Comment by dmitriid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmitriid | Hacker News Reader

Many people have alaready made sense of web3. The problem with web3? People involved in the space don't care. They are either gullible or know exactly what they are doing (scamming and claiming something that has nothing to do blockchains).

One of the earliest articles that already made sense is 5 years old this year:

- Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain, https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/ten-years-in-nobody-has-c...

- And the follow up, Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future, https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustle...

We've yet to see a single "making sense" cryptobro engage with any of the points in the article. I'm not even talking about the more recent ones like Moxie Marlinspike's My first impressions of web3, https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html, or Molly White's collection of posts on blockchains and web3, https://blog.mollywhite.net/

There are more, of course. But they are all dismissed by crypto people because they don't care as long as crypto is useful for getting rich quick schemes. It's not here to save the world, or help the disadvantaged, or whatever other bullshit they sling your way.

I don't regard what security researchers like saurik: [0] and cryptographers like Matthew Green [1] to be the typical 'cryptobros' these days since they seem to know what they are talking about when it comes to 'web3' and the technologies behind it.

Heck I even initially hated crypto (and still hate some NFTs), but even I recognise that 'critics' like Stephen Diehl, Molly White, Nicholas Weaver, etc have all deliberately been ignoring the eco-friendly cryptocurrencies and technologies for years. As soon as one is mentioned on Twitter, there are no counter responses or refutations. They are immediately silent.

It seems that even Stripe [2] has recognised that change as well as Moxie, who is also pushing MobileCoin [3], a private and encrypted cryptocurrency into Signal (which he rarely talks about) and pissed off one of his critics. [4]

I think they are finding it very difficult to ignore it. For them, it is only going to get harder.

[0] https://twitter.com/saurik

[1] https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green

[2] https://stripe.com/gb/use-cases/crypto

[3] https://mobilecoin.com

[4] https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/signal.html

Stephen Diehl has been working on his own Digital ledger so in my mind he's biased anyway.

I don't understand this argument.

All three Molly White, Stephen Diel and Nicolas Weaver have made arguments beyond "cryptocurrencies use a lot of energy".

You cite a couple of sources in your statements but I would like to see these twitter threads where they "have all deliberately been ignoring the eco-friendly cryptocurrencies and technologies for years". I'm not saying it didn't happen but in these cases it depends on the details because I wouldn't engage in a debate with a laser eyes account whose only talking point it "you forgot about 'eco-friendly" cryptocurrency X".

> All three Molly White, Stephen Diel and Nicolas Weaver have made arguments beyond "cryptocurrencies use a lot of energy".

Even beyond those criticisms, anyone else's counter-examples, arguments are never replied to or several of their tweets are deleted without explanation.

> You cite a couple of sources in your statements but I would like to see these twitter threads where they "have all deliberately been ignoring the eco-friendly cryptocurrencies and technologies for years".

Well I don't seem to find any tweets or sources of direct criticisms by them towards the state-of-the-art cryptocurrency technologies or even their impact on the environment. Perhaps they cannot critique the eco-friendly ones at all or perhaps it is just difficult for them to do so. So it is easier for them to be ignorant and dedicate to only attacking PoW cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

> I'm not saying it didn't happen but in these cases it depends on the details because I wouldn't engage in a debate with a laser eyes account whose only talking point it "you forgot about 'eco-friendly" cryptocurrency X".

Well it is only so when one invites themselves to fight an uphill battle against everything as they generalize all cryptocurrencies having the same characteristics Bitcoin, which not only that is not true, but that is a very dangerous assumption to make. [0]

[0] https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1486235252070789122

I take the point and perhaps one could think about what is useful to the "middle ground" of the uninitiated e.g. the policy-makers looking for some guidance, the journalists trying to make sense of the claims and counter-claims.

What we're trying to do here is set out the claims clearly (and atomically) and evaluate them in as transparent and honest a manner as possible. So far I've not seen this a lot on the internet despite the huge amount of material on this topic.

I do hope it will be as you say it will be. I would be very interested in such an examination.

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