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> Blockchain is also nearly useless at transferring money or money-adjacent things. We'll probably have to agree to disagree there. I could send you $5 in Bitc

> Blockchain is also nearly useless at transferring money or money-adjacent things. We'll probably have to agree to disagree there. I could send you $5 in Bitcoin right now no matter what country you're in, what bank you use, and without knowing who you are. It would cost like a $1 which is high for a $5 transaction, but that price wouldn't go up for a more significant amount of money. > But we're talking web3 here, not money, so whether it's good or bad at handling money is irrelevant? I think you have a misunderstanding of what exactly web3 is. All the apps with any traffic (loans, gambling, NFTs, insurance, derivatives) are using the money transfer capabilities of blockchain. It's the whole point.

kllrnohj 5y ago
> We'll probably have to agree to disagree there. I could send you $5 in Bitcoin right now no matter what country you're in, what bank you use, and without knowing who you are. It would cost like a $1 which is high for a $5 transaction, but that price wouldn't go up for a more significant amount of money. That transaction fee is itself highly variable & dependent on load, though. The more people that actually try to use bitcoin to transfer money, the more expensive it gets. It actively resists using it to transfer money. That, combined with the long transaction times, make it completely useless as a general purpose currency. You can use it as a variant on a wire transfer, where you only use it for rare, large transactions. And even then only one where you're ok waiting load spikes out (which can last for months as was the case in the first half of 2021). But then you're still spending extra time & money on each side of that transaction moving back out of bitcoin and into something usable for "normal" transactions. > I think you have a misunderstanding of what exactly web3 is. All the apps with any traffic (loans, gambling, NFTs, insurance, derivatives) are using the money transfer capabilities of blockchain. It's the whole point. But that's not what web3 proponents claim it is. Yes right now all the "web3 dApps" are money-related (or less charitably but more accurately, pyramid schemes), I don't disagree with you on that at all. But the claims are that it can be a decentralized replacement for web2. And web2 does a whole lot more than just shuffle money around. That's why it's billing itself as "web3" and not, idk, "visa2".
- thebean11 5y ago
  Are prediction markets pyramid schemes? What about collateralized loans? I'm not sure what specific claims you're arguing against, but most people in the space aren't making them. It's a straw man. It sounds like you mainly take issue with the name web3, which I don't disagree with.
- 0ldskool 5y ago
  I think you are mistaken in 2 aspects. Blockchain != web3. Blockchain + cryptocurrencies make up a large part of web3 because they provide an incentive mechanism to be decentralized. Web3 is about decentralization, other solutions that follow the goals of decentralization of the web can fall into web3. I would say IPFS falls into this category. Other possible solution/algorithms that focus on decentralization could also fall into this category. Blockchain provides incentives, those incentives can be transformed into cash for the end user. Web2 basically focused on 2 aspects. Transforming the browser into a OS that can run on any computer, using advertising for the generation of money for stakeholders. In regards to advertisement the reason why this was use d was because it worked in the past. Printing press --> newspaper --> advertisements, Radio --> audio advertisements, Movies --> pre-movie advertisements, tv --> commercials. This mechanism has worked before and worked for web2.0. The problem now is that so many companies are involved in data collection on individuals that it has become quiet scary, this was not possible with previous mediums (not to the same degree). Game companies have tried to transition to micro-transactions, psudo-gambling, upgrades as a payment form. Web3 offers a different incentive model that if successful can replace these arguably more scary methods.
  - eternityforest 5y ago
    Web3's model involves users actually paying for stuff. Even with all the tracking, the ad model is a win for accessibility to the poor. I'd rather be completely tracked everywhere I go then left out of all the important conversations. Web3 kind of IS just blockchain at this point. Some are even calling for a Web4, as a non blockchain more performant version of web3 not focused on financial features. I suspect if any P2P tech gets big without a token, people won't actually call it web3.
eternityforest 5y ago
That's the problem. Web3 adds payment layers to things, instead of finding ways to make things "too cheap to meter". Decentralized insurance seems like a horrible idea. Who makes the decisions? And who do you sue if they turn out to be a scam? How can you sue anyone without a centralized legal system? At best, DeFi seems like a last resort, being marketed as a replacement for the whole bank system, while still not providing core services the current system does, and calling the lack of those services a feature rather than a bug. It may have uses to certain niche groups, but the name web3 implies it's some kind of revolution on the scale of web2. But most people have exactly no use for cryptocurrency. I don't want my money outside the traditional reversible financial system. DeFi loans seem to mostly be based on large amounts of collateral. Greatly defeating the purpose of taking out a loan, which, unless you are rich and doing wierd finance stuff, is because you need money that you don't have. I know very few people with any reason to touch Web3, unless it provides something of interest for anyone but rich people with a grudge against the government. It would be fine as a niche thing, but unfortunately it has completely taken over the tech scene to an insane degree.
- thebean11 5y ago
  Hosting, storage, software, human-provided services, physical objects etc will never be "too cheap to meter".
  - eternityforest 5y ago
    Part of what makes tech great is reducing the need for physical objects. Open source software already is literally free. Almost all the good stuff is developed by corporations at a pretty high price, but it's still not much considering billions of users. Hosting apparently costs so little to provide that just a few ad clicks and some data collection, or a donation model like Wikipedia, can be way more than enough. Some of it appears to even be given away just as a promotion. It's not literally free, but it's getting close to irrelevant costs per megabyte of data.

