These technologies have mindshare and will be part of our world’s future. As an engineer, where can I read about these technologies discussed regularly, so I can learn & understand through exposure? Is HN that venue? (If not, why not? What are the boundaries of our bubble here). I’m interested in the tech/practical applications, as opposed to the hype/emotion.
Twitter seems to be the go-to place for these discussions. Partly because many of the web3 participants are actively trying to build communities around themselves that they can leverage in their crypto activities. There isn’t much interest in anonymous discussions. Frankly, there’s not really any interest in honest discussions because the participants have all realized that telling people <i>exactly</i> what they want to hear and hinting that they can get rich is a golden way to collect a lot of Twitter followers right now. Many of the big personalities are launching expensive crypto courses or NFTs and they need a lot of true believer followers to sell to.<p>The challenge with web3 is that almost nobody is actually <i>using</i> web3 for anything other than doing more web3 speculation. That makes this virtually impossible to find this:<p>> I’m interested in the tech/practical applications, as opposed to the hype/emotion.<p>Even the people discussing the potential practical applications aren’t the people who are using it. The people talking about it are the people trying to sell it or speculate on it.
> I’m interested in the tech/practical applications<p>I've studied this for about ten years, and came to the conclusion there is none, other than crazy financial structures and mechanisms that make the 2008 subprime mortgage scandal look like a Fischer-Price toy. If you find an interesting, practical application for anything blockchain or cryptocurrency, please let me know as well.
The fact that you can find little on this subject on HN speaks for itself.<p>There are many clever minds here and I have followed by far the most witty discussions on various topics on this platform. Whenever the topic of cryptocurrencies comes up, substantial concerns are expressed about the technology and its added value for society and the financial system.<p>At the same time, I don't get the sense that this is unfounded reluctance. Rather, fundamental questions reveal themselves upon closer examination. And the participants in the discussion are in best of company. Many smart people have expressed concerns about crypto currencies in the past (e.g. Bjarne Stroustrup or Waren Buffet to name a few).<p>I have the feeling that the vast majority of cryptocurrency advocates have no idea about the matter themselves. They are simply spreading slogans on Reddit and Twitter proclaiming the next big hype. I think that's one of the reasons why you can find so little neutral and highly qualitative information on the subject - there is none.
Crypto for me has become the opposite of the fun hack and try ethos. It's the opposite of most open source in that it is pay to play. I can't clone a repo and play around with something. I almost always need to buy some token. It's the commodification of hacking and it isn't fun so I don't participate.
I believe you’re looking for <a href="https://ethresear.ch/" rel="nofollow">https://ethresear.ch/</a>. Ethereum research discussions. That covers Web3, DeFi, NFT, etc.<p>“Crypto” in your list is more broad and can also include the Development & Research sub forum of Bitcointalk: <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=6.0" rel="nofollow">https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=6.0</a><p>Beyond those, find the “Community” sections of the specific projects you care about. They’ll usually have either a forum or a Discord or a Telegram.
I think there is no such thing as HN for a lot of different domains. Apart from the technical aspect, also politically and philosophically the discussions here are on a very high level I have not been exposed to anywhere else on the internet.<p>However, HN seems to be in large anti-crypto, so I think you will not be exposed here to anything "bleeding edge", more like major news. Also I have not seen any Show HN or similar of people developing applications for the crypto space.<p>So I have been asking myself the same question as you. There are a lot of websites with great resources for crypto (similar to the regular finance world, the amount of free websites with good information is substantial). There are also some really good substack newsletters (however, some of the writers are invested, so I take their information with a grain of salt).<p>But there is no forum or similar venue that I know of where actual users or contributors discuss or share experiences (except for some discord servers maybe).
Honestly, most of us are on Twitter right now, that's the best place to see discussions at the moment. I try to optimize for higher signal rather than hype, feel free to look at who I follow and build out from there: <a href="https://twitter.com/the_carlosdp/following" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/the_carlosdp/following</a> .<p>HN isn't going to be that venue at the moment, seems pretty hostile to web3/crypto. That'll change eventually, but for now you gotta look elsewhere.
