10 ms·

Show HN: An Ethereum-authenticated community on Web3, science and technology

41 points by ilovenerds 3y ago

ilovenerds 3y ago
Hi everyone, we started developing Caches about a year ago and it's finally gotten to a stage that I believe it can be enjoyed by more people. Accounts are totally anonymous thanks to Sign In with Ethereum. You don't need to provide an email address or password to sign up. Some communities groups on the site are NFT gated and some you can't even see unless you have the correct NFT in your wallet. If you have a community NFT token we would love for you to make Caches your home. Reach out to @CachesAdmin on the site. Friends, countryhumans, lend me your brains! Leave behind the wreckage of Reddit and begin to migrate to greener pastures! Join a social community created for nerds, by nerds! Ok, ok ... no need to shove, I'm leavin!
- c_crank 3y ago
  What benefits does running this system on Ethereum provide compared to something like urbit?
  - hanniabu 3y ago
    Given Ethereum's network, I'd like to pose the inverse question back to you and ask why urbit would be better
    - c_crank 3y ago
      Not having to deal with the distributed computing problems a blockchain provides. No worrying about any proof of stake slowdowns or overhead. I don't think urbit is all that great, either, but this is coming from someone who decided to increase their investment in face to face conversations following social media starting to crumble.
      - ETH_start 3y ago
        >Not having to deal with the distributed computing problems a blockchain provides. No worrying about any proof of stake slowdowns or overhead Ethereum operates perfectly smoothly, with zero downtime since launching 8 years ago. In any case, besides peripheral features like NFT-gated forums and Ethereum Name Service created proxy names, this doesn't use Ethereum's distributed network. Just the public key wallet software built for using Ethereum.
  - ilovenerds 3y ago
    I'm not familiar with Urbit, but a quick glance at their website says that it's owned by the "Tlon Corporation," which I have to assume is a for profit company. Ethereum on the other hand is guided, but not owned or controlled by a non-profit foundation. Ethereum is a public utility and they have a mechanism for community involvement and contribution via Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIP). Hope that helps!
    - yosoyubik 3y ago
      Urbit has always been open source—currently under the MIT license [1]—and same as Ethereum it's also guided by a non-profit foundation, the Urbit Foundation [2] established in 2021. [1] https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/develop/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/develop/LICENSE.txt [2] https://urbit.org/overview/people-history https://urbit.org/overview/people-history
    - humanizersequel 3y ago
      >a quick glance at their website says that it's owned by the "Tlon Corporation," Where on the website do you see this?
      - ilovenerds 3y ago
        https://urbit.org/privacy https://urbit.org/privacy https://urbit.org/terms-of-service https://urbit.org/terms-of-service
        yosoyubik 3y ago
        > Last Updated: September 24, 2018 This is very outdated and Tlon no longer operates/runs urbit.org but, in any case, the ToS says this: "The Site is owned and operated by Tlon", so the reference was to the website "urbit.org", not the Urbit project.
- remram 3y ago
  Without the blockchain speak, what does "web3 authenticated" mean? I have to buy an account? (ie "NFT" that lets my "wallet" in, whatever?)
  - zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
    "Don’t let the word cryptocurrency scare you! You don’t need any money in your wallet here at Caches. We won’t ask you to buy or invest in any cryptocurrency. You can totally create a brand new, empty wallet if you want."