kllrnohj 5y ago

> We'll probably have to agree to disagree there. I could send you $5 in Bitcoin right now no matter what country you're in, what bank you use, and without knowing who you are. It would cost like a $1 which is high for a $5 transaction, but that price wouldn't go up for a more significant amount of money. That transaction fee is itself highly variable & dependent on load, though. The more people that actually try to use bitcoin to transfer money, the more expensive it gets. It actively resists using it to transfer money. That, combined with the long transaction times, make it completely useless as a general purpose currency. You can use it as a variant on a wire transfer, where you only use it for rare, large transactions. And even then only one where you're ok waiting load spikes out (which can last for months as was the case in the first half of 2021). But then you're still spending extra time & money on each side of that transaction moving back out of bitcoin and into something usable for "normal" transactions. > I think you have a misunderstanding of what exactly web3 is. All the apps with any traffic (loans, gambling, NFTs, insurance, derivatives) are using the money transfer capabilities of blockchain. It's the whole point. But that's not what web3 proponents claim it is. Yes right now all the "web3 dApps" are money-related (or less charitably but more accurately, pyramid schemes), I don't disagree with you on that at all. But the claims are that it can be a decentralized replacement for web2. And web2 does a whole lot more than just shuffle money around. That's why it's billing itself as "web3" and not, idk, "visa2".

thebean11 5y ago
Are prediction markets pyramid schemes? What about collateralized loans? I'm not sure what specific claims you're arguing against, but most people in the space aren't making them. It's a straw man. It sounds like you mainly take issue with the name web3, which I don't disagree with.
0ldskool 5y ago
I think you are mistaken in 2 aspects. Blockchain != web3. Blockchain + cryptocurrencies make up a large part of web3 because they provide an incentive mechanism to be decentralized. Web3 is about decentralization, other solutions that follow the goals of decentralization of the web can fall into web3. I would say IPFS falls into this category. Other possible solution/algorithms that focus on decentralization could also fall into this category. Blockchain provides incentives, those incentives can be transformed into cash for the end user. Web2 basically focused on 2 aspects. Transforming the browser into a OS that can run on any computer, using advertising for the generation of money for stakeholders. In regards to advertisement the reason why this was use d was because it worked in the past. Printing press --> newspaper --> advertisements, Radio --> audio advertisements, Movies --> pre-movie advertisements, tv --> commercials. This mechanism has worked before and worked for web2.0. The problem now is that so many companies are involved in data collection on individuals that it has become quiet scary, this was not possible with previous mediums (not to the same degree). Game companies have tried to transition to micro-transactions, psudo-gambling, upgrades as a payment form. Web3 offers a different incentive model that if successful can replace these arguably more scary methods.
- eternityforest 5y ago
  Web3's model involves users actually paying for stuff. Even with all the tracking, the ad model is a win for accessibility to the poor. I'd rather be completely tracked everywhere I go then left out of all the important conversations. Web3 kind of IS just blockchain at this point. Some are even calling for a Web4, as a non blockchain more performant version of web3 not focused on financial features. I suspect if any P2P tech gets big without a token, people won't actually call it web3.

eternityforest 5y ago

That's the problem. Web3 adds payment layers to things, instead of finding ways to make things "too cheap to meter". Decentralized insurance seems like a horrible idea. Who makes the decisions? And who do you sue if they turn out to be a scam? How can you sue anyone without a centralized legal system? At best, DeFi seems like a last resort, being marketed as a replacement for the whole bank system, while still not providing core services the current system does, and calling the lack of those services a feature rather than a bug. It may have uses to certain niche groups, but the name web3 implies it's some kind of revolution on the scale of web2. But most people have exactly no use for cryptocurrency. I don't want my money outside the traditional reversible financial system. DeFi loans seem to mostly be based on large amounts of collateral. Greatly defeating the purpose of taking out a loan, which, unless you are rich and doing wierd finance stuff, is because you need money that you don't have. I know very few people with any reason to touch Web3, unless it provides something of interest for anyone but rich people with a grudge against the government. It would be fine as a niche thing, but unfortunately it has completely taken over the tech scene to an insane degree.

thebean11 5y ago
Hosting, storage, software, human-provided services, physical objects etc will never be "too cheap to meter".
- eternityforest 5y ago
  Part of what makes tech great is reducing the need for physical objects. Open source software already is literally free. Almost all the good stuff is developed by corporations at a pretty high price, but it's still not much considering billions of users. Hosting apparently costs so little to provide that just a few ad clicks and some data collection, or a donation model like Wikipedia, can be way more than enough. Some of it appears to even be given away just as a promotion. It's not literally free, but it's getting close to irrelevant costs per megabyte of data.