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"social networks that empower artists and creators (via NFTs)" That's totally what happened. We are in a renaissance of artistry, of artists creating meaningfu

"social networks that empower artists and creators (via NFTs)" That's totally what happened. We are in a renaissance of artistry, of artists creating meaningful art out of conviction, and making a living. "innovation in the space is only accelerating" They mispelled infinite exploitation of people who are greedy or desperate to believe in something. A common mistake. Pushing ticking timebombs on people as investment and fanning the hype machine, if not outright manipulating the markets can be called innovation, but innovation should involve societal gain too. Let me share an example of actual innovation. Imagine if you will a database technology that allows encrypted data to be searched and the server to be untrusted, not having the ability to compromise the data regardless of how curious or malicious the server is. This is a very complicated problem, but it would allow for companies with services like Facebook to not have access to your data, unless you shared it, while still being able to operate the service. You would still have to trust third parties or the government to store your encryption keys, and perhaps to ensure the freshness of your data, there is no such thing as zero trust, but we wouldn't have to trust as many parties. We could create a trust infrastructure every new service can benefit from. This kind of technology would compromise the business model of many companies, but isn't it the goal of Web 3.0 to give ordinary people more control over their lives, their data? I suspect the actual goal of it is to create a use for cryptocurrencies, or maybe find another avenue for growth and exploitation. Don't get me wrong, make as much money as you can, but do something useful. Do something people actually want or need. Don't just wantonly and reclessly exploit them. Create some damn value, something your mama would be proud of.

