5 ms·

Exactly: Ignore the crap, and look for the Amazons and Googles. There is so much garbage, but then there are projects like Avalanche. People love to hate on cr

Exactly: Ignore the crap, and look for the Amazons and Googles. There is so much garbage, but then there are projects like Avalanche. People love to hate on crypto and the stupid puppy coins, but meanwhile, projects like Avalanche are actually running the efficient, performant networks that everyone is shouting will never exist. It takes years to ignore fud and hype and quietly follow the fundamentals.

t_mann 4y ago
Avalanche is probably the biggest disappointment out of the whole bunch. They started out strong with a new consensus algorithm, and then they started hyping 'subnets', which turned out to be plain L1s with artificial restrictions on who can be a validator. Their tokenomics are so skewed in favour of AvaLabs and their early VC backers that they removed the pie chart from their website to conceal it. It's probably the most centralized out of all the wannabe Ethereums, with Emin singlehandedly calling the shots (how much needs to be staked to be a validator, whether subnet validators need to be whitelisted...), and they don't seem to have much of an idea where they're going (they went from bashing L2s and saying subnets are so much better to saying 'let's build L2s, ours will be so much better than Ethereum's'; they still haven't managed to build a bridging solution between subnets and they seem to have given up on that, given that they don't seem capable of competing with the existing interoperability protocols that treat subnets like any other chain, Avalanche-related or not). They also lost an 8-figure sum from the Terra collapse (Emin himself promoted UST after the depeg had started), which does not bode well for an ecosystem where they are still the only truly active entity promoting new projects. They're more than ripe for replacement by a standalone EVM-compatible chain that takes the only thing that's genuinely innovative about Avalanche, the consensus algorithms, and leaves the rest to the community (ie an actually decentralized project).
NetOpWibby 4y ago
I feel this with Handshake as well.
pavlov 4y ago
What are the must-use applications on Avalanche? When I first paid for dial-up Internet in 1993, it was pre-web, just clunky text-mode telnet, but the apps were obviously attractive: IRC, email, Usenet, ftp. Talk to anyone in the world, download latest stuff for free! Same with www a few years later. The dot-com business schemes may have been harebrained but the underlying protocol’s usage was growing exponentially because people couldn’t get enough of the things you could find on the web. What’s the thing on Avalanche that would keep me coming back every day, like dial-up Internet and web did?
- ertian 4y ago
  I suspect we're not really at the equivalent of 1993. We may still be back in the early 80s, with people exchanging bang paths and oohing and ahhing when an email goes through. 'Real' applications are thin on the ground, largely driven by novelty, and not particularly visible to the public. In most cases, wide-area networks can't compete with a phone call or a station wagon full of floppy disks. There's a bunch of competing approaches; it's not clear which will win, and surely most will fail, but all have devoted adherents. The important standards and protocols may still be in the future, or are obscured by piles of false leads, mistakes, and outright scams. The thing is, we now exist in a post-internet environment where people are well aware of the transformative ability of technology. They're all looking for the Next Big Thing in a way that people just weren't in the 70s and 80s. The population of the world has doubled, and the share of those people who are trying to keep up with the cutting edge is _vastly_ higher. On top of that we're talking about a network of value, i.e. money, and so there's inherently money to be made--and it's accessible to the average Joe. All together, you've got the recipe for a blizzard of hype and excitement that obscures the real innovations that underlie it all. And that's unavoidable. Any exciting new technology with the potential to have a serious impact on society is inevitably going to trigger a blizzard of hype--and an equivalent blizzard of skepticism. That makes the whole process exhausting. Par for the course in 2022.
  - pavlov 4y ago
    A lot of 1980s hype technologies fizzled out. Take CD-ROM, which enjoyed crypto-level multi-year hype before anyone even had a player. None of the companies that invested heavily in CD-ROM were winners. We’re not enjoying our multimedia entertainment on platforms provided by Philips and Sega and Sierra On-Line. There were no Googles or Amazons arising from that massive tech hype cycle. In twenty years, the notion of “I’ll store value using my cryptocurrency wallet” may sound as anachronistic and outdated as “I’ll enjoy a night home browsing hot multimedia content on a Philips CDi disc.”

