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Comment by vmception | Hacker News Reader

> A lot of Web3 platforms are in fact centralized. Your wallet (MetaMask), marketplaces (OpenSea), APIs (Alchemy) are all central platforms. Sure, they use a distributed database (blockchain), but before that it’s still a Go app on AWS, meaning its centralized.

> Your wallet (MetaMask)

Run your own node. This is lazy reporting to reach the end point about fawning over FreeBSD (its in the article, literally an article about having fun staying poor), when you can just as easily inspire and teach people how to use custom RPCs. There is an opportunity to inspire people with the tools to know what to look for, even if it's absurd to suggest people actually compile and run a node themselves. Tell them why the default behavior is a convenience and if they are interested in the decentralized parts then here is what to do.

> marketplaces (OpenSea)

Yep. It is a GUI ontop of their smart contracts (public access backend code). You don't have to use their GUI. You should inspect their smart contracts for centralized control, or at least look to see if anyone else has. There is an opportunity to inspire people with the tools to know what to look for, even if its absurd to suggest people actually do all the analysis themselves.

> APIs (Alchemy) are all central platforms

a fine example. don't use Alchemy or Infura as your RPC endpoints? Why not just make blog posts about that?

This kind of energy could just as easily be steered into "how to improve the concept of Web3" which lots of people are actually doing. It could just as easily be "This isn't decentralized! Let me fix that!"

View on HN

> Run your own node. This is lazy reporting

It isn't practical for the majority of people to run their own node. Even Vitalik Buterin acknowledges[1] this isn't realistic for the current state of things.

Last year I was interested in running a sidechain node and I was shocked when I looked at minimum system requirements. I can't just run it in the background and I have a 5600X Ryzen. Plus my NVMe drive needed to be much bigger. It also can eat through SSDs, and HDDs are considered too slow.

Worse to me: It looks like another time consuming hobby. I spent a lot of time even just getting up to speed on the current ecosystem, the jargon, best practices, etc. It often seems like crypto is trying to take something less complicated and make it complicated.

It just seems like people are simply pushing a technology that isn't ready yet for what people in the scene think is currently possible.

My interest for running a node was for prediction market trading to attempt to counter frontrunning aka sandwich attacks. Another ridiculous problem that many people in the scene act like isn't a big deal.

1. https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/05/23/scaling.html

> It often seems like crypto is trying to take something less complicated and make it complicated.

That could be intentional. The more complex it is, the harder it is to “prove” the whole thing is nothing more than a twist on classic pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes. The more complicated it sounds the easier it is to bamboozle people into handing over their hard earned fiat to earlier generations of holders.

' My interest for running a node was ... to attempt to counter frontrunning aka sandwich attacks. '

You may have misunderstood the eth tech stack. Running your own node is not a means to prevent sandwich attacks.

I specifically said "counter" not "prevent". I explained in another post.

Running your own node neither counters nor prevents front running your transactions. If you send tx to standard mempool, the tx can be seen and front run.

There are existing solutions for the narrow use case you seem to have - flashbots and a few others. And they have cost savings to you of not running your tx (saving eth gas fees) if your tx submission does not win.

I explained in my other comment, but I see no mention any of those aspects of countering a sandwich botter.

Front run + back run is sandwich. Front running has also been called miner extractable value. This is now called maximal extractable value.

You may want to look a little further, or not.

https://github.com/flashbots/pm

'... mitigating the negative externalities of Maximal Extractable Value ...'

Can you not you "see" more transactions, faster...?

The block producer chooses transaction ordering. They control who gets sandwiched. Running your own node won't change anything.

The trading site's performance is quite high latency, and uses a 3rd party endpoint (I forget which one) that doesn't emphasize performance. You reduce the latency of your orders, acquire real-time price information, notification of liquidity changes faster, etc.

If you think it's to prevent attacks in some absolute sense, that isn't the goal. Your goal is to make life more difficult for them and/or decrease profit incentives.

You only need to remove some of the profit to make it not worth someone's time to maintain, and at least you're bleeding less money if they do continue. You get to be more strategic in how you place orders and make it really annoying for a botter or force the botter to blacklist your trades from your attacks (something that has happened before). You can also identify flaws in the bot and exploit them to make it bleed money(this has been demonstrated as possible many times).

