4 ms·

Can you explain how web3 is responsible for all the crypto nonsense for a layman?

epgui 3y ago
I can't speak for the other commenter, but I don't think they said that "web3 is responsible for all the crypto nonsense". My impression is that they're just hinting at a relationship between the two.
ceejayoz 3y ago
Web3 is the crypto nonsense. It was a rebrand attempt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web3
- bbor 3y ago
  From this forum we shall organize the great retaking of “Web3” for the 3D paradigm it was always meant to be. It’s in the name!! It’s sad that blockchain went the way it did, because it’s probably a great technology when you don’t expect it to revolutionize the entire internet.
  - Tao3300 3y ago
    > it’s probably a great technology It really isn't. There's nothing legal it can do that something else can't do better. It's not even that good at the illegal stuff.
    - altruios 3y ago
      digital voting is the use-case I hear get brought up all the time... seems like it would work...
      - generic92034 3y ago
        Especially for those who set up the digital voting. ;)
      - tim333 3y ago
        A basic problem is blockchains are public. How you voted is usually private.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > nothing legal it can do that something else can't do better Eh, Treasuries should probably be traded on a blockchain. Cryptocurrency is nonsense. But the tech has legs. It just needs to, ironically, clear its way of the crypto/web3 crowd first.
      - lokar 3y ago
        No serious person wants a financial system based on “code is law”
      - nradov 3y ago
        What's the point of trading on a blockchain? The existing securities settlement process seems to be working fine.
      - SI_Rob 3y ago
        I tend to think highly of most of the comments I see from you man, but you are quite confused about how this stuff works if you believe that the pay-to-play aspect of a cryptocurrency can be divorced from the blockchain used to track it. They are no more separable from one another than front is from back or up is from down. A blockchain without the economic carrot-stick power to protect its own integrity and internal rules, power that comes from aligning the behavior of otherwise unrelated and even mutually antagonistic custodial participants by incentivizing their common interest in getting rich (or at least not losing their existing wealth), is no more than a database with superfluous "decentralization theater" yak shaving bolted on. If defecting from the game doesn't cost you a meaningful penalty (and such cost is defined by a fixed unit of measure, in order to distinguish in-game gains from losses) then you are not compelled to follow its rules except by your own conscience. This would be noble, but it would not be a blockchain.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        This is fair, I should have said could instead of should.
    - mrb 3y ago
      An irreversible permissionless way to send funds near-instantaneously to anyone anywhere in the world is pretty darn good at a lot of perfectly legal use cases. My personal favorite example is that I once used Bitcoin for an emergency so my (then-homeless) friend could receive cash in hands from a Bitcoin ATM, in a matter of less than 1 hour, on a Sunday, while I was vacationing remote. Nothing, and I truly mean it because we searched, nothing else would have worked that fast: try setting up a new Western Union/MoneyGram account online on a Sunday, and have it verified and activated... nope. Fun thing is my friend had never used Bitcoin before that day. Bitcoin ATMs are a very convenient gateway to "cash in hands", when needed.
      - AlexandrB 3y ago
        Can do this for free in Canada with Interac as long as both parties have Canadian bank accounts. But for international transfer theres not a good solution AFAIK. Bitcoin ATMs are an interesting example because they involve at least one trusted third party - the Bitcoin ATM operator.
        mrb 3y ago
        Interac wouldn't have worked even if him and I had been Canadians. My friend was unbanked due to past financial issues (which is also the reason he was homeless at the time.) This is one significant advantage of Bitcoin, that it works for the unbanked.
        askonomm 3y ago
        Wise (previously Transferwise) can do international transfer within seconds. If you're in Europe then payments between any bank in Europe take seconds (SEPA payments).