TimPC 5y ago
Your database technology is interesting but has the problem that there is a legitimate use case for a company having access to at least some of the data on its servers. It is impossible to optimize a service without transparency into what it is providing and which of those results are useful. Companies spend a good deal of time and effort, arguably even over-optimizing for this, but many applications which don't do it at all are crap. Any product based on this technology lacks the data to do any form of recommendations and most services these days consider recommendations an essential component.
- Comevius 5y ago
  The point is that people would have the option to opt-out of or opt-in to privacy, when that makes sense. Not every company would offer those options, but no company can today, except for cloud storage where client-side encryption can be considered practically secure in many, but not all cases. For a database client-side encryption unfortunately cannot provide adequate protection.
  - TimPC 5y ago
    Fair but the parent comment referenced Facebook as an example and I think it's fair to say Facebook is rather dependant on content recommendation to the point where they wouldn't use the technology at all.
- api 5y ago
  > It is impossible to optimize a service without transparency into what it is providing and which of those results are useful. People created excellent UIs in the "shrink wrap" software era before people even had network connections. In fact, many would argue that some of these UIs were simpler and cleaner and overall better. Oh wait... if by optimize a service you mean optimize it for engagement (addiction, triggering, controversy) then I agree.
  - TimPC 5y ago
    Excellent UIs for shrink wrap software. I think we can agree that the UI for Netflix or YouTube depends on content recommendation in ways that shrink wrap software doesn't. One person's engagement (addiction, triggering, controversy) is another person's usability. If YouTube is going to recommend entirely Fox News videos to an apolitical user it's not going to provide a good interface. Even search is hard to do properly without data. How is YouTube useful if it can't do recommendations and you can't search it?
    - api 5y ago
      > I think we can agree that the UI for Netflix or YouTube depends on content recommendation in ways that shrink wrap software doesn't. I can imagine a lot of interfaces for sites like that which do not require personalized feedback at all. In fact, a rich search feature allowing me to say what I want to find would usually be preferable to an opaque recommendation engine designed to steer me toward content the site wants me to visit.
aww_dang 5y ago
>Don't get me wrong, make as much money as you can, but do something useful. Do something people actually want or need. Don't just wantonly and reclessly exploit them. Create some damn value, something your mama would be proud of. We're at a place in some circles where cryptocurrency projects and any subjective value they may provide is preemptively dismissed with prejudice. Ultimately the customer decides what he values. As tech types it is too easy to sit back and claim, "Oh these consumers don't know what they want". Perhaps that is true. Perhaps what we find useful or interesting isn't what interests consumers. If we really know what will satisfy them, then we should provide it. Knee-jerk condemnations are a bit easier.
- Hjfrf 5y ago
  Cryptocurrency projects have squandered a decade of good faith with no useful product. They've done a great deal of harm in that period, so I can't see even the current level of mild negative sentiment as sustainable.
  - nickstinemates 5y ago
    Storj is pretty useful. But, it's definitely an exception not the norm.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - RC_ITR 5y ago
      And what's amazing is that the coin has a market cap of $450m (probably still expensive if comped to someone like Dropbox). If something with that utility is so lowly valued, then imagine the true intrinsic value of BTC!
    - Comevius 5y ago
      Storj is genuinely useful. It is however regular cloud storage, except the storage nodes that must be trusted will survive the company somehow. However the authenticated client-side encryption will protect your data, so the safety claim checks out, not sure about liveness. Slapping a decentralized sticker on and having a cryptocurrency apparently worked out for them. This is how you successfully differentiate a product.
yowlingcat 5y ago
I think there is perhaps a bit of irony in that your example of "database technology that allows encrypted data to be searched and the server to be untrusted" has already, to some degree, been invented in several competing and production strength crypto implementations: ZCash (Equihash) and Monero (RandomX/CryptoNight). I am stretching the truth a little bit here and it's more like "allows encrypted data/messages to be bidirectionally sent and exchanged two parties while the server is untrusted" because neither of these protocols allow for search. However, they /do/ allow for fully anonymous transactions + data storage, upon which you could build the rest of your social networks on top of. So IMO the actual pace of technological innovation in crypto is quite strong. I'm not such a big fan of the NFT space, but DeFi and the truly anonymous coins are extremely interesting to me.
- ChadNauseam 5y ago
  The database problem the GP describes is actively being worked on and is extremely difficult. There's Etebase, which is a product that's attempting to provide some of what they hope for, but without very modern (and usually very slow) encryption techniques it's not workable for most use cases. For example, on Etebase it's impossible to return rows in order from lowest to highest without using complicated hacks involving client-side indices. (In general, the field of doing operations on encrypted data is called homomorphic encryption.) ZK-tech, while super cool, is not super related IMO, but it is seem strange that the GP doesn't seem to consider it a worthwhile side effect of cryptocurrency hype.
- Comevius 5y ago
  The closest technology we have are verifiable databases, usually immutable ones. They can detect the server modifying the data, either with a Merkle or vector commitment tree, which blockchain technology also relies on. The difference is that those databases are much more efficient than blockchain technologies. The whole proof of work (voting power depends on computational effort) song and dance is unnecessary for a database. Even for a distributed database you only need a Byzantine agreement such as Paxos, which can only tolerate a certain number of faulty or malicious nodes. This would not work for cryptocurrencies, they need to tolerate arbitary number of such nodes (also known as a Sybil attack) to avoid the double spending problem. Cryptocurrency transactions are not I-confluent (invariant confluent), but certain database transactions are and they don't require consensus at all, so there are specialized databases that can tolerate arbitrary number of faulty or malicious nodes without Sybil countermeasures. The problem with crypto is that a solution to a specific problem (eliminating the double spending problem trustlessly) can't be applied to every problem. There are trade-offs involved. Solving the double spending problem will let you have cryptocurrencies, but will lock you out of efficiently solving a lot of other problems.
adamsmith143 5y ago
>That's totally what happened. We are in a renaissance of artistry, of artists creating meaningful art out of conviction, and making a living. This is irony right? Because a guy made some money selling ape drawings there's now a renaissance?
- FridgeSeal 5y ago
  I’m pretty certain that paragraph is meant to be read with a heavy serving of sarcasm.
- JohnHaugeland 5y ago
  > This is irony right? you needed to ask?
kmangutov 5y ago
[dead]
- Comevius 5y ago
  My feeling is that this does something to the discoverability problem, to music patronage that's completely superfluous and doesn't serve the artists or their audience. It's being pushed by NFT enthusiasts and a16z, but yet to gain mainstream appeal. I think this would be much more successful without NFTs, cryptocurrencies and all that. It would make it possible for ordinary people to understand the service better, especially when it comes to payment. The involvement of cryptocurrencies is simply a barrier. Scarcity isn't the best incentive either, it's an extrinsic motivation associated with logic and ownership, whereas for music you want an intrinsic motivation associated with self-expression, creativity and social aspects. These NFT platforms are suprisingly bad at presenting a social influence incentive, you would think it would be their bread and butter. Basically you want that and empowerment, with a bit of epic meaning mixed in. You want a creative playground of artists and their audience both feeling that they have an impact. None of this scarcity crap, instant turn off, it's completely on the other side of the spectrum. The point of music and any creative endevour is not the scarcity of the end product, it's sharing it. It's connection. There is no point in ownership. That's not the kind of connection people trully want, it's bragging rights at best.
  - venatiodecorus 5y ago
    > I think this would be much more successful without NFTs I think a big part of some of these new projects is that their payment systems are powered by crypto, allowing them to operate completely outside the traditional financial system. To simply say, why not do this without crypto/blockchain, is ignoring a major facet of these systems. Some of these players may never have been able to secure a bank loan, or one big enough to start their project/service. Or they would never have been able to reach their audience so easily. Or they'd be beholden to a much smaller group of backers.
- mbesto 5y ago
  Which is an absolute drop in the hat when you compare it to people selling computer generated monkeys and those arbitraging crypto. Look, maybe the art renaissance is coming soon™ but it sure as hell is not here now, especially relative to the financial one.
ignoramous 5y ago
> Imagine if you will a database technology that allows encrypted data to be searched and the server to be untrusted, not having the ability to compromise the data regardless of how curious or malicious the server is. This is a very complicated problem, but it would allow for companies with services like Facebook to not have access to your data, unless you shared it, while still being able to operate the service. dualitytech.com | cosmian.com | inpher.io | enveil.com | apheris.com | capeprivacy.com I was hoping a16z had invested in one of these companies working on privacy-enhancing technologies (PET)... but no. May be, the tech is not quite there yet, or a16z doesn't yet have an "investment thesis" for it. > This kind of technology would compromise the business model of many companies, but isn't it the goal of Web 3.0 to give ordinary people more control over their lives, their data? A counter point to this is web3 institutions like the Algorand Foundation which employ some of the best cryptographers and security researchers who have gone on to make non-trivial contributions in PET and MPC (multi-party computation) fields.
mattdesl 5y ago
> That's totally what happened. We are in a renaissance of artistry, of artists creating meaningful art out of conviction, and making a living. I assume this is sarcastic, but to be fair, generative and computer art really is thriving and getting more recognition than it ever has in the past, in part because of recent NFT boom. [1] https://news.artnet.com/art-world/vera-molnar-venice-biennale-2098046/amp-page https://news.artnet.com/art-world/vera-molnar-venice-biennal... [2] https://www.sothebys.com/en/digital-catalogues/natively-digital-1-3 https://www.sothebys.com/en/digital-catalogues/natively-digi...

