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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 corporati

by 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.
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago
  Internet Service Providers? Hosting Providers? Literally anyone from their closet? Google isn't the Internet, no matter how badly they want you to believe that.
  - Feriti 4y ago
    From their closet? What? They develop web3 software in the closet?
    - kjsthree 4y ago
      Not sure if you’ve heard but, over the last two years, some of the most polished and well-produced voices on NPR were literally coming from someone under a blanket in a closet. I’m not sure how much web3 is happening in closets but I wouldn’t bet on zero.
- axg11 4y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your question, genuinely. There are of course costs for the benefits that come with web3: protocols are slow to evolve, and infrastructure is less efficient when we require a distributed consensus. Anyone that thinks "Web 2" or centralized systems will disappear is silly, there will always be situations where the costs of web3 are greater than the benefits. On the other hand, it's equally silly to think that there are zero use cases where the benefits of web3 outweigh the costs. Both can and will coexist. Static HTML pages still exist today.
  - enos_feedler 4y ago
    The difference is there are relatively fewer static html pages. There wont be relatively fewer web2 deployments vs web3. Itll be mostly web2
    - axg11 4y ago
      I agree - misguided attempts to make everything "web3" shouldn't take away from the huge amount of value that future web3 services can bring, even if they are vastly outnumbered by web2 services forever.
- bsedlm 4y ago
  have you considered how (not "why?") was google able to give away one gigabyte of email storage to anybody before 2010s? that was not free either... what I'm trying to get at (and not very eloquently) is that a lot of that work is done by the computers. also, something about how the code is written once and then used by everybody at the same time. sure, writting the code may be expensive at first. dunno, I doubt better written words will get you to agree with (or see) whatever it is I'm trying to get at.
  - Feriti 4y ago
    I follow plenty of things Google as a company just does due to the money they have. Undersee cables for example. Project Zero. Secure by default. 2FA. Google even gives you now the option of configuring your ads. Realistically speaking some entity with a monetary motivation is solving hard problems for us. Who will solve this issue in web3 and with what motivation? If it is monetary (as it will be) do I now should start trusting the etherium company instead of Google? Or should I start trusting 1000 small companies than Google? I'm quite happy what Google does and I don't know all of those other potential companies.
    - eric_cc 4y ago
      > the etherium company LOL
      - Feriti 4y ago
        Not sure what you think is funny but did you check the contributor list here https://github.com/orgs/ethereum/people https://github.com/orgs/ethereum/people ?
      - topranks 4y ago
        Sorry, “foundation” https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-basics/ethereum-foundation/ https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-basics/ethereum-foundation/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethereum-foundation/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethereum-foundation/
- blawson 4y ago
  Speaking of which… https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-pages-on-ipfs/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-pages-on-ipfs/
moolcool 4y ago
> Universal login You can have universal login with MetaMask, sure, but that functionality isn't reliant on a blockchain. It's decades-old public key cryptography. > Ownership in communities.... The difference is that existing platforms don't let you build on those communities outside of their walled garden But successful internet communities do everything in their power to remain walled gardens. What could they possibly have to gain by doing this? Like what would Reddit gain by moving Reddit Gold to the blockchain?
- axg11 4y ago
  > But successful internet communities do everything in their power to remain walled gardens. What could they possibly have to gain by doing this? Like what would Reddit gain by moving Reddit Gold to the blockchain? We have to reimagine everything, I don't think a successful web3 platform will emerge from simply tacking on tokens to existing platforms. Successful internet communities become walled gardens to protect against competition, but they're limiting the growth of their community members and I believe the platforms themselves could capture more value. A creator on TikTok today can't easily give their most loyal followers discounts on their Shopify store, perks for moderating a Discord, early access to YouTube content, etc.
  - the_snooze 4y ago
    >We have to reimagine everything, I don't think a successful web3 platform will emerge from simply tacking on tokens to existing platforms. Greenfield projects are easy because they wave away the real complexities of integrating with existing systems. But those existing platforms already provide a lot of tangible value. If you want users, you can't just ignore that.
  - egypturnash 4y ago
    “I’m running a sale on Shopify for my supporters, check the latest Patreon post for the discount code!” Patreon makes it pretty easy to give your subscribers early access to stuff, too. No blockchain involved. A lot of it happens over email.
  - trenchgun 4y ago
gentleman11 4y ago
Universal login: the third party services still need to accept your login and can still reject it. Service providers won’t vanish or decentralize, look how we got google on the open web Composability: sounds really bad for privacy. The entire concept of a permanent public record of transactions scares me for this reason rewarding creator communities: we already have Patreon and advertising deals. Aren’t crypto transactions relatively slow and expensive, or has that changed?
choppaface 4y ago
Universal Login: while some corporate login controls are anti-competitive, most blocks are due to spam and phishing. Web3 / crypto has yet to provide an effective sell against fakes and whitewashing. Sure blockchain is cool, but the actual product is the design of the collision to stop spam. Permissionless composability: Copyright ensures there will always be the need for permission if you wish to compose in a country that has copyright. There are some good ideas here but there are also some very critical flaws. The problem is not so much web3 itself but that web3’s most vocal proponents—- particularly investors—- have refused to grapple with things like spam and copyright. It’s probably because they want to be middlemen who collect all the profits and are left without liability when the pyramid collapses.
kristjansson 4y ago
I get stuck at the point where I’m supposed to store the key material for my highly secure, persistent, web3-wide identity in … a browser extension? To which I then allow every web3 site I visit to access? I understand that it helps adoption, but there’s an enormous impedance mismatch there. Why isn’t there offline identify verification front and center?
- mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
  The way you've described it, sounds like a cross domain cookie. That isn't technically a thing unless you consider one domain/company selling the tracking of their cookie for you to another domain/company or a data broker/aggregator. So it sounds like it could make tracking of activity much easier and that doesn't sound right.
giantrobot 4y ago
> that can't be denied by a corporation Every service that might use blockchain based authentication will implement allow lists. As everyone in the history of the Internet has learned trolls and spammers will ruin services. So some sort of unblockable universal login is an impractical fantasy.
crate_barre 4y ago
8note 4y ago
All of those usecase are going to suck for handling fraud and abuse though, same as everything else crypto related. Permissionless composability means you have no control over which apps use your data, the universal login makes sure that spam is present and unbannable, and Reddit communities benefit heavily from being able to have top mods removed when they turn abusive
MrMan 4y ago
I like the distributed ID stuff and think its good or at least has potential. permissionless computing is also fine, but I think payments need to be somehow decoupled from this. endless ocean of tokens is stupid. we need some kind of distributed payment gateway built into the internet where you can use any currency on a list of supported currencies, and none should be supported that are "bad" ie planet killing POW. tokenization I think is a dead end

by axg11 4y ago

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.
hypertele-Xii 4y ago
Internet Service Providers? Hosting Providers? Literally anyone from their closet? Google isn't the Internet, no matter how badly they want you to believe that.
- Feriti 4y ago
  From their closet? What? They develop web3 software in the closet?
  - kjsthree 4y ago
    Not sure if you’ve heard but, over the last two years, some of the most polished and well-produced voices on NPR were literally coming from someone under a blanket in a closet. I’m not sure how much web3 is happening in closets but I wouldn’t bet on zero.
axg11 4y ago
I'm not sure I understand your question, genuinely. There are of course costs for the benefits that come with web3: protocols are slow to evolve, and infrastructure is less efficient when we require a distributed consensus. Anyone that thinks "Web 2" or centralized systems will disappear is silly, there will always be situations where the costs of web3 are greater than the benefits. On the other hand, it's equally silly to think that there are zero use cases where the benefits of web3 outweigh the costs. Both can and will coexist. Static HTML pages still exist today.
- enos_feedler 4y ago
  The difference is there are relatively fewer static html pages. There wont be relatively fewer web2 deployments vs web3. Itll be mostly web2
  - axg11 4y ago
    I agree - misguided attempts to make everything "web3" shouldn't take away from the huge amount of value that future web3 services can bring, even if they are vastly outnumbered by web2 services forever.
bsedlm 4y ago
have you considered how (not "why?") was google able to give away one gigabyte of email storage to anybody before 2010s? that was not free either... what I'm trying to get at (and not very eloquently) is that a lot of that work is done by the computers. also, something about how the code is written once and then used by everybody at the same time. sure, writting the code may be expensive at first. dunno, I doubt better written words will get you to agree with (or see) whatever it is I'm trying to get at.
- Feriti 4y ago
  I follow plenty of things Google as a company just does due to the money they have. Undersee cables for example. Project Zero. Secure by default. 2FA. Google even gives you now the option of configuring your ads. Realistically speaking some entity with a monetary motivation is solving hard problems for us. Who will solve this issue in web3 and with what motivation? If it is monetary (as it will be) do I now should start trusting the etherium company instead of Google? Or should I start trusting 1000 small companies than Google? I'm quite happy what Google does and I don't know all of those other potential companies.
  - eric_cc 4y ago
    > the etherium company LOL
    - Feriti 4y ago
      Not sure what you think is funny but did you check the contributor list here https://github.com/orgs/ethereum/people https://github.com/orgs/ethereum/people ?
    - topranks 4y ago
      Sorry, “foundation” https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-basics/ethereum-foundation/ https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-basics/ethereum-foundation/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethereum-foundation/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethereum-foundation/
blawson 4y ago
Speaking of which… https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-pages-on-ipfs/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-pages-on-ipfs/

