Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3
github.com
github.com
While some of the critiques are valid, as system matures, there will be less and less of it. Crypto is here to stay.
> A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.
Now, if you want to say that it was badly designed for its purpose, that is a different matter.
many of which guarantee the same security as their Layer 1.
And it successfully achieved this specific goal, however it never claimed it is a good solution for micro/small payments, which is a requirement for "normal currency". Payments of small amounts require small fees and quick settlement time, neither of which Bitcoin has by design.
> ... without going through a financial institution.
Why? Why don't we want to go through a financial institution?
Well, honestly, the only REAL reasons are fees on large transactions, and the desire/preference to be able to conduct activities that are illegal by regulated financial institutions.
And that, if we all remember, was the only usecase for bitcoin before speculation - buying drugs and even more illegal things on TOR marketplaces.
Well, that and money laundering.
I'd happily use and adopt crypto. I don't do anything illegal, I just don't want corrupted and evil people having control over my assets.
Have I got some news for you about the 51% of people who control all the most popular blockchains :(
> Once it gets bootstrapped, there are so many applications if you could effortlessly pay a few cents to a website as easily as dropping coins in a vending machine.
This claim that Bitcoin was never meant to be a payment system for small payments is 100% historical revisionism.
Bitcoin has _mostly_ avoided it, but not fully, as evidenced by the coins claiming to be the One True Bitcoin, forks driven largely by a small group of people who want to force some policy onto the blockchain, and not entirely unsuccessfully.
There isn't.
Early miners have long since sold off their coins. Pool operators don't own any hashrate. Yes there is some fuckery they can engage in, but it would be obvious and miners can trivially switch pools.
Forks are evidence that there is no central authority in Bitcoin! They cannot change the rules for others so they go do their own thing. How can you not see this as an incredible feature?
This means that the price of 51% attack will drop massively, and that completely undermines the safety that PoW provides.
A large drop in price followed by a large drop in mining completely destroys the security of bitcoin.
It's like how much you spend on a bike lock. A $100 lock on a $20 bike is probably quote secure, while a $200 lock on a $5000 bike is probably quite insecure.
All of those have rebuttals, but I don't want to get into the politics of it, there's plenty of that already. Can we please talk about the fucking tech here? I'm talking about what's made with it, not some sort of philosophical debate about how authoritarian we should be to protect people we deem gullible, or who can spend electricity on what, or who is allowed to speculate.
For those who actually are interested in the tech and not some faux moral crusade, here's better "awesome" lists, that are actually awesome, not toxic.
https://github.com/OffcierCia/DeFi-Developer-Road-Map
https://github.com/bkrem/awesome-solidity
https://github.com/btomashvili/awesome-ethereum
https://github.com/bkrem/awesome-solidity
https://github.com/vinsgo/awesome-ethereum
https://github.com/toadkicker/awesome-ethereum
> https://github.com/OffcierCia/DeFi-Developer-Road-Map
Background and development information, no applications. This link, by itself, has a massive number of links.
> https://github.com/bkrem/awesome-solidity
This links is later duplicated, but is also mostly background and developer information. There is one section titled "deployed on Ethereum mainnet" which seems to be mostly dev tools again
- rarity, an MMO (example UI: https://raritymmo.com/). That's kind of cool, if unlikely to be monetizable.
- ronin, a sidechain implementation to support another game called "Axie Infinity".
> https://github.com/bekatom/awesome-ethereum
Another giant linkfarm. Has a "DAPPS" section. Again mostly dev tools or tools for interacting with Ethereum itself, but a few things that look like applications:
- a decentralized crowdfunding platform: err, doesn't the money eventually go to a particular endpoint? What's the point of decentralizing this.
- zeronet decentralized websites: bitcoin doesn't provide compute infrastructure or a high-bandwidth distribution mechanism (bittorrent is used for this), so...what does this actually _do_? auth can be handled by TLS.
- augur: platform for prediction markets. interesting idea, but ... ultimately the actual result has to be certified?
I'm out of time but in general I haven't seen a simple example of what problems a decentralized ledger solves, ignoring all the technical issues like energy use and 51% attacks.
That's not a bad thing, but it isn't true anyway, you literally login with your wallet.
Virtual currencies are banned on Stripe, PayPal etc. MMOs are how I got into crypto in the first place.
> I am genuinely curious on useful applications.
I was sharing "awesome" lists related to "web3", not a list of apps to support some argument you want to have about "energy use" or "51% attacks". Since this is a forum that has developers on it, a list of resources and roadmap for developers interested in getting started in web3 is useful, is it not? And yes, awesome lists are "link dumps", nice connotation twist.
Here's more geared towards your "genuine curiosity" of web3 apps:
https://github.com/gdamdam/awesome-decentralized-web
Im genuinely curious, do you have any examples that do exist now, are remotely useful, and wouldn’t work without web3 tech?
If you're genuinely curious, explore the lists.
What you want is for me to list a small amount of apps so you can shit on them and we can have a subjective argument about whether they are useful, which can't be determined as it's an opinion.
