Vitalik's Response to Moxie | Hacker News Reader

Vitalik's Response to Moxie

old.reddit.com

43 pointsbvaldivielso10 comments

“Moxie is right, but if we just replace what exists today with this totally different thing — an outcome which is by no means certain - we will have addressed his concerns.”

You have to admire his optimism, even if it’s mixed with a whole lot of naïveté.

He doesn't realize it but he's building a specialty product that can by used by places like art auction houses to prove provenance. They wil wait for him. The broader market wont. It doesn't care about that. They just want to collect and trade their digital "baseball cards".

3, 4, 5, and 6 don't seem _that_ hard such that they're impossible. It's not the tech's fault that the media hype and confused FOMO mania are playing out before it's ready.

Timing is central to Moxie’s argument - the market demanded something the protocol didn’t offer, so intermediaries filled the gap (and made bank). Once ETH2 is ready to fulfill these needs, the market will expect something more.

From my reading, Moxie isn’t saying “ETH isn’t ready”, he’s saying “platforms move faster when they don’t have to wait for the protocol to make upgrades”

Though it's not naivete if you profit out of something...

Link to Vitalik's comment

https://old.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/ryk3it/my_first_i...

Oops, my bad, I wanted to link to that. I cannot edit it now (maybe someone reading this can?)

His comments primarily address technological advancement, which are not necessarily the same as replacement of or even reliance on centralized systems.

Platforms like OpenSea have a network effect and the marginal value of fully decentralized NFT trading or even the technical support (E.g. YouTube tutorials) of Metamask, for instance, does not outweigh the advantage for most users.

Moreover, it's in the best interest of these centralized platforms to remain centralized as it creates user stickiness.

> Platforms like OpenSea have a network effect

Exactly. Sellers will go wherever they can find the highest bidders. Buyers will go wherever they can find the best products. Eventually 1-2 winners + a few niche players will emerge and 99.9% of users will forget it was supposed to be decentralized

In case you missed the discussion on Moxie’s comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29845208

Reply on news.ycombinator.com