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What is the value proposition of web3 to the user? JS web apps offloaded the compute and memory onto the browser/client, web3 to offload storage costs onto th

What is the value proposition of web3 to the user? JS web apps offloaded the compute and memory onto the browser/client, web3 to offload storage costs onto the user. You will up pay for every click. web3 and metaverse feels so dystopian. but the young generations that were raised by tiktok will probably accept it.

lalaland1125 4y ago
> What is the value proposition of web3 to the user? The same value as most other P2P software: illegal activity. Web3 in particular is very useful for running online casinos and ponzi schemes. Note that there is huge potential there for a ton of profit. Casinos make a ton of money.
- przeor 4y ago
  - Xorlev 4y ago
    I don't think your parent comment mentioned social security. Kind of off-topic, don't you think?
  - LordKeren 4y ago
    yeah, if you cut out and overlook all the key defining aspects of a Ponzi scheme like the fraud, sure. Once the government privatizes social security (and similar mandatory retirement programs in other countries), converts it to a for-profit system, encourages speculative “investing”, makes deceptive claims on returns— you’ll be exactly right, they would be the same.
  - Double_a_92 4y ago
    What about it? Everybody knows it's a Ponzi and at some point people agreed to it. It's not lying to you saying it will magically create money for you if you invest. You take the money from younger contributors, to give it to older contributors by design. And that kinda makes sense because the people at the top eventually die and it's everybodys turn at some point.
  - APock 4y ago
    The ponzi schemes ran by governments are ultimately run as a benefit to your retirement, and most importantly, you can overthrow a government.
    - achenet 4y ago
      you make it sound so easy... why not just waltz into Russia, tell Putin and pals to leave and replace them with kind, competent, generous leaders?
  - arinlen 4y ago
    > How about poniz schemes ran by governments ? You are ok with that kind of exploitation ? I don't understand what kind of argument you were aiming at. Even if your "government ponzi scheme" non-sequitur is taken at face value, what's your point exactly? Do you expect that a type of fraud becomes acceptable if you manage to point out other types of fraud?
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      Welcome to the internet. 1. Claim that X is the same as Y. 2. Assert that Y is Bad. 3. Therefore, X is Good. QED.
    - przeor 4y ago
      simple, if there are no more participants in a govt systems like social security or people dont want to use govt backed money, then it's value will collapse in a one way or another. It means that people who are left in the system are screwed like in any ponzi like systems. P.S. Thanks for downvotes HN on my orginal comment
- maccard 4y ago
  p2p is great and has some excellent use cases. We used it on a previous project to download 100+GB patches onto dozens of PCs in a trusted environment using a 100(?)mbps external connection in a couple of minutes. Torrents are also an incredible piece of technology, allowing tamper resistant distribution of files from untrusted parties - imagine how much value Linux distros glean from being hosted by third parties who voluntarily do so without needing to "partner up"? I don't disagree that the _primary_ use case is piracy though (and I've yet to see any genuine use cases for web3 suggested either)
- 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
  Good point
_glass 4y ago
you could make social media where the ad revenue is shared with the users. you can already sell art where the platform can vanish (like hicetnunc did) but the artists and users can take their assets to just another platform (like objkt).
- belltaco 4y ago
  That sounds like it'd make social media somehow even worse, by incentivitizing clickbait, flamebait, reposting, fake news and shock posts.
- rgbrgb 4y ago
  incidentally this was the argument against streaming music. Superior UX won out over philosophical arguments of data portability and custody.
douglaswlance 4y ago
Data portability is a huge value prop: Everywhere you sign-in, you already have all of your data. Is it bad to pay to click, if you earn more from the ads on the page? Along with micro-payments, you also micro-earn.
- APock 4y ago
  So, being FULLY tracked by every website ever, on every device at the same time, since all your data is whatever wallet you use across devices anyway, is now a good thing?
  - pshc 4y ago
    You're not wrong. Privacy mechanisms still need to be designed and implemented. There is much research, particularly in the landscape of zero-knowledge proofs.
  - douglaswlance 4y ago
    Only you (or anyone who has access to your private key) can access your data.
- simonw 4y ago
  How does data portability actually work? I hear it talked about a lot, but I've never seen anything more than vague hand-waving as to the actual mechanics of it.
- cecilpl2 4y ago
  What data do I actually want to carry across websites? I actually don't understand the value here. Is it that I don't have to re-enter my personal information on each site? Signing in with Google already gets me that. Is it something else? Is it some kind of JSON blob that every service will know how to ingest properly?
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > Data portability is a huge value prop: Everywhere you sign-in, you already have all of your data. No. No you don't. 1. Below you claim that "Only you (or anyone who has access to your private key) can access your data." So when you sign in somewhere, that "web3" app still has no access to your data 2. Just the fact that you have your data does not mean it's portable. A proprietary binary blob created by app1 will not be readable or accessible through app2.
outside1234 4y ago
The user can money launder their money via NFT wash sales.
anonymous0 4y ago