Web3 doesn't do things Web2 can't, it does the same things differently that gives users more power over operators.
> Here's more geared towards your "genuine curiosity" of web3 apps
I get that you weren't addressing my particular interest in your original post. I've put in a decent amount of time digging through the links you've shared; I'd appreciate if you accepted my curiosity in good faith.
Thanks for sharing more links, though they are not terribly digestible. The first link in particular seems to have many decentralized applications that don't use a blockchain (see below).
> https://github.com/gdamdam/awesome-decentralized-web
These are all cool decentralized web applications (many with real value, including bittorrent, mastodon, etc) -- but how many are built on a decentralized ledger / blockchain? Eight include "blockchain" in their description, and only three I would consider "apps":
- BigchainDB [dev tool] - a 'database'
- storj [dev tool] - blockchain-based object storage
- dtube [application]- decentralized video platform built on a blockchain ("STEEM")
- opentimestamps [dev tool?] - blockhain timestamping (not sure what this is for?)
- namecoin [application] - dns on blockchain
- steemit [application] - blogging/social networking on top of a blockchain db
- arcblock [dev tool] - tool for building "dapps, blockchains and websites"
I'm specifically curious about useful applications for decentralized ledgers, if that wasn't clear. The web/internet already runs on many decentralized protocols.
## STEEM
Both dtube and steemit are built on "STEEM", which seems to function as a form of social credit. Basically, whuffie (for the Doctorow fans out there). That's kinda cool[1].
IIUC:
- new users get 15 STEEM (where does this come from? is this not a spam vector?)
- posting costs STEEM
- upvoting content yields STEEM for the producer (content creation)
- early upvoters earn STEEM (curation)
The crypto part is mostly managing relationships and influence, not attempting to decentralize the actual shuffling of bits. Reasonable. Influence being portable across social networks is a cool idea too.
But how does the _business_ of this work, and is it an improvement over centralized social networks? Steemit, Inc, funds itself via the STEEM digital currency. The STEEM digital currency can be bought -- i.e., influence on the networks can be bought. Is this better than buying likes/comments/subscribers? Abstractly, it might keep the actual social signals cleaner -- except that IIUC you have to like/comment/etc to actually have your STEEM influence people! It's not clear to me that having the network funded by selling influence is an improvement. In ahttps://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/05/20/steem-hard-fork-..., off-platform deals to leverage other people's influence will still be a reality.
So what are the benefits? Theoretically influence becomes decentralized, though the role that Steemit Inc plays is unclear to me. How are new participants funded? Who actually runs and pays for the social network infrastructure? And of course there are the usual risks like 51% attacks.
In practice: according to reddit.com/r/steemit, Steem has been forked because Steemit was acquired and the community didn't trust the new owners who had a majority share (STEEM used proof-of-stake, not proof-of-work). This was because of some drama involving "witnesses", presumably having to do with implementing the actual STEEM rewards/rate limiting. This happened in Apr 2020. The sticked post on r/steemit is from only six months ago (Aug 2021) for some reason. This explains why steemit.com seemed dead. https://hive.blog is apparently where all the action is now. Tthere are other UIs (or could be), so this is not centralized (does this mean the actual content is on the chain? Seems expensive and unscalable).
Detangling just this one "dapp" took >30 minutes. All the crypto stuff aside, hive.blog looks basically like a multireddit made of small subreddits (DTube shows up as the equivalent of a subreddit[2], btw).
## Namecoin
Once you have decentralized DNS the others can already rely on other decentralized parts of the internet (IP, etc).
DNS is not really centralized IMO, which the existence of Namecoin itself attests to. You can choose your nameservers; arbitrary levels of subdomains are supported; etc. If you are capable of opting into Namecoin, why not another root DNS?
Practically Namecoin acts like another root of trust. How well does it perform this function?
https://www.namecoin.org/docs/faq/#is-squatting-a-problem--w... https://www.namecoin.org/docs/faq/#what-is-the-threat-posed-...
Maybe there's a way to better execute this idea; however Namecoin seems to be dominant implementation.
[1] "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" was written in the early 00s, so "cyber" is almost appropriate. [2] https://hive.blog/trending/hive-196037
There is a very strong bias towards the truth, yes.
If you really want to argue this, please at least have something of substance.
I cannot prove a negative, or in this case an undefined, you need to present an issue to debate.
Clearly you don't want to share it so I guess we're done here.
OpenBazaar - Closed Jan 4, 2021. https://twitter.com/openbazaar/status/1346104369566121986
SafeMarket - the getting started link says it's alpha, tells you to go to the subreddit, which is closed. The GitHub repo last had a commit in 2016.
Livepeer - a video streaming service that has no actual evidence on the website of anyone actually using it to stream any content. All the videos they have up on the Livepeer website about Livepeer... are hosted on YouTube. All the discussion I see of it on Twitter and their subreddit is about which exchanges the coin is listed on and the likelihood of it going to the moon etc. The actual utility in transcoding seems secondary to the speculative value of the token.
CryptoPunks - I hope the person who paid $23 million is happy with their purchase.
