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1. Permissionless, censorship-resistant global money transfer 2. Smart contracts 3. Append-only logs synchronised between mutually distrusting parties 4. Dec

1. Permissionless, censorship-resistant global money transfer 2. Smart contracts 3. Append-only logs synchronised between mutually distrusting parties 4. Decentralised identities 5. Microtransactions for online games and to replace web advertising

tester756 4y ago
>1. Permissionless, censorship-resistant global money transfer >5. Microtransactions for online games and to replace web advertising how money transfer and microtransactions are different?
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  They are (at least) two separate use cases, even though they are both examples of sending money. (You could equally say that they are all examples of sending data). 1. Some people want to be able to send large amounts of money internationally to their family in a country which has currency controls and "official" exchange rates. Others want to be able to send funds to organisations that have been banned by traditional money transmitters, such as Wikileaks, or protest groups, or adult content, or cannabis. 5. Separate groups of people don't have a problem with their government's fiscal or censorship policies, but simply want to be able to buy an emote or a skin in an online game, or to listen to a piece of music or read an article without being tracked around the web or needing to wire 50 cents from their bank in Mongolia to the service provider's bank in Cyprus.
  - salawat 4y ago
    1. The problem there is exactly why the space is going to remain a reserve for fundamentally illegal activity. Arguably it shouldn't be. I get that. That still doesn't get me any closer to me suggesting anyone's grandma hop into Web3. 5. So you're still being tracked, because there isn't a company around that isn't monetizing viewership data. Also, if you're fine with fiscal policies, why are you hesitant to wire? Sounds to me like you're dissatisfied with your host country's fiscal controls, or service provider's offerings. Look, control over financial networks is one of the most powerful soft control mechanisms on the planet. You will not work around that. Government is slow to catch up, but I assure you, these folks aren't stupid anywhere close to 100% of the time. The fact regulation is crystalizing around crypto as fast as it is without taking the multi-century learning experience trad-fi did is evidence enough of that. If it comes down to "a bunch of nerds created an unregulable financial system" I can pretty much guarantee it'll get gobbled by trad-fi snd re-centralized. In fact, anyone could roll their own financial networks without using banks/Visa/you name it. No one has because we've made laws that specifically increase the barrier to entry because finance is the spine that provides support for all manner of economic activity, which includes the illegal stuff, and Government is putatively in the business of making sure that the illegal stuff doesn't see the light of day. I just do not see the compelling argument that'll carry weight to switch someone from "financial system that makes crime hard" to "financial system that makes crime easy" and feel alright about it. You have to already accept that crime is just an endemic human phenomena, and this is just a rebalancing of the spectrum. Given you've got much more efficient implementations of your other use cases available, this is the sticking point for me. No people I've spoken to and laid out what Web3 really is, even with the most charitable framing gets passed that. If I can't convince people it's a good idea with full disclosure in effect, I'm not sure it's something worth pushing forward.
NoGravitas 4y ago
1. Except cryptocurrencies aren't any good for that, because the transaction costs are too high, and the value of cryptocurrencies too volatile. Cryptocurrencies are not a medium of exchange. 2. Now, what's a valid use-case for a smart contract, and please explain how it functions if there's a bug in the contract? 3. Maybe. You'll need to provide a more concrete use-case. Also, you have the outside-world problem (you know the data hasn't been altered, but you don't necessarily know where it comes from). 4. All you need for decentralized identities is a public key. (Though if you want your identity to be long-lived, you'll have to also have a system of secure key rotation, and the most straightforward system is blockchain-ish in that it involves a signed append-only log. But it doesn't need a global trustless ledger. 5. See 1, except worse, because the transaction cost dwarf the actual payment.
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  1. If you're sending a portion of your monthly wages as a remittance to your family, spending a dollar[1] isn't too much. 2. A smart contract allows decentralised organisations to function, with democratic voting and transparency. (That's not appropriate or necessary for every organisation, but it can be an improvement on one person hosting a server and saying "Trust me"). If there's a bug in the contract, you have to vote to change the contract. Traditional contracts, businesses, and even countries fail all the time, but we haven't give up on them as concepts. 3. For a concrete use-case, I offer the example of blockchain technology being used to make the fishing industry supply chain more transparent.[3] It's true that someone could enter fake information onto the blockchain, but they could also fake signatures on paperwork, so a system can still be useful even if it doesn't prevent all possible attacks. 4. If the ledger isn't trustless, then someone is controlling it, so your identities aren't really decentralised. 5. There are better currencies than BTC if transaction costs are the main concern. The equivalent number for BCH is half a cent.[5] [1] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees... [3] https://www.reutersevents.com/sustainability/using-blockchain-bring-transparency-sea-plate https://www.reutersevents.com/sustainability/using-blockchai... [5] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin%20cash-transactionfees.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin%20cash-transact...

