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I'm kinda happy with the way things turned out. For a moment, my understanding of reality was upside down with how many mediocre and clearly pointless projects

by dayvid 4y ago

I'm kinda happy with the way things turned out. For a moment, my understanding of reality was upside down with how many mediocre and clearly pointless projects were generating so much money. With every crypto hype cycle, I actually go through the motions and create a smart contract project and become completely disillusioned with the hype. I thought ERC20 tokens were bullshit when I realized it's just updating keys in a hashtable. I worked in Solana and was surprised to find out that a developer can update a program at will. No one is really talking about this and this seems like a disastrously shaky foundation to put your money in, along with programs being difficult to audit. There are some NFTs by amazing artists which no one cares about. The ones with the most popularity are modern-day clip art pieces, with copy-paste scripts and marketing strategies. I think web3/crypto will have mass adoption, but when it does, it will be much more boring and seamless with what we have today, with large companies managing blockchains and governments issuing their own coins.

stemlord 4y ago
>There are some NFTs by amazing artists which no one cares about. The ones with the most popularity are modern-day clip art pieces, with copy-paste scripts and marketing strategies. I've only witnessed almost every amazing digital artist on my twitter feed quickly devolve into an obnoxious NFT shill and drastically reduce the quality of their practice to maximize their output. I'm glad they are finding ways to some meager financial gains but the ideological mystique around their practice was shattered in the process
LouisSayers 4y ago
> and governments issuing their own coins. ... in which case they could just create a standard centralised system and avoid all the overhead of blockchain - or am I missing something here? I don't see the point in mining coins when you could simply run a for loop generating uuids followed by perhaps signing transactions with public key cryptography. I feel like we'll look back at "web3" as a wild west of cryptomania. Perhaps we all need to start thinking along the lines of "Generation GPT" - this seems to be the next evolution of the Web if you ask me.
JeremyNT 4y ago
> I think web3/crypto will have mass adoption, but when it does, it will be much more boring and seamless with what we have today, with large companies managing blockchains and governments issuing their own coins. What point is there in the blockchain here? Why would a company or government need or want the indirection and overhead of blockchain/cryptocurrency instead of a normal database and traditional currency?
- ithkuil 4y ago
  There is also an interesting middle ground between a centralized database and a fully distributer blockchain: a transparency log. You can have a central authority operate on a ledger as they please, but provide verifiable proof that they are not rigging the books behind your back and rewriting history
  - daveguy 4y ago
    This is an interesting concept. But I'm not sure why a company would want to do this if they didn't have to. Currently even publicly traded companies don't have to completely open their books to an auditor unless they get into trouble, right? Even then is it public? But for this to be a public benefit, wouldn't it have to be mandated? A government requirement to have a cryptographic chain of evidence for your books seems like the opposite of the crypto ethos.
    - dayvid 4y ago
      There’s been some interest for things such as banks balancing transactions with each other or shipping countries validating logs. JP Morgan already developed their own Eth based blockchain to my knowledge and the usecases will be there. You will probably never hear about them, though.
      - daveguy 4y ago
        Ah, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you.
  - 4y ago
coldpie 4y ago
> I think web3/crypto will have mass adoption, but when it does, it will be much more boring and seamless with what we have today, with large companies managing blockchains and governments issuing their own coins. But, that's no different from a really power-inefficient database. Whatever could be done with centralized crypto can equally be done with a Postgres server for 1/100,000 the cost. Why do you think this will have mass adoption?
- RestlessMind 4y ago
  Agreed, centralized crypto should just die or be treated like any other web2 project.
hanniabu 4y ago
> I worked in Solana and was surprised to find out that a developer can update a program at will Because it's not a real blockchain. Most chains are centralized. You should really focus your time on Ethereum. It's the only chain researching and innovating and is focused on longevity.
- qvrjuec 4y ago
  Absolutely not true. Program maintainers can create immutable programs, most just choose not to. It's a user issue more so than a protocol issue.
  - dayvid 4y ago
    Ah I see that in the official docs, you are correct! My mistake. I never saw that in the docs when I was working on my project.
  - hanniabu 4y ago
    *unless the team shuts down solana for maintenance
pstuart 4y ago
Why would anybody buy an NFT for any other reason than banking on a greater fool? Art doesn't need blockchain to be sold, and an NFT adds zero value to it.

by dayvid 4y ago

stemlord 4y ago

>There are some NFTs by amazing artists which no one cares about. The ones with the most popularity are modern-day clip art pieces, with copy-paste scripts and marketing strategies. I've only witnessed almost every amazing digital artist on my twitter feed quickly devolve into an obnoxious NFT shill and drastically reduce the quality of their practice to maximize their output. I'm glad they are finding ways to some meager financial gains but the ideological mystique around their practice was shattered in the process

LouisSayers 4y ago

> and governments issuing their own coins. ... in which case they could just create a standard centralised system and avoid all the overhead of blockchain - or am I missing something here? I don't see the point in mining coins when you could simply run a for loop generating uuids followed by perhaps signing transactions with public key cryptography. I feel like we'll look back at "web3" as a wild west of cryptomania. Perhaps we all need to start thinking along the lines of "Generation GPT" - this seems to be the next evolution of the Web if you ask me.

JeremyNT 4y ago

> I think web3/crypto will have mass adoption, but when it does, it will be much more boring and seamless with what we have today, with large companies managing blockchains and governments issuing their own coins. What point is there in the blockchain here? Why would a company or government need or want the indirection and overhead of blockchain/cryptocurrency instead of a normal database and traditional currency?

ithkuil 4y ago
There is also an interesting middle ground between a centralized database and a fully distributer blockchain: a transparency log. You can have a central authority operate on a ledger as they please, but provide verifiable proof that they are not rigging the books behind your back and rewriting history
- daveguy 4y ago
  This is an interesting concept. But I'm not sure why a company would want to do this if they didn't have to. Currently even publicly traded companies don't have to completely open their books to an auditor unless they get into trouble, right? Even then is it public? But for this to be a public benefit, wouldn't it have to be mandated? A government requirement to have a cryptographic chain of evidence for your books seems like the opposite of the crypto ethos.
  - dayvid 4y ago
    There’s been some interest for things such as banks balancing transactions with each other or shipping countries validating logs. JP Morgan already developed their own Eth based blockchain to my knowledge and the usecases will be there. You will probably never hear about them, though.
    - daveguy 4y ago
      Ah, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you.
- 4y ago

coldpie 4y ago

> I think web3/crypto will have mass adoption, but when it does, it will be much more boring and seamless with what we have today, with large companies managing blockchains and governments issuing their own coins. But, that's no different from a really power-inefficient database. Whatever could be done with centralized crypto can equally be done with a Postgres server for 1/100,000 the cost. Why do you think this will have mass adoption?

RestlessMind 4y ago
Agreed, centralized crypto should just die or be treated like any other web2 project.

hanniabu 4y ago

> I worked in Solana and was surprised to find out that a developer can update a program at will Because it's not a real blockchain. Most chains are centralized. You should really focus your time on Ethereum. It's the only chain researching and innovating and is focused on longevity.

qvrjuec 4y ago
Absolutely not true. Program maintainers can create immutable programs, most just choose not to. It's a user issue more so than a protocol issue.
- dayvid 4y ago
  Ah I see that in the official docs, you are correct! My mistake. I never saw that in the docs when I was working on my project.
- hanniabu 4y ago
  *unless the team shuts down solana for maintenance

pstuart 4y ago

Why would anybody buy an NFT for any other reason than banking on a greater fool? Art doesn't need blockchain to be sold, and an NFT adds zero value to it.