Honest question: Is there something specific about TikTok technology/usage pattern paving the way for distopy acceptance or it's just the same concept of facebook/instagram/Twitter but with a younger audience?
- sergiomattei 4y ago
  It’s just a low-tier generalization about newer generation. Nothing to analyze here. There is nothing about TikTok that makes my generation mindless Web3 drones.
  - danieldevries 4y ago
    Agreed. Just lazy analytics by using buzzwords. The TikTok generation... I'm clearly late to the party as a Millennial.
  - tomc1985 4y ago
    OK Zoomer. OF COURSE you're going to deny the generalization and blame the accuser. That's generational warfare 101. Doesn't make their thoughts any less valid. There are clear differences between the Facebook demo and the Tiktok demo. I am not smart enough to be able to articulate them but they are there.
- ewzimm 4y ago
  I have noticed a cultural difference between different generations of social networks. With Facebook, people usually sought out people and groups that they wanted to connect with and complained about being algorithmically profiled for ads but accepted it as part of the business model. With TikTok, people usually express how much they love the algorithm that finds things that they like.
  - dwaite 4y ago
    > With Facebook, people usually sought out people and groups that they wanted to connect with and complained about being algorithmically profiled for ads but accepted it as part of the business model. Google's success with ads is that they were able to trigger them as part of user action. Paid search results are hypothetically helpful to some people. Contextual ads on a site may actually provide value if they are on-topic. Facebook ads mostly target people. They don't really provide any in-context value, they are pure commercials - spooky commercials that know what is going on in your life, although the ability to utilize this information is often laughably bad. Twitter often has the same problems. Ads interspersed within conversations just aren't helpful or desired.
exo762 4y ago
> What is the value proposition of web3 to the user? Potential of paying for services and being able to require privacy in return? It is not a choice one can make with many web2 services (e.g. google). As for "blockchains are transparent and can't offer no privacy" - just a question of time. Tech is already here (zkps, mpc, etc).
- dwaite 4y ago
  Most tech calling itself web3 has less privacy - rather than 'just' Google knowing who I am across the internet, I'm spreading correlating information and pointers to publicly accessible records everywhere. Privacy isn't some technology you can add to the stack. Rather than adding ZKP sprinkles on top, every technical choice will ultimately need to be reevaluated if privacy is a goal. Basically, you're talking about web4/5.
web4 4y ago
web3 is not "pay for every click." value prop is disintermediation and decentralization. like purchasing a game asset, and not having it tied only to your iOS or Steam account.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bpeebles 4y ago
  It's just as easy for a game developer to say "eh we're no longer using that blockchain for game assets" or otherwise make your "purchase" (which isn't really a purchase) unusable with a blockchain based solution as it is with current Steam/iOS-based systems. (Probably easier, really.)
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    Absolutely easier: Steam and Apple stores have policies that merchants are legally liable for, including refund and availability policies. Who enforces it when the creator no longer honors your token?
  - rglullis 4y ago
    It's not about "game assets". It's a about having disintermediated access to the state of the "world". Think of all the stories of startups that offer a product that locks their users and then go to be acquired/shut down by some other bigger company. If the services and the data live on the blockchain, it's guaranteed by design that the users are in control of their own data (no lock in) and that if the company just drops out of the market, others can continue using the services however they want.
    - candiddevmike 4y ago
      I don't think blockchain is the answer for this. The answer is self-hosting and requiring SaaS companies to offer a self-hosted version.
    - DanHulton 4y ago
polygamous_bat 4y ago
> What is the value proposition of web3 to the user? ... You will up pay for every click. But people who come after you will pay even more to you to do the same thing that you did for cheap! You are an early adopter who can just do nothing but click early all the way to becoming a millionaire! Basically a shameless ponzi is implicit in the promise. I think in a perverse way, the pay per click dystopia is a feature and not a bug.
- vmception 4y ago
  Depends more on transaction fees then the base currency used If people pay to use that network and that increases, means alot of people are
woojoo666 4y ago
If you're talking about visitors to a web3 website, ideally they shouldn't be able to tell if it's web3 or not. But I believe the value proposition is for people who have spare bandwidth/compute/storage and want to make money. Currently internet infrastructure (like AWS) is largely owned by a few corps. Web3 has the potential to let anybody join, distributing the infrastructure across individual providers like what Uber did to taxis. Another big one is web3 social platforms like Odysee and Peertube. These are more censorship resistant because they are decentralized.
- maccard 4y ago
  Uber is the polar opposite of what web 3 purports - it's a closed garden of a standard that allows other members to play by their rules.
  - woojoo666 4y ago
    That's fair, I was just using them as an example of a share economy
    - maccard 4y ago
      A sharing economy can (and does!) exist in Web2 though - I've yet to get an answer as to what Web3 gives me over web2 when it comes to these sorts of problems.
axg11 4y ago
