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>Personally, I think the government should subsidize something like this to allow it to get off the ground. Earthquake data, climate data, traffic data, etc. Es

>Personally, I think the government should subsidize something like this to allow it to get off the ground. Earthquake data, climate data, traffic data, etc. Essentially public use. Literally the exact opposite of what web3 is. You're arguing for a _public good_, but web3's entire premise only makes sense when the opposite happens: everything is privatized, everything is monetized. THIS is the world that web3 makers envision: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...

knowaveragejoe 4y ago
Web3 folks spend a lot of time and effort on public goods, it's one of Vitalik's core visions for the direction of crypto as a whole.
swamp40 4y ago
Crypto is the payment method for this service. It's not an essential element, and there is much more to it. I'm not exactly sure where your definition of 'web3' and crypto overlap, but there are many future public use cases for crypto. Banking the unbanked, protection against hyperinflation, etc. Maybe 10+ years away, but it will happen.
- TomSwirly 4y ago
  > Banking the unbanked I first heard this line eight years ago and so far this hasn't happened. If you are unbanked, it's because you have little money, and you want to put it into something stable and something where you are protected - in other words, the exact opposite of cryptocurrencies. > protection against hyperinflation, In 2022, cryptocurrencies have experienced over 100% inflation. Your one bitcoin today will buy less than half the goods and services it would have half a year ago. Cryptocurrencies are almost as old as the smartphone. You can't keep promising something useful and never delivering, forever.
  - swamp40 4y ago
    >100% inflation Volatility is not great but it is not hyperinflation, where your money never comes back. >promising something useful and never delivering, forever. Forever is a long time. Still lots of progress to be made. Cardano and Lightning Network on top of Bitcoin are my top picks right now.
    - snicky 4y ago
      It seems that the Lightning Network requires some degree of centralization which defies the main premise of Bitcoin, no?
  - haswell 4y ago
    > Cryptocurrencies are almost as old as the smartphone. You can't keep promising something useful and never delivering, forever. I’m generally pretty bearish on crypto and the current state of web3, so I’m not here to evangelize for it. But comparing crypto to a smartphone is arbitrary, and the nature of one does not help us understand the acceptable timeframe for development of the other. When I see the “it’s existed for X time and isn’t popular yet so it must not be viable”, a follow up question immediately comes to mind. What is a reasonable amount of time for an emerging technology like this to develop? The modern web took decades to evolve into what it is today (for better or worse). Depending on who you talk to, web3’s goals are just as lofty, and a similar time horizon doesn’t seem unreasonable. With that said, the space still struggles to articulate the real problems it will solve, and time and time again it’s just a solution to those problems, and not necessarily the best one. All of this to say - I’m a web3 skeptic, but we need a better measure of health than the passage of time, or we need a better definition of what an acceptable amount of time actually looks like.
    - latexr 4y ago
      > What is a reasonable amount of time for an emerging technology like this to develop? Suggestion: it depends on the harm it causes in the meantime. If an emerging technology isn’t living up to its promise and the downside is the creators wasting their time, let it go on indefinitely. Maybe they’re having fun. As long as no one is getting hurt, it’s a hobby. If the emerging technology is solving nothing and actively creating new problems, allowing bad actors to consistently hurt others with little to no consequences, and accelerating our demise so a handful of egoistic maniacs can see a number go up in their bank accounts, perhaps it’s time to stop. Put an end to it even sooner if the biggest proponents repeatedly lie and make promises which fail to materialise year after year.
- nradov 4y ago
  The unbanked don't have much in the way of assets. Hyperinflation doesn't impact your savings if you have no savings. They get by using pre-loaded debit cards instead of bank accounts and credit cards. Cryptocurrency doesn't solve anything for them. It won't happen.
mindslight 4y ago
When it comes to buying food, "everything is privatized, everything is monetized". And yet with robust competition, the market for food essentially works. It's worst problem seems to be price discrimination "sales", but those are around a factor of two, which may seem high but is actually pretty reasonable compared to non-competative markets. And while morally, we can perhaps say that we've progressed as a species to a point that nobody should go hungry, any attempts to do so are necessarily going to rely on that food market to create food, with publicly funded purchases. In general, markets can be really good at solving certain problems. Now, my comment is not a defense of trying to creating scarcity or monopolies where they don't exist - eg NFTs, Nestle buying up aquifers, copyright, etc. Nor is it a defense of creating "market efficiency" out of things that would be personal capital goods, where market inefficiency allowed for wealth to remain distributed (eg Uber, AirBNB). Personally, I would say that wireless Internet access is (regrettably) a scarce good and thus attempts to make the market more democratized and efficient are a good thing. This is not the all-too-common converse of someone trying to take something that is already democratized and trying to make a market out of it.

