Nothing wrong with p2p. But often it's simply overkill. Skype started out as a p2p thing. But ultimately, video calls became a commodity where orchestrating them centrally proved to be good enough. I can make video calls with meets, facebook, whatsapp, signal, slack, etc. Not a big deal. I even still have Skype somewhere and it still works even though they ripped out the p2p bits ages ago.<p>I'm not sure what web3 is other than a label that people started slapping on the collective efforts of people vaguely doing anything with or depending on some kind of block chain thingy. IMHO it has very little to do with the web and little or no relevance to end users.<p>From a technical point of view, I don't see anything wrong with having a distributed store of ownership of stuff. There are all sorts of useful and valid uses for that. The problem is all the hyena's with dollar signs in their eyes floating around any companies active in this space. It's hard to see the forest for the trees because of this. Doing anything with a blockchain almost automatically buckets you with the fraudsters, utopians, and other people plaguing this space.<p>Most of the companies in this space are a combination of naive, fraudulent, or misguided. With a few notable exceptions where you might squint and see some potential of some actual economic value. But most of them are obvious duds. I actually briefly used Stellar for some actual applications. Great tech. Mostly works as advertised. Not that expensive to use. Etc.
I'll just leave this here [0]<p>I don't disagree that the concentration of web architecture into the hands of a small number of big corps is a bad thing. I just don't see the solution being a purely technical one. There are market forces and reasons for that consolidation: efficiency in terms of power; production, acquisition, and deployment of expensive equipment; high-availability of services, operations and staff, etc. I don't like that a third of the Internet goes down with aws-east-1 like anyone else but the factors that enabled this situation are no conspiracy.<p>We need economic incentives to enable smaller players to build on widely deployed infrastructure, fair competition laws, etc.<p>We could use more edge-computing power with low-power equipment. Make it easy to deploy small-time data-centres on low-power, off-the-shelf hardware. Incentives that align with the economic value they bring so that they're not fighting on the margins left by large monopolies.<p>Instead we're supposed to switch over to a "P2P" system built on funny machines evaluating user code. As many chains have tried to formally verify their smart contracts it's becoming increasing clear that the proofs, when they can be achieved, are so complex that the underlying system probably has more errors in it than we can count. Probably great for departing folks from their money but the folks running this stuff often don't even understand programming let alone proofs and verification.<p>And then the stuff that actually gets built with it... slow, terrible UX, that it is... is just garbage anyways. Axie? I don't think anyone in web3 actually plays the game. It looks boring as all hell. And it's incredibly expensive to get started in it. They literally pay people to play it for them and they just watch spreadsheets for number to go up.<p>And none of this "distributed web" works without the Internet as it exists today anyway. I'm not interested in promises of potential. We don't drive on potential bridges.<p>Maybe some part of the community is built by idealists but their dreams are poisoned. The world we live in right now is already pretty terrible in some parts. We could be fixing those instead of building another dystopia.<p>[0] <a href="https://web3isgoinggreat.com/" rel="nofollow">https://web3isgoinggreat.com/</a>
Sort of agree. My initial understanding was that web3 was essentially a P2P solution with IPFS, Federated social graphs, decentralized p2p messaging and RTC stuff, and awaiting decentralized DNS. My current understanding or impression is that it's a coin wallet in my ~browser and I have to mine shit coins via storing and computing stuff on what will certainly be FAANGs behalf.
Where is Web3 P2P? Decentraland is centralized. The Sandbox is centralized. OpenSea is centralized. Metamask is centralized. Bitcoin and Etherium mining depend on big server farms that are more centralized than Akamai.
P2P is a big component of blockchains. The "expensive" part is competition for the limited capacity in global consensus (block space), which is necessary if you want to interact with global systems that deal with high value objects.<p>Blockchains can't exist without P2P, but P2P is not sufficient. There are plenty of use cases that require global consensus, and that part is expensive.
Moxie Marlinspike on Web3 [1]:<p>* "People don’t want to run their own servers, and never will"<p>* "A protocol moves much more slowly than a platform"<p>[1] <a href="https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html" rel="nofollow">https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html</a>
> P2P never made it to the mainstream; instead, centralized systems still (or, again? even more?) dominate the landscape. So, because it failed, should we try Web3? I doubt it, as it is more likely to fail, due to higher complexity and more dependencies.<p>One major reason decentralized has a hard time is because standards, public protocols cannot be innovated on rapidly. Or at least, new iterations cannot be deployed universally very quickly. So centralized / proprietary channels rise to the top because new ideas can find expression in them more rapidly.
What is the value proposition of web3 to the user?<p>JS web apps offloaded the compute and memory onto the browser/client,
web3 to offload storage costs onto the user.<p>You will up pay for every click. web3 and metaverse feels so dystopian. but the young generations that were raised by tiktok will probably accept it.
The internet didn't replace centralized services. It was a new platform that extended the capabilities.<p>Web3 is the same thing. It offers new platforms for extending capabilities using blockchain tech.<p>The platform is decentralized. Centralized services are built using the platform. Services themselves do not need to decentralized. But they can benefit from it.<p>You can also build decentralized services. In some sense, decentralized services <i>become</i> the platform.
So many people miss the point of blockchains that they forget that there is an actual utility for immutable ledgers, that is, to make sure funds (e.g. taxes) go to the places that they are claimed to be going to. Right now we pay our taxes and that's that - we don't even have a way to confirm that it is going to the extremely bloated military-industrial complex in the way the budget is written.<p>Will the government ever allow something like that? Most likely not, but it doesn't mean that having complete traceability for funds is a bad idea at its core.
As an EU citizen, I’m wondering how things like the “right to be forgotten” would work on this? How can we remove personal information in web3?<p>I’m still new to the topic so I guess there are some easy solutions already…
As a vocal critic of "web3" and in particular NFTs and other crypto grifting,<p>I will speak up in defense of its point of origin (as next-generation P2P), the concept of the "decentralized internet,"<p>which prior to and if stripped of its monetization schemes back to its original precepts,<p>is as current and urgent as it ever was;<p>even more so in light of its potential complex interactions with the concepts of free speech and the like, much in the news.<p>An interesting critique offered ITT his that P2P "externalizes" the cost of e.g. storage to the user...<p>...my counter-critique to this is that TANSTAAFL, we are all already paying for storage (most of it for surveillance analytics and its products), c.f. industry chatter about revenue per user e.g. at Twitter.<p>One of the interesting precepts of building a decentralized web is how it changes the premises of "teh algorithm" and the avenues for weaponized (amplified, precisely-targeted, bad faith) speech. Those with the money to game the system to pervert it to their ends (selling you things being the most benevolent end of a spectrum that goes very far into worse uses) will of course always have the most elaborate and pervasive tooling; but its efficacy and that of defenses against it in a decentralized concept are much more murky. Which is what we want; indeed it's kind of the point.<p>Many things benefit from the efficiencies of centralization. Democracy and its constituent discourse do not seem to be among them.
No, the OP is wrong. Exchanging value (not just content) online without having to trust a third party is a game-changer and that is why Web 3 is a big deal. You have to be P2P aka decentralized to do that. Yes, lots of fluffy marketing hype obfuscating that reality.
Traditional P2P has a lot of potential. It just has almost no attention these days, everything has a blockchain built in.<p>BitTorrent was mainstream, and had near-centralized performance in ideal conditions.<p>I think that a cross-platform P2P solution that doesn't make any compromises to add incentive layers or data structures to support them, could really work.<p>No crazy CRDTs, no append only ledgers, just fully mutable multi-writer torrents.<p>GUN seems to be closet.
His hypthesis that p2p never paid off is not justified. P2P plays an important role in media, aka bittorent. The issue with p2p and open source in general not taking off more in the consumer space has to do with the lack of profit motives. In b2b oss is winning cause businesses care a lot about costs and control. in b2c, this isn’t a concern and thus we need to figure out how to pay the p2p workers and developers for work. aka web3
What Web3 should be is a) identity, and b) digital payment.<p>I am of the opinion that the state should provide digital identity service. Estonia is a good example, from what I've heard, of a state that is doing this effectively.<p>As for digital payment, Brazil seems to be in the lead now with Pix.<p>I see no valid role for private companies nor blockchains in providing digital ID and currency services.