t_mann 4y ago

Avalanche is probably the biggest disappointment out of the whole bunch. They started out strong with a new consensus algorithm, and then they started hyping 'subnets', which turned out to be plain L1s with artificial restrictions on who can be a validator. Their tokenomics are so skewed in favour of AvaLabs and their early VC backers that they removed the pie chart from their website to conceal it. It's probably the most centralized out of all the wannabe Ethereums, with Emin singlehandedly calling the shots (how much needs to be staked to be a validator, whether subnet validators need to be whitelisted...), and they don't seem to have much of an idea where they're going (they went from bashing L2s and saying subnets are so much better to saying 'let's build L2s, ours will be so much better than Ethereum's'; they still haven't managed to build a bridging solution between subnets and they seem to have given up on that, given that they don't seem capable of competing with the existing interoperability protocols that treat subnets like any other chain, Avalanche-related or not). They also lost an 8-figure sum from the Terra collapse (Emin himself promoted UST after the depeg had started), which does not bode well for an ecosystem where they are still the only truly active entity promoting new projects. They're more than ripe for replacement by a standalone EVM-compatible chain that takes the only thing that's genuinely innovative about Avalanche, the consensus algorithms, and leaves the rest to the community (ie an actually decentralized project).

NetOpWibby 4y ago

I feel this with Handshake as well.

pavlov 4y ago

What are the must-use applications on Avalanche? When I first paid for dial-up Internet in 1993, it was pre-web, just clunky text-mode telnet, but the apps were obviously attractive: IRC, email, Usenet, ftp. Talk to anyone in the world, download latest stuff for free! Same with www a few years later. The dot-com business schemes may have been harebrained but the underlying protocol’s usage was growing exponentially because people couldn’t get enough of the things you could find on the web. What’s the thing on Avalanche that would keep me coming back every day, like dial-up Internet and web did?

ertian 4y ago
I suspect we're not really at the equivalent of 1993. We may still be back in the early 80s, with people exchanging bang paths and oohing and ahhing when an email goes through. 'Real' applications are thin on the ground, largely driven by novelty, and not particularly visible to the public. In most cases, wide-area networks can't compete with a phone call or a station wagon full of floppy disks. There's a bunch of competing approaches; it's not clear which will win, and surely most will fail, but all have devoted adherents. The important standards and protocols may still be in the future, or are obscured by piles of false leads, mistakes, and outright scams. The thing is, we now exist in a post-internet environment where people are well aware of the transformative ability of technology. They're all looking for the Next Big Thing in a way that people just weren't in the 70s and 80s. The population of the world has doubled, and the share of those people who are trying to keep up with the cutting edge is _vastly_ higher. On top of that we're talking about a network of value, i.e. money, and so there's inherently money to be made--and it's accessible to the average Joe. All together, you've got the recipe for a blizzard of hype and excitement that obscures the real innovations that underlie it all. And that's unavoidable. Any exciting new technology with the potential to have a serious impact on society is inevitably going to trigger a blizzard of hype--and an equivalent blizzard of skepticism. That makes the whole process exhausting. Par for the course in 2022.
- pavlov 4y ago
  A lot of 1980s hype technologies fizzled out. Take CD-ROM, which enjoyed crypto-level multi-year hype before anyone even had a player. None of the companies that invested heavily in CD-ROM were winners. We’re not enjoying our multimedia entertainment on platforms provided by Philips and Sega and Sierra On-Line. There were no Googles or Amazons arising from that massive tech hype cycle. In twenty years, the notion of “I’ll store value using my cryptocurrency wallet” may sound as anachronistic and outdated as “I’ll enjoy a night home browsing hot multimedia content on a Philips CDi disc.”