Some benefits that I think web3 can bring to the user: - Universal login: An alternative to "Sign in with Google/Apple/XYZ" that can't be denied by a corporation. There are countless examples of these companies deactivating accounts for questionable reasons. - Permissionless composability: I'm not sure how to word this one better. If a developer wants to build on top of blockchain data, they can. No need to apply for API access, rate limits, etc. Not all data should be open/on a blockchain, but in the cases where it's appropriate this is a fantastic benefit. - Ownership in communities: tokens (fungible or non-fungible) can represent ownership for communities. The next Reddit will reward its community and contributors. This isn't an unusual concept. YouTube and TikTok already reward their creator communities. The difference is that existing platforms don't let you build on those communities outside of their walled garden. For balance, here are two concepts/terms I see co-mentioned with web3 that I believe are bullshit: - Metaverse: I don't think this will come to anything. We're already living in the metaverse. We have online identities (yours is mouzogu!). I refuse to spend a significant portion of my life in VR or another 3D game. - Micropayments: Consumers don't want the mental overhead of figuring out value for money every time they consume content.
- Feriti 4y ago
  And who else will then operate the web3 infrastructure? Instead of the Security team at Google, their ddos service and OnCall experts we have whom now? Some miners? Perfectly written Blockchain code? You sound like those things are just free.
  - damon_c 4y ago
    As a member of an open source community involved in one or more blockchain projects, I can attest that many of these things literally are indeed free.
    - Feriti 4y ago
      An open source community can do a lot and not everything. I'm not aware of any opensource community being happy at doing on call. Or end customer support. Or even marketing. And if we look at successful opensource projects, than we have companies behind them.
birracerveza 4y ago
That's not web3. Web3 should feel no different to the end user than web2, except for the fact they "sign in" via their wallet (Metamask) instead of legacy login mechanisms (Username+password or Google/FB sign ins). Users shouldn't even pay for gas. Look at orbis.club for an early example of proper web3. What we saw up until now is not "true" web3, but simply web2 masquerading as such and using web3 as a marketing buzzword.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > Web3 should feel no different to the end user than web2 Yes, yes it would feel different. Because every action requires the user to pay.
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    No
  - birracerveza 4y ago
    Please read my post. Take a look at orbis.club. Users are not required to pay gas for every interaction.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      Storing content on the blockchain is prohibitively expensive. So "web3" is either using centralized non-blockchain solutions, or users will pay for it. Running "smart" "contracts" which underpin "web3" is not free. So yeah. If users only consume content, then web3 can be free for those users I guess.
- Shish2k 4y ago
  > Web3 should feel no different to the end user than web2, except for the fact they "sign in" via their wallet Ok but we’ve had this technology for decades and nobody cares. Why is doing this via the blockchain suddenly going to make it work?
  - 4y ago
vmception 4y ago
Its very developer friendly Now we don’t have to pay for any costs (maaaaybe a smart contract deployment once) and the users can’t help themselves from interacting Compared to web 2 marketing funnels, this is a one click funnel where every click is a payment. (Every click doesnt have to be a payment, users dont currently care) Thats a great value proposition Cheaper to operate, faster to accept payment, better path to getting payment. Pick all three.
- maccard 4y ago
  Faster to accept payment? How is it easier for me to accept payment in eth and use it to pay my energy bill than it is to set up stripe? Also, you claim a better path to getting payment? What is better about it? As far as I can see either I trust a third party to act as an intermediate to save in gas tax, or I charge multiple dollars to verify payment "immediately" - i.e. anytime in the next few hours if imlucky, depending on the currency. Of course there are coins out there that don't have these problems (yet) but then I need to go find an exchange that supports the coin I have and the coin I want, transfer them (see above) and _then_ pay? I don't see how this as a consumer is easier than having my browser autofill my credit card, or as a developer is easier than implementing a handful of functions to accept currency my users already use.
  - pshc 4y ago
    OP might be living in the future a bit, because yeah, fees are still too high right now, and there's too much friction. For now. But in principle I agree. If you have a wallet set up and are used to using it, it's pretty quick and easy, and the money settles faster than ACH in the US which take at least a day if not 3-5? Although in Canada settlement with Interac is almost instant, maybe 3 minutes to an hour. Setting up Stripe is something you can only do with approval from the authorities, though, so e.g. sex workers can't use it.
    - maccard 4y ago
      > But in principle I agree. If you have a wallet set up and are used to using it, it's pretty quick and easy, Once you've overcome all the hurdles it's quick and easy isn't exactly encouraging. I'm not going to claim that it's easy to open a bank account/get a debit card, but they're pretty close to required in the western world these days so people have already overcome that hrudle. > and the money settles faster than ACH in the US which take at least a day if not 3-5 This is a US problem that can be solved by regulation, not a technical problem. SEPA transfers clear in seconds in the EU. If you're using a payment network like Visa or Mastercard, you don't need to wait for processing (which can be 5-10 days), you only need authorization which is normally in the order of seconds. There is an element of trust here for sure, but you're trusting your Merchant Provider, and if you don't trust them to pay you you need another Merchant Provider _anyway_. > Setting up Stripe is something you can only do with approval from the authorities, though, so e.g. sex workers can't use it. Coinbase requires you to go through a KYC too, meaning it's unlikely that a person who is currently unable to use an existing Merchant provider will be able to use any of the larger exchanges.