> It looks like another time consuming hobby.

So did BBS message boards.

Better shut this whole, inefficient pile of gack and hacks down!

The majority of people in the world? No, that's correct. The majority of people who use Ethereum today, or hang out on HN and would be inclined to do so? Absolutely feasible. I was recently set straight on this[0]. Things have been improving a lot even since that blog post by vb, and ongoing efforts are still progressing. And note that in the linked thread, I was pushing for full archive nodes. While it's desirable that this is feasible to have a healthy network, most people have their needs served by having pruned full nodes, which requires a fraction of the storage space. Also, several clients (at least geth and erigon) allows for split storage, where you have recent/hot state on faster storage like nvme, and historical archive on a larger drive.

If you are up for it, you may want to give it another shot. My 3400G now handles this fine, alongside other workloads.

I have not tried myself yet, but it does seem realistic to run a full node on an rpi4b with usb3 storage now, if you don't need to run heavy RPC queries on it.

It seems to be common practice to do the initial sync on a beefier machine with more RAM and IO, and then migrate over to a more lightweight instance for the ongoing.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30584184

I agree with you that crypto often makes things unecessairly complicated sometimes. Every heard of hypercore protocol? They're a force against that. Ethereum should take note there.

SSDs are fine, you absolutely don't need an NVMe. A mid shelf 2TB SSD is way more than enough. Processor requirements aren't that high either, but yes it is a noticeable amount of resource usage, so running in the background isn't practical.

Regarding Ethereum you’re right, it’s centralized.

With Bitcoin I run my node and check the incoming transactions with it whenever I make a big money transfer (for outgoing transactions a full node is not really needed, as I don’t care if the network doesn’t accept it as long as my counterparty does).

Running a Bitcoin node is practical (less than a day of running in the background on the first run) if the amount of money is significant.

Ethereum is only centralized if you dont run your own node. It is as practical to do that as it is a bitcoin node (but not for what the person you replied to was trying to do). This is an absurd distinction, and even if it wasnt absurd or wasnt practical then it is a fixable issue. Because it already has been fixed. Geth has a pruned fast sync client that has everything necessary for consensus, it takes about the amount of space and resources as a bitcoin one.

If we limit ourselves to Bitcoin then we're at a sliver of the web3 ecosystem everyone is casting their hopes upon. And Bitcoin in its current state still seems more like a blockchain working prototype and isn't 'feature-ful' enough to replace centralized finance.

But proof-of-work's energy consumption is what kills Bitcoin for me.

For what it's worth, I consider myself crypto agnostic. If a tech delivers something better then great.

Bitcoin has nothing to do with Web3, they are two different things (web3 is a new term, Bitcoin is a system from 2008)

Bitcoin has a scripting system which gives it some limited smart contract capabilities. If web 3 is about programmable money and ownership I would argue BTC is very much relevant to Web 3.

You can use Bitcoin as a collateral on web3.

Cryptocurrency agnostic — thank you. I'm going to borrow.

I don't necessarily like all of the community, current "leaders" etc — I just know a sticky concept when I see it.

I run an Ethereum node at home just fine. There’s nothing centralized about Ethereum.

When a product has a lot of negative externalities, and you also notice that it doesn't deliver on the promise that's meant to counterbalance those externalities, it's entirely reasonable and appropriate to conclude that the project should be rejected, rather than joining in to try to fix it. I don't know why anyone would want to build a "Web3" with people who use "have fun staying poor" as a catchphrase, or whose understanding of existing technology allows them to refer to "BSD linux". I don't want to empower or enrich those people. We already have enough of them.

*FreeBSD, BSD Desktop is what was used in the article

Many people join in to fix it, that's exactly what Alchemy, Infura, OpenSea are and were, many people that would be interested are first exposed to offputting characters that don't know anything but who believe every sales pitch. I mostly think the lack of standardized education on this is what creates these outcomes of the latter population. Since some of them would be useful to have in that space.

You’re falling into the same trap as tech enthusiasts in web1.

