7 ms·
There are legitimate ways in which the web would benefit from being more decentralized. Democratizing domain distribution away from money-printing machines like
by m12k 4y ago
There are legitimate ways in which the web would benefit from being more decentralized. Democratizing domain distribution away from money-printing machines like ICANN, freeing user's data from the walled gardens like the fediverse tries to do or Tim Berners Lee is trying to do with Solid.
But these legitimate grievances have been co-opted by the blockchain crowd in order to legitimize their grift/solution in search of a problem, bundling it all into the term web3, so they don't need to justify their part of the whole thing, and can lure in new suckers to sell crypto to by draping it all in this air of revolution and societal progress, conveniently allowing them to dismiss anyone calling out their bullshit and get-rich-fast incentives as "anti-progress".
Blockchains are just another kind of centralization, a single central source of truth that nobody can update without convincing/paying a whole bunch of others to do it for them. Conceptually bundling that together with actual decentralized technologies like DHT, IPFS and other P2P systems is doing a disservice to those that are actually working to make the web a freer place, and not just get rich quick.
- Hendrikto 4y ago> Blockchains are just another kind of centralization, a single central source of truth If you really believe this, you don't understand blockchains. They are the exact opposite of that. A decentralized, distributed, immutable, censorship-resistant, trustless, permissionless ledger. You don't need centralized authorities, and you don't need to trust anybody. You don't need anyone's permission to participate, and nobody can keep you from doing so. Moreover, the data is immutable and extremely safe, as it is replicated globally.
- shkkmo 4y agoWhere almost nobody can store and process the whole chain so everyone uses a centralized exchanges and a single company that provides an API to see what happened on chain? In practice, web3 is just as centralized as web2, but with less privacy.
- exit 4y agoyou act as if everything about web3 has to be solved right from the starting gun to have any legitimacy :) there are many different competing consensus mechanism and the balance of trade-offs is still playing out.
- shkkmo 4y agoThe old "it's so new, you expect too much" argument that I have been hearing for years. How about instead of lauding web3 as being so great for decentralization ... you wait until the ecosystem actually increases decentralization. Cryoptocurrency advocates have a long, long history of making empty promises that are never filled. Nobody expects every problem to be solved instantly, but it would be nice if atleast one was solved every once in a while.
- cbm-vic-20 4y agoIndeed- there were a good number of useful "Web 2.0" sites available out there widely being used before someone came up with the term.
- pshc 4y ago> almost nobody can store and process the whole chain Maybe if you’re talking about Solana? Projects that actually take decentralization seriously (like Ethereum) ensure that you only need consumer hardware to run your own node, and even an archive node with full history is attainable. Plus they have proposals in the works to prune old state.
- raspberry1337 4y ago>Projects that actually take decentralization seriously (like Ethereum) Etherum that is centrally controlled and split after giant scam stole like half the tokens in a "bug", hence why we have pre-split etherum classic. The fact that you think etherum is decentrialized speaks volumes
- vitaflo 4y agoThere is nothing about blockchains that requires them to be decentralized, trustless or permissionless. This is a common misunderstanding of blockchains.
- pshc 4y agoA blockchain without those properties might as well be a SQL database.