Hacker News Reader

Comment by carlosdp | Hacker News Reader

I joined the team at Mozilla that developed Persona as an intern, just as they closed it down.

Persona failed because it was fighting against a head-wind of an already established trend of using Google/FB OAuth2, without giving the service provider any new benefits. There was no incentive for a website to actually implement Persona, since it was just another auth provider and users weren't using it. Users didn't use it because no one implemented it. Chicken and egg.

Websites that integrate web3 wallet login do get something new: built-in, straightforward payment rails.

View on HN

> Websites that integrate web3 wallet login do get something new: built-in, straightforward payment rails.

I'm not convinced it's that a large benefit.

For the foreseeable future, any website that aspires to be anything more than a niche web3 player will need to support web2 auth and web2 payments. So web3 is just adding layers, not removing them. Until web3 becomes powerful enough that you're losing customers because you aren't supporting it, there's no incentive to support it. (Exactly the same predicament Persona was in.)

Additionally, cryptocurrency is not practical as a currency right now because of high transaction fees and slow settlement. This situation won't change until layer 2 networks come of age, which seem to have been "just around the corner" for the past five years.

I'm not convinced it's that a large benefit.

That's because you're not a merchant that has to deal with the monopoly of Visa/Mastercard which inflict high fees on your business and who at a moments notice can bankrupt your business by blocking all payments.

Companies that are built around "SIN" such as weed and porn have basically been strong-armed by this financial monopoly, to the point that Crypto is a welcome addition and which they offer big discounts to users who pay with it.

Additionally, cryptocurrency is not practical as a currency right now because of high transaction fees and slow settlement. This situation won't change until layer 2 networks come of age

There are plenty of L1 solutions like Solana and Avalanche which offer low txn fees and high TPS. L2 networks such as Polygon have already launched and are being used.

> That's because you're not a merchant that has to deal with the monopoly of Visa/Mastercard

Visa and MasterCard don't have a duopoly on payment. They have a duopoly on “instant credit-card-based payment with charge back”, and Blockchain "tech" isn't competing in any of these features. If you don't need this and don't care about subpar UX, you can use bank transfers and still have a better solution than a blockchain-based one.

> high fees on your business

You think Visa fees are high? Blockchain transaction fees must look giagantic to you then…

> Websites that integrate web3 wallet login do get something new: built-in, straightforward payment rails.

Is this really any better than Apple/Google pay? Those are already set up, trustworthy, I don't need to convert my fiat into a cryptocurrency than can swing in value wildly, and it's super easy to set up with stripe or any of the other platforms that the website is probably already using.

I'm not very knowledgeable about Web3, but what you point out, I also find confusing. Why do I need to use ETH to buy an NFT -- my credit card should just do fine -- shouldn't it?

Clicking the "Connect My Wallet" button is kind of fun. But I feel like I've gained nothing over just using my credit card -- in fact my credit card provides me (as the consumer) tons more benefit than using ETH -- and don't get me started on gas fees!

There's work happening now to make this a reality by partnering with on-ramps and off-ramps to go from fiat to crypto.

One can imagine a world in which this is completely transparent to the end user.

High ETH gas fees are also being solved by Layer 2 solutions which get fees down to cents by either batching transactions or doing the work off the main chain and posting only the proofs to the main ETH chain. Checkout zero knowledge rollups, aka zk-rollups.

Rollup solutions like StarkNet and StarkEx on Ethereum will make apps gas-free.

You can't buy most NFTs with ETH, right? First you have to pay ETH-level fees to buy 'wrapped' ETH?

What happens if Visa/Mastercard decides to block the merchant you want to use? Or you yourself are a merchant that gets hit with high fees simply because you're in a business that is deemed "high-risk"

Fair, but that seems like a really really small segment of the market assuming it's legal. For 99% of businesses I don't think this is an issue.

I seem to remember pornhub being hit by this, which is why they removed unverified content. Perhaps it's also why OnlyFans decided to ban explicit content a few months back (before backpedaling).

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/10/business/visa-mastercard-...

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/20/tech/onlyfans-explicit-co...

> Websites that integrate web3 wallet login do get something new: built-in, straightforward payment rails.

With super high fees, transfers that take litteral minutes to complete, no charge back and the ability to lose all the money yoy have if you ever get hacked. How exciting! Even bank transfer as a mean of payment is way better UX.

> built-in, straightforward payment rails.

Yeah. Crappy ones with high latency and high fees.

Solana transactions currently cost $0.00025 and can handle 50,000 transactions per second. For comparison visa handles 1700 TPS and MasterCard 5000.

Solana is proof-of-stake, right? I think the parent comment was talking about proof-of-work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com