Sure, you could scan blockchains and extract NFT data yourself, and sure you could run your own node for every blockchain that interests you (paying god only know how much for storage and bandwidth). Just like how in web1 you could run your own email server to handle email and have your own blog server to publish info and your own git server to host your code and your own domain name to put it all under…

But it turns out that exceptionally few users actually care about putting in the time/effort/money to do that. Hence the rise in web2 and platforms. The people who run their own infra now are all doing it more as a hobby than anything else.

Like it or not, recentralization is the future of web3 for the average consumer. You can be a crypto decentralization purist, but I hope you realize that you’ll be the minority in that, if crypto/web3 actually is to gain widespread adoption.

For the average consumer, convenience is the real feature, and true decentralization is inconvenient.

But I don't care about that the impractical enthusiast stuff, I care about the bloggers that make these flippant dismissals instead of talking about the impractical things that are possible. I simultaneously observe that the impractical things can be made more practical.

For example, Metamask with a non-default RPC node is great compared to using crypto before Metamask. Phantom wallet on Solana is even further improved than Metamask in what a browser-extension wallet can do! Just keep pushing in that direction and wean people off of the default nodes!

Node software mostly sucks! There is great room for improvement there and it will keep happening. For example, for Ethereum Mainnet, a Go-Ethereum (Geth) archive node takes like 10 Terabytes and most people just accepted that absurdity, while someone else said "hm that data structure is not optimal" and made Erigon which can do the same in 1/3rd the time and around 1.8 Terabytes.

Node software still sucks! It can be improved! The people that like FreeBSD would like tinkering with that kind of stuff too (the author admits that, but chooses to adopt a different perspective unrelated to how they would actually be contributing to the space)

> I care about the bloggers that make these flippant dismissals instead of talking about the impractical things that are possible. I simultaneously observe that the impractical things can be made more practical.

Why, though? What's the sell? What does a decentralized future get me, concretely, that I don't have now? Appeals to user privacy and data ownership aren't concrete things. Concrete things are faster loading times, or new features that are impossible or infeasible in other architectures. In these dimensions -- the only ones that matter -- I can't see how decentralization is anything other than an enormous step backwards?

Those fortunate to live in a place with somewhat stable currency, decent rule of law, and decent banking often don't see the advantages of holding assets without custodians.

My keys, my coins.

> Those fortunate to live in a place with somewhat stable currency, decent rule of law, and decent banking often don't see the advantages of holding assets without custodians.

This describes every place on Earth except -- arguably -- Venezuela and Somalia. And the solution to Venezuela and Somalia is to fix the government! Not to just sigh and assume their broken societies are somehow inevitable and to treat them as default.

---

> My keys, my coins.

When you lose your keys -- which, statistically, you absolutely will -- is it appropriate that you should also forfeit your wealth? (This is a rhetorical question.)

"Custodians" are not a bug. They are a feature.

> This describes every place on Earth except -- arguably -- Venezuela and Somalia.

That's just ignorance. Argentina, a G20 member, has had banks not allow it's citizens access their accounts in 2002. Currently they don't allow their citizens to buy dollars and have a black market for it. Banks change rules constantly trying to adapt to new laws. This is a similar thing occuring in many countries. Russia and Ukraine have also strong issues due to the current situation, and citizens are adopting crypto because of it.

Just because you don't know about it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

>And the solution to Venezuela and Somalia is to fix the government

Oh. So as a citizen I have to just fix my goverment! Thanks for the suggestion.

Argentina has a curious economic situation but inarguably the rule of law and a coherent banking system. Russia self-subverts their currency but is otherwise stable. Ukraine is under siege so many things are up in the air. None of these nations qualify under your rules.

And yes, you have to fix your government. That's how society works.

This sort of argument reminds me of the old doctrinaire Marxists, who insisted communism could work if only it could be done without authoritarianism.

Turns out Web3, in theory, sounds fine, but the implementations and uses of it all fall back to centralised networks and nefarious purposes.

I think it's time to recognise Web3 for what it is: a massive con fronted by people who sell a fantasy of open, decentralised computing designed to free everybody from the excesses of government, but are actually implementing something far worse than the system it's supposed to replace.

