8 ms·

Web3 is the big idea customers didn’t ask for?

49 points by thm 4y ago

marban 4y ago
https://archive.ph/WDMhO https://archive.ph/WDMhO
zikalify 4y ago
swalsh 4y ago
I have an unpopular opinion for which I expect both web2 people and web3 people will downvote me for. The current generation of web3 companies aren't for you. Not your business, not you as a person. You're not asking for it, because these things aren't for you. Try to imagine how you would build a blockchain based business 10 years from now. I've done it several times. Everytime I have, I've found a bunch of gaps, missing necesary capabilities. It's just not possible today to build a sophisticated purely digital, autonomous decentralized service/product today. You can solve some of the problems in a hybrid way, and crypto received a lot of flak for that recently (which I suppose is fair), but it's just a painful necessity until the gaps are filled. So a lot of the good stuff that was/is being built this cycle, the stuff that's going to survive the bear market is critical infrastructure meant to support the future new startups in the blockchain space... the customer of crypto today, is crypto. Combined these capabilities will enable a very powerful platform which will eventually serve businesses and individuals. Today, it's not ready for your needs.
- batesy 4y ago
  This is a really great take. Agree wholeheartedly.
- Jasper_ 4y ago
  I mean, that's cool and all, except I've been hearing "it's too early, it's not for you, give it 10 more years" for like 10 years now. So I don't really believe you when you say it'll get there eventually. Have you considered... it just won't get there? Or that there are incentives in place to prevent it from getting there?
  - batesy 4y ago
    But like, who are you to say that it won't get there? If such a large group of very smart people want to continue to work on this tech that they all believe has massive potential, maybe you should consider the possibility that you are wrong? It's not like Blockchain is the only tech people have been talking about for the last 10 years that hasn't been fully actualized yet. Doesn't mean it's not well on its way.
    - Jasper_ 4y ago
      And a lot of very smart people worked on Itanium! Or on the Segway. TransMeta. Google Glass must have taken thousands of world-class engineers. 3D TVs! The world is full of plenty of Very Smart People who are all dying to work on cool tech, often blissfully unaware of the economic and social consequences of what they build. Saying very smart people work on it doesn't do much to really convince me. Bitcoin's block size isn't a technical debate that requires Very Smart People to solve. It's a social one, about externalities, core beliefs, power structures, and motivations. And those are ones that Very Smart People tend not to make progress on, because they're unable to step outside of their lens of technicalities.
    - acdha 4y ago
      > It's not like Blockchain is the only tech people have been talking about for the last 10 years that hasn't been fully actualized yet. How many of those technologies had no impact for that long but then went on to be significantly useful? The only examples which come to mind are things like mRNA vaccines which had far more development & approval hurdles, which is a pretty different situation from systems which are globally available but generally just haven't found a niche where they're a good fit and affordable.
  - swalsh 4y ago
    Here have been the phases so far: Gen 1: Bitcoin - general ideas established, mostly a proof of concept Gen 2: ETH - Building on bitcoin's ideas it establishes the idea of the VM + chain, which transforms bitcoin into essentially a new digital economy. Gen 3: AVAX/SOL/DOT - ETH with scaling and fixes environmental concerns AVAX, the chain I develop on, and the one that has the best technology to enable the capabilities required is less than a year old. Solona and Polka Dot are 2 years old. The stuff i'm talking about is what I would call Gen 5. I think it's pretty unfair to say it's always been "10 years in the future".... a lot of progress has been made, it just might not be apparent if you're not active in the space.
- mjburgess 4y ago
  Do the opposite: take the best functioning crypto system you can imagine, and remove all the tech decentalisation and inherent transaction costs. I think you'll find you've just invented a better version of that system.
  - sshine 4y ago
    > remove all the tech decentalisation and inherent transaction costs. cost: check, definitely. decentralisation: nope, that's the point. If you have to go to bitcoin.com to get your drug money, you can just shut that site down. The Pirate Bay still works even though it's blocked in lots of countries, because running a mirror on a new domain is incentivised by littering the site with scammy ads, and the trackers and magnet links are an organic, decentralised matter.
    - mjburgess 4y ago
      Cash Yes, you'd then need some middlemen... but are the cost of those middlemen really higher than a skil-road rugpull? Or a crypto crash? Or all the pyramid-scheme lot coming in to pump your dark money system, and screwing you over?
- jshen 4y ago
  I don't see how a blockchain will ever be ready. They don't scale by their nature, have huge security risks (regular people don't want to manage their keys), the unit economics of running on other peoples computers do not pencil out, people don't want immutability once you think about it holistically, and many other reasons.
  - CodeShmode 4y ago
    > regular people don't want to manage their keys They don't have to, but they can if they want to.
    - jameshart 4y ago
      If regular people manage their own keys, they will lose everything.
  - swalsh 4y ago
    > They don't scale by their nature I think there's a few different things to think about here. Does EVERYTHING need to be on-chain? No, clearly not. but for the stuff that does it's been found that you can scale by having multiple chains. I mostly use AVAX, it's like ETH but uses a DAG for consensus, which means finality is WAY faster (seconds). It also has a concept called subnets, so scale is accomplished by having multiple blockchains which can interoperate with each other. Not all validators validate all subnets, but all subnets have multiple validators. Your need for level of security is going to depend on your application. Defi has a high need for security, gaming has a low need. The idea of 1 chain for everything is kind of obsolete.
    - jshen 4y ago
      That still doesn’t scale. It’s slightly better than ethereum
- acdha 4y ago
