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> 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 know

> 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.
  - thebean11 5y ago
    How will you pay for things in “web4”? If the answer is “you don’t” it makes tons of things impossible (any sort of large scale hosting, storage, commerce) If it’s credit cards..we’ll now you’ve created a massive centralized link in your “p2p” system.
    - eternityforest 5y ago
      That's fine. It's what we have now , and centralized finance has a huge advantage in that there is human review to reverse fraud and theft. I am perfectly fine using centralised finance to buy things that are mostly already inherently centralized, which is pretty much all common purchases for most people, since buying anything that can be made cheaply by an individual is rare for most. A huge number of things can be done purely P2P with no payments, with almost no infrastructure. That should be the core feature of Web4. Even more things can be done semi-decentralized as in BitTorrent+a seedbox, and that works just fine. Some of those things can even be donation supported in a profitable way and don't need payment from most users in any way that actually connects to the service. They can just put a PayPal and bitcoin link and people can donate however they want. In Wikipedia can do it, Facebook and maybe even Youtube can, with appropriate P2P load balancing. This is almost essential because the competing centralized services are totally free(via you-are-the-product models). An email service or something that costs money and requires linking your bank to some coin payment service is going to have a hard time competing with gmail for the general public. If something needs payment, it probably shouldn't be a core layer of the whole system. The first priority should be make things too cheap to meter where you can, and then figure out how to decentralize the remaining stuff, assuming there is demand. Blockchain inherently can't do offline first LAN apps properly, you can't have consensus without communication. If I can't talk to someone on a mesh network without internet, a large amount of the advantage of P2P is gone.

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.
- thebean11 5y ago
  How will you pay for things in “web4”? If the answer is “you don’t” it makes tons of things impossible (any sort of large scale hosting, storage, commerce) If it’s credit cards..we’ll now you’ve created a massive centralized link in your “p2p” system.
  - eternityforest 5y ago
    That's fine. It's what we have now , and centralized finance has a huge advantage in that there is human review to reverse fraud and theft. I am perfectly fine using centralised finance to buy things that are mostly already inherently centralized, which is pretty much all common purchases for most people, since buying anything that can be made cheaply by an individual is rare for most. A huge number of things can be done purely P2P with no payments, with almost no infrastructure. That should be the core feature of Web4. Even more things can be done semi-decentralized as in BitTorrent+a seedbox, and that works just fine. Some of those things can even be donation supported in a profitable way and don't need payment from most users in any way that actually connects to the service. They can just put a PayPal and bitcoin link and people can donate however they want. In Wikipedia can do it, Facebook and maybe even Youtube can, with appropriate P2P load balancing. This is almost essential because the competing centralized services are totally free(via you-are-the-product models). An email service or something that costs money and requires linking your bank to some coin payment service is going to have a hard time competing with gmail for the general public. If something needs payment, it probably shouldn't be a core layer of the whole system. The first priority should be make things too cheap to meter where you can, and then figure out how to decentralize the remaining stuff, assuming there is demand. Blockchain inherently can't do offline first LAN apps properly, you can't have consensus without communication. If I can't talk to someone on a mesh network without internet, a large amount of the advantage of P2P is gone.