This is precisely correct. I am hugely sympathetic to the theoretical benefits of web3, but it clearly does not deliver on these promises. Rather than move on to something else which can deliver, its proponents are insisting the emperor is fully clothed because honestly most of them don’t care a single bit about the philosophical or political dimensions of the technology but only about the profit margins they can get by deluding others to join in.

Yeah. Tech (hell, humanity) already has a big enough problem with cults forming around bad or discredited ideas and defending them to the death, but the intrinsic characteristics of crypto make its adherents substantially more aggressive -- specifically the fact that crypto fans are not only emotionally and ideologically invested, but generally also quite heavily materially and financially invested, usually to the tune of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, if not more. The consequences if they're wrong are so much worse which necessitates a completely different level of self-deception and defensiveness.

Okay.

The disconnect here is what you think that I think web3 to be.

I recognize the decentralized capabilities and find it marginally interesting and optional when convenient.

I don't think it is a sales pitch. And therefore I dont think the whole concept is a con. I empathize with people that come to the space and products within the space for an inaccurate sales pitch.

I like the platforms. I would be fine with an optional EVM that was not censorship resistant, where I could deploy my existing products on simply because the code was compatible. I want the other censorship resistant ones to exist too. You are assuming I care about the sales pitch and am trying to sell that fantasy. I think people should be aware of how to use that part of the technology.

> I would be fine with an optional EVM that was not censorship resistant, where I could deploy my existing products on simply because the code was compatible.

This sounds sort of like AWS. Or if you want decentralization then something built on DHTs.

I mean this is neither here nor there, but "communism could work if only it could be done without authoritarianism" is not a Marxist take, doctrinaire or otherwise. If you're a bolshevik, you believe that having and defending a revolution requires a vanguard of devoted party members who run shit. If you're a democratic socialist, likewise you think there needs to be a centralized group in control during the revolution -- you just think that this centralized group should be selected by vote rather than self-appointed. If you're an anarchist (and anarchists are typically not marxist), then you're someone who thinks that managing a revolution without centralized control is possible.

And you might be thinking: why on earth would someone argue that putting the centralized party in control is a good idea? There's a simple reason for that: the Paris Commune.

Why does the Paris Commune matter? They tried to run a revolution on anarchist lines... and so, instead of immediately marching on Versailles to take down the extant government, they just sort of faffed around in committee meetings until a couple of months later the extant government's army came and killed them all. Leninism (the centralized, essentially authoritarian stuff) was a reaction to that. Because they observed how thoroughly fucked over the Commune was, specifically due to the lack of the sort of centralized control that would get people to take up arms and march on Versailles, the bolsheviks decided that they would do everything they possibly could to centralize the fuck out of everything.

And I mean, they lasted for longer than the commune did? At the very least, the bolshevik experiment had some measure of democracy until Stalin came along 7 years after the revolution.

So, yeah. people don't believe "communism could work if it could be done without authoritarianism." Instead there's an active debate (running for a century and a half now) about what type and level of centralized control is necessary to do a revolution without being immediately killed by the old government, and what level of centralized control is so hyper-centralized that it makes a Stalin happen.

Interesting - thanks for clearing that up.

> I simultaneously observe that the impractical things can be made more practical.

I'm not sure this is feasible.

Software tends towards complexity. How many people work on a system that hasn't grown tentacles and increased in complexity over time? And that's with a centralized organizational structure motivating change! Look at how much more complex the blockchain ecosystem has become over the last decade. Sure, individual pain points may become less painful. But I'd be stunned if the overall complexity of the systems didn't increase dramatically over the next decade.

> Node software still sucks! It can be improved!

Talk is cheap. Show me the code.

Not sure what you mean or expect, but pretending - I mean assuming - that is a question in good faith, then for EVMs, I would start with Erigon

https://github.com/ledgerwatch/erigon

Every time someone on a discussion forum identifies a fundamental problem with the web3 space, it's inevitable that someone will reply with a link to an essentially arbitrary project and claim that it solves that problem. I've never seen the same project linked twice in this way, it's always brand new, and usually from a group I've never heard of, either. Just wild.

A fundamental problem?? Somebody just said they don't like node implementations and asked for something else. The poster included a URL for an alternative node implementation... What were you expecting? In an open software world there can be many implementations for a given problem...