    - pavlov 3y ago
      Except for that whole “some communities groups on the site are NFT gated” part, which means that you must first buy a cryptocurrency to buy the NFT. It’s just like a “free to play” game that will upsell you on in-app purchases at every opportunity. I can’t imagine anyone wants their reading experience to be more like that. “Web3” really just means “the worst upsell shit from mobile gaming, in every aspect of your life — with the extra bonus that you get to risk losing your money on a scammy crypto exchange!”
      - EGreg 3y ago
        I don’t get it, Web2 constantly upsells you on stuff and HN complains, but doesn’t blame the underlying technology. But far be it for someone to store their private keys in a wallet and sign transactions on their own behalf! Nooooo, that has no real applications!
      - DANmode 3y ago
        You can also be given access NFTs, no different than someone would give you the password of a speakeasy.
        remram 3y ago
        Isn't an "admit one" ticket the very definition of fungible?
- nkrisc 3y ago
  > Friends, countryhumans, lend me your brains! Leave behind the wreckage of Reddit and begin to migrate to greener pastures! Join a social community created for nerds, by nerds! Ok, ok ... no need to shove, I'm leavin! But only if you have the correct NFT.
  - spencerchubb 3y ago
    What's the problem with an exclusive community? The website is decentralized such that people can form exclusive communities with whatever rules they want, with no concern that an overarching corporation will dethrone them.
    - ilovenerds 3y ago
      Exactly! What's really cool though is that communities can have their hidden members-only groups on Caches but still interact with the public at large there too. Communities could have a hidden group, only for community members, and a public group to connect with the world. Of course you have your own personal profile to reach whoever you want also.
  - ilovenerds 3y ago
    You can totally start a community here without a NFT! In fact, we want you to! Everyone is allowed to create 1 public, private or hidden group for free. But! If you have a community NFT we can create a hidden group for you, and when members of your community sign into Caches with a wallet containing that NFT, we can automatically add them to that group. Unless you have that NFT you'll never even know that group exists or how much activity is happening behind the scenes. We can also attach a badge next to community members names throughout the site showing they're a member of that community if desired. For example, this guy is part of the Layer0 community, as you can see by the little L0 icon below his name. https://caches.xyz/members/25016e3c/ https://caches.xyz/members/25016e3c/ For you that may mean nothing, but for other members of Caches that little icon may bring increased trust to that member, or help him identify another member of his community in a sea of random usernames. Here's a blog post about WordPress and sign in with Ethereum that gives a broad overview of the idea. https://caches.xyz/the-rostrum/wordpress-web3-and-ethereum-what-the-whole-world-is-missing/ https://caches.xyz/the-rostrum/wordpress-web3-and-ethereum-w...
montenegrohugo 3y ago
Can't access this from Europe - why not?
- ilovenerds 3y ago
  Hi, sorry for the trouble. Accept my sincerest apologies. We did not properly unblock some regions that were restricted during our testing phase. It's been corrected and the responsible party has been properly flogged and then sacked. We hope you'll try again. Thank you for the feedback!
  - joggelsoggel 3y ago
    I still have a geoblock.
    - ilovenerds 3y ago
      Which country do you hail from?
zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