  It's more that web3 was created as a marketing term to escape the bad reputation cryptocurrencies had developed over the first decade or so. “web2 people” don't really exist — it's just the web, which all of the “web3” projects also rely on. When someone builds something useful with web technologies, the definition of “web” will expand to include it. If they end up with a stack which doesn't bridge to the web, it'll get a different name.
- a2800276 4y ago
  I believe you may be missing the point: "It's just not possible today to build a sophisticated purely digital, autonomous decentralized service/product today." The things that customer's didn't ask for is a vaporous abstraction such as "a sophisticated purely digital, autonomous decentralized service/product"
  - bytelines 4y ago
    Here's a more concrete example: coupons. I, as a supplier, want to prevent coupon fraud - a ~300M year problem. Today they mitigate this with trust relationships between retailers and distributers, which consequentially means that coupons are less widely distributed and more marginal in what discounts they offer than they could be. When coupons are redeemed, a cashier stuffs them in a bag, they get counted and redeemed and the supplier cuts a check. A shady retailer can simply say they have double the coupons they actually received, and they will get the same check. There's nothing unique about the coupon to prevent this. Ignoring web3, how could you solve this? You could set up some simple database and rest api and have the coupons have some unique identity. You'd need to make this cryptographically secure so you couldn't simply forge identities, you'd need to be able to issue these easily and in bulk, have them expire at a certain time, onboard retailers to easily redeem these coupons and then facilitate payments to the retailer. And, well, that's essentially what Hedera does[1], as a cryptographic DLT. Its value is that the cryptographic proof of whether something is unique and how it can be redeemed is done via NFT, and this protects against a number of attacks at the "consensus level". It offers you a secure way to do this and not run any computer, for minimal and predictable fees. Every transaction is fixed to USD and costs 0.0001 USD and completes in 5 seconds. https://hedera.com/users/coupon-bureau https://hedera.com/users/coupon-bureau If you don't believe me that the customer is asking for this maybe you can listen to them yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=--Bw8yYwJL4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=--Bw8yYwJL4
    - a2800276 4y ago
      "It's just not possible today to build a sophisticated purely digital, autonomous decentralized service/product today." Granted, Hedera is digital, but from the description in the link you posted it's neither autonomous nor decentralized. "Target and General Mills" may have access to it, but I certainly can't post a "50% off my hand knitted sweater"-Coupon to it. I may also need some convincing that Hedera users are able to verify the cryptographic integrity of a coupon without running "any computer". "Ignoring web3, how could you solve this?" Roughly in the way you describe, with a database. You even go on to say "that's essentially what Hedera does", I fail to see the added benefit of slapping a blockchain/web3/NFT/whatever on top, but maybe I'm just ignorant.
- jayd16 4y ago
  What crypto business do you imagine making and what are the missing pieces?
  - swalsh 4y ago
    This is just me, don't interpret what i'm saying as being some kind of community consensus. Many probably disagree with me. I think nearly anything digital can be turned into a crypto business that can operate more effeciently than a corporation. Anything that touches the real world however will require a corporation with people. The solutions I've seen for interfacing with the real world just suck, and I suspect that is a fundumental problem. So in my opinion, the strength is digital. Fortunately for crypto, most things real world have the ability to be turned digital (think CAD -> 3D printer). Why would a crypto business out compete a corporation? To me the answer comes down to how your business is structured. Corporations are structured around managing people. Crypto businesses (I think when some workflow pieces are added) can be structured around interfacing with AI. An entire world of AI can freely contribute value to a crypto business where as a corporation will have to prioritize, plan, and execute. We can kind of see that today, the biggest whales in crypto have bots doing the heavy lifting. People struggle to interface with crypto, but bots interface natively. This probably sounds hand wavy. At some point when I find time I'll try to write into more detail on how I personally believe this can work. I'm certain Crypto + AI = an accerlerated future. I'm motivated to work in this space, because if done wrong, this is a disaster for society. If done fairly, we can build something amazing.
- spamizbad 4y ago
  Can you provide any estimates on when the crypto world will start building things for regular folks that aren't just new ways to speculate on assets? Because, quite frankly, this is exactly what I've been hearing for the last decade. Because right now the web3 ecosystem seems to cut directly against the ethos of "build stuff that solves a problem for your users". It seems like it's becoming increasingly insular for who its solving problems for - namely other people building things in the web3 space. Like imagine its the 1980s and the industry decided it was stupid to build a home computer because we didn't have X Y or Z built yet so these machines are for computer enthusiasts, scientists, and researchers ONLY.
  - swalsh 4y ago
    Each generation of tech seems to take 3-4 years, and I think we're 2 generations away when I map out a roadmap of needs (which I might be completely wrong about). So 6-8 years? My own personal opinion.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - axg11 4y ago
    The early "killer" products and projects are there, but most people are looking in the wrong places (DeFi). Some examples below. Consumer apps: - STEPN - Superlocal The future of brands (NFTs): - Doodles - BAYC Science funding: - VitaDAO - Molecule - HairDAO
    - mysore 4y ago
      if BAYC is a killer app then web3 is doomed. Using NFTs to enforce digital scarcity and 'ownership' of content can be cool. but the idea of a exclusive social club where you can only get into by buying a million dollar avatar is a little ridiculous. IF they actually had good content in the group that would make sense but it seems to be mostly an MMO the pictures dont even have any taste and the whole thing feels overly commercial and reeks of group-think.
    - smolder 4y ago
- rvz 4y ago
