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Some platforms like Ethereum are completely decentralized. You forfeit some of this decentralization bit by bit when using MetaMask, OpenSea or Alchemy, but the

by ipnon 5y ago

Some platforms like Ethereum are completely decentralized. You forfeit some of this decentralization bit by bit when using MetaMask, OpenSea or Alchemy, but the platform itself is still decentralized. The Web is completely decentralized, by you forfeit some of this decentralization bit by bit when using Paypal, Facebook, or AWS. The trend in technology has always been to trade control for convenience. This doesn't stop you from writing your own browser and pushing packets out of your own HTTP server. The (now infamous) Andre Cronje had a whimsical tweet reminiscing on his days as a lawyer: "The contracts aren't for when everything is going right. They're for when everything is going wrong." Some network wide catastrophe is seemingly inevitable for any sufficiently large system. When these occur it will be the decentralized blockchains like Ethereum with failsafes in place to survive, and it's the centralized blockchains like Binance that will implode.

thr0wawayf00 5y ago
> When these occur it will be the decentralized blockchains like Ethereum with failsafes in place to survive, and it's the centralized blockchains like Binance that will implode. Didn't Ethereum recently disclose a major settlement vulnerability discovered by a researcher that could've forced a hard fork had this person chosen to exploit it? He got a multi-million dollar bounty for it I believe. This kind of certain optimism that nothing will go wrong with a piece of software reminds me of all the people back in 2007 that said the housing market could never collapse because it never had before. Folks buy into the idea so much that they forget at the end of the day, it's computers running code and shit happens all the time. EDIT: I believe this was the story I was referring to, he received $2M[0]. There have been multiple major vulnerabilities discovered in the last couple of years. [0] https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/22/02/25573169/infinite-ethereum-bug-discovered-in-optimism-by-hacker-behind-iphone-jaibreaks https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/22/02/255731...
- ipnon 5y ago
  This is like saying Heartbleed is proof the Web will never work. You can't even guarantee secure connections! What will happen when the spy agencies start using these?! Decentralization isn't proof a system has no bugs, it's proof the system works without an authoritative governance, which I will remind you is the topic at hand in this particular comment section. Is crypto a scam? Maybe, maybe not. If you think so, just don't use it!
  - hannasanarion 5y ago
    Heartbleed didn't cause tens of thousands of financial transactions totalling billions of dollars to be retroactively reverted with a technically guaranteed lack of recourse to the people whose accounts were drained as a result.
    - DennisP 5y ago
      And neither did the DAO fork, which did not roll back the chain.
  - nopeYouAreWrong 5y ago
    No. This is more like saying Heartbleed is proof the web will never be secure. Which it won't.
- Sargos 5y ago
  That was a bug in Optimism not Ethereum. No funds on Ethereum were at risk. Optimism is a separate project which runs a separate layer 2 network that helps run blockchain transactions faster. It uses Ethereum as its data store but is separate in most other ways.
djur 5y ago
Isn't that the point? Web technology is decentralized, but as an economic and cultural force it's dominated by a small number of corporations. Web3 has the exact same problems with economic centralization, and "rolling your own" requires all of the same investments and sacrifices as doing so on the existing web, plus more.
- nootropicat 5y ago
  The difference is that 'centralized' parts are a commodity. Infura itself is centralized, but if it creates problems, it can be replaced with any other rpc, including your own node. Therefore, those services have zero power over the user.
- ipnon 5y ago
  The general consensus seems to be that while both crypto and the Web share this problem, the Web is ultimately redeemable while crypto should be nuked from orbit. It's an interesting contradiction in public opinion, probably stemming from all of the money involved.
  - freeone3000 5y ago
    All of the cryptocurrency and "web3" marketing (including the proponents up and downthread!) seem to be interested only in the money, and not how it can actually help people any better than the existing products they're replacing. The web, for all of its faults, actually does help people with things. It's also very feasible and reasonable, for instance, for a pizza place to run their own website! This is a thing that has been done! If they can't do it themselves, it's easy to set one up! Very affordably! And all of the cryptocurrency and blockchain stuff seems to firmly go in the opposite direction, with the complexity seemingly the point and the resources required for even the simplest thing multiplying endlessly.
  - djur 5y ago
    The Web is here, useful, has much lower barriers of entry, and although it's wasteful of energy in a lot of ways it isn't as aggressively and intentionally wasteful as cryptocurrency. I will happily stop using this argument against the crypto ecosystem as soon as it is not true.
mccorrinall 5y ago
As decentralized as in “someone stole my funds, let’s roll back the whole chain”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic
- dvt 5y ago
  I know you're being a bit snarky, but the miners voted on that decision and decided, collectively, to fork. It's decentralized in the sense that there's no central mandate, and everyone needs to agree with a decision or that decision will ultimately fizzle.
  - hannasanarion 5y ago
    Yeah, and then nearly half of the miners kept going with the old fork anyway. On Ethereum Classic, the theives who scammed $400 million worth of 2016 ETH from the founders, valued at who knows what now, still have that money, and they have spent it, and it's still considered good on the ETH Classic chain.
    - DennisP 5y ago
      ETH Classic's current price is $47 (compared to ETH at about $3000). The DAO hacker got 3.6 million ETH, so its current value on the Classic chain is $169 million.
  - activitypea 5y ago
    That's not how "decentralization" should work.
    - djohnston 5y ago
      How should it work? No one gets to make a choice which fork they run?
      - activitypea 5y ago