plsbenice34 4y ago
>You will up pay for every click Much less dystopian to me to pay rather than indirectly pay by being a data mining product and selling my mental real estate.
- dgellow 4y ago
  Cannot they do both, you pay per action AND your data are sold? What blocks companies from gathering user data in a web3 application and resell them?
10x-dev 4y ago
Story time. About 20 years ago, when dialup was introduced where I grew up, my uncle called me to show him what this new internet thing is. As soon as I opened "yahoo.com", he asked "how am I paying to view Yahoo?". I said you're not paying anybody, you're just paying for the Internet connection. He nodded. I then showed him Hotmail. He kept asking "ok so now, how did they charge me to view this page?". I kept telling him, "that's the beauty of the internet, you don't pay for each site you visit, you just have access to this enormous body of knowledge". He was thinking of sites in terms of making long distance calls, since he knew the Internet used the phone line, so to him it was normal to pay for each "site call" (if that makes sense), because that's how phone calls worked. This interaction stayed with me for a long time, because it was natural for him to think about paying for each website visit, but to me it was all 'free'. As social media and user data became more monetizable in the years after, we found out pretty fast that there was no such thing as free. At times I wonder what would the web feel like if it worked like my uncle expected it to work back then. Websites could support their existence without ads, since each customer would be a paying customer. Ads would still be around, but perhaps people would have demanded a nicer experience once they know they are paying for the visit. In many ways, that's the lense through which I look at web3. It might be too late to switch to a pay as you go system. It might be too late to educate people about the importance of staying anonymous and preserving their user data. Nothing about this payment system requires a blockchain, but internet-money is a good enough excuse to introduce an alternative pay-per-click approach to the Internet, because, to be honest, I think the Internet ended up being a cesspool of abnoxious ads, paid content, ads disguised as content, dark patterns, etc, like the world's dirtiest third world country bazaar. Maybe if we paid for each click, the experience of using the Internet could be more like a supermarket. It would certainly be different.
- arinlen 4y ago
  > In many ways, that's the lense through which I look at web3. It might be too late to switch to a pay as you go system. In that regard, web3 is a solution looking for a problem. Companies like Medium, Udemy, Spotify, Netflix, LinkedIn, etc already offer users pay-as-you-go services for higher-value content, and none of them required so many buzzword-driven technologies to pull it off. Heck, even Amazon offers pay-as-you-go access to books. Exactly what does web3 bring to the table? > It might be too late to educate people about the importance of staying anonymous and preserving their user data. Again, exactly what does web3 bring to the table with regards to privacy and "preserving user data"? Those examples seem too vague to have any meaning beyond scaremongering.
celdon25 4y ago
The theory is that people are incentivized to contribute to the p2p ecosystem. Unfortunately, the visionaries behind it probably didn’t predict that the user base (and therefore the next generations of developers) would be dominated by scammers and charlatans. Most of those projects didn’t even become decentralized, having a heavy UI on top of a thin blockchain. I think the original vision might be possible to pull off if redesigned to ward against that sort of thing. Successfully rebranding it would be one of the harder problems I would imagine.
CuriouslyC 4y ago
The value proposition is the ability to share content without restriction or censorship, and own your data rather than being locked in a walled garden.
- the_snooze 4y ago
  Those conditions are perfect if you want a system to get overrun with spam and scams.
  - CuriouslyC 4y ago
    Sure, but if you have an individually managed social trust graph built into the distribution network that's pretty easy to combat. Have a friend that's spreading trust to scammers? Reduce their trust value (or just stop trusting them), problem solved.
thesausageking 4y ago
Tiktok is the opposite of web3. It's a centralized service, run by a Chinese company, that collects loads of data about users and which controls the network. If they decide they want to ban your account they can. If you want to take your username and data to another network, it's very hard to do. Networks should function more like domains and email. If you own "mouzugo.com", you can use Gmail for email. If you decide you'd rather switch to Fastmail, you can migrate without a problem. It's all enabled by open standards and interoperability. This is what web3 is trying to get back to.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  > This is what web3 is trying to get back to. No, it's trying to extract money out of clients for every transaction they perform. Moreover it requires all users buy into the cryptocurrency Ponzi to participate in that rent extraction. So you trade real money for Geoffrey dollars in order to pay money to read a fucking tweet.
Melatonic 4y ago
I suspect Web3 will be a spectacular marketing fail and then eventually nerds will figure out a real Web 3.1 that is not nearly as easily hyped but actually brings us some nice advances