In a centralized system you cannot even ask this question. If someone said Banks implementation of SWIFT sucks, show me a better implementation what do you think the end result would be?

> that is a question in good faith

More of a statement on how cryptocurrency projects like to make a lot of promises and how their followers eat it up without having the necessary expertise to evaluate the claims. See e.g. "one more year" on proof-of-stake for ethereum for...how many years now?

I don't get this, it's a work being done by multiple teams.

So if we cross out the decentralizaton part, which problem does web3 solve over web2? Why do we need it? Honest question.

Not having PayPal lock my funds based on some faulty algorithm and refusing to communicate with me for months.

> literally an article about having fun staying poor

And here it is. When the technical merits of “web3” fail to illicit genuine change (networks effects are powerful and matter [0]), its advocates fall back on the “get in or stay out” mentality, which is frankly a red flag for a supposedly technical project.

> could just as easily be steered into "how to improve the concept of Web3"

If web3 cannot sustain itself due to its technical merits and if there clearly are centralized effects at work here, then every person brought in with the threat that they better help out or “stay poor” (a truly disgusting phrase) is just another brick in the pyramid, another dollar to VCs. Just admit you are trying to coerce free labor to prop up your own bags.

Many are not impressed by the so called merits of web3 for good reason.

> Run your own node

Literally, in Satoshi’s original white paper in 2008, he pointed out that running a node is prohibitive and could result in centralization over time, which is exactly why he coined SPV (simple payment verification) (aka light clients).

> [OpenSea] is a GUI ontop of their smart contracts (public access backend code)

Blatantly false. OpenSea can and has taken down various tokens minted on their platform for reasons ranging from copyright infringement to sanctions compliance (Iran is the only country I am familiar with at the time). You can mint an NFT without OpenSea but to say that you can just use OpenSea’s “backend code” without their consent is false.

> There is an opportunity to inspire people with the tools to…

This crypto grift talk is frustrating, dishonest, and hand-wave-y coming from the cypherpunks to what we have now. Cryptocurrency and the space around it was never about “inspiration,” but about liberation and action. We don’t need to be inspired, we need to be empowered.

[^0]: Coinbase complies with sanctions. OpenSea removes artwork. MetaMask uses Infura as an RPC so any NFT removed on OpenSea will not show up in MetaMask wallets (using default RPC). Bridge hacks result in many accounts losing their money unless saved by an injection of VC funding, completely defeating the “be your own bank” mentality. Centralized platforms extreme usage relative to the rest of the network (Uniswap, OpenSea, MetaMask) result in high gas prices for everyone else. Billionaires like Justin Sun Tron can take out massive loans to influence distributed governance like he did for the Compound vote on collateral rates.

> And here it is. When the technical merits of “web3” fail to illicit genuine change (networks effects are powerful and matter [0]), its advocates fall back on the “get in or stay out” mentality, which is frankly a red flag for a supposedly technical project.

Interesting thing to focus on over and over, OPs article had the non sequiturs about having fun not getting rich. The irony being that it’s a meme in crypto and they chose to be a caricature of that meme, personified. I feel like you didn't read the article. What you responded to is for people that read the article.

Opensea is 2 products. One is a storefront for technophobes to try and configure their art on the opensea platform before turning it into an NFT. The other is an NFT reader for NFTs made by people that know what theyre doing. Only the latter is relevant because thats the whole NFT economy, but the former is the thing more people try their hand at so I can see how that is distracting to conversation. The latter NFTs cannot be taken down by OpenSea they can be hidden from their GUI. They would not be hidden by your GUI.

> Coinbase complies with sanctions. OpenSea removes artwork.

Complying with sanctions is a good thing; removing stolen artwork is a good thing. You... know this, right?

I believe his point is that these good things wouldn't be possible if it were decentralized

A torrent indexer removes a porn torrent therefor BitTorrent is centralized. The argument makes no sense.

Oh, if so I totally misread and apologize.

> Run your own node.

Which platforms are doing that? Any you can name offhand?

> You don't have to use their GUI.

Who's doing that?

> don't use Alchemy or Infura as your RPC endpoints?

Who's doing that?

> It could just as easily be "This isn't decentralized! Let me fix that!"

Write the post, then. I'd read it.