Very cool, but hosting isn't free. How do you plan on monetizing this?
- goldenkey 3y ago
  They are partnering with NFT communities.
- jurynulifcation 3y ago
  [flagged]
jurynulifcation 3y ago
[flagged]
- noman-land 3y ago
  It appears they are just using Ethereum accounts for authentication. Unlike email addresses, you don't need a third party to have one.
  - jurynulifcation 3y ago
    My understanding is that they use NFTs on the Ethereum chain for authentication. NFTs are still wildly damaging to the ecosystem, with how much electricity they demand. Their sole purpose is to be traded as chits in a series of wealth extractions, until some unfortunate sucker is left holding the bag on a worthless blob of data that (rightfully) nobody wants. You do not need Ethereum for auth. You do not even need Ethereum for anonymous without a 3rd party provider. I do not see what value this actually provides nor why it should come in this form. So I believe it is a reasonable assumption that it is in this form so the creators can get in on the scam-o-sphere that is Ethereum/NFT.
    - ews 3y ago
      After the Ethereum merge, the Energy Usage of any ETH token is negligible. Do you have any source for this "NFTs are damaging because how much electricity they demand" or is just plain old Hacker News "Crypto Bad" fud?
      - jurynulifcation 3y ago
        Do you have any source for (a) how much electricity the blockchain requires after the merge and (b) whether there are any applications outside of gambling and scamming that can not be done otherwise?
        noman-land 3y ago
Geee 3y ago
It's not very private if your Ethereum account is connected to it. Ethereum accounts should be considered PII. After all, KYC requirements on exchanges makes your accounts easy to link to your identity. Logging in with Bitcoin (LNURL-auth) is much better implementation. It's just standard public key cryptography, which reuses your wallet seed to generate keys for logging in. Nothing about your addresses is shared or recorded anywhere.
- ETH_start 3y ago
  With MetaMask it's trivial to create a new Ethereum account dedicated for this particular purpose, and not linked to any on-chain transactions.
  - DANmode 3y ago
    CLI options, hardware wallets, lots of paths.
- kinakomochidayo 3y ago
  LN UI is crap unless you use custodial services. People can just use zk privacy to anonymize, and run their own nodes to connect their web3 wallets to.
Animats 3y ago
This offers a way for scammers to communicate with their marks without having any annoying outsiders posting. Other than that, is there a use case?
- ETH_start 3y ago
  It's easier and more secure than using a password. Public key cryptography in general is a much better way to do authentication than usernames/passwords. This is just leveraging the existing public key infrastructure and wallet software suite of the Ethereum space to create a community with hopefully a critical mass of users able to authenticate themselves with public key cryptography. Perhaps another minor additional benefit of making it Ethereum-based is that the Ethereum Name Service allows easy use and registration of human-friendly names as proxies for the public keys.
  - Animats 3y ago
    That's not the problem for something in the blog/message board/social network space. The problem is the ability to generate huge numbers of fake identities and spam. You can make all the Etherium wallets you want. This is the standard spam problem.
    - ETH_start 3y ago
      That's a separate problem, and largely the same whether the sign up method is email or Ethereum account authentication. Spammers can always secure huge numbers of Facebook-accounts/email-addresses/etc. What this does is make sign in easier and more secure, and obviate the need to keep track of passwords.