lalaland1125 4y ago

> What is the value proposition of web3 to the user? The same value as most other P2P software: illegal activity. Web3 in particular is very useful for running online casinos and ponzi schemes. Note that there is huge potential there for a ton of profit. Casinos make a ton of money.

przeor 4y ago
- Xorlev 4y ago
  I don't think your parent comment mentioned social security. Kind of off-topic, don't you think?
- LordKeren 4y ago
  yeah, if you cut out and overlook all the key defining aspects of a Ponzi scheme like the fraud, sure. Once the government privatizes social security (and similar mandatory retirement programs in other countries), converts it to a for-profit system, encourages speculative “investing”, makes deceptive claims on returns— you’ll be exactly right, they would be the same.
- Double_a_92 4y ago
  What about it? Everybody knows it's a Ponzi and at some point people agreed to it. It's not lying to you saying it will magically create money for you if you invest. You take the money from younger contributors, to give it to older contributors by design. And that kinda makes sense because the people at the top eventually die and it's everybodys turn at some point.
- APock 4y ago
  The ponzi schemes ran by governments are ultimately run as a benefit to your retirement, and most importantly, you can overthrow a government.
  - achenet 4y ago
    you make it sound so easy... why not just waltz into Russia, tell Putin and pals to leave and replace them with kind, competent, generous leaders?
- arinlen 4y ago
  > How about poniz schemes ran by governments ? You are ok with that kind of exploitation ? I don't understand what kind of argument you were aiming at. Even if your "government ponzi scheme" non-sequitur is taken at face value, what's your point exactly? Do you expect that a type of fraud becomes acceptable if you manage to point out other types of fraud?
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Welcome to the internet. 1. Claim that X is the same as Y. 2. Assert that Y is Bad. 3. Therefore, X is Good. QED.
  - przeor 4y ago
    simple, if there are no more participants in a govt systems like social security or people dont want to use govt backed money, then it's value will collapse in a one way or another. It means that people who are left in the system are screwed like in any ponzi like systems. P.S. Thanks for downvotes HN on my orginal comment
maccard 4y ago
p2p is great and has some excellent use cases. We used it on a previous project to download 100+GB patches onto dozens of PCs in a trusted environment using a 100(?)mbps external connection in a couple of minutes. Torrents are also an incredible piece of technology, allowing tamper resistant distribution of files from untrusted parties - imagine how much value Linux distros glean from being hosted by third parties who voluntarily do so without needing to "partner up"? I don't disagree that the _primary_ use case is piracy though (and I've yet to see any genuine use cases for web3 suggested either)
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
Good point

_glass 4y ago

you could make social media where the ad revenue is shared with the users. you can already sell art where the platform can vanish (like hicetnunc did) but the artists and users can take their assets to just another platform (like objkt).

belltaco 4y ago
That sounds like it'd make social media somehow even worse, by incentivitizing clickbait, flamebait, reposting, fake news and shock posts.
rgbrgb 4y ago
incidentally this was the argument against streaming music. Superior UX won out over philosophical arguments of data portability and custody.

douglaswlance 4y ago

Data portability is a huge value prop: Everywhere you sign-in, you already have all of your data. Is it bad to pay to click, if you earn more from the ads on the page? Along with micro-payments, you also micro-earn.

APock 4y ago
So, being FULLY tracked by every website ever, on every device at the same time, since all your data is whatever wallet you use across devices anyway, is now a good thing?
- pshc 4y ago
  You're not wrong. Privacy mechanisms still need to be designed and implemented. There is much research, particularly in the landscape of zero-knowledge proofs.
- douglaswlance 4y ago
  Only you (or anyone who has access to your private key) can access your data.
simonw 4y ago
How does data portability actually work? I hear it talked about a lot, but I've never seen anything more than vague hand-waving as to the actual mechanics of it.
cecilpl2 4y ago
What data do I actually want to carry across websites? I actually don't understand the value here. Is it that I don't have to re-enter my personal information on each site? Signing in with Google already gets me that. Is it something else? Is it some kind of JSON blob that every service will know how to ingest properly?
dmitriid 4y ago
> Data portability is a huge value prop: Everywhere you sign-in, you already have all of your data. No. No you don't. 1. Below you claim that "Only you (or anyone who has access to your private key) can access your data." So when you sign in somewhere, that "web3" app still has no access to your data 2. Just the fact that you have your data does not mean it's portable. A proprietary binary blob created by app1 will not be readable or accessible through app2.

outside1234 4y ago

The user can money launder their money via NFT wash sales.

anonymous0 4y ago

Honest question: Is there something specific about TikTok technology/usage pattern paving the way for distopy acceptance or it's just the same concept of facebook/instagram/Twitter but with a younger audience?

