC node is great compared to using crypto before Metamask. Phantom wallet on Solana is even further improved than Metamask in what a browser-extension wallet can do! Just keep pushing in that direction and wean people off of the default nodes! Node software mostly sucks! There is great room for improvement there and it will keep happening. For example, for Ethereum Mainnet, a Go-Ethereum (Geth) archive node takes like 10 Terabytes and most people just accepted that absurdity, while someone else said "hm that data structure is not optimal" and made Erigon which can do the same in 1/3rd the time and around 1.8 Terabytes. Node software still sucks! It can be improved! The people that like FreeBSD would like tinkering with that kind of stuff too (the author admits that, but chooses to adopt a different perspective unrelated to how they would actually be contributing to the space)
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  This sort of argument reminds me of the old doctrinaire Marxists, who insisted communism could work if only it could be done without authoritarianism. Turns out Web3, in theory, sounds fine, but the implementations and uses of it all fall back to centralised networks and nefarious purposes. I think it's time to recognise Web3 for what it is: a massive con fronted by people who sell a fantasy of open, decentralised computing designed to free everybody from the excesses of government, but are actually implementing something far worse than the system it's supposed to replace.

mbesto 5y ago

> Yep. It is a GUI ontop of their smart contracts (public access backend code). You don't have to use their GUI. So what happens if someone just copies the JPG and puts on their web host? Isn't that essentially what OpenSea is...a hosted service for the JPG.

vmception 5y ago
You'd have to be conflating about half a dozen different concepts to write that sentence. I can't help you. If you want to learn, you can.
- mbesto 5y ago
  So then explain it instead of the personal attack. You guys seem fun.
  - vmception 5y ago
    > So what happens if someone just copies the JPG and puts on their web host? Isn't that essentially what OpenSea is...a hosted service for the JPG. The question then is whose problem is that? “What happens” to who? There are about 6 or 7 distinct parties in the NFT market, so which person are you thinking about? Who would care and why? What does the rehoster get out of it? That’s a good start
    - mbesto 5y ago
      Random example I found on reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/MichaelReeves/comments/js1ib8/someone_stole_my_art/ https://old.reddit.com/r/MichaelReeves/comments/js1ib8/someo... Now let's say instead of Reddit he posted it on OpenSea. The person that owns it OpenSea then lists the image on Redbubble for financial gain. Who then owns it? Clearly the person who owns it on OpenSea? How do we know the person that posted it on Redbubble isn't the true owner and bblaineC isn't the scammer?
      - vmception 5y ago

TheCowboy 5y ago

> Run your own node. This is lazy reporting It isn't practical for the majority of people to run their own node. Even Vitalik Buterin acknowledges[1] this isn't realistic for the current state of things. Last year I was interested in running a sidechain node and I was shocked when I looked at minimum system requirements. I can't just run it in the background and I have a 5600X Ryzen. Plus my NVMe drive needed to be much bigger. It also can eat through SSDs, and HDDs are considered too slow. Worse to me: It looks like another time consuming hobby. I spent a lot of time even just getting up to speed on the current ecosystem, the jargon, best practices, etc. It often seems like crypto is trying to take something less complicated and make it complicated. It just seems like people are simply pushing a technology that isn't ready yet for what people in the scene think is currently possible. My interest for running a node was for prediction market trading to attempt to counter frontrunning aka sandwich attacks. Another ridiculous problem that many people in the scene act like isn't a big deal. 1. https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/05/23/scaling.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/05/23/scaling.html

xiphias2 5y ago
Regarding Ethereum you’re right, it’s centralized. With Bitcoin I run my node and check the incoming transactions with it whenever I make a big money transfer (for outgoing transactions a full node is not really needed, as I don’t care if the network doesn’t accept it as long as my counterparty does). Running a Bitcoin node is practical (less than a day of running in the background on the first run) if the amount of money is significant.
- TheCowboy 5y ago
  If we limit ourselves to Bitcoin then we're at a sliver of the web3 ecosystem everyone is casting their hopes upon. And Bitcoin in its current state still seems more like a blockchain working prototype and isn't 'feature-ful' enough to replace centralized finance. But proof-of-work's energy consumption is what kills Bitcoin for me. For what it's worth, I consider myself crypto agnostic. If a tech delivers something better then great.
  - 5y ago

shp0ngle 5y ago

Lol have you tried running own Ethereum node?