The only legitimate use for web3 that I’ve seen is a way to establish trust with strangers before you run arbitrary software on their computers. It’s like a really expensive replacement for AWS. Are there any other cases similar to this and do you think it could ever be cost effective?
I live in a Nordic country which I semi-jokingly call a “anthropophobic” country. People simply don’t want to deal with each other. Whenever you need to do anything that is predicted by the system and happens by the book, it is an extremely pleasant and comfortable experience. The moment you “fall in the cracks” and needs to somehow have a custom solution to something, it becomes hell. And all that simply because you will actually need to talk to someone to solve your problem, and people simply don’t want to talk to you, period. When you call someone, you have to actually get them to answer the phone in the first place (in the 30 min per week that they have allocated for phone calls, if you get through the 20+ queue before the 30 min are up). Then, after a cold greeting, you explain your problem and immediately feel like you are (a) stupid because you had to ask a question and couldn’t solve your problem silently by yourself, and/or (b) a nuisance because you have to bother another human being and put them through the extremely unpleasant experience of having to talk to another human. Then, they will forward you to someone else, you go through the whole ordeal again (because the next person doesn’t know your problem and nobody explained it to them), they will forward you again, until after the 3rd or 4th jump you are back to the first attendant. The whole system is designed to wear you out in the hopes that you’ll give up, which most people do (nordic people are averse to conflicts), but if you are resilient enough you’ll eventually find someone to actually help you. And don’t even think about getting angry; in the nordic countries getting angry and making a scene is <i>extremely</i> looked down, and if you do, you are immediately wrong and they won. No problem solving for you.<p>The reason I told the anecdote is that I think the main point of the article was the last one: a bit of trust can go a long way.<p>It seems to me that people advocating for stuff like DAOs and “code is law” believe so strongly that the human is the broken link in the system (which it probably is) that they want to take the human out of the loop completely. They are “anthropophobes”: they want to find a way to make deals and business without having to deal with the fellow humans. Obviously, it fails miserably. You always need to deal with humans; if it’s not the person/company administrating a service, it’s the hacker who is asking for ransom or the judge who will decide about your case when you sue the DAO or whoever else. We should invest more in people and their communication instead of trying to replace them with blockchains and algorithmic contracts, IMHO.
P2P isn't bad thing though right? Or many would argue it's a great thing.<p>Web3 is systematized, open, and properly incentivized P2P. That sounds like a great value prop. This has allowed an ecosystem to be built to push it into the mainstream which is his primary challenge with P2P
It's a bit of a strawman argument. I don't see it as being either/or. Sure for many/most use cases the existing web is likely to remain the better option. The real question is what new interesting use cases are facilitated.
I think the main issue I have is with the name.<p>3 is implied to be better and replacing 2. I'm not sure if the future we are heading to is actually that way but the name kinda led people to believe it is.
I disagree with the article strongly, but still find the comparison very thought-provoking and useful. There <i>are</i> odd parallels there, right down to the early adopters of the former being the regulars of the latter.<p>What the author identifies as the weaknesses of web3, though, are actually just the weaknesses of Ethereum. They're very <i>good</i> reasons why Ethereum will not be the future of the internet - but chains that are being developed to replace it[0] solve all of those problems and then some.<p>[0]: <a href="https://smartcontracts.org" rel="nofollow">https://smartcontracts.org</a>
> The Web3 community approaches this from the opposite side: Instead of a lightweight communistic take, they follow a heavyweight libertarian path: Everything should be monetized.<p>This is how you get people to stop reading your article, and to instantly agree or disagree with you (regardless of what you're saying) based only on the political language you used.<p>I'm not a politician, and I make an active effort to avoid politics on the internet. However, even I know that this is tone deaf. If this article was written only for people with above average reading comprehension skills (which is not this site's demographic), then that's fine. But if this was written for the masses, i.e. the typical victims of crypto scams, then it's just completely tone deaf and ineffective. "Communist" and "libertarian" are trigger words for a significant portion of Americans.<p>For example, I know that if my father was reading through this article, he wouldn't understand any of the technical stuff, but he'd associate the word "communist" with "things that aren't Web3", and then enthusiastically start going down Tiktok/Youtube/Facebook Web3 rabbit holes, <i>just to stick it to those damned commies.</i>
The underlying technology of Web3 (distributed consensus building) is quite different from that of p2p (networking and information sharing).<p>While some of the criticisms of web3 are true, most of them are situations caused by the early phase we are in. Moxie's post surfaces the need for better decentralized infrastructure. The hyper financialization (everything is monetized) is caused by lack of identity solution and limited blockspace in L1 chains. These things are being built now, and will come online in the next few years. Transaction fees will become cheaper, applications will be more decentralized.<p>The core innovation is digital scarcity and crypto-enabled data ownership. For the first time in history, we can represent value without a middle-man. This completely changes the power dynamic of platforms vs. users, and makes value creation digital-native. Web3 has an opportunity to address some of the biggest problems with today's internet services like surveillance capitalism and censorship.