  > So a lot of the good stuff that was/is being built this cycle, the stuff that's going to survive the bear market is critical infrastructure meant to support the future new startups in the blockchain space... the customer of crypto today, is crypto. Combined these capabilities will enable a very powerful platform which will eventually serve businesses and individuals. Today, it's not ready for your needs. This is why Stripe, Moneygram, Checkout.com, etc are choosing the blockchain technologies that are useful to them, which tells us that some of them are going to survive past this bear market and make it past regulations. Not all of these crypto projects will survive either but a certain few will. Again, like the free-software activists who have been disappointed with their mission in removing all non-free software which the web2 tech bros have hijacked the 'open-source' term as cover to suggest their so-called 'transparency' in closed-source surveillance capitalist companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc, we are now seeing them going to be very disappointed with the hope of absolute obliteration and complete removal of everything web3 and blockchain related. I'm afraid that this 'destroying' or 'removal' of it all is not going to happen, just like it isn't going to take over the current system. Like closed-source software, crypto is here to stay and both web2 and web3 people are going to be very disappointed.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  > how you would build a blockchain based business What problems does a "blockchain based business" solve? That's what I don't understand. Most businesses out there derive value by interacting with off-chain, real-world state. If you wanted to use a blockchain in this case you'd need some trusted party to sync the blockchain state with the state of the real world, which then nullifies most/all of the advantages of using a blockchain over just letting this trusted party run an old school database.
fourstar 4y ago
Aside: "Web3" is a forced and overloaded name (and category) for all the VCs who wanted to get into crypto, but didn't know how. Similar to the "startup" nomenclature.
mjburgess 4y ago
Crypto is the chain-letter scams of the 30s; the pyramid schemes of the 60s, 70s; and the Ponzi schemes of 90s/00s. People are susceptible to a specific sort of social-proof, social-recursion type of fraud. Enough people do something early, on paper it grows rapidly, and the scam artist sells that rapid growth as value. You get in late, they cash out by you getting in, and hence defraud you. The 10s is going to be seen as the decade where Amway was replaced by crypto, and gullible housewives replaced with gullible tech bros. The value of a product or service is in its use, the value its consumers place on it. "Crypto" is just another "amway soap dispenser": a piece of cheese in a mouse trap. They say "everyone wants to buy our soap!" (coins, etc.) ... but no one does. Your job, with soap/coins in your hand, is to go out and "pump the value"... and likewise, all the way down the pyramid. No one wants the soap, the coins, the crypto. The marginal value to a consumer is zero. The only value it has now is the future expected amount people can be defrauded. It's fraud, and the people buying in early are exiting at ATHs paid for by people who are being scammed. This needs to be called out for what it is and regulated into oblivion. People are loosing everything because reputable grifters (celebs, etc.) are selling a scam.
- whywhywhywhy 4y ago
  It’s pointless arguing it because we have whole generations who are completely screwed and unless they invest (gamble) they will never ever own a house. They have two choices, sit back, own nothing and watch their savings evaporate with inflation. Or just try every thing they can and pray one of them works. If we don’t want to have people getting sucked into crypto, then maybe start by making our actual currency more trustworthy, rather than work your ass off, pay the money of half the hours worked away in tax, then sit and watch the measly pile you hoarded get evaporated away with inflation as houses skyrocket. Compared to that, a ”scam” like Bitcoin starts to look like a way out to many.
  - mjburgess 4y ago
    But this messaging is part of the scam... It's the same messaging for pyramid schemes: become your own boss. The 9-5 has failed you. etc. I think crypto has been interpreted as a ponzi.. but that misses the whole social phenomenon. It's actually a pyramid: it's a cult out to defraud. Your job as a coin holder is to recruit others into the system, that's how you exit. You only make money if you can get others into the system. You dont make money from the coins ever actually being used. Your messaging here is the "cheese in the mousetrap". It's a scam. It's a scam. Really, your eyes aren't deceiving you. No one uses crypto. No one wants crypto. No one wants your "vitamin supplements" and "essential oils" sold door-to-door. There is no product. It's a warehouse of useless crap no one wants. I think we need to be really really really clear here: it's a scam. The last 95% of people buying in will be left with be left with a loss. We need to stop positioning fradulent schemes in the same breath as critiques of the job market. They're making it worse: they're defrauding those people most vulerable. Everyone in crypto wants you to be talking about the economy, just as everyone in pyramids wants you to be talking about vitamin supplements. Both are irrelevant. The proposition is a scam, you're being defrauded and invited to defraud others. Ignore vitamin science, ignore economics, ignore the job market: this is a scheme to transfer money from dupes to grifters
robrorcroptrer 4y ago
It is not even a big idea.
EphemeralNebula 4y ago
I run a house sitting site where house owners post listings for house sitters to respond to. Sometimes I flirt with the idea of making this community a decentralized autonomous web3 community. Currently I am the sole arbiter and mediator when there is conflict. I would love to shift this responsibility to a random selection of active members that have enrolled for this role for a certain time period. I envision a rotating council formulates the complaint, and a selected group votes on a set predefined outcomes. Members pay a virtual crypto currency and when problems arise this fund can be used to pay for insurance claims. Still very much in its infancy but I could see a good use case for web3 here.
- happymellon 4y ago
  What does web3 add to this? You just described a subscription service, which as a concept has existed longer than web3 has. All of these things that you have described has been possible for over 2 decades. Web3 adds in the idea that your crypto subscription could tank and you have nothing left to pay for legals costs.
  - EphemeralNebula 4y ago
    "You just described a subscription service", nope I think the defining character of web3 is a decentralised and hopefully anonymous community, driven and voted for by a blockchain powered mechanisme with a transparent, verifiable chain of decisions. In my opinion this is quite difficult to achieve with conventional organisational structures.
- laserbeam 4y ago
  You're describing a company/owner's association/some other similar entity which already exists in your legal system. You can already implement the rotating council and an insurance fund without a blockchain. The only thing the blockchain does is prevent you from fixing problems if you made mistakes at some point in the past and had bugs. And it costs you more.
- valdiorn 4y ago
  You'll still be the person named in the lawsuit when actual, physical property gets destroyed and someone decides they're not going to adhere to the decision of some random internet strangers. Given you (or your company) is the only party that's actually exposed to risk in that case, why would it benefit you, or your customers, to use Blockchain/crypto/web3 stuff? At the end of the day the same result could be achieved with a database in your AWS account and some registered users who get a small fee for reviewing claims.
Comevius 4y ago
Web3 is not meant to be useful, it is a carrot dangled in front of investors. It's there to justify the existence of cryptocurrencies. It's customers are greater fools investing into the cryptocurrency behind the project. The joke is that there is an incentive for Web3 projects to be competitive. Most video games with microtransactions strive to have a wider appeal, otherwise they have less people to sell to. And yet such effort is not exerted for Web3 projects. The people are just supposed to see how potentially revolutionary they are and come flocking. Because it worked for Bitcoin and Ethereum the developers think that this is how the market works. You build something new, if relatively useless and the people throw their entire savings at you, because they don't want to be left out.
yoaviram 4y ago
Unpopular opinion - Web3, incidentally, may save us: https://nonstructured.com/in-defense-of-web3/ https://nonstructured.com/in-defense-of-web3/
- nix0n 4y ago
  Previously discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31680904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31680904
- axg11 4y ago
  This is a much more level-headed take on web3. As someone building in web3, I admit that 99% of current web3 projects (including tokens and NFTs) will go to zero. That's a consequence of the sheer number of projects and diversity of experimentation occurring today. For the first time in a decade, there is an explosion in the number of products and projects being developed. I can only see this as a positive thing.
  - Comevius 4y ago
    Not to be hurtful about your project Ribbon and other similar projects, but companies rewarding their employees with NFTs is a bad idea. People like being treated fairly and they like meaningful benefits, like health and wellness, and of course being adequately compensated. NFTs are hardly fair or meaningful. I don't say that you should not experiment with the market, but I'm questioning if that's even the point. Projects like these are being pumped out in this space hoping to luck into some temporary craze, but I see a lack of care, not polish, but a lack of interest in making something useful for actual people. I really question the usefulness of crypto in these projects. It's putting the cart in front of the horse, most of these projects would be actually better without it.
- webkike 4y ago
  > Web3 allows us to experiment with alternative economic systems in a controlled fashion, and our imagination is the only limit in this realm. We can describe an economic system’s exact properties for the first time and then let the experiment run, learn, and adapt. The idea that this is unique to Web3, crypto, or even decentralized systems is incorrect. MMOs do this all of the time with a SQL server.
smt88 4y ago
Title has been editorialized by OP. Actual title: "You Can Give People What They Want. Or You Can Give Them Web3"
- yakubin 4y ago
  It hasn't. OP's title is taken from the <title> tag of the page (i.e. the thing displayed in the browser title bar). For some reason, newspapers have a habit of displaying one title on the page, and another in the browser chrome.
slackfan 4y ago
I remember these exact articles being written about web2.0, and look where we are now. Mind you, web2.0 was exactly as destructive and pointless as web3 is looking to be.
- jimsmart 4y ago
  I'd be very interest to see some of these articles, just to look back on, and reflect — because I've worked in tech since the 80s, and have been doing web stuff since well before Web 2.0 was even a phrase. Do you have any links please? — AFAICT Web 2.0 was initially about dynamic web pages (client-side dynamism mostly, i.e. the Javascript revolution) at a technical level. Then a short while later, on a social level, it was about more user-generated content. Combined with the improvements brought about by improved UI from the previous. Web 2.0 also somewhat encompasses e-commerce too, to a large degree (the dot-com boom was mostly all about e-commerce, and Web 2.0 came about in the midst of that, of course). I don't recall there being articles saying that customers/users didn't want these things. What I recall was kinda the opposite: folk did want improved UI (without round-tripping to the server every click), folk did want to be able to more easily share content they'd created, with their network of friends and the rest of the world. Folk did want to be able to buy things without going to a physical store. — But perhaps I just have poor recall? This is why I'd find it particularly interesting to read some articles that say Web 2.0 was solving problems that customers hadn't asked to be solved. Personally, I don't think Web 2.0 was destructive and pointless, as you claim. Could you expand on what you think was destructive and pointless about it? Perhaps we just have differing ideas as to what Web 2.0 is/was exactly.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
tonetheman 4y ago
web3 is the Michal Scott email forward that will just not die. It is a made up term from people who want your money and nothing more. Shaded with some good old cargo cult fan boys who will tell how it will save the world.
neuronic 4y ago
Legitimate web3 noob question: how is web3 decentralized if a vast amount of products rely on players centralizing infrastructure (blockchain) access, for example by relying on Alchemy [1]? [1] https://www.alchemy.com/ https://www.alchemy.com/
dbs 4y ago
Eagerly waiting for crypto to be as successful as WAP was

49 points by thm 4y ago

marban 4y ago

https://archive.ph/WDMhO https://archive.ph/WDMhO

zikalify 4y ago

swalsh 4y ago

I have an unpopular opinion for which I expect both web2 people and web3 people will downvote me for. The current generation of web3 companies aren't for you. Not your business, not you as a person. You're not asking for it, because these things aren't for you. Try to imagine how you would build a blockchain based business 10 years from now. I've done it several times. Everytime I have, I've found a bunch of gaps, missing necesary capabilities. It's just not possible today to build a sophisticated purely digital, autonomous decentralized service/product today. You can solve some of the problems in a hybrid way, and crypto received a lot of flak for that recently (which I suppose is fair), but it's just a painful necessity until the gaps are filled. So a lot of the good stuff that was/is being built this cycle, the stuff that's going to survive the bear market is critical infrastructure meant to support the future new startups in the blockchain space... the customer of crypto today, is crypto. Combined these capabilities will enable a very powerful platform which will eventually serve businesses and individuals. Today, it's not ready for your needs.

batesy 4y ago
This is a really great take. Agree wholeheartedly.
Jasper_ 4y ago
I mean, that's cool and all, except I've been hearing "it's too early, it's not for you, give it 10 more years" for like 10 years now. So I don't really believe you when you say it'll get there eventually. Have you considered... it just won't get there? Or that there are incentives in place to prevent it from getting there?
- batesy 4y ago
  But like, who are you to say that it won't get there? If such a large group of very smart people want to continue to work on this tech that they all believe has massive potential, maybe you should consider the possibility that you are wrong? It's not like Blockchain is the only tech people have been talking about for the last 10 years that hasn't been fully actualized yet. Doesn't mean it's not well on its way.
  - Jasper_ 4y ago
    And a lot of very smart people worked on Itanium! Or on the Segway. TransMeta. Google Glass must have taken thousands of world-class engineers. 3D TVs! The world is full of plenty of Very Smart People who are all dying to work on cool tech, often blissfully unaware of the economic and social consequences of what they build. Saying very smart people work on it doesn't do much to really convince me. Bitcoin's block size isn't a technical debate that requires Very Smart People to solve. It's a social one, about externalities, core beliefs, power structures, and motivations. And those are ones that Very Smart People tend not to make progress on, because they're unable to step outside of their lens of technicalities.
  - acdha 4y ago
    > It's not like Blockchain is the only tech people have been talking about for the last 10 years that hasn't been fully actualized yet. How many of those technologies had no impact for that long but then went on to be significantly useful? The only examples which come to mind are things like mRNA vaccines which had far more development & approval hurdles, which is a pretty different situation from systems which are globally available but generally just haven't found a niche where they're a good fit and affordable.
- swalsh 4y ago
  Here have been the phases so far: Gen 1: Bitcoin - general ideas established, mostly a proof of concept Gen 2: ETH - Building on bitcoin's ideas it establishes the idea of the VM + chain, which transforms bitcoin into essentially a new digital economy. Gen 3: AVAX/SOL/DOT - ETH with scaling and fixes environmental concerns AVAX, the chain I develop on, and the one that has the best technology to enable the capabilities required is less than a year old. Solona and Polka Dot are 2 years old. The stuff i'm talking about is what I would call Gen 5. I think it's pretty unfair to say it's always been "10 years in the future".... a lot of progress has been made, it just might not be apparent if you're not active in the space.
mjburgess 4y ago
Do the opposite: take the best functioning crypto system you can imagine, and remove all the tech decentalisation and inherent transaction costs. I think you'll find you've just invented a better version of that system.
- sshine 4y ago
  > remove all the tech decentalisation and inherent transaction costs. cost: check, definitely. decentralisation: nope, that's the point. If you have to go to bitcoin.com to get your drug money, you can just shut that site down. The Pirate Bay still works even though it's blocked in lots of countries, because running a mirror on a new domain is incentivised by littering the site with scammy ads, and the trackers and magnet links are an organic, decentralised matter.
  - mjburgess 4y ago
    Cash Yes, you'd then need some middlemen... but are the cost of those middlemen really higher than a skil-road rugpull? Or a crypto crash? Or all the pyramid-scheme lot coming in to pump your dark money system, and screwing you over?
jshen 4y ago
I don't see how a blockchain will ever be ready. They don't scale by their nature, have huge security risks (regular people don't want to manage their keys), the unit economics of running on other peoples computers do not pencil out, people don't want immutability once you think about it holistically, and many other reasons.
- CodeShmode 4y ago
  > regular people don't want to manage their keys They don't have to, but they can if they want to.
  - jameshart 4y ago
    If regular people manage their own keys, they will lose everything.
- swalsh 4y ago
  > They don't scale by their nature I think there's a few different things to think about here. Does EVERYTHING need to be on-chain? No, clearly not. but for the stuff that does it's been found that you can scale by having multiple chains. I mostly use AVAX, it's like ETH but uses a DAG for consensus, which means finality is WAY faster (seconds). It also has a concept called subnets, so scale is accomplished by having multiple blockchains which can interoperate with each other. Not all validators validate all subnets, but all subnets have multiple validators. Your need for level of security is going to depend on your application. Defi has a high need for security, gaming has a low need. The idea of 1 chain for everything is kind of obsolete.
  - jshen 4y ago
    That still doesn’t scale. It’s slightly better than ethereum
acdha 4y ago
It's more that web3 was created as a marketing term to escape the bad reputation cryptocurrencies had developed over the first decade or so. “web2 people” don't really exist — it's just the web, which all of the “web3” projects also rely on. When someone builds something useful with web technologies, the definition of “web” will expand to include it. If they end up with a stack which doesn't bridge to the web, it'll get a different name.
a2800276 4y ago
I believe you may be missing the point: "It's just not possible today to build a sophisticated purely digital, autonomous decentralized service/product today." The things that customer's didn't ask for is a vaporous abstraction such as "a sophisticated purely digital, autonomous decentralized service/product"
- bytelines 4y ago
  Here's a more concrete example: coupons. I, as a supplier, want to prevent coupon fraud - a ~300M year problem. Today they mitigate this with trust relationships between retailers and distributers, which consequentially means that coupons are less widely distributed and more marginal in what discounts they offer than they could be. When coupons are redeemed, a cashier stuffs them in a bag, they get counted and redeemed and the supplier cuts a check. A shady retailer can simply say they have double the coupons they actually received, and they will get the same check. There's nothing unique about the coupon to prevent this. Ignoring web3, how could you solve this? You could set up some simple database and rest api and have the coupons have some unique identity. You'd need to make this cryptographically secure so you couldn't simply forge identities, you'd need to be able to issue these easily and in bulk, have them expire at a certain time, onboard retailers to easily redeem these coupons and then facilitate payments to the retailer. And, well, that's essentially what Hedera does[1], as a cryptographic DLT. Its value is that the cryptographic proof of whether something is unique and how it can be redeemed is done via NFT, and this protects against a number of attacks at the "consensus level". It offers you a secure way to do this and not run any computer, for minimal and predictable fees. Every transaction is fixed to USD and costs 0.0001 USD and completes in 5 seconds. https://hedera.com/users/coupon-bureau https://hedera.com/users/coupon-bureau If you don't believe me that the customer is asking for this maybe you can listen to them yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=--Bw8yYwJL4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=--Bw8yYwJL4
  - a2800276 4y ago
    "It's just not possible today to build a sophisticated purely digital, autonomous decentralized service/product today." Granted, Hedera is digital, but from the description in the link you posted it's neither autonomous nor decentralized. "Target and General Mills" may have access to it, but I certainly can't post a "50% off my hand knitted sweater"-Coupon to it. I may also need some convincing that Hedera users are able to verify the cryptographic integrity of a coupon without running "any computer". "Ignoring web3, how could you solve this?" Roughly in the way you describe, with a database. You even go on to say "that's essentially what Hedera does", I fail to see the added benefit of slapping a blockchain/web3/NFT/whatever on top, but maybe I'm just ignorant.
jayd16 4y ago
What crypto business do you imagine making and what are the missing pieces?
- swalsh 4y ago
  This is just me, don't interpret what i'm saying as being some kind of community consensus. Many probably disagree with me. I think nearly anything digital can be turned into a crypto business that can operate more effeciently than a corporation. Anything that touches the real world however will require a corporation with people. The solutions I've seen for interfacing with the real world just suck, and I suspect that is a fundumental problem. So in my opinion, the strength is digital. Fortunately for crypto, most things real world have the ability to be turned digital (think CAD -> 3D printer). Why would a crypto business out compete a corporation? To me the answer comes down to how your business is structured. Corporations are structured around managing people. Crypto businesses (I think when some workflow pieces are added) can be structured around interfacing with AI. An entire world of AI can freely contribute value to a crypto business where as a corporation will have to prioritize, plan, and execute. We can kind of see that today, the biggest whales in crypto have bots doing the heavy lifting. People struggle to interface with crypto, but bots interface natively. This probably sounds hand wavy. At some point when I find time I'll try to write into more detail on how I personally believe this can work. I'm certain Crypto + AI = an accerlerated future. I'm motivated to work in this space, because if done wrong, this is a disaster for society. If done fairly, we can build something amazing.
spamizbad 4y ago
Can you provide any estimates on when the crypto world will start building things for regular folks that aren't just new ways to speculate on assets? Because, quite frankly, this is exactly what I've been hearing for the last decade. Because right now the web3 ecosystem seems to cut directly against the ethos of "build stuff that solves a problem for your users". It seems like it's becoming increasingly insular for who its solving problems for - namely other people building things in the web3 space. Like imagine its the 1980s and the industry decided it was stupid to build a home computer because we didn't have X Y or Z built yet so these machines are for computer enthusiasts, scientists, and researchers ONLY.
- swalsh 4y ago
  Each generation of tech seems to take 3-4 years, and I think we're 2 generations away when I map out a roadmap of needs (which I might be completely wrong about). So 6-8 years? My own personal opinion.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- axg11 4y ago
  The early "killer" products and projects are there, but most people are looking in the wrong places (DeFi). Some examples below. Consumer apps: - STEPN - Superlocal The future of brands (NFTs): - Doodles - BAYC Science funding: - VitaDAO - Molecule - HairDAO
  - mysore 4y ago
    if BAYC is a killer app then web3 is doomed. Using NFTs to enforce digital scarcity and 'ownership' of content can be cool. but the idea of a exclusive social club where you can only get into by buying a million dollar avatar is a little ridiculous. IF they actually had good content in the group that would make sense but it seems to be mostly an MMO the pictures dont even have any taste and the whole thing feels overly commercial and reeks of group-think.
  - smolder 4y ago
rvz 4y ago
> So a lot of the good stuff that was/is being built this cycle, the stuff that's going to survive the bear market is critical infrastructure meant to support the future new startups in the blockchain space... the customer of crypto today, is crypto. Combined these capabilities will enable a very powerful platform which will eventually serve businesses and individuals. Today, it's not ready for your needs. This is why Stripe, Moneygram, Checkout.com, etc are choosing the blockchain technologies that are useful to them, which tells us that some of them are going to survive past this bear market and make it past regulations. Not all of these crypto projects will survive either but a certain few will. Again, like the free-software activists who have been disappointed with their mission in removing all non-free software which the web2 tech bros have hijacked the 'open-source' term as cover to suggest their so-called 'transparency' in closed-source surveillance capitalist companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc, we are now seeing them going to be very disappointed with the hope of absolute obliteration and complete removal of everything web3 and blockchain related. I'm afraid that this 'destroying' or 'removal' of it all is not going to happen, just like it isn't going to take over the current system. Like closed-source software, crypto is here to stay and both web2 and web3 people are going to be very disappointed.
Nextgrid 4y ago
> how you would build a blockchain based business What problems does a "blockchain based business" solve? That's what I don't understand. Most businesses out there derive value by interacting with off-chain, real-world state. If you wanted to use a blockchain in this case you'd need some trusted party to sync the blockchain state with the state of the real world, which then nullifies most/all of the advantages of using a blockchain over just letting this trusted party run an old school database.

fourstar 4y ago

Aside: "Web3" is a forced and overloaded name (and category) for all the VCs who wanted to get into crypto, but didn't know how. Similar to the "startup" nomenclature.

mjburgess 4y ago

Crypto is the chain-letter scams of the 30s; the pyramid schemes of the 60s, 70s; and the Ponzi schemes of 90s/00s. People are susceptible to a specific sort of social-proof, social-recursion type of fraud. Enough people do something early, on paper it grows rapidly, and the scam artist sells that rapid growth as value. You get in late, they cash out by you getting in, and hence defraud you. The 10s is going to be seen as the decade where Amway was replaced by crypto, and gullible housewives replaced with gullible tech bros. The value of a product or service is in its use, the value its consumers place on it. "Crypto" is just another "amway soap dispenser": a piece of cheese in a mouse trap. They say "everyone wants to buy our soap!" (coins, etc.) ... but no one does. Your job, with soap/coins in your hand, is to go out and "pump the value"... and likewise, all the way down the pyramid. No one wants the soap, the coins, the crypto. The marginal value to a consumer is zero. The only value it has now is the future expected amount people can be defrauded. It's fraud, and the people buying in early are exiting at ATHs paid for by people who are being scammed. This needs to be called out for what it is and regulated into oblivion. People are loosing everything because reputable grifters (celebs, etc.) are selling a scam.

whywhywhywhy 4y ago
It’s pointless arguing it because we have whole generations who are completely screwed and unless they invest (gamble) they will never ever own a house. They have two choices, sit back, own nothing and watch their savings evaporate with inflation. Or just try every thing they can and pray one of them works. If we don’t want to have people getting sucked into crypto, then maybe start by making our actual currency more trustworthy, rather than work your ass off, pay the money of half the hours worked away in tax, then sit and watch the measly pile you hoarded get evaporated away with inflation as houses skyrocket. Compared to that, a ”scam” like Bitcoin starts to look like a way out to many.
- mjburgess 4y ago
  But this messaging is part of the scam... It's the same messaging for pyramid schemes: become your own boss. The 9-5 has failed you. etc. I think crypto has been interpreted as a ponzi.. but that misses the whole social phenomenon. It's actually a pyramid: it's a cult out to defraud. Your job as a coin holder is to recruit others into the system, that's how you exit. You only make money if you can get others into the system. You dont make money from the coins ever actually being used. Your messaging here is the "cheese in the mousetrap". It's a scam. It's a scam. Really, your eyes aren't deceiving you. No one uses crypto. No one wants crypto. No one wants your "vitamin supplements" and "essential oils" sold door-to-door. There is no product. It's a warehouse of useless crap no one wants. I think we need to be really really really clear here: it's a scam. The last 95% of people buying in will be left with be left with a loss. We need to stop positioning fradulent schemes in the same breath as critiques of the job market. They're making it worse: they're defrauding those people most vulerable. Everyone in crypto wants you to be talking about the economy, just as everyone in pyramids wants you to be talking about vitamin supplements. Both are irrelevant. The proposition is a scam, you're being defrauded and invited to defraud others. Ignore vitamin science, ignore economics, ignore the job market: this is a scheme to transfer money from dupes to grifters

robrorcroptrer 4y ago

It is not even a big idea.

EphemeralNebula 4y ago

I run a house sitting site where house owners post listings for house sitters to respond to. Sometimes I flirt with the idea of making this community a decentralized autonomous web3 community. Currently I am the sole arbiter and mediator when there is conflict. I would love to shift this responsibility to a random selection of active members that have enrolled for this role for a certain time period. I envision a rotating council formulates the complaint, and a selected group votes on a set predefined outcomes. Members pay a virtual crypto currency and when problems arise this fund can be used to pay for insurance claims. Still very much in its infancy but I could see a good use case for web3 here.

happymellon 4y ago
What does web3 add to this? You just described a subscription service, which as a concept has existed longer than web3 has. All of these things that you have described has been possible for over 2 decades. Web3 adds in the idea that your crypto subscription could tank and you have nothing left to pay for legals costs.
- EphemeralNebula 4y ago
  "You just described a subscription service", nope I think the defining character of web3 is a decentralised and hopefully anonymous community, driven and voted for by a blockchain powered mechanisme with a transparent, verifiable chain of decisions. In my opinion this is quite difficult to achieve with conventional organisational structures.
laserbeam 4y ago
You're describing a company/owner's association/some other similar entity which already exists in your legal system. You can already implement the rotating council and an insurance fund without a blockchain. The only thing the blockchain does is prevent you from fixing problems if you made mistakes at some point in the past and had bugs. And it costs you more.
valdiorn 4y ago
You'll still be the person named in the lawsuit when actual, physical property gets destroyed and someone decides they're not going to adhere to the decision of some random internet strangers. Given you (or your company) is the only party that's actually exposed to risk in that case, why would it benefit you, or your customers, to use Blockchain/crypto/web3 stuff? At the end of the day the same result could be achieved with a database in your AWS account and some registered users who get a small fee for reviewing claims.

Comevius 4y ago

Web3 is not meant to be useful, it is a carrot dangled in front of investors. It's there to justify the existence of cryptocurrencies. It's customers are greater fools investing into the cryptocurrency behind the project. The joke is that there is an incentive for Web3 projects to be competitive. Most video games with microtransactions strive to have a wider appeal, otherwise they have less people to sell to. And yet such effort is not exerted for Web3 projects. The people are just supposed to see how potentially revolutionary they are and come flocking. Because it worked for Bitcoin and Ethereum the developers think that this is how the market works. You build something new, if relatively useless and the people throw their entire savings at you, because they don't want to be left out.

yoaviram 4y ago

Unpopular opinion - Web3, incidentally, may save us: https://nonstructured.com/in-defense-of-web3/ https://nonstructured.com/in-defense-of-web3/

nix0n 4y ago
Previously discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31680904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31680904
axg11 4y ago
This is a much more level-headed take on web3. As someone building in web3, I admit that 99% of current web3 projects (including tokens and NFTs) will go to zero. That's a consequence of the sheer number of projects and diversity of experimentation occurring today. For the first time in a decade, there is an explosion in the number of products and projects being developed. I can only see this as a positive thing.
- Comevius 4y ago
  Not to be hurtful about your project Ribbon and other similar projects, but companies rewarding their employees with NFTs is a bad idea. People like being treated fairly and they like meaningful benefits, like health and wellness, and of course being adequately compensated. NFTs are hardly fair or meaningful. I don't say that you should not experiment with the market, but I'm questioning if that's even the point. Projects like these are being pumped out in this space hoping to luck into some temporary craze, but I see a lack of care, not polish, but a lack of interest in making something useful for actual people. I really question the usefulness of crypto in these projects. It's putting the cart in front of the horse, most of these projects would be actually better without it.
webkike 4y ago
> Web3 allows us to experiment with alternative economic systems in a controlled fashion, and our imagination is the only limit in this realm. We can describe an economic system’s exact properties for the first time and then let the experiment run, learn, and adapt. The idea that this is unique to Web3, crypto, or even decentralized systems is incorrect. MMOs do this all of the time with a SQL server.

smt88 4y ago

Title has been editorialized by OP. Actual title: "You Can Give People What They Want. Or You Can Give Them Web3"

yakubin 4y ago
It hasn't. OP's title is taken from the <title> tag of the page (i.e. the thing displayed in the browser title bar). For some reason, newspapers have a habit of displaying one title on the page, and another in the browser chrome.

slackfan 4y ago

I remember these exact articles being written about web2.0, and look where we are now. Mind you, web2.0 was exactly as destructive and pointless as web3 is looking to be.

jimsmart 4y ago
I'd be very interest to see some of these articles, just to look back on, and reflect — because I've worked in tech since the 80s, and have been doing web stuff since well before Web 2.0 was even a phrase. Do you have any links please? — AFAICT Web 2.0 was initially about dynamic web pages (client-side dynamism mostly, i.e. the Javascript revolution) at a technical level. Then a short while later, on a social level, it was about more user-generated content. Combined with the improvements brought about by improved UI from the previous. Web 2.0 also somewhat encompasses e-commerce too, to a large degree (the dot-com boom was mostly all about e-commerce, and Web 2.0 came about in the midst of that, of course). I don't recall there being articles saying that customers/users didn't want these things. What I recall was kinda the opposite: folk did want improved UI (without round-tripping to the server every click), folk did want to be able to more easily share content they'd created, with their network of friends and the rest of the world. Folk did want to be able to buy things without going to a physical store. — But perhaps I just have poor recall? This is why I'd find it particularly interesting to read some articles that say Web 2.0 was solving problems that customers hadn't asked to be solved. Personally, I don't think Web 2.0 was destructive and pointless, as you claim. Could you expand on what you think was destructive and pointless about it? Perhaps we just have differing ideas as to what Web 2.0 is/was exactly.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

tonetheman 4y ago

web3 is the Michal Scott email forward that will just not die. It is a made up term from people who want your money and nothing more. Shaded with some good old cargo cult fan boys who will tell how it will save the world.

neuronic 4y ago

Legitimate web3 noob question: how is web3 decentralized if a vast amount of products rely on players centralizing infrastructure (blockchain) access, for example by relying on Alchemy [1]? [1] https://www.alchemy.com/ https://www.alchemy.com/

dbs 4y ago

Eagerly waiting for crypto to be as successful as WAP was