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Comment by xwolfi | Hacker News Reader

Me I d define web3 by referencing the websocket arrival that evolved from Ajax polling to have better data subscription and the rise of full js frameworks which transformed the amount of work clients do on web resources that sometimes couldnt be done by the backend (drawing a financial graph full of beautiful indicator and refreshing live for instance).

I can understand web4 could be self financing unstoppable web resources with no central authority able to close them but I dont see yet a proper use case beyond criminal endeavour. Plus, we're far from it, we'd need an organic transmission network that goes out of the traditional ISP system, like a global bluetooth peer to peer mobile network every phone contributes to in exchange for payment... that would be fast enough...

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When I studied at University 15 years ago web 2.0 was in full swing and the academics where busy talking about web 3.0 which was at the time understood as "the semantic web".

Web 2.0 was never a thing. It was just a vague term some people came up with so they’d have something to say in their magazine articles/blog posts. There is no Web 2.0 or in fact web2.

Web 3.0 I have a soft spot for. It was a stupid name and the ideas didn’t really work but the semantic web people had their hearts in the right place.

BS. Web 2.0 was the conjunction, refinement and broader availability of several different web-related technologies, notably JavaScript and AJAX, among other things. They enabled an interaction model for web stuff that was impossible with earlier versions of the web.

Nobody said "web2", indeed, but that doesn't invalidate that Web 2.0 described a very distinct and substantial evolution of what is possible in the browser.

I though Web 2.0 was all about missing vowels in names.

Rounded corners actually

Don't forget the 3D glossy buttons...

Wikipedia, OpenStreetMaps, DuckDuckGo would all be great examples of self-financing unstoppable web resources with no central authority distributed across a peer-peer mesh network.

Unclear if the value prop is large enough to overcome the activation energy of such an endeavor.

DuckDuckGo - is a private company. The other 2 are non profits.

When you use one too many buzzwords you let on that you don't know what they mean.

None of those resources operate peer to peer, none of them operate in anything resembling a mesh network. DDG is absolutely stoppable and centralized.

Not that I don't love all those projects and all of those qualities.

Wikipedia and OpenStreetMaps absolutely have central authorities and are not peer-to-peer or distributed on a mesh network. If they shut down you could probably access their data from an archive, but that does not mean that they are decentralized.

DuckDuckGo is even more centralized since it uses the index of one of the largest search engines (bing), is not at all self-financing, is not at all unstoppable (if the central authority was shut down any replacement would need to access bing's result) and is not at all peer-to-peer.

Either you don't actually know what those terms mean or you don't know how those websites function.

Ok, since there is clearly a trend my comment was too focused on responding to the grandparent and lacked enough context for all readers. Let some amend it to:

> Wikipedia, OpenStreetMaps, [WebSearch] would all be great examples of [potentially operating as] self-financing unstoppable web resources with no central authority distributed across a peer-peer mesh network.

> Unclear if the value prop is large enough to overcome the activation energy of such an endeavor [to convert these currently centralized services into an entity like what the grandparent describes].

Criminal endeavours are not equal. Some are trading drugs and murdering people, others are overthrowing authoritarian dictators like Putin or Lukashenko.

As you can imagine, the latter activity is criminal in Russia and Belarus.

Trading drugs is not equal to murdering people. For many, the only access to life-enabling medicine such as medicinal cannabis is buying it illegally.

That depends on drugs. If you hook people on highly addictive expensive drug with severe withdrawal symptoms, like heroin, it naturally spawns more crime, because addicts would resort to anything to get the next doze: theft, robbery, prostitution, murder, etc.

People hook themselves up, not other people, who may help do so, but the person taking drugs is the one responsible.

I think you misunderstand how this works in reality. Nobody walks to a shady oerson standing near the corner and says, "hi, I'm joe, today i want to try this meth stuff I've been hearing about, how much for a dose?" When a person is in a vulnerable state, there is always a 'friend' who offers first dose for free, and says, that it is ok and totally safe to try a few times. Consequences come later when it is too late.

Opioids are added to less addictive drugs to make the customer more regular and thus drive more profit. It's never smart business to kill your customer but it's also not smart business to have a customer that only texts once every few months.

Of those three things “crypto” is ok for trading drugs, not very good for murdering people (not for lack of people trying but luckily it seems like death prediction markets and dark web assassins aren’t really a thing), and not at all useful for overthrowing dictators. It’s absolutely fantastic for dictators who want evade sanctions and continue enriching themselves.

It is absolutely critically useful for overthrowing dictators. Currently that's the only sure way for Russian citizens to fund anti-Putin opposition without immediate consequences.

Source: I'm from Russia.

I’m absolutely sure that Putin and his cronies will find enough use for crypto (avoiding sanctions, carrying out criminal enterprise) that they’ll be more than happy about this minor inconvenience.

You are missing the point. Putin and his cronies will find ways to do their criminal business with or without cryptocurrencies. His opponents have little other choice BUT cryptocurrencies to fund their operations.

Ukrainian politicians hold a lot of Bitcoin.

If you are in Russia, is it wise to call Putin a dictator on a public forum?

I think that going to anti-Putin rallies and getting detained by the police thugs is even less wise. But a dutiful citizen has no choice.

You can be from Russia without being in it

How many dictators have been overthrown thanks to bitcoin? I guess none.

Dictators are overthrown at a rate of fewer than one in three years (maybe even lower), and Bitcoin has entered the public consciousness no earlier than in 2017. Give it some time.

> Currently that's the only sure way for Russian citizens to fund anti-Putin opposition without immediate consequences.

This seems like incredibly irresponsible advice: if you're worried about consequences for a political donation, leaving a signed public confession is the police's dream come true. Compromise someone's computer and you now have proof of a crime as well as something you can use to pressure everyone they transacted with, even if you had no idea to investigate them at the time it happened.

Best of all, nobody knows if that's happened unless you tell them so you can continue to quietly map out the opposition network and pressure each person you link to a Bitcoin transaction to identify their partners but otherwise stay quiet.

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