sergiomattei 4y ago
It’s just a low-tier generalization about newer generation. Nothing to analyze here. There is nothing about TikTok that makes my generation mindless Web3 drones.
- danieldevries 4y ago
  Agreed. Just lazy analytics by using buzzwords. The TikTok generation... I'm clearly late to the party as a Millennial.
- tomc1985 4y ago
  OK Zoomer. OF COURSE you're going to deny the generalization and blame the accuser. That's generational warfare 101. Doesn't make their thoughts any less valid. There are clear differences between the Facebook demo and the Tiktok demo. I am not smart enough to be able to articulate them but they are there.
ewzimm 4y ago
I have noticed a cultural difference between different generations of social networks. With Facebook, people usually sought out people and groups that they wanted to connect with and complained about being algorithmically profiled for ads but accepted it as part of the business model. With TikTok, people usually express how much they love the algorithm that finds things that they like.
- dwaite 4y ago
  > With Facebook, people usually sought out people and groups that they wanted to connect with and complained about being algorithmically profiled for ads but accepted it as part of the business model. Google's success with ads is that they were able to trigger them as part of user action. Paid search results are hypothetically helpful to some people. Contextual ads on a site may actually provide value if they are on-topic. Facebook ads mostly target people. They don't really provide any in-context value, they are pure commercials - spooky commercials that know what is going on in your life, although the ability to utilize this information is often laughably bad. Twitter often has the same problems. Ads interspersed within conversations just aren't helpful or desired.

exo762 4y ago

> What is the value proposition of web3 to the user? Potential of paying for services and being able to require privacy in return? It is not a choice one can make with many web2 services (e.g. google). As for "blockchains are transparent and can't offer no privacy" - just a question of time. Tech is already here (zkps, mpc, etc).

dwaite 4y ago
Most tech calling itself web3 has less privacy - rather than 'just' Google knowing who I am across the internet, I'm spreading correlating information and pointers to publicly accessible records everywhere. Privacy isn't some technology you can add to the stack. Rather than adding ZKP sprinkles on top, every technical choice will ultimately need to be reevaluated if privacy is a goal. Basically, you're talking about web4/5.

web4 4y ago

web3 is not "pay for every click." value prop is disintermediation and decentralization. like purchasing a game asset, and not having it tied only to your iOS or Steam account.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bpeebles 4y ago
It's just as easy for a game developer to say "eh we're no longer using that blockchain for game assets" or otherwise make your "purchase" (which isn't really a purchase) unusable with a blockchain based solution as it is with current Steam/iOS-based systems. (Probably easier, really.)
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  Absolutely easier: Steam and Apple stores have policies that merchants are legally liable for, including refund and availability policies. Who enforces it when the creator no longer honors your token?
- rglullis 4y ago
  It's not about "game assets". It's a about having disintermediated access to the state of the "world". Think of all the stories of startups that offer a product that locks their users and then go to be acquired/shut down by some other bigger company. If the services and the data live on the blockchain, it's guaranteed by design that the users are in control of their own data (no lock in) and that if the company just drops out of the market, others can continue using the services however they want.
  - candiddevmike 4y ago
    I don't think blockchain is the answer for this. The answer is self-hosting and requiring SaaS companies to offer a self-hosted version.
  - DanHulton 4y ago

polygamous_bat 4y ago

> What is the value proposition of web3 to the user? ... You will up pay for every click. But people who come after you will pay even more to you to do the same thing that you did for cheap! You are an early adopter who can just do nothing but click early all the way to becoming a millionaire! Basically a shameless ponzi is implicit in the promise. I think in a perverse way, the pay per click dystopia is a feature and not a bug.

vmception 4y ago
Depends more on transaction fees then the base currency used If people pay to use that network and that increases, means alot of people are

woojoo666 4y ago

If you're talking about visitors to a web3 website, ideally they shouldn't be able to tell if it's web3 or not. But I believe the value proposition is for people who have spare bandwidth/compute/storage and want to make money. Currently internet infrastructure (like AWS) is largely owned by a few corps. Web3 has the potential to let anybody join, distributing the infrastructure across individual providers like what Uber did to taxis. Another big one is web3 social platforms like Odysee and Peertube. These are more censorship resistant because they are decentralized.

maccard 4y ago
Uber is the polar opposite of what web 3 purports - it's a closed garden of a standard that allows other members to play by their rules.
- woojoo666 4y ago
  That's fair, I was just using them as an example of a share economy
  - maccard 4y ago
    A sharing economy can (and does!) exist in Web2 though - I've yet to get an answer as to what Web3 gives me over web2 when it comes to these sorts of problems.