by ipnon 5y ago

thr0wawayf00 5y ago

> When these occur it will be the decentralized blockchains like Ethereum with failsafes in place to survive, and it's the centralized blockchains like Binance that will implode. Didn't Ethereum recently disclose a major settlement vulnerability discovered by a researcher that could've forced a hard fork had this person chosen to exploit it? He got a multi-million dollar bounty for it I believe. This kind of certain optimism that nothing will go wrong with a piece of software reminds me of all the people back in 2007 that said the housing market could never collapse because it never had before. Folks buy into the idea so much that they forget at the end of the day, it's computers running code and shit happens all the time. EDIT: I believe this was the story I was referring to, he received $2M[0]. There have been multiple major vulnerabilities discovered in the last couple of years. [0] https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/22/02/25573169/infinite-ethereum-bug-discovered-in-optimism-by-hacker-behind-iphone-jaibreaks https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/22/02/255731...

ipnon 5y ago
This is like saying Heartbleed is proof the Web will never work. You can't even guarantee secure connections! What will happen when the spy agencies start using these?! Decentralization isn't proof a system has no bugs, it's proof the system works without an authoritative governance, which I will remind you is the topic at hand in this particular comment section. Is crypto a scam? Maybe, maybe not. If you think so, just don't use it!
- hannasanarion 5y ago
  Heartbleed didn't cause tens of thousands of financial transactions totalling billions of dollars to be retroactively reverted with a technically guaranteed lack of recourse to the people whose accounts were drained as a result.
  - DennisP 5y ago
    And neither did the DAO fork, which did not roll back the chain.
- nopeYouAreWrong 5y ago
  No. This is more like saying Heartbleed is proof the web will never be secure. Which it won't.
Sargos 5y ago
That was a bug in Optimism not Ethereum. No funds on Ethereum were at risk. Optimism is a separate project which runs a separate layer 2 network that helps run blockchain transactions faster. It uses Ethereum as its data store but is separate in most other ways.

djur 5y ago

Isn't that the point? Web technology is decentralized, but as an economic and cultural force it's dominated by a small number of corporations. Web3 has the exact same problems with economic centralization, and "rolling your own" requires all of the same investments and sacrifices as doing so on the existing web, plus more.

nootropicat 5y ago
The difference is that 'centralized' parts are a commodity. Infura itself is centralized, but if it creates problems, it can be replaced with any other rpc, including your own node. Therefore, those services have zero power over the user.
ipnon 5y ago
The general consensus seems to be that while both crypto and the Web share this problem, the Web is ultimately redeemable while crypto should be nuked from orbit. It's an interesting contradiction in public opinion, probably stemming from all of the money involved.
- freeone3000 5y ago
  All of the cryptocurrency and "web3" marketing (including the proponents up and downthread!) seem to be interested only in the money, and not how it can actually help people any better than the existing products they're replacing. The web, for all of its faults, actually does help people with things. It's also very feasible and reasonable, for instance, for a pizza place to run their own website! This is a thing that has been done! If they can't do it themselves, it's easy to set one up! Very affordably! And all of the cryptocurrency and blockchain stuff seems to firmly go in the opposite direction, with the complexity seemingly the point and the resources required for even the simplest thing multiplying endlessly.
- djur 5y ago
  The Web is here, useful, has much lower barriers of entry, and although it's wasteful of energy in a lot of ways it isn't as aggressively and intentionally wasteful as cryptocurrency. I will happily stop using this argument against the crypto ecosystem as soon as it is not true.

mccorrinall 5y ago

As decentralized as in “someone stole my funds, let’s roll back the whole chain”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic

dvt 5y ago
I know you're being a bit snarky, but the miners voted on that decision and decided, collectively, to fork. It's decentralized in the sense that there's no central mandate, and everyone needs to agree with a decision or that decision will ultimately fizzle.
- hannasanarion 5y ago
  Yeah, and then nearly half of the miners kept going with the old fork anyway. On Ethereum Classic, the theives who scammed $400 million worth of 2016 ETH from the founders, valued at who knows what now, still have that money, and they have spent it, and it's still considered good on the ETH Classic chain.
  - DennisP 5y ago
    ETH Classic's current price is $47 (compared to ETH at about $3000). The DAO hacker got 3.6 million ETH, so its current value on the Classic chain is $169 million.
- activitypea 5y ago
  That's not how "decentralization" should work.
  - djohnston 5y ago
    How should it work? No one gets to make a choice which fork they run?
    - activitypea 5y ago