TimPC 5y ago

Your database technology is interesting but has the problem that there is a legitimate use case for a company having access to at least some of the data on its servers. It is impossible to optimize a service without transparency into what it is providing and which of those results are useful. Companies spend a good deal of time and effort, arguably even over-optimizing for this, but many applications which don't do it at all are crap. Any product based on this technology lacks the data to do any form of recommendations and most services these days consider recommendations an essential component.

Comevius 5y ago
The point is that people would have the option to opt-out of or opt-in to privacy, when that makes sense. Not every company would offer those options, but no company can today, except for cloud storage where client-side encryption can be considered practically secure in many, but not all cases. For a database client-side encryption unfortunately cannot provide adequate protection.
- TimPC 5y ago
  Fair but the parent comment referenced Facebook as an example and I think it's fair to say Facebook is rather dependant on content recommendation to the point where they wouldn't use the technology at all.
api 5y ago
> It is impossible to optimize a service without transparency into what it is providing and which of those results are useful. People created excellent UIs in the "shrink wrap" software era before people even had network connections. In fact, many would argue that some of these UIs were simpler and cleaner and overall better. Oh wait... if by optimize a service you mean optimize it for engagement (addiction, triggering, controversy) then I agree.
- TimPC 5y ago
  Excellent UIs for shrink wrap software. I think we can agree that the UI for Netflix or YouTube depends on content recommendation in ways that shrink wrap software doesn't. One person's engagement (addiction, triggering, controversy) is another person's usability. If YouTube is going to recommend entirely Fox News videos to an apolitical user it's not going to provide a good interface. Even search is hard to do properly without data. How is YouTube useful if it can't do recommendations and you can't search it?
  - api 5y ago
    > I think we can agree that the UI for Netflix or YouTube depends on content recommendation in ways that shrink wrap software doesn't. I can imagine a lot of interfaces for sites like that which do not require personalized feedback at all. In fact, a rich search feature allowing me to say what I want to find would usually be preferable to an opaque recommendation engine designed to steer me toward content the site wants me to visit.