The answer to every question like this is twitter and podcasts.<p><a href="https://vitalik.ca/" rel="nofollow">https://vitalik.ca/</a><p><a href="https://twitter.com/DocumentEther" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/DocumentEther</a><p><a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/defi/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/defi/</a><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=raoul+pal+ethereum" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=raoul+pal+ether...</a><p>Just code some smart contracts on the testnet after you've absorbed the basics.
Tech forums on the internet have heavily declined in quality. Reddit took up a lot of communities that would have been independent otherwise, and over time the original mods of those communities gave control to heavily unqualified individuals whom abuse their positions for pleasure and profit.<p>I would imagine where Bitcoin started would be one of them, perhaps there's references to other communities there. Sometimes discords are good but still suffer from bad management.
On reddit, r/ethfinance is a good, well moderated resource from the user perspective. From there once you find a particular protocol niche you are interested in, the community discords for each app are also frequently quite informative and helpful.<p>As for HN, the conversations here bring in a lot of folks that have a very low opinion of crypto assets in general, so that makes it harder to have more detailed conversations about the underlying technology.
I don't think there is anything else quite like HN. I sometimes wish I knew how to better find certain things here or something.<p>I don't really want tags or silos. I'm not great at searching the site. Given how often questions exactly like this post show up here, I'm clearly not the only one who wishes they could find HN-like discussion for a specific subject area.<p>I'm bothering to make this comment in hopes that one of two things will happen:<p>1. Someone will give me a solution for how to more readily find what I want on HN.<p>2. Someone will create some kind of tech solution in response to seeing this observation.
If you are an optimist, HN is not the right place to have a "pro" discussion imo. I will outline products that i'm most excited about or use regularly .<p>1. Decentralized exchanges: Uniswap.org, projectserum.com.<p>2. Stablecoins, especially USDC. I get paid for my consulting in USD from US to India with a tx fee of $0.00025 on Solana. I'm saving a lot compared to using PP/Payoneer.<p>3. Supporting artists I love with NFT on foundation/ opensea/magic eden(for some reason I never did this before although there are web2 sites for it).<p>4. Generate yield on your stable coins. I wont mention apps here since they are new and have some smart contract risks to it, DYOR.<p>5. Creator monetisation using unlock-protocol.com and mirror.xyz.<p>6. Play to earn models in games(Axie infinity and Aurory).<p>7. Internet native experiments on inclusive sybil resistant identities(proofofhumanity.id)<p>8. Crypto powered infrastructure networks (helium.com)<p>9. Inflation resistant currency/Digital gold(Bitcoin & lightning network).<p>10. Censorship resistant social media.
HN has a hateboner for cryptos, which most of the time is based on purely illogical assumptions of tech they have no understanding of.<p>Reddit is fine, but it heavily depends on what you want. r/ethdev is good if you're interested in creating something, and r/ethfinance for quality discussion focused on what you can do on Ethereum.
HN has collectively decided not to be that venue. I doubt that's going to change any time soon.<p>It's a newsletter blurb-and-link format, but Week In Ethereum is a great resource for keeping up with a lot of what's happening. From the core ethereum development to defi and nft techs to some broader social and legal issues, that newsletter keeps you up to date.<p><a href="https://weekinethereum.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://weekinethereum.substack.com/</a>
Twitter is extremely important in the crypto industry.<p>But, twitter isn't just the "HN" of crypto. r/ethereum may be closer to the HN of crypto.<p>In crypto, Twitter is the town square, the watering hole, the stadium, the newspaper, the social club, and so much more. It's very hard to overstate the importance of twitter to the crypto industry.
