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Comment by jimmydorry | Hacker News Reader

- You need permission from the central root certifying authorities (aka. getting a domain) for people to be able to find your site.

- You need to remain out of the shitlist of a handful of “spam and anti-evil” authorities (getting on a list means your site gets blocked by all the big browsers and can be permanent or take a long time to resolve)

- You need permission to host your content from the: hardware / cloud provider, the datacentre if you self-host, and / or intermediary ISPs for peering (if no-one will peer, your site may as well not exists)

There are some other parties you need permission or blessing from that don’t come immediately to mind.

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>You need permission from the central root certifying authorities[...]

>You need to remain out of the shitlist of a handful of “spam and anti-evil” authorities

And the exact same will happen in the world of 'web3'. Except you won't sign your terms and conditions in English but in from of a smart contract. The internet is a distributed computer, blockchains are distributed computers. Whatever people built on top of it will be as permissioned and have as many authorities as anything else.

You think you can't do encrypted, peer-to-peer communication without authorities on the good old internet? Of course you can, there's nothing technically in the way of it at all. It's just that nobody runs a business that way and they won't do it in the world of 'web3' either.

None of the points I listed apply to web3? So yes, I do imagine you won't need to the permission of any of those listed parties.

Freenet and Tor have existed for a while and are solutions to these problems for those that need them. You’re not interested in that though are you? No coins so no option for speculation.

Web3 as it currently stands (as I said before it’s a slippery weasel word so no don’t you’ll change it to suite) also needs all that stuff. Most “web3” apps are served via Cloudflare ffs!

Why would you assume I am not interested in Freenet and Tor? Please review the Hacker News guidelines, as you are not replying in good faith.

You say that; but after almost 20 years of attack at every one of those levels I can still connect to https://thepiratebay.org. And https://wikileaks.org. That wouldn't be possible if there was a true single entity in charge, both of those sites have enemies. In the case of wikileaks, enemies with literal firepower and secret agencies working to shut it down.

I never said there was a single entitiy in charge, nor that it was impossible to host politically damaging or ifringing content. I only said that you need permission from several parties. Both wikileaks and thepiratebay have obtained permission (or at a minimum did not attract ire) from all of the parties I listed. If they did not, then they would not be accessible.

Do you think either site managed to purchase and control a domain name without the approval of a domain registrar?

Do you think either site is accessible without the approval of the ISP providing a connection to their server?

Etc. down the list I provided.

If your point is that one human can't admin an entire internet then sure you are technically correct (best type). But that isn't a useful point - the web is still highly decentralised even though it takes more than one person to run it.

Both those domains at various times have had disagreements with their registrars, with their ISPs and with bodies on the internet more powerful than that. Hasn't made any difference to whether I can connect to them or not, because there are always alternative paths and vendors. Which is more or less what it means to be decentralised. In practice, being able to replace any party and keep on going is the capability that matters.

My point, as stated originally, is that "web3" and all the hype around it in its current form will require less (practically none) permission for users to interact with it than the existing web paradigm we are familiar with.

A couple questions to dig into each point: What problem does it solve? Could web3 have the same problem? If so, how will web3 solve it?

Most of the points mentioned are security features to shield people from bad actors, something that crypto does not seem very good at thus far, which is why I’m curious how web3 solves similar things.

I'm most excited for digital asset marketplaces. I don't work in the space, and I only have a look at where things are every few months, so I'm probably the last person you should be asking.

Just like any paradigm change though, it's going to rely on the "killer implementation" to take off to kickstart the paradigm reaching mass appeal.

Web3 is not using TCP and DNS :)?

Some of the web3 concepts I've seen are indeed not using DNS in the practical sense you are implying. Why use CA's when you can run your own name service? There are plenty of other methods too.

Not exactly sure why you think TCP, the protocol, is relevant here? Creating or interacting with a web contract in a blockchain is a different ballgame to hosting a web site, and are treated as such by ISPs. One is indistuishable with normal web browsing, and the other is often treated as a business. The threat of having your ISP cut you off because they don't like what you are browsing remains a threat though, and hence a weakness by requiring their permission.

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