        mrb 3y ago
        Wise wouldn't have worked as my friend was among the 10M American adults who are unbanked. Also I doubt him and I would have been able to do account setup on a Sunday, within 1 hour, which is the time it took us to do the transfer, despite this situation being his first time ever using Bitcoin.
    - andrewflnr 3y ago
      That's much closer to being true now than it was when bitcoin started getting popular, in no small part because it scared financial institutions into competing on convenience. But really, who says legality is the arbiter of greatness anyway? Are you really prepared to say that every illegal use of blockchain should never happen? I'm not.
      - Tao3300 3y ago
        > who says legality is the arbiter of greatness anyway? I don't know; who does? I said it was bad at all the things.
  - ChainOfFools 3y ago
    Blockchain is not a technology in the sense of being a better "how" for some existing problem. blockchain is before anything else, a social contract based on the premise that everything humans care about ('value') really does boil down to "voting with money," and thus requiries enforcement of such economic consensus through technology. It is sufficiently removed from expectations people normally have about how they relate to one another that it would require quite a revolution indeed to be adopted in the capacity in which it is intended to function as intended, that is, to become the ultimate source of truth for every transaction on Earth. It's a back door attempt to fundamentally rewire how value is routed through society, and in the abstract this _might_ be a good thing (perhaps too generous with that 'might') in practice it cannot possibly happen due to physical constraints on consensus formation at the global, realtime scale that it would have to happen. As a result shortcuts are taken (or appear organically, i.e. exchages) in the form of centralized nodes of consensus settlement (what the promoters like to call Layer 2, sharding, or similar), and it's the people controlling these centralized nodes who end up becoming the new kings of this "revolutionized" system, the trust-me-bro's of trustlessness. I've met some of them, and they are not people who I would ever want to have anyone I care about to be under the thumb of.
    - Tao3300 3y ago
      > a social contract requiring enforcement through technology That's fundamentally a bad thing. I want my social contracts enforced socially. The rot is at the heart.
      - ChainOfFools 3y ago
        No disagreement here, not a fan.* but so many arguments miss this point. the problems with blockchain are rooted in the why; the how is mostly a sideshow but admittedly much more expedient to criticize in comparison. * were not for HN's character limit my username would have started with the word 'block'
- drzaiusapelord 3y ago
  Its sad to think web 2.0 so long ago was a move towards more human centric websites, UI's, AJAXy sites, etc and now web3 is just a marketing term for fraudsters, exit scammers, shady VC's, and criminals. The late-stage capitalism of the internet is obvious to see.
  - robgibbons 3y ago
    Web3 never had anything to do with the web. It was always a vain attempt to cash in on the aura associated with web 2.0 by sounding like a legitimate heir to the heritage of the WWW. It is however, as you said, just a convenient marketing term for crypto bros and blockchain scamware. Web 3.0 as Tim Berners-Lee envisions it might have some legs, but web3 was a always an empty marketing vessel.
rjbwork 3y ago
web3 is the moniker these crypto-zealots use for their crypto-currency-all-the-things efforts. It secondarily has connotations of decentralization with stuff like Mastodon, but relatively few people care about that stuff.
abujazar 3y ago
web3 is a term coined by some of the people behind the crypto nonsense, as if it could be a successor to 'web 2.0'
orwin 3y ago
Blockchains are a fun tools, i really like some ideas (ipfs, etherium and solidity), but i want to separate it from the cryptocurrency nonsense. Luckily, almost all grifters and zealots started talking about "web3", to re appropriate the term (like they did "crypto", which mean cryptography for old and cybersec people). Hence i associate web3 with the grift, and blockchain with the technology. Probably gp does the same.

I can't speak for the other commenter, but I don't think they said that "web3 is responsible for all the crypto nonsense". My impression is that they're just hinting at a relationship between the two.

ceejayoz 3y ago

Web3 is the crypto nonsense. It was a rebrand attempt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web3

bbor 3y ago
From this forum we shall organize the great retaking of “Web3” for the 3D paradigm it was always meant to be. It’s in the name!! It’s sad that blockchain went the way it did, because it’s probably a great technology when you don’t expect it to revolutionize the entire internet.
- Tao3300 3y ago
  > it’s probably a great technology It really isn't. There's nothing legal it can do that something else can't do better. It's not even that good at the illegal stuff.
  - altruios 3y ago
    digital voting is the use-case I hear get brought up all the time... seems like it would work...
    - generic92034 3y ago
      Especially for those who set up the digital voting. ;)
    - tim333 3y ago
      A basic problem is blockchains are public. How you voted is usually private.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > nothing legal it can do that something else can't do better Eh, Treasuries should probably be traded on a blockchain. Cryptocurrency is nonsense. But the tech has legs. It just needs to, ironically, clear its way of the crypto/web3 crowd first.
    - lokar 3y ago
      No serious person wants a financial system based on “code is law”
    - nradov 3y ago
      What's the point of trading on a blockchain? The existing securities settlement process seems to be working fine.
    - SI_Rob 3y ago
      I tend to think highly of most of the comments I see from you man, but you are quite confused about how this stuff works if you believe that the pay-to-play aspect of a cryptocurrency can be divorced from the blockchain used to track it. They are no more separable from one another than front is from back or up is from down. A blockchain without the economic carrot-stick power to protect its own integrity and internal rules, power that comes from aligning the behavior of otherwise unrelated and even mutually antagonistic custodial participants by incentivizing their common interest in getting rich (or at least not losing their existing wealth), is no more than a database with superfluous "decentralization theater" yak shaving bolted on. If defecting from the game doesn't cost you a meaningful penalty (and such cost is defined by a fixed unit of measure, in order to distinguish in-game gains from losses) then you are not compelled to follow its rules except by your own conscience. This would be noble, but it would not be a blockchain.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        This is fair, I should have said could instead of should.
  - mrb 3y ago
    An irreversible permissionless way to send funds near-instantaneously to anyone anywhere in the world is pretty darn good at a lot of perfectly legal use cases. My personal favorite example is that I once used Bitcoin for an emergency so my (then-homeless) friend could receive cash in hands from a Bitcoin ATM, in a matter of less than 1 hour, on a Sunday, while I was vacationing remote. Nothing, and I truly mean it because we searched, nothing else would have worked that fast: try setting up a new Western Union/MoneyGram account online on a Sunday, and have it verified and activated... nope. Fun thing is my friend had never used Bitcoin before that day. Bitcoin ATMs are a very convenient gateway to "cash in hands", when needed.
    - AlexandrB 3y ago
      Can do this for free in Canada with Interac as long as both parties have Canadian bank accounts. But for international transfer theres not a good solution AFAIK. Bitcoin ATMs are an interesting example because they involve at least one trusted third party - the Bitcoin ATM operator.
      - mrb 3y ago
        Interac wouldn't have worked even if him and I had been Canadians. My friend was unbanked due to past financial issues (which is also the reason he was homeless at the time.) This is one significant advantage of Bitcoin, that it works for the unbanked.
      - askonomm 3y ago
        Wise (previously Transferwise) can do international transfer within seconds. If you're in Europe then payments between any bank in Europe take seconds (SEPA payments).
        mrb 3y ago
        Wise wouldn't have worked as my friend was among the 10M American adults who are unbanked. Also I doubt him and I would have been able to do account setup on a Sunday, within 1 hour, which is the time it took us to do the transfer, despite this situation being his first time ever using Bitcoin.
  - andrewflnr 3y ago
    That's much closer to being true now than it was when bitcoin started getting popular, in no small part because it scared financial institutions into competing on convenience. But really, who says legality is the arbiter of greatness anyway? Are you really prepared to say that every illegal use of blockchain should never happen? I'm not.
    - Tao3300 3y ago
      > who says legality is the arbiter of greatness anyway? I don't know; who does? I said it was bad at all the things.
- ChainOfFools 3y ago
  Blockchain is not a technology in the sense of being a better "how" for some existing problem. blockchain is before anything else, a social contract based on the premise that everything humans care about ('value') really does boil down to "voting with money," and thus requiries enforcement of such economic consensus through technology. It is sufficiently removed from expectations people normally have about how they relate to one another that it would require quite a revolution indeed to be adopted in the capacity in which it is intended to function as intended, that is, to become the ultimate source of truth for every transaction on Earth. It's a back door attempt to fundamentally rewire how value is routed through society, and in the abstract this _might_ be a good thing (perhaps too generous with that 'might') in practice it cannot possibly happen due to physical constraints on consensus formation at the global, realtime scale that it would have to happen. As a result shortcuts are taken (or appear organically, i.e. exchages) in the form of centralized nodes of consensus settlement (what the promoters like to call Layer 2, sharding, or similar), and it's the people controlling these centralized nodes who end up becoming the new kings of this "revolutionized" system, the trust-me-bro's of trustlessness. I've met some of them, and they are not people who I would ever want to have anyone I care about to be under the thumb of.
  - Tao3300 3y ago
    > a social contract requiring enforcement through technology That's fundamentally a bad thing. I want my social contracts enforced socially. The rot is at the heart.
    - ChainOfFools 3y ago
      No disagreement here, not a fan.* but so many arguments miss this point. the problems with blockchain are rooted in the why; the how is mostly a sideshow but admittedly much more expedient to criticize in comparison. * were not for HN's character limit my username would have started with the word 'block'
drzaiusapelord 3y ago
Its sad to think web 2.0 so long ago was a move towards more human centric websites, UI's, AJAXy sites, etc and now web3 is just a marketing term for fraudsters, exit scammers, shady VC's, and criminals. The late-stage capitalism of the internet is obvious to see.
- robgibbons 3y ago
  Web3 never had anything to do with the web. It was always a vain attempt to cash in on the aura associated with web 2.0 by sounding like a legitimate heir to the heritage of the WWW. It is however, as you said, just a convenient marketing term for crypto bros and blockchain scamware. Web 3.0 as Tim Berners-Lee envisions it might have some legs, but web3 was a always an empty marketing vessel.

rjbwork 3y ago

web3 is the moniker these crypto-zealots use for their crypto-currency-all-the-things efforts. It secondarily has connotations of decentralization with stuff like Mastodon, but relatively few people care about that stuff.

abujazar 3y ago

web3 is a term coined by some of the people behind the crypto nonsense, as if it could be a successor to 'web 2.0'

orwin 3y ago

Blockchains are a fun tools, i really like some ideas (ipfs, etherium and solidity), but i want to separate it from the cryptocurrency nonsense. Luckily, almost all grifters and zealots started talking about "web3", to re appropriate the term (like they did "crypto", which mean cryptography for old and cybersec people). Hence i associate web3 with the grift, and blockchain with the technology. Probably gp does the same.