Thousand Ether Homepage - old school web nostalgia. Okay that's nice I guess.
"An open source sample iOS dApp that demonstrates a practical use-case in biomedical research: sharing location data by interacting with a smart contract deployed on the Oasis Devnet." Trusting a smart contract with your location data sure sounds like one of those ideas that'll end perfectly. Again, not an actual app, just some demoware.
Everything else on the awesome-dapps list are educational resources—books, tutorials, blog posts—not actual examples of functioning dapps.
If these are the awesome dapps, one dare not ask what the bad ones are like.
awesome-dapps is the smallest list, check out the ones below since you seemed to miss them:
> There are no fundamentals to any crypto token and it’s discounted future cashflows are all strictly zero and thus its present value must be strictly zero.
This is demonstrably false.
Cash has no future cash flow, yet its value is clearly not zero.
The way I see it, the value of an asset depends on how desirable it is to market participants (demand), as well as on its supply.
If Bitcoin has a believable enough story ("there will only ever be 21M units"), and it draws people in, while national currencies inflate ceaselessly as economic growth stalls, the relative value of Bitcoin grows.
Other assets are far from better.
Current public companies' Shiller PE ratios are in the "ridiculous" area - it takes 35 years to recoup costs of an investment. https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe
Current inflation is much higher than government bond yields. This is one definition of financial repression - the government sponsors itself with its own currency, in spite of the real negative return.
I see an argument like this in every crypto thread. Come on. You should know that this is a political argument and that, in the US at least, we're pretty damn divided. Talk about stuff that you can plausibly predict at least. You can't predict worldwide economic failure _inevitably_ leading to increased use of crypto. Full stop.
From my perspective, that probably does a lot of damage and doing anything other than leading, governing, non-violent protesting (in person) will not help. The wild west of complete lack of regulation over the economy is a scary and probably dangerous thing. As someone who actually _enjoys_ government regulation (gasp!), I hope you realize that this turn isn't at all likely in the western world from my point of view. Further, if your arguments only apply to countries with authoritarian regimes, please say so.
You may say "well hey, but it's perfect for people living under authoritarian regimes tho!" to which I say, cool - let them get after it. Does it do _anything_ (other than lose/make me money) that I couldn't do with my current currency in the US? No? Okay, then that's a terrible idea.
My only issue is that investment in the traditional markets is subject to government-caused inflation.
This was only the case since Nixon. I would love to go back to stricter regulation such as the gold standard. It is a simple way to enforce financial sustainability.
The US never reverted the "temporarily" suspended convertibilty of the USD to gold. Bitcoin is a reaction to that - gold for a digital age. It IS a form of nonviolent protest. It is scarcity through complete accounting and messaging.
Really though my main point is that you seem tone-deaf. like - "money hasn't been real since we got off the gold standard" is just old libertarian rhetoric. Are you not aware that there are views on this, mainstream ones even, that disagree? Anyone taught Keynesian economics in high school is going to have a view on this and simply saying "oh yeah all the economists were wrong actually but the crypto people got it right" just isn't convincing anyone except for those who are entrenched and/or uneducated.
But this is not Diehl's argument. He's saying that crypto isn't worth anything no matter how many journalists MBS cuts into little pieces. His line (which appears to be a dumbed-down, unattributed version of what Nassim Nicholas Taleb says) is that an asset with no cash flow has zero present value. NNT's version is that an asset with no cash flow must be valued based on the price "at infinity". Diehl wants this to mean that any self-licking ice-cream cone has zero PV, but that is simply false, in that a self-sustaining process which never ceases really does have that "price at infinity". Most of gold's value comes from this, i.e. from the reasonable expectation that humans will value gold for as long as there are humans. There's a respectable theory of money which says that moneys arise in this way – a feedback loop of belief about others' beliefs about value, that ends up creating the common knowledge that something is valuable. To this extent Diehl is simply begging the question, by assuming that something isn't a potential money and valuing it as if it can never be one.
I wouldn't call such a source an awesome critique.
I do think he did once (quite a few years ago) consult for a blockchain company. That's about the only factual basis I've discerned for it.
(Disclaimer/source: I met Stephen once or twice a while back, via the Haskell community.)
Do his arguments have merit or not?
> The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.
https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirv...
The gist was, tulips are flowers, not distributed apps and ledgers. He has no specific criticism, just a doomsday prediction, fear mongering, and false equivalencies.
> What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who'd prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where—in the holy names of Education and Progress—important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.
This could have been written last week about the metaverse, or the experiences we faced with the pandemic. That article is quite on point in retrospect. What Clifford forgot is that replacing salespeople and customer support with nothing is valuable because it cuts costs. A CD-ROM (or or iPad app, to update the analogy) sucks as a replacement for a real teacher, but it is a hell of a lot cheaper...
Did I miss something, or hasn't the rest of the World Wide Web moved on to Web11 or so by now?
I seem to remember a little while after the Web2 craze, the Web was incrementing several times a year.
Am I misunderstanding it, or is "Web3" meant to sound charmingly retro?