41 points by ilovenerds 3y ago

Hi everyone, we started developing Caches about a year ago and it's finally gotten to a stage that I believe it can be enjoyed by more people. Accounts are totally anonymous thanks to Sign In with Ethereum. You don't need to provide an email address or password to sign up. Some communities groups on the site are NFT gated and some you can't even see unless you have the correct NFT in your wallet. If you have a community NFT token we would love for you to make Caches your home. Reach out to @CachesAdmin on the site. Friends, countryhumans, lend me your brains! Leave behind the wreckage of Reddit and begin to migrate to greener pastures! Join a social community created for nerds, by nerds! Ok, ok ... no need to shove, I'm leavin!

c_crank 3y ago
What benefits does running this system on Ethereum provide compared to something like urbit?
- hanniabu 3y ago
  Given Ethereum's network, I'd like to pose the inverse question back to you and ask why urbit would be better
  - c_crank 3y ago
    Not having to deal with the distributed computing problems a blockchain provides. No worrying about any proof of stake slowdowns or overhead. I don't think urbit is all that great, either, but this is coming from someone who decided to increase their investment in face to face conversations following social media starting to crumble.
    - ETH_start 3y ago
      >Not having to deal with the distributed computing problems a blockchain provides. No worrying about any proof of stake slowdowns or overhead Ethereum operates perfectly smoothly, with zero downtime since launching 8 years ago. In any case, besides peripheral features like NFT-gated forums and Ethereum Name Service created proxy names, this doesn't use Ethereum's distributed network. Just the public key wallet software built for using Ethereum.
- ilovenerds 3y ago
  I'm not familiar with Urbit, but a quick glance at their website says that it's owned by the "Tlon Corporation," which I have to assume is a for profit company. Ethereum on the other hand is guided, but not owned or controlled by a non-profit foundation. Ethereum is a public utility and they have a mechanism for community involvement and contribution via Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIP). Hope that helps!
  - yosoyubik 3y ago
    Urbit has always been open source—currently under the MIT license [1]—and same as Ethereum it's also guided by a non-profit foundation, the Urbit Foundation [2] established in 2021. [1] https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/develop/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/develop/LICENSE.txt [2] https://urbit.org/overview/people-history https://urbit.org/overview/people-history
  - humanizersequel 3y ago
    >a quick glance at their website says that it's owned by the "Tlon Corporation," Where on the website do you see this?
    - ilovenerds 3y ago
      https://urbit.org/privacy https://urbit.org/privacy https://urbit.org/terms-of-service https://urbit.org/terms-of-service
      - yosoyubik 3y ago
        > Last Updated: September 24, 2018 This is very outdated and Tlon no longer operates/runs urbit.org but, in any case, the ToS says this: "The Site is owned and operated by Tlon", so the reference was to the website "urbit.org", not the Urbit project.
remram 3y ago
Without the blockchain speak, what does "web3 authenticated" mean? I have to buy an account? (ie "NFT" that lets my "wallet" in, whatever?)
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
  "Don’t let the word cryptocurrency scare you! You don’t need any money in your wallet here at Caches. We won’t ask you to buy or invest in any cryptocurrency. You can totally create a brand new, empty wallet if you want."
  - pavlov 3y ago
    Except for that whole “some communities groups on the site are NFT gated” part, which means that you must first buy a cryptocurrency to buy the NFT. It’s just like a “free to play” game that will upsell you on in-app purchases at every opportunity. I can’t imagine anyone wants their reading experience to be more like that. “Web3” really just means “the worst upsell shit from mobile gaming, in every aspect of your life — with the extra bonus that you get to risk losing your money on a scammy crypto exchange!”
    - EGreg 3y ago
      I don’t get it, Web2 constantly upsells you on stuff and HN complains, but doesn’t blame the underlying technology. But far be it for someone to store their private keys in a wallet and sign transactions on their own behalf! Nooooo, that has no real applications!
    - DANmode 3y ago
      You can also be given access NFTs, no different than someone would give you the password of a speakeasy.
      - remram 3y ago
        Isn't an "admit one" ticket the very definition of fungible?
nkrisc 3y ago
> Friends, countryhumans, lend me your brains! Leave behind the wreckage of Reddit and begin to migrate to greener pastures! Join a social community created for nerds, by nerds! Ok, ok ... no need to shove, I'm leavin! But only if you have the correct NFT.
- spencerchubb 3y ago
  What's the problem with an exclusive community? The website is decentralized such that people can form exclusive communities with whatever rules they want, with no concern that an overarching corporation will dethrone them.
  - ilovenerds 3y ago
    Exactly! What's really cool though is that communities can have their hidden members-only groups on Caches but still interact with the public at large there too. Communities could have a hidden group, only for community members, and a public group to connect with the world. Of course you have your own personal profile to reach whoever you want also.
- ilovenerds 3y ago
  You can totally start a community here without a NFT! In fact, we want you to! Everyone is allowed to create 1 public, private or hidden group for free. But! If you have a community NFT we can create a hidden group for you, and when members of your community sign into Caches with a wallet containing that NFT, we can automatically add them to that group. Unless you have that NFT you'll never even know that group exists or how much activity is happening behind the scenes. We can also attach a badge next to community members names throughout the site showing they're a member of that community if desired. For example, this guy is part of the Layer0 community, as you can see by the little L0 icon below his name. https://caches.xyz/members/25016e3c/ https://caches.xyz/members/25016e3c/ For you that may mean nothing, but for other members of Caches that little icon may bring increased trust to that member, or help him identify another member of his community in a sea of random usernames. Here's a blog post about WordPress and sign in with Ethereum that gives a broad overview of the idea. https://caches.xyz/the-rostrum/wordpress-web3-and-ethereum-what-the-whole-world-is-missing/ https://caches.xyz/the-rostrum/wordpress-web3-and-ethereum-w...