aww_dang 5y ago

>Don't get me wrong, make as much money as you can, but do something useful. Do something people actually want or need. Don't just wantonly and reclessly exploit them. Create some damn value, something your mama would be proud of. We're at a place in some circles where cryptocurrency projects and any subjective value they may provide is preemptively dismissed with prejudice. Ultimately the customer decides what he values. As tech types it is too easy to sit back and claim, "Oh these consumers don't know what they want". Perhaps that is true. Perhaps what we find useful or interesting isn't what interests consumers. If we really know what will satisfy them, then we should provide it. Knee-jerk condemnations are a bit easier.

Hjfrf 5y ago
Cryptocurrency projects have squandered a decade of good faith with no useful product. They've done a great deal of harm in that period, so I can't see even the current level of mild negative sentiment as sustainable.
- nickstinemates 5y ago
  Storj is pretty useful. But, it's definitely an exception not the norm.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - RC_ITR 5y ago
    And what's amazing is that the coin has a market cap of $450m (probably still expensive if comped to someone like Dropbox). If something with that utility is so lowly valued, then imagine the true intrinsic value of BTC!
  - Comevius 5y ago
    Storj is genuinely useful. It is however regular cloud storage, except the storage nodes that must be trusted will survive the company somehow. However the authenticated client-side encryption will protect your data, so the safety claim checks out, not sure about liveness. Slapping a decentralized sticker on and having a cryptocurrency apparently worked out for them. This is how you successfully differentiate a product.

yowlingcat 5y ago

I think there is perhaps a bit of irony in that your example of "database technology that allows encrypted data to be searched and the server to be untrusted" has already, to some degree, been invented in several competing and production strength crypto implementations: ZCash (Equihash) and Monero (RandomX/CryptoNight). I am stretching the truth a little bit here and it's more like "allows encrypted data/messages to be bidirectionally sent and exchanged two parties while the server is untrusted" because neither of these protocols allow for search. However, they /do/ allow for fully anonymous transactions + data storage, upon which you could build the rest of your social networks on top of. So IMO the actual pace of technological innovation in crypto is quite strong. I'm not such a big fan of the NFT space, but DeFi and the truly anonymous coins are extremely interesting to me.

ChadNauseam 5y ago
The database problem the GP describes is actively being worked on and is extremely difficult. There's Etebase, which is a product that's attempting to provide some of what they hope for, but without very modern (and usually very slow) encryption techniques it's not workable for most use cases. For example, on Etebase it's impossible to return rows in order from lowest to highest without using complicated hacks involving client-side indices. (In general, the field of doing operations on encrypted data is called homomorphic encryption.) ZK-tech, while super cool, is not super related IMO, but it is seem strange that the GP doesn't seem to consider it a worthwhile side effect of cryptocurrency hype.
Comevius 5y ago
The closest technology we have are verifiable databases, usually immutable ones. They can detect the server modifying the data, either with a Merkle or vector commitment tree, which blockchain technology also relies on. The difference is that those databases are much more efficient than blockchain technologies. The whole proof of work (voting power depends on computational effort) song and dance is unnecessary for a database. Even for a distributed database you only need a Byzantine agreement such as Paxos, which can only tolerate a certain number of faulty or malicious nodes. This would not work for cryptocurrencies, they need to tolerate arbitary number of such nodes (also known as a Sybil attack) to avoid the double spending problem. Cryptocurrency transactions are not I-confluent (invariant confluent), but certain database transactions are and they don't require consensus at all, so there are specialized databases that can tolerate arbitrary number of faulty or malicious nodes without Sybil countermeasures. The problem with crypto is that a solution to a specific problem (eliminating the double spending problem trustlessly) can't be applied to every problem. There are trade-offs involved. Solving the double spending problem will let you have cryptocurrencies, but will lock you out of efficiently solving a lot of other problems.