Hey,<p>I share your quest for finding the HN of "Web3". I've long been on CryptoTwitter but I've decided that I don't want to spent a lot of time on Twitter anymore.<p>Since then, I've tried to understand where there could be a technical and philosophical community of tech+crypto people on the internet.<p>- HN is full of haters, sadly<p>- everything on reddit is slightly too non-technical and hype mentality<p>- I haven't found a low noise Discord server<p>- I haven't found a good hacker news clone either.<p>- CT is too self-important<p>I don't strictly want to have this totally crypto-biased community either. I'm in the camp of "'yes' to crypto but I'm critical".<p>For the last year or so, I've simply started to foster my own community. I write a blog on crypto that you may like: <a href="https://timdaub.github.io/" rel="nofollow">https://timdaub.github.io/</a>
My headlines are kinda clickbaity but I think they're legitbait :) Check it!<p>I'd be up for starting a proper crypto community. I even have reserved a name for it: neoactuary.com. I checked out the lobster code base and I think it'd be a good fit too. But those things take ages to get established: <a href="https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters</a>
Great question. I recently created a decentralized website to help spread best security practices in this space. I have a lot of information to share, but I'm trying to figure out how to publish the content, as I haven't done a lot of web development yet.<p><a href="https://unstoppabledomains.com/search?searchTerm=evilmaid.crypto&searchRef=header" rel="nofollow">https://unstoppabledomains.com/search?searchTerm=evilmaid.cr...</a><p>Here is a IPFS link to the website.
<a href="https://abbfe6z95qov3d40hf6j30g7auo7afhp.mypinata.cloud/ipfs/Qmaf6KcqBeghsTpsNxy93pxMCKuHXQjcPGHtrTSCSQzwUm/?id=&page=" rel="nofollow">https://abbfe6z95qov3d40hf6j30g7auo7afhp.mypinata.cloud/ipfs...</a><p>Using a Web3 browser.
<a href="https://evilmaid.crypto/" rel="nofollow">https://evilmaid.crypto/</a>
I look at this aggregator <a href="https://cryptopanic.com/" rel="nofollow">https://cryptopanic.com/</a> daily to see a bit of the blockchain buzz. Rather basic, but there is a decent bit of discussion and a variety of sources I don't get from reddit/twitter or MSM sites.
> I’m interested in the tech/practical applications, as opposed to the hype/emotion.<p><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-good-reason-to-trust-blockchain-technology/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-good-reason-to-trust-b...</a><p>(Wired paywall can be circumvented with: <a href="https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome</a>)
Twitter is going to be the best resource to discover projects, and DYOR Wiki (<a href="https://dyor-crypto.fandom.com/" rel="nofollow">https://dyor-crypto.fandom.com/</a>) is really good to get plain english understanding and history of various projects. To understand technically, you'll need to read docs or code.
I'd really like this as well, I haven't been able to find anything besides discord, cryptopanic, and subreddits. And there's a lot more noise to cut through in the space than on Hacker News
The only communities that are "like" HN seem to be HN and rationalist ones, like Astral Codex, LessWrong, etc. At least as far as I've found.<p>/r/medicine is also pretty interesting, albeit more diffuse.<p>You have to be a certain kind of person and a certain kind of commenter to benefit from the kinds of rules and norms we have here. We reward curiosity and heavily penalize single-layer jokes and memes. But unlike heavily moderated subreddits, we also value quality asides and off-topic branches, so long as, again, they reflect curiosity.<p>Perhaps the biggest blocker to HN-like communities for other fields is we're allowed to be wrong on the internet. And we're allowed to point it out, correct each other, and gratefully accept corrections.<p>HN & Rationalist groups can accept and integrate new information, and we can accept that some people are misinformed or having a bad day, and that they're not malicious or trolls.<p>Whereas in most online communities you can be either "right" or you can be gone.
Crypto Twitter is your best bet, though of course it's completely different to HN in how its content is organized.<p>From there, it's a huge number of individual communities centered on different DeFi products on Discord.<p>The problem with DeFi is that there's a lot of spam and shilling, making it extremely hard to have a more centralized forum like HN.
I am much more interested in DAS, Decentralized Account Systems where the web would no longer requires a signup before anything to work. It should just "work".<p>And it seems Shopify, Stripe and even Cloudflare are all hiring a team on Web3. I dont understand Crypto, NFT or DeFi, but I see DAS as an important piece of puzzle on the web.
I don't know if there is one yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if a successful accelerator DAO emerges.<p>People here always say the value of YC is in the network, and that may translate well to a decentralized model.