knowaveragejoe 4y ago

Web3 folks spend a lot of time and effort on public goods, it's one of Vitalik's core visions for the direction of crypto as a whole.

swamp40 4y ago

Crypto is the payment method for this service. It's not an essential element, and there is much more to it. I'm not exactly sure where your definition of 'web3' and crypto overlap, but there are many future public use cases for crypto. Banking the unbanked, protection against hyperinflation, etc. Maybe 10+ years away, but it will happen.

TomSwirly 4y ago
> Banking the unbanked I first heard this line eight years ago and so far this hasn't happened. If you are unbanked, it's because you have little money, and you want to put it into something stable and something where you are protected - in other words, the exact opposite of cryptocurrencies. > protection against hyperinflation, In 2022, cryptocurrencies have experienced over 100% inflation. Your one bitcoin today will buy less than half the goods and services it would have half a year ago. Cryptocurrencies are almost as old as the smartphone. You can't keep promising something useful and never delivering, forever.
- swamp40 4y ago
  >100% inflation Volatility is not great but it is not hyperinflation, where your money never comes back. >promising something useful and never delivering, forever. Forever is a long time. Still lots of progress to be made. Cardano and Lightning Network on top of Bitcoin are my top picks right now.
  - snicky 4y ago
    It seems that the Lightning Network requires some degree of centralization which defies the main premise of Bitcoin, no?
- haswell 4y ago
  > Cryptocurrencies are almost as old as the smartphone. You can't keep promising something useful and never delivering, forever. I’m generally pretty bearish on crypto and the current state of web3, so I’m not here to evangelize for it. But comparing crypto to a smartphone is arbitrary, and the nature of one does not help us understand the acceptable timeframe for development of the other. When I see the “it’s existed for X time and isn’t popular yet so it must not be viable”, a follow up question immediately comes to mind. What is a reasonable amount of time for an emerging technology like this to develop? The modern web took decades to evolve into what it is today (for better or worse). Depending on who you talk to, web3’s goals are just as lofty, and a similar time horizon doesn’t seem unreasonable. With that said, the space still struggles to articulate the real problems it will solve, and time and time again it’s just a solution to those problems, and not necessarily the best one. All of this to say - I’m a web3 skeptic, but we need a better measure of health than the passage of time, or we need a better definition of what an acceptable amount of time actually looks like.
  - latexr 4y ago
    > What is a reasonable amount of time for an emerging technology like this to develop? Suggestion: it depends on the harm it causes in the meantime. If an emerging technology isn’t living up to its promise and the downside is the creators wasting their time, let it go on indefinitely. Maybe they’re having fun. As long as no one is getting hurt, it’s a hobby. If the emerging technology is solving nothing and actively creating new problems, allowing bad actors to consistently hurt others with little to no consequences, and accelerating our demise so a handful of egoistic maniacs can see a number go up in their bank accounts, perhaps it’s time to stop. Put an end to it even sooner if the biggest proponents repeatedly lie and make promises which fail to materialise year after year.
nradov 4y ago
The unbanked don't have much in the way of assets. Hyperinflation doesn't impact your savings if you have no savings. They get by using pre-loaded debit cards instead of bank accounts and credit cards. Cryptocurrency doesn't solve anything for them. It won't happen.

mindslight 4y ago

When it comes to buying food, "everything is privatized, everything is monetized". And yet with robust competition, the market for food essentially works. It's worst problem seems to be price discrimination "sales", but those are around a factor of two, which may seem high but is actually pretty reasonable compared to non-competative markets. And while morally, we can perhaps say that we've progressed as a species to a point that nobody should go hungry, any attempts to do so are necessarily going to rely on that food market to create food, with publicly funded purchases. In general, markets can be really good at solving certain problems. Now, my comment is not a defense of trying to creating scarcity or monopolies where they don't exist - eg NFTs, Nestle buying up aquifers, copyright, etc. Nor is it a defense of creating "market efficiency" out of things that would be personal capital goods, where market inefficiency allowed for wealth to remain distributed (eg Uber, AirBNB). Personally, I would say that wireless Internet access is (regrettably) a scarce good and thus attempts to make the market more democratized and efficient are a good thing. This is not the all-too-common converse of someone trying to take something that is already democratized and trying to make a market out of it.