Things like otterscan that are a locally run instance of an etherscan like site are a step in the right direction, but there is still a lot to do in this regard for sure.

https://github.com/wmitsuda/otterscan

Woah! This is great! I’m glad I held space for this thread! I’ll absolutely be using this tool with Erigon

> It could just as easily be "This isn't decentralized! Let me fix that!"

First I would like to be convinced that centralization is actually a problem.

Most things in our daily lives are centralized: Power Generation and Distribution, Water Distribution, the Logistics which put food in our stores, Infrastructure setup and maintenance, to name just a few.

Yes, even our financial systems work fine. I get my paycheck on my account, I can pay effortless with my credit card, security, maintenance, services, customer service is taken care of.

Yes, there are shitty centralized systems, and there are opressive authorities that abuse centralization. The solution to that however, is not "get rid of centralized systems".

In the abstract, centralization bad, decentralization good.

There is no deeper thought going on here than the above. These are barely thought out, quasi religious beliefs as moral justifications for get rich quick schemes and frauds.

The same conversation about nothing, ad nauseam.

My place is on well and septic. I like the setup, and the yard space for this creates limits to residential density. I'm possibly not typical.

that will probably never happen. There is always an ongoing fight between decentralization (enduser, humanistic approach) and centralization (efficient, dictorship, monopolization approach). Centralization will almost always be more efficient but has "security" flaws in the form of bad faith actors while also acting as the central authority. Basically see any form of dictatorship over multiple generations. Ofcourse they can accomplish good, working systems. They can even be efficient as long as all orders are done exactly without fighting back.

decentralization is taking back some of the control back from central authorities. The problem is people often do not want to be 100% responsible for their own well being. This in turn leads to re-centralization at some point. We have governments because people often do not believe they can easily live together with complete trust. We have laws in order to make it easier for humans to live together. Essentially offloading a cognitive function of threat detection by relying on a trusted entity (government) to create a safe environment. In a dictatorship its possible for that trusted entity to transform into a bad faith actor and no longer work towards its original purpose. We introduce democracy/republicanism (a form of decentralization) in order to protect against this flaw. This form of government itself often re-centralizes in some form or another (government parties).

What I'm trying to get at is that while centralization is efficient and many things head to centralization we should still try to make the backbone decentralized whenever possible. It is a form protection against a central authority transitioning to a bad faith actor. Almost all central authorities will eventually transition to bad faith (from the end users perspective). With as much of the backbone being decentralized as possible we can at least more easily finger point and hold those central authorities responsible for their actions.

> Centralization will almost always be more efficient but has "security" flaws in the form of bad faith actors while also acting as the central authority.

And de-centralization has security flaws in the form of more difficult or impossible oversight, which can allow bad-faith actors to pursue their goals with impunity.

Neither paradigm is perfect, each has its flaws. Knowing that a system is de- or centralized, tells us exactly nothing about the morals of the people using it.

“Have fun staying poor”

It’s so obnoxious to assert that poverty is a choice, or falsely claim that anyone can get rich by investing in crypto.

It’s from the article you should read it and take it up with the author

> Sure, I would have been much richer if I chose Bitcoin instead of FreeBSD. But I probably would have become a worse person, not having had to work hard since I’d have 10 million dollars right now

I could also not do any of that and trust an authority to provide that service for me.

Society encourages specialization and most people will not start to self-host for some idealistic reasons that they might not even share. Unless self-hosting is more convenient and has better UX the majority will not adopt it.

Even if you as an individual want decentralization, you will still be affected by this creeping centralization. Tokens on platforms (like OpenSea) will have more value and liquidity than trying to trade directly. If your NFT gets blacklisted on OpenSea it will lose value. Even if you never intend to use OpenSea, if the majority uses it to verify "authenticity" it will become a central authority.

Just look at all the phished NFTs. The owners (not anymore) immediately rush to OpenSea trying to get the "stolen" NTF blacklisted.

> Run your own node

Until ISPs block you like they did with DNS.

That’s what really should change; ISPs should be required to let anyone run services, bill for consumption.

But then the internet would be truly decentralized.

Most people just want messaging, calendar, and maps anyway. The rest of these apps serve first world tech bros who didn’t want a real job.