p2p cannot save a state that the whole network agree upon, that's the point of Web3, that's what it is solving. What a waste of articles?<p>You CANNOT have distributed apps with old p2p file sharing.
this article is lazy, and has no real substance.<p>> The Web3 community approaches this from the opposite side: Instead of a lightweight communistic take, they follow a heavyweight libertarian path: Everything should be monetized.<p>the web is already monetized - we pay for games and game skins, software and apps, access to news, media streaming. current web2 payment and ownership model favors payment processors like VISA, and the distributors like Spotify, not the creators and consumers of this media.<p>> So, unless the setup and maintenance trouble of the initial setup can be reduced (and there are community efforts out there), the best way to go is the centralized model: You pay someone specific to do this. Maybe set up a not-for-profit association to provide the necessary money.<p>this already happens in web3. OpenSea charges 2.5% on trades for the UX and network effects they provide. other marketplaces offer 0% on trades but do not have the same reach and UX. despite this, users do have a choice to go with any service they desire, since the asset is not locked into any single walled garden.
OK, so granted the boxes-and-arrows descriptions of these software systems are identical if you squint to things we built decades ago. But the social way that human reason about these systems -- that is different this time.<p>Gentle readers, last night I dreamed I was seated in the nave of a tall cathedral, watching four bishops conduct a service at an altar. There were readings with the call-and-response ("The word of the Lord" - "Thanks be to God"). There was the sitting and the standing.<p>And then, I swear to you I am not making this up, each of the parishioners gave some bitcoin to each of the four bishops, and the cryptocurrency was transubstantiated as it passed through each officeholder into the central coffers. In my dream that church service cleared some 30,000 units (BTC or USD, I do not know).<p>I woke up abruptly with a profound sense of "what just happened?". How did I "see" people giving bitcoin to bishops? Did I have a dream about a metaverse church service?!? What is going on here?!? I think I have been reading too much Matt Levine. I would like off Mr. Bones's wild ride.<p>But, friends, I would NEVER have had a dream like this about Beenz or Flooz. Something is very different about this one.
<i>"the P2P community established something like a tiny, lightweight communist bubble"</i><p>Yes, and that's the core of the problem. Things are pretty limited when the premise is "donating spare hardware and bandwidth."<p><i>"[Web3 follows] a heavyweight libertarian path: Everything should be monetized."</i><p>I don't know what these people think. Only traditional companies should be allowed to make money, and the rest of the world should donate their resources?<p>The conclusion of this piece sounds a bit arbitrary too.<p>P2P failed in the past because of the lack of monetization.<p>Web3 tries to solve this by adding monetization at the protocol level.<p>Adding something to a system to solve an issue that wasn't solved before can add complexity.<p>The author doesn't like complexity, so it's a failed attempt.<p>What?
Ironically I can't access the site, that probably defends against web3 (checking out the title and the comments), which is on a centralized web host, is probably hugged to death because of HN exposure and I can't access it.<p>I can't stop thinking how things could be different if we embraced web3 and used a decentralized storage/hosting that incentivizes sharing by some form of token, solving the scaling problem while also awarding the content creators/hosters.<p>I know this is not the only solution, but given the particular context, I can't stop thinking this.