axg11 4y ago

Some benefits that I think web3 can bring to the user: - Universal login: An alternative to "Sign in with Google/Apple/XYZ" that can't be denied by a corporation. There are countless examples of these companies deactivating accounts for questionable reasons. - Permissionless composability: I'm not sure how to word this one better. If a developer wants to build on top of blockchain data, they can. No need to apply for API access, rate limits, etc. Not all data should be open/on a blockchain, but in the cases where it's appropriate this is a fantastic benefit. - Ownership in communities: tokens (fungible or non-fungible) can represent ownership for communities. The next Reddit will reward its community and contributors. This isn't an unusual concept. YouTube and TikTok already reward their creator communities. The difference is that existing platforms don't let you build on those communities outside of their walled garden. For balance, here are two concepts/terms I see co-mentioned with web3 that I believe are bullshit: - Metaverse: I don't think this will come to anything. We're already living in the metaverse. We have online identities (yours is mouzogu!). I refuse to spend a significant portion of my life in VR or another 3D game. - Micropayments: Consumers don't want the mental overhead of figuring out value for money every time they consume content.

Feriti 4y ago
And who else will then operate the web3 infrastructure? Instead of the Security team at Google, their ddos service and OnCall experts we have whom now? Some miners? Perfectly written Blockchain code? You sound like those things are just free.
- damon_c 4y ago
  As a member of an open source community involved in one or more blockchain projects, I can attest that many of these things literally are indeed free.
  - Feriti 4y ago
    An open source community can do a lot and not everything. I'm not aware of any opensource community being happy at doing on call. Or end customer support. Or even marketing. And if we look at successful opensource projects, than we have companies behind them.

birracerveza 4y ago

That's not web3. Web3 should feel no different to the end user than web2, except for the fact they "sign in" via their wallet (Metamask) instead of legacy login mechanisms (Username+password or Google/FB sign ins). Users shouldn't even pay for gas. Look at orbis.club for an early example of proper web3. What we saw up until now is not "true" web3, but simply web2 masquerading as such and using web3 as a marketing buzzword.

dmitriid 4y ago
> Web3 should feel no different to the end user than web2 Yes, yes it would feel different. Because every action requires the user to pay.
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  No
- birracerveza 4y ago
  Please read my post. Take a look at orbis.club. Users are not required to pay gas for every interaction.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    Storing content on the blockchain is prohibitively expensive. So "web3" is either using centralized non-blockchain solutions, or users will pay for it. Running "smart" "contracts" which underpin "web3" is not free. So yeah. If users only consume content, then web3 can be free for those users I guess.
Shish2k 4y ago
> Web3 should feel no different to the end user than web2, except for the fact they "sign in" via their wallet Ok but we’ve had this technology for decades and nobody cares. Why is doing this via the blockchain suddenly going to make it work?
- 4y ago

vmception 4y ago

Its very developer friendly Now we don’t have to pay for any costs (maaaaybe a smart contract deployment once) and the users can’t help themselves from interacting Compared to web 2 marketing funnels, this is a one click funnel where every click is a payment. (Every click doesnt have to be a payment, users dont currently care) Thats a great value proposition Cheaper to operate, faster to accept payment, better path to getting payment. Pick all three.

maccard 4y ago
Faster to accept payment? How is it easier for me to accept payment in eth and use it to pay my energy bill than it is to set up stripe? Also, you claim a better path to getting payment? What is better about it? As far as I can see either I trust a third party to act as an intermediate to save in gas tax, or I charge multiple dollars to verify payment "immediately" - i.e. anytime in the next few hours if imlucky, depending on the currency. Of course there are coins out there that don't have these problems (yet) but then I need to go find an exchange that supports the coin I have and the coin I want, transfer them (see above) and _then_ pay? I don't see how this as a consumer is easier than having my browser autofill my credit card, or as a developer is easier than implementing a handful of functions to accept currency my users already use.
- pshc 4y ago
  OP might be living in the future a bit, because yeah, fees are still too high right now, and there's too much friction. For now. But in principle I agree. If you have a wallet set up and are used to using it, it's pretty quick and easy, and the money settles faster than ACH in the US which take at least a day if not 3-5? Although in Canada settlement with Interac is almost instant, maybe 3 minutes to an hour. Setting up Stripe is something you can only do with approval from the authorities, though, so e.g. sex workers can't use it.
  - maccard 4y ago
    > But in principle I agree. If you have a wallet set up and are used to using it, it's pretty quick and easy, Once you've overcome all the hurdles it's quick and easy isn't exactly encouraging. I'm not going to claim that it's easy to open a bank account/get a debit card, but they're pretty close to required in the western world these days so people have already overcome that hrudle. > and the money settles faster than ACH in the US which take at least a day if not 3-5 This is a US problem that can be solved by regulation, not a technical problem. SEPA transfers clear in seconds in the EU. If you're using a payment network like Visa or Mastercard, you don't need to wait for processing (which can be 5-10 days), you only need authorization which is normally in the order of seconds. There is an element of trust here for sure, but you're trusting your Merchant Provider, and if you don't trust them to pay you you need another Merchant Provider _anyway_. > Setting up Stripe is something you can only do with approval from the authorities, though, so e.g. sex workers can't use it. Coinbase requires you to go through a KYC too, meaning it's unlikely that a person who is currently unable to use an existing Merchant provider will be able to use any of the larger exchanges.

plsbenice34 4y ago

>You will up pay for every click Much less dystopian to me to pay rather than indirectly pay by being a data mining product and selling my mental real estate.

dgellow 4y ago
Cannot they do both, you pay per action AND your data are sold? What blocks companies from gathering user data in a web3 application and resell them?