>That’s what really should change; ISPs should be required to let anyone run services, bill for consumption.

Check Yggdrasil.

> suggest people actually compile and run a node themselves

yeah just buy an 86TB drive every year and run the node 24/7 to avoid penalties

>You should inspect their smart contracts

how many people are actually able to do this

I'm not against crypto and i'm not sure yet about web3 but if it requires buying some kind of token to participate then i am skeptical.

I don't know where you got 86TB but the current storage required for an Ethereum full node is about 600GB.

https://etherscan.io/chartsync/chaindefault

There's a difference between a full node and an archive node. A full node has all the data required to verify the chain from genesis up to the current state. An archive node also has all the state of all previous blocks. An archive node can be derived from a full node, and the only purpose of an archive node is to run historical queries.

You can run a full node without staking ETH, in which case there are no penalties for going offline. (And if you are staking, you can be offline up to a third of the time and still be profitable.)

There are efforts underway to shrink storage requirements, including very secure light clients, state expiration, and statelessness. But right now that stuff is mostly on the back burner while they focus on the proof-of-stake migration.

> yeah just buy an 86TB drive every year and run the node 24/7 to avoid penalties

This is healthy skepticism, these are things the crypto community would write in jest, on twitter. For the most part this is a massive exaggeration lol.

> how many people are actually able to do this

Not many, but a rapidly growing number of people are. Its more of a consumer protection problem and people are getting better at it.

> I'm not against crypto and i'm not sure yet about web3 but if it requires buying some kind of token to participate then i am skeptical.

There are certainly node based projects like that. Some are interesting, some should be avoided, some use tokens as a prerequisite for access, some don't, some are articulately explained and have free testnets you can simulate things on. Its up to the individual or team that created the project.

> yeah just buy an 86TB drive every year and run the node 24/7 to avoid penalties

Lazy, low effort, inaccurate comment. A validator node is <$500 of hardware. A 2TB SSD will be enough for years.

> how many people are actually able to do this

How many people are able to inspect the code running on their machine? I don't really buy this line of argument. Humans are social animals. Information about what software (on or offchain) is safe tends to propagate naturally.

> Yep. It is a GUI ontop of their smart contracts (public access backend code). You don't have to use their GUI. You should inspect their smart contracts for centralized control, or at least look to see if anyone else has. There is an opportunity to inspire people with the tools to know what to look for, even if its absurd to suggest people actually do all the analysis themselves.

On Polygon OpenSea took an open-access marketplace (0x V3) and gave only themselves the permission to interact with the mutable functions (e.g. filling orders). The very definition of centralized.

With 16% of Americans saying they have invested in cryptocurrency in some form, coupled with the classic adoption graph (https://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/99A2/curve.JPG), crypto is begging for ways to burst into the mainstream early majority, and the way to do that is with the familiar. They want Coinbase, and OpenSea, and low friction experiences.

I'm not too experienced with this sector, but LooksRare is already a decentralized replacement for OpenSea. It has lower fees, too. Some of my friends got airdrops or invested directly in LooksRare and have talked about it quite a bit.

> Yep. It is a GUI ontop of their smart contracts (public access backend code). You don't have to use their GUI.

So what happens if someone just copies the JPG and puts on their web host? Isn't that essentially what OpenSea is...a hosted service for the JPG.

All the blockchain holds is that a certain address (0x12345678) owns a certain token ID (42) minted from a certain contract (0xDEADBEEF). That's all. It proves provenance. What the metadata contains, where it's hosted, etc. is irrelevant.

So while it's true that OS hosts the JPEG of your NFT, for example (it actually caches it), the point is about proving ownership of a specific token identifier, not just a pretty picture.

Ok so lets say the same JPG exists on two sets of blockchains. One is 0x12345678 and the other one is 99x12345678.

How do I prove that I own the JPG?

Which one did the creator use? That's the one that has legitimacy and value.

Legitimacy is basically a coordination game, where you get the best payoff by making the same choice as everyone else. To really dig into this, read this piece by Vitalik:

https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html

> Which one did the creator use? That's the one that has legitimacy and value.

This is exactly the crux. How do I prove who is the original creator? Vitalik's concept of legitimacy is based on EVERYONE participