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From a first read, the following problems I see in this critique: - The trilemmas do not need to be solved. They just need to be acknowledged when you are des

From a first read, the following problems I see in this critique: - The trilemmas do not need to be solved. They just need to be acknowledged when you are designing your application so that people can understand the types of trade-offs being made. In cases where sybil-resistance is not a requirement, you can build a system that gives you privacy and decentralization. When sybil-resistance is required, you just need to think if you prefer a system that sacrifices privacy or if it sacrifices decentralization. Depending on the use-case, one might be preferred over the other. - "Security practices are hard, no one will do it properly, they will rather have some expert that can do it for them". Well, if you don't want to deal with security hygiene, you delegate. Just like the majority of people will rightfully prefer to have a bank to manage most of their funds, one could still envision a future where service providers will act as a proxy to anything that requires "your" identity(ies). In general, the thing that upsets me with all of anti-crypto/anti-web3 people is that they fall into the same trap as the maxis: they start from this ridiculous notion that "web3" is about creating a Highlander solution (there can be only one!) and that this solution needs to satisfy all constraints, otherwise it rubbish and needs to be discarded. The important thing by having decentralized identities (and decentralized technology in general) is that it gives new options for whole new classes of applications that do not exist. No one is being forced to adopt a system just because it is now possible to do it on a blockchain, and we do not need to destroy the current systems if they work well - or at least if they work better than any alternative. There will be even plenty of cases where the status quo is totally fine.

nonrandomstring 4y ago
Everything you say is very reasonable until: > No one is being forced to adopt a system just because it is now possible to do it on a blockchain, and we do not need to destroy the current systems if they work well - or at least if they work better than any alternative. There will be even plenty of cases where the status quo is totally fine. which is probably true in reality, but still something I'd like to challenge. Every technology that ends up being totalitarian/expansive starts out with "Nobody is being forced to....". I am sure when automobiles first appeared it seemed obvious that "nobody is being forced to drive them", and yet the other day a poster here was absolutely indignant with me for suggesting it might be possible not to have one. I read hundreds if student essays that literally begin with the line: "Today, life without the internet would be impossible." You're right, many (maybe most) technologies do reach a healthy balance with alternatives and legacy systems. But certain "infrastructural" technologies tend to expand aggressively. I think money systems are among them, at least if the number of times I have heard someone say "cashless society seems inevitable" is any guide. (Though often, when one hears these little maxims repeated verbatim, over and over and over, I come to suspect they are not the authentic views of the speakers, but propaganda injected into public discourse.)
- renewiltord 4y ago
  That's just students repeating cliches. Most kids are trying to write what they think the grading authority will reward. One can live a pure cash no internet life even in SF.
  - Dudeman112 4y ago
    One can win the lottery, but we shouldn't base anything on the assumption that we will or that it's likely. At some point being technically possible no longer matters since you have to go so out of your way to do it that virtually no one will do it. Such expressions as the students use are warranted when that point is reached.
  - rcoder 4y ago
    I’m not sure how one would secure stable housing or employment without a bank account, email address, etc., but if you mean “physically survive on scavenged and gifted food and water, and sleep outdoors or in temporary shelter,” then…sure, I guess?
    - renewiltord 4y ago
      Currently live in stable housing via Venmo but cash in an envelope would do the trick. Don't need email.
- rglullis 4y ago
  > "cashless society seems inevitable" is any guide. If anything, if you (like me) would like to avoid a cashless society the you have yet another reason to be in favor of decentralized technologies. "Cashless Society" is just Newspeak for "Total Economic Surveillance". It implies a world where corporations and governments alike have full visibility over what everyone else is doing. Blockchain-based systems already provide an alternative (Monero) where privacy is respected. In a world where Governments and Corporations can conspire to eliminate cash and extend their reach even more over our liberties, I think we should at least try to support an alternative.
atoav 4y ago
As a web3 critic, my criticism is not that there can be only one, it is that all the proposed web3 stuff that I read about is just an existing thing with extra steps. If I were to build a blog system I would not store the blog posts in a local merkle tree. Why not? Because a regular database has more benefits. Now why would I want to store the data on a decentralized public merkle tree (blockchain)? I don't want my blogs data to be public, I want *an adjustable view" into non-public, editable and deletable data, which is what we have now. This is one case where the status quo is not only totally fine as you phrased it, but it is superior (to me at least). The issue I have with web3 is not that it is a new idea, it is that to me it sounds like yet another solution in search of a problem. People who have/are invested in crypto-tokens have a huge incentives to fool themselves into believing you actually can/should solve every problem using the technology of the blockchain. If it is an problem that people can delete things use an append-only-log/merkle tree. If it is an problem that you want to have a centrally agreed upon public state, open a public API to that append-only-log. If it is a problem that people can neither trust you, nor each other to be a faithful keeper of logs, decentralize it wit consesus algorithms and end up with something like a block chain. Now this chain of problems is something that fails at the first step for many things. There is not a lot of things that you want to be append-only, typically for very good reasons. But let's say I want my blog append-only for some reason. One solution would be to just do it instead of forcing myself technically. But lets say I want to force others, then it would make sense. Now it does not make a lot of sense to make that literal log public, but let's say I also offer an API to it and ignore all the real world problems it would bring (illegal content that needs to be deleted which I could do by rolling the merkle tree back to the latest non-illegal version. Now I run that sote, why would I like to decentralize that data? So I can claim I don't need to delete anything?
- hGkXBvR 4y ago
  You fall into the same trap that the parent commenter points out. Rarely does a serious web3 project aim to put everything on a blockchain. But something like a Kickstarter-ish crowdfund system could be using a blockchain contract to handle funding and escrow, while the rest of the website is hosted in a standard web2 way. Suddenly it’s a “web3 project” where users are able to interact with and even own records in the contract, outside the context of a single frontend website.
Kinrany 4y ago
> they start from this ridiculous notion that "web3" is about creating a Highlander solution (there can be only one!) and that this solution needs to satisfy all constraints, otherwise it rubbish and needs to be discarded. I dub this the Highlander bias.

nonrandomstring 4y ago

Everything you say is very reasonable until: > No one is being forced to adopt a system just because it is now possible to do it on a blockchain, and we do not need to destroy the current systems if they work well - or at least if they work better than any alternative. There will be even plenty of cases where the status quo is totally fine. which is probably true in reality, but still something I'd like to challenge. Every technology that ends up being totalitarian/expansive starts out with "Nobody is being forced to....". I am sure when automobiles first appeared it seemed obvious that "nobody is being forced to drive them", and yet the other day a poster here was absolutely indignant with me for suggesting it might be possible not to have one. I read hundreds if student essays that literally begin with the line: "Today, life without the internet would be impossible." You're right, many (maybe most) technologies do reach a healthy balance with alternatives and legacy systems. But certain "infrastructural" technologies tend to expand aggressively. I think money systems are among them, at least if the number of times I have heard someone say "cashless society seems inevitable" is any guide. (Though often, when one hears these little maxims repeated verbatim, over and over and over, I come to suspect they are not the authentic views of the speakers, but propaganda injected into public discourse.)

renewiltord 4y ago
That's just students repeating cliches. Most kids are trying to write what they think the grading authority will reward. One can live a pure cash no internet life even in SF.
- Dudeman112 4y ago
  One can win the lottery, but we shouldn't base anything on the assumption that we will or that it's likely. At some point being technically possible no longer matters since you have to go so out of your way to do it that virtually no one will do it. Such expressions as the students use are warranted when that point is reached.
- rcoder 4y ago
  I’m not sure how one would secure stable housing or employment without a bank account, email address, etc., but if you mean “physically survive on scavenged and gifted food and water, and sleep outdoors or in temporary shelter,” then…sure, I guess?
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    Currently live in stable housing via Venmo but cash in an envelope would do the trick. Don't need email.
rglullis 4y ago
> "cashless society seems inevitable" is any guide. If anything, if you (like me) would like to avoid a cashless society the you have yet another reason to be in favor of decentralized technologies. "Cashless Society" is just Newspeak for "Total Economic Surveillance". It implies a world where corporations and governments alike have full visibility over what everyone else is doing. Blockchain-based systems already provide an alternative (Monero) where privacy is respected. In a world where Governments and Corporations can conspire to eliminate cash and extend their reach even more over our liberties, I think we should at least try to support an alternative.

atoav 4y ago

As a web3 critic, my criticism is not that there can be only one, it is that all the proposed web3 stuff that I read about is just an existing thing with extra steps. If I were to build a blog system I would not store the blog posts in a local merkle tree. Why not? Because a regular database has more benefits. Now why would I want to store the data on a decentralized public merkle tree (blockchain)? I don't want my blogs data to be public, I want *an adjustable view" into non-public, editable and deletable data, which is what we have now. This is one case where the status quo is not only totally fine as you phrased it, but it is superior (to me at least). The issue I have with web3 is not that it is a new idea, it is that to me it sounds like yet another solution in search of a problem. People who have/are invested in crypto-tokens have a huge incentives to fool themselves into believing you actually can/should solve every problem using the technology of the blockchain. If it is an problem that people can delete things use an append-only-log/merkle tree. If it is an problem that you want to have a centrally agreed upon public state, open a public API to that append-only-log. If it is a problem that people can neither trust you, nor each other to be a faithful keeper of logs, decentralize it wit consesus algorithms and end up with something like a block chain. Now this chain of problems is something that fails at the first step for many things. There is not a lot of things that you want to be append-only, typically for very good reasons. But let's say I want my blog append-only for some reason. One solution would be to just do it instead of forcing myself technically. But lets say I want to force others, then it would make sense. Now it does not make a lot of sense to make that literal log public, but let's say I also offer an API to it and ignore all the real world problems it would bring (illegal content that needs to be deleted which I could do by rolling the merkle tree back to the latest non-illegal version. Now I run that sote, why would I like to decentralize that data? So I can claim I don't need to delete anything?

hGkXBvR 4y ago
You fall into the same trap that the parent commenter points out. Rarely does a serious web3 project aim to put everything on a blockchain. But something like a Kickstarter-ish crowdfund system could be using a blockchain contract to handle funding and escrow, while the rest of the website is hosted in a standard web2 way. Suddenly it’s a “web3 project” where users are able to interact with and even own records in the contract, outside the context of a single frontend website.

Kinrany 4y ago

> they start from this ridiculous notion that "web3" is about creating a Highlander solution (there can be only one!) and that this solution needs to satisfy all constraints, otherwise it rubbish and needs to be discarded. I dub this the Highlander bias.