10x-dev 4y ago

Story time. About 20 years ago, when dialup was introduced where I grew up, my uncle called me to show him what this new internet thing is. As soon as I opened "yahoo.com", he asked "how am I paying to view Yahoo?". I said you're not paying anybody, you're just paying for the Internet connection. He nodded. I then showed him Hotmail. He kept asking "ok so now, how did they charge me to view this page?". I kept telling him, "that's the beauty of the internet, you don't pay for each site you visit, you just have access to this enormous body of knowledge". He was thinking of sites in terms of making long distance calls, since he knew the Internet used the phone line, so to him it was normal to pay for each "site call" (if that makes sense), because that's how phone calls worked. This interaction stayed with me for a long time, because it was natural for him to think about paying for each website visit, but to me it was all 'free'. As social media and user data became more monetizable in the years after, we found out pretty fast that there was no such thing as free. At times I wonder what would the web feel like if it worked like my uncle expected it to work back then. Websites could support their existence without ads, since each customer would be a paying customer. Ads would still be around, but perhaps people would have demanded a nicer experience once they know they are paying for the visit. In many ways, that's the lense through which I look at web3. It might be too late to switch to a pay as you go system. It might be too late to educate people about the importance of staying anonymous and preserving their user data. Nothing about this payment system requires a blockchain, but internet-money is a good enough excuse to introduce an alternative pay-per-click approach to the Internet, because, to be honest, I think the Internet ended up being a cesspool of abnoxious ads, paid content, ads disguised as content, dark patterns, etc, like the world's dirtiest third world country bazaar. Maybe if we paid for each click, the experience of using the Internet could be more like a supermarket. It would certainly be different.

arinlen 4y ago
> In many ways, that's the lense through which I look at web3. It might be too late to switch to a pay as you go system. In that regard, web3 is a solution looking for a problem. Companies like Medium, Udemy, Spotify, Netflix, LinkedIn, etc already offer users pay-as-you-go services for higher-value content, and none of them required so many buzzword-driven technologies to pull it off. Heck, even Amazon offers pay-as-you-go access to books. Exactly what does web3 bring to the table? > It might be too late to educate people about the importance of staying anonymous and preserving their user data. Again, exactly what does web3 bring to the table with regards to privacy and "preserving user data"? Those examples seem too vague to have any meaning beyond scaremongering.

celdon25 4y ago

The theory is that people are incentivized to contribute to the p2p ecosystem. Unfortunately, the visionaries behind it probably didn’t predict that the user base (and therefore the next generations of developers) would be dominated by scammers and charlatans. Most of those projects didn’t even become decentralized, having a heavy UI on top of a thin blockchain. I think the original vision might be possible to pull off if redesigned to ward against that sort of thing. Successfully rebranding it would be one of the harder problems I would imagine.

CuriouslyC 4y ago

The value proposition is the ability to share content without restriction or censorship, and own your data rather than being locked in a walled garden.

the_snooze 4y ago
Those conditions are perfect if you want a system to get overrun with spam and scams.
- CuriouslyC 4y ago
  Sure, but if you have an individually managed social trust graph built into the distribution network that's pretty easy to combat. Have a friend that's spreading trust to scammers? Reduce their trust value (or just stop trusting them), problem solved.

thesausageking 4y ago

Tiktok is the opposite of web3. It's a centralized service, run by a Chinese company, that collects loads of data about users and which controls the network. If they decide they want to ban your account they can. If you want to take your username and data to another network, it's very hard to do. Networks should function more like domains and email. If you own "mouzugo.com", you can use Gmail for email. If you decide you'd rather switch to Fastmail, you can migrate without a problem. It's all enabled by open standards and interoperability. This is what web3 is trying to get back to.

giantrobot 4y ago
> This is what web3 is trying to get back to. No, it's trying to extract money out of clients for every transaction they perform. Moreover it requires all users buy into the cryptocurrency Ponzi to participate in that rent extraction. So you trade real money for Geoffrey dollars in order to pay money to read a fucking tweet.

Melatonic 4y ago

I suspect Web3 will be a spectacular marketing fail and then eventually nerds will figure out a real Web 3.1 that is not nearly as easily hyped but actually brings us some nice advances