adamsmith143 5y ago

>That's totally what happened. We are in a renaissance of artistry, of artists creating meaningful art out of conviction, and making a living. This is irony right? Because a guy made some money selling ape drawings there's now a renaissance?

FridgeSeal 5y ago
I’m pretty certain that paragraph is meant to be read with a heavy serving of sarcasm.
JohnHaugeland 5y ago
> This is irony right? you needed to ask?

kmangutov 5y ago

[dead]

Comevius 5y ago
My feeling is that this does something to the discoverability problem, to music patronage that's completely superfluous and doesn't serve the artists or their audience. It's being pushed by NFT enthusiasts and a16z, but yet to gain mainstream appeal. I think this would be much more successful without NFTs, cryptocurrencies and all that. It would make it possible for ordinary people to understand the service better, especially when it comes to payment. The involvement of cryptocurrencies is simply a barrier. Scarcity isn't the best incentive either, it's an extrinsic motivation associated with logic and ownership, whereas for music you want an intrinsic motivation associated with self-expression, creativity and social aspects. These NFT platforms are suprisingly bad at presenting a social influence incentive, you would think it would be their bread and butter. Basically you want that and empowerment, with a bit of epic meaning mixed in. You want a creative playground of artists and their audience both feeling that they have an impact. None of this scarcity crap, instant turn off, it's completely on the other side of the spectrum. The point of music and any creative endevour is not the scarcity of the end product, it's sharing it. It's connection. There is no point in ownership. That's not the kind of connection people trully want, it's bragging rights at best.
- venatiodecorus 5y ago
  > I think this would be much more successful without NFTs I think a big part of some of these new projects is that their payment systems are powered by crypto, allowing them to operate completely outside the traditional financial system. To simply say, why not do this without crypto/blockchain, is ignoring a major facet of these systems. Some of these players may never have been able to secure a bank loan, or one big enough to start their project/service. Or they would never have been able to reach their audience so easily. Or they'd be beholden to a much smaller group of backers.
mbesto 5y ago
Which is an absolute drop in the hat when you compare it to people selling computer generated monkeys and those arbitraging crypto. Look, maybe the art renaissance is coming soon™ but it sure as hell is not here now, especially relative to the financial one.

ignoramous 5y ago

> Imagine if you will a database technology that allows encrypted data to be searched and the server to be untrusted, not having the ability to compromise the data regardless of how curious or malicious the server is. This is a very complicated problem, but it would allow for companies with services like Facebook to not have access to your data, unless you shared it, while still being able to operate the service. dualitytech.com | cosmian.com | inpher.io | enveil.com | apheris.com | capeprivacy.com I was hoping a16z had invested in one of these companies working on privacy-enhancing technologies (PET)... but no. May be, the tech is not quite there yet, or a16z doesn't yet have an "investment thesis" for it. > This kind of technology would compromise the business model of many companies, but isn't it the goal of Web 3.0 to give ordinary people more control over their lives, their data? A counter point to this is web3 institutions like the Algorand Foundation which employ some of the best cryptographers and security researchers who have gone on to make non-trivial contributions in PET and MPC (multi-party computation) fields.

mattdesl 5y ago

> That's totally what happened. We are in a renaissance of artistry, of artists creating meaningful art out of conviction, and making a living. I assume this is sarcastic, but to be fair, generative and computer art really is thriving and getting more recognition than it ever has in the past, in part because of recent NFT boom. [1] https://news.artnet.com/art-world/vera-molnar-venice-biennale-2098046/amp-page https://news.artnet.com/art-world/vera-molnar-venice-biennal... [2] https://www.sothebys.com/en/digital-catalogues/natively-digital-1-3 https://www.sothebys.com/en/digital-catalogues/natively-digi...