tester756 4y ago

>1. Permissionless, censorship-resistant global money transfer >5. Microtransactions for online games and to replace web advertising how money transfer and microtransactions are different?

dane-pgp 4y ago
They are (at least) two separate use cases, even though they are both examples of sending money. (You could equally say that they are all examples of sending data). 1. Some people want to be able to send large amounts of money internationally to their family in a country which has currency controls and "official" exchange rates. Others want to be able to send funds to organisations that have been banned by traditional money transmitters, such as Wikileaks, or protest groups, or adult content, or cannabis. 5. Separate groups of people don't have a problem with their government's fiscal or censorship policies, but simply want to be able to buy an emote or a skin in an online game, or to listen to a piece of music or read an article without being tracked around the web or needing to wire 50 cents from their bank in Mongolia to the service provider's bank in Cyprus.
- salawat 4y ago
  1. The problem there is exactly why the space is going to remain a reserve for fundamentally illegal activity. Arguably it shouldn't be. I get that. That still doesn't get me any closer to me suggesting anyone's grandma hop into Web3. 5. So you're still being tracked, because there isn't a company around that isn't monetizing viewership data. Also, if you're fine with fiscal policies, why are you hesitant to wire? Sounds to me like you're dissatisfied with your host country's fiscal controls, or service provider's offerings. Look, control over financial networks is one of the most powerful soft control mechanisms on the planet. You will not work around that. Government is slow to catch up, but I assure you, these folks aren't stupid anywhere close to 100% of the time. The fact regulation is crystalizing around crypto as fast as it is without taking the multi-century learning experience trad-fi did is evidence enough of that. If it comes down to "a bunch of nerds created an unregulable financial system" I can pretty much guarantee it'll get gobbled by trad-fi snd re-centralized. In fact, anyone could roll their own financial networks without using banks/Visa/you name it. No one has because we've made laws that specifically increase the barrier to entry because finance is the spine that provides support for all manner of economic activity, which includes the illegal stuff, and Government is putatively in the business of making sure that the illegal stuff doesn't see the light of day. I just do not see the compelling argument that'll carry weight to switch someone from "financial system that makes crime hard" to "financial system that makes crime easy" and feel alright about it. You have to already accept that crime is just an endemic human phenomena, and this is just a rebalancing of the spectrum. Given you've got much more efficient implementations of your other use cases available, this is the sticking point for me. No people I've spoken to and laid out what Web3 really is, even with the most charitable framing gets passed that. If I can't convince people it's a good idea with full disclosure in effect, I'm not sure it's something worth pushing forward.

NoGravitas 4y ago

1. Except cryptocurrencies aren't any good for that, because the transaction costs are too high, and the value of cryptocurrencies too volatile. Cryptocurrencies are not a medium of exchange. 2. Now, what's a valid use-case for a smart contract, and please explain how it functions if there's a bug in the contract? 3. Maybe. You'll need to provide a more concrete use-case. Also, you have the outside-world problem (you know the data hasn't been altered, but you don't necessarily know where it comes from). 4. All you need for decentralized identities is a public key. (Though if you want your identity to be long-lived, you'll have to also have a system of secure key rotation, and the most straightforward system is blockchain-ish in that it involves a signed append-only log. But it doesn't need a global trustless ledger. 5. See 1, except worse, because the transaction cost dwarf the actual payment.

dane-pgp 4y ago
1. If you're sending a portion of your monthly wages as a remittance to your family, spending a dollar[1] isn't too much. 2. A smart contract allows decentralised organisations to function, with democratic voting and transparency. (That's not appropriate or necessary for every organisation, but it can be an improvement on one person hosting a server and saying "Trust me"). If there's a bug in the contract, you have to vote to change the contract. Traditional contracts, businesses, and even countries fail all the time, but we haven't give up on them as concepts. 3. For a concrete use-case, I offer the example of blockchain technology being used to make the fishing industry supply chain more transparent.[3] It's true that someone could enter fake information onto the blockchain, but they could also fake signatures on paperwork, so a system can still be useful even if it doesn't prevent all possible attacks. 4. If the ledger isn't trustless, then someone is controlling it, so your identities aren't really decentralised. 5. There are better currencies than BTC if transaction costs are the main concern. The equivalent number for BCH is half a cent.[5] [1] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees... [3] https://www.reutersevents.com/sustainability/using-blockchain-bring-transparency-sea-plate https://www.reutersevents.com/sustainability/using-blockchai... [5] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin%20cash-transactionfees.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin%20cash-transact...