montenegrohugo 3y ago

Can't access this from Europe - why not?

ilovenerds 3y ago
Hi, sorry for the trouble. Accept my sincerest apologies. We did not properly unblock some regions that were restricted during our testing phase. It's been corrected and the responsible party has been properly flogged and then sacked. We hope you'll try again. Thank you for the feedback!
- joggelsoggel 3y ago
  I still have a geoblock.
  - ilovenerds 3y ago
    Which country do you hail from?

zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago

Very cool, but hosting isn't free. How do you plan on monetizing this?

goldenkey 3y ago
They are partnering with NFT communities.
jurynulifcation 3y ago
[flagged]

jurynulifcation 3y ago

[flagged]

noman-land 3y ago
It appears they are just using Ethereum accounts for authentication. Unlike email addresses, you don't need a third party to have one.
- jurynulifcation 3y ago
  My understanding is that they use NFTs on the Ethereum chain for authentication. NFTs are still wildly damaging to the ecosystem, with how much electricity they demand. Their sole purpose is to be traded as chits in a series of wealth extractions, until some unfortunate sucker is left holding the bag on a worthless blob of data that (rightfully) nobody wants. You do not need Ethereum for auth. You do not even need Ethereum for anonymous without a 3rd party provider. I do not see what value this actually provides nor why it should come in this form. So I believe it is a reasonable assumption that it is in this form so the creators can get in on the scam-o-sphere that is Ethereum/NFT.
  - ews 3y ago
    After the Ethereum merge, the Energy Usage of any ETH token is negligible. Do you have any source for this "NFTs are damaging because how much electricity they demand" or is just plain old Hacker News "Crypto Bad" fud?
    - jurynulifcation 3y ago
      Do you have any source for (a) how much electricity the blockchain requires after the merge and (b) whether there are any applications outside of gambling and scamming that can not be done otherwise?
      - noman-land 3y ago

Geee 3y ago

It's not very private if your Ethereum account is connected to it. Ethereum accounts should be considered PII. After all, KYC requirements on exchanges makes your accounts easy to link to your identity. Logging in with Bitcoin (LNURL-auth) is much better implementation. It's just standard public key cryptography, which reuses your wallet seed to generate keys for logging in. Nothing about your addresses is shared or recorded anywhere.

ETH_start 3y ago
With MetaMask it's trivial to create a new Ethereum account dedicated for this particular purpose, and not linked to any on-chain transactions.
- DANmode 3y ago
  CLI options, hardware wallets, lots of paths.
kinakomochidayo 3y ago
LN UI is crap unless you use custodial services. People can just use zk privacy to anonymize, and run their own nodes to connect their web3 wallets to.

Animats 3y ago

This offers a way for scammers to communicate with their marks without having any annoying outsiders posting. Other than that, is there a use case?

ETH_start 3y ago
It's easier and more secure than using a password. Public key cryptography in general is a much better way to do authentication than usernames/passwords. This is just leveraging the existing public key infrastructure and wallet software suite of the Ethereum space to create a community with hopefully a critical mass of users able to authenticate themselves with public key cryptography. Perhaps another minor additional benefit of making it Ethereum-based is that the Ethereum Name Service allows easy use and registration of human-friendly names as proxies for the public keys.
- Animats 3y ago
  That's not the problem for something in the blog/message board/social network space. The problem is the ability to generate huge numbers of fake identities and spam. You can make all the Etherium wallets you want. This is the standard spam problem.
  - ETH_start 3y ago
    That's a separate problem, and largely the same whether the sign up method is email or Ethereum account authentication. Spammers can always secure huge numbers of Facebook-accounts/email-addresses/etc. What this does is make sign in easier and more secure, and obviate the need to keep track of passwords.