uncomputation 5y ago

> literally an article about having fun staying poor And here it is. When the technical merits of “web3” fail to illicit genuine change (networks effects are powerful and matter [0]), its advocates fall back on the “get in or stay out” mentality, which is frankly a red flag for a supposedly technical project. > could just as easily be steered into "how to improve the concept of Web3" If web3 cannot sustain itself due to its technical merits and if there clearly are centralized effects at work here, then every person brought in with the threat that they better help out or “stay poor” (a truly disgusting phrase) is just another brick in the pyramid, another dollar to VCs. Just admit you are trying to coerce free labor to prop up your own bags. Many are not impressed by the so called merits of web3 for good reason. > Run your own node Literally, in Satoshi’s original white paper in 2008, he pointed out that running a node is prohibitive and could result in centralization over time, which is exactly why he coined SPV (simple payment verification) (aka light clients). > [OpenSea] is a GUI ontop of their smart contracts (public access backend code) Blatantly false. OpenSea can and has taken down various tokens minted on their platform for reasons ranging from copyright infringement to sanctions compliance (Iran is the only country I am familiar with at the time). You can mint an NFT without OpenSea but to say that you can just use OpenSea’s “backend code” without their consent is false. > There is an opportunity to inspire people with the tools to… This crypto grift talk is frustrating, dishonest, and hand-wave-y coming from the cypherpunks to what we have now. Cryptocurrency and the space around it was never about “inspiration,” but about liberation and action. We don’t need to be inspired, we need to be empowered. [^0]: Coinbase complies with sanctions. OpenSea removes artwork. MetaMask uses Infura as an RPC so any NFT removed on OpenSea will not show up in MetaMask wallets (using default RPC). Bridge hacks result in many accounts losing their money unless saved by an injection of VC funding, completely defeating the “be your own bank” mentality. Centralized platforms extreme usage relative to the rest of the network (Uniswap, OpenSea, MetaMask) result in high gas prices for everyone else. Billionaires like Justin Sun Tron can take out massive loans to influence distributed governance like he did for the Compound vote on collateral rates.

vmception 5y ago
> And here it is. When the technical merits of “web3” fail to illicit genuine change (networks effects are powerful and matter [0]), its advocates fall back on the “get in or stay out” mentality, which is frankly a red flag for a supposedly technical project. Interesting thing to focus on over and over, OPs article had the non sequiturs about having fun not getting rich. The irony being that it’s a meme in crypto and they chose to be a caricature of that meme, personified. I feel like you didn't read the article. What you responded to is for people that read the article. Opensea is 2 products. One is a storefront for technophobes to try and configure their art on the opensea platform before turning it into an NFT. The other is an NFT reader for NFTs made by people that know what theyre doing. Only the latter is relevant because thats the whole NFT economy, but the former is the thing more people try their hand at so I can see how that is distracting to conversation. The latter NFTs cannot be taken down by OpenSea they can be hidden from their GUI. They would not be hidden by your GUI.

grensley 5y ago

With 16% of Americans saying they have invested in cryptocurrency in some form, coupled with the classic adoption graph (https://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/99A2/curve.JPG https://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/99A2/curve.JPG), crypto is begging for ways to burst into the mainstream early majority, and the way to do that is with the familiar. They want Coinbase, and OpenSea, and low friction experiences.

yahn00 5y ago

> Run your own node Until ISPs block you like they did with DNS. That’s what really should change; ISPs should be required to let anyone run services, bill for consumption. But then the internet would be truly decentralized. Most people just want messaging, calendar, and maps anyway. The rest of these apps serve first world tech bros who didn’t want a real job.

anthk 5y ago
>That’s what really should change; ISPs should be required to let anyone run services, bill for consumption. Check Yggdrasil.

5350-uiop-1130 5y ago

> suggest people actually compile and run a node themselves yeah just buy an 86TB drive every year and run the node 24/7 to avoid penalties >You should inspect their smart contracts how many people are actually able to do this I'm not against crypto and i'm not sure yet about web3 but if it requires buying some kind of token to participate then i am skeptical.

vmception 5y ago
> yeah just buy an 86TB drive every year and run the node 24/7 to avoid penalties This is healthy skepticism, these are things the crypto community would write in jest, on twitter. For the most part this is a massive exaggeration lol. > how many people are actually able to do this Not many, but a rapidly growing number of people are. Its more of a consumer protection problem and people are getting better at it. > I'm not against crypto and i'm not sure yet about web3 but if it requires buying some kind of token to participate then i am skeptical. There are certainly node based projects like that. Some are interesting, some should be avoided, some use tokens as a prerequisite for access, some don't, some are articulately explained and have free testnets you can simulate things on. Its up to the individual or team that created the project.
DennisP 5y ago
I don't know where you got 86TB but the current storage required for an Ethereum full node is about 600GB. https://etherscan.io/chartsync/chaindefault https://etherscan.io/chartsync/chaindefault There's a difference between a full node and an archive node. A full node has all the data required to verify the chain from genesis up to the current state. An archive node also has all the state of all previous blocks. An archive node can be derived from a full node, and the only purpose of an archive node is to run historical queries. You can run a full node without staking ETH, in which case there are no penalties for going offline. (And if you are staking, you can be offline up to a third of the time and still be profitable.) There are efforts underway to shrink storage requirements, including very secure light clients, state expiration, and statelessness. But right now that stuff is mostly on the back burner while they focus on the proof-of-stake migration.
thebean11 5y ago

usrbinbash 5y ago

> It could just as easily be "This isn't decentralized! Let me fix that!" First I would like to be convinced that centralization is actually a problem. Most things in our daily lives are centralized: Power Generation and Distribution, Water Distribution, the Logistics which put food in our stores, Infrastructure setup and maintenance, to name just a few. Yes, even our financial systems work fine. I get my paycheck on my account, I can pay effortless with my credit card, security, maintenance, services, customer service is taken care of. Yes, there are shitty centralized systems, and there are opressive authorities that abuse centralization. The solution to that however, is not "get rid of centralized systems".

socksset 5y ago
In the abstract, centralization bad, decentralization good. There is no deeper thought going on here than the above. These are barely thought out, quasi religious beliefs as moral justifications for get rich quick schemes and frauds. The same conversation about nothing, ad nauseam.
0ldskool 5y ago
that will probably never happen. There is always an ongoing fight between decentralization (enduser, humanistic approach) and centralization (efficient, dictorship, monopolization approach). Centralization will almost always be more efficient but has "security" flaws in the form of bad faith actors while also acting as the central authority. Basically see any form of dictatorship over multiple generations. Ofcourse they can accomplish good, working systems. They can even be efficient as long as all orders are done exactly without fighting back. decentralization is taking back some of the control back from central authorities. The problem is people often do not want to be 100% responsible for their own well being. This in turn leads to re-centralization at some point. We have governments because people often do not believe they can easily live together with complete trust. We have laws in order to make it easier for humans to live together. Essentially offloading a cognitive function of threat detection by relying on a trusted entity (government) to create a safe environment. In a dictatorship its possible for that trusted entity to transform into a bad faith actor and no longer work towards its original purpose. We introduce democracy/republicanism (a form of decentralization) in order to protect against this flaw. This form of government itself often re-centralizes in some form or another (government parties). What I'm trying to get at is that while centralization is efficient and many things head to centralization we should still try to make the backbone decentralized whenever possible. It is a form protection against a central authority transitioning to a bad faith actor. Almost all central authorities will eventually transition to bad faith (from the end users perspective). With as much of the backbone being decentralized as possible we can at least more easily finger point and hold those central authorities responsible for their actions.

Dagonfly 5y ago

I could also not do any of that and trust an authority to provide that service for me. Society encourages specialization and most people will not start to self-host for some idealistic reasons that they might not even share. Unless self-hosting is more convenient and has better UX the majority will not adopt it. Even if you as an individual want decentralization, you will still be affected by this creeping centralization. Tokens on platforms (like OpenSea) will have more value and liquidity than trying to trade directly. If your NFT gets blacklisted on OpenSea it will lose value. Even if you never intend to use OpenSea, if the majority uses it to verify "authenticity" it will become a central authority. Just look at all the phished NFTs. The owners (not anymore) immediately rush to OpenSea trying to get the "stolen" NTF blacklisted.

topranks 5y ago

“Have fun staying poor” It’s so obnoxious to assert that poverty is a choice, or falsely claim that anyone can get rich by investing in crypto.

user-the-name 5y ago
vmception 5y ago
It’s from the article you should read it and take it up with the author > Sure, I would have been much richer if I chose Bitcoin instead of FreeBSD. But I probably would have become a worse person, not having had to work hard since I’d have 10 million dollars right now

AlchemistCamp 5y ago

I'm not too experienced with this sector, but LooksRare is already a decentralized replacement for OpenSea. It has lower fees, too. Some of my friends got airdrops or invested directly in LooksRare and have talked about it quite a bit.

beaugunderson 5y ago

> Yep. It is a GUI ontop of their smart contracts (public access backend code). You don't have to use their GUI. You should inspect their smart contracts for centralized control, or at least look to see if anyone else has. There is an opportunity to inspire people with the tools to know what to look for, even if its absurd to suggest people actually do all the analysis themselves. On Polygon OpenSea took an open-access marketplace (0x V3) and gave only themselves the permission to interact with the mutable functions (e.g. filling orders). The very definition of centralized.