moolcool 4y ago

> Universal login You can have universal login with MetaMask, sure, but that functionality isn't reliant on a blockchain. It's decades-old public key cryptography. > Ownership in communities.... The difference is that existing platforms don't let you build on those communities outside of their walled garden But successful internet communities do everything in their power to remain walled gardens. What could they possibly have to gain by doing this? Like what would Reddit gain by moving Reddit Gold to the blockchain?

axg11 4y ago
> But successful internet communities do everything in their power to remain walled gardens. What could they possibly have to gain by doing this? Like what would Reddit gain by moving Reddit Gold to the blockchain? We have to reimagine everything, I don't think a successful web3 platform will emerge from simply tacking on tokens to existing platforms. Successful internet communities become walled gardens to protect against competition, but they're limiting the growth of their community members and I believe the platforms themselves could capture more value. A creator on TikTok today can't easily give their most loyal followers discounts on their Shopify store, perks for moderating a Discord, early access to YouTube content, etc.
- the_snooze 4y ago
  >We have to reimagine everything, I don't think a successful web3 platform will emerge from simply tacking on tokens to existing platforms. Greenfield projects are easy because they wave away the real complexities of integrating with existing systems. But those existing platforms already provide a lot of tangible value. If you want users, you can't just ignore that.
- egypturnash 4y ago
  “I’m running a sale on Shopify for my supporters, check the latest Patreon post for the discount code!” Patreon makes it pretty easy to give your subscribers early access to stuff, too. No blockchain involved. A lot of it happens over email.
- trenchgun 4y ago

gentleman11 4y ago

Universal login: the third party services still need to accept your login and can still reject it. Service providers won’t vanish or decentralize, look how we got google on the open web Composability: sounds really bad for privacy. The entire concept of a permanent public record of transactions scares me for this reason rewarding creator communities: we already have Patreon and advertising deals. Aren’t crypto transactions relatively slow and expensive, or has that changed?

choppaface 4y ago

Universal Login: while some corporate login controls are anti-competitive, most blocks are due to spam and phishing. Web3 / crypto has yet to provide an effective sell against fakes and whitewashing. Sure blockchain is cool, but the actual product is the design of the collision to stop spam. Permissionless composability: Copyright ensures there will always be the need for permission if you wish to compose in a country that has copyright. There are some good ideas here but there are also some very critical flaws. The problem is not so much web3 itself but that web3’s most vocal proponents—- particularly investors—- have refused to grapple with things like spam and copyright. It’s probably because they want to be middlemen who collect all the profits and are left without liability when the pyramid collapses.

kristjansson 4y ago

I get stuck at the point where I’m supposed to store the key material for my highly secure, persistent, web3-wide identity in … a browser extension? To which I then allow every web3 site I visit to access? I understand that it helps adoption, but there’s an enormous impedance mismatch there. Why isn’t there offline identify verification front and center?

mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
The way you've described it, sounds like a cross domain cookie. That isn't technically a thing unless you consider one domain/company selling the tracking of their cookie for you to another domain/company or a data broker/aggregator. So it sounds like it could make tracking of activity much easier and that doesn't sound right.

giantrobot 4y ago

> that can't be denied by a corporation Every service that might use blockchain based authentication will implement allow lists. As everyone in the history of the Internet has learned trolls and spammers will ruin services. So some sort of unblockable universal login is an impractical fantasy.

crate_barre 4y ago

8note 4y ago

All of those usecase are going to suck for handling fraud and abuse though, same as everything else crypto related. Permissionless composability means you have no control over which apps use your data, the universal login makes sure that spam is present and unbannable, and Reddit communities benefit heavily from being able to have top mods removed when they turn abusive

MrMan 4y ago

I like the distributed ID stuff and think its good or at least has potential. permissionless computing is also fine, but I think payments need to be somehow decoupled from this. endless ocean of tokens is stupid. we need some kind of distributed payment gateway built into the internet where you can use any currency on a list of supported currencies, and none should be supported that are "bad" ie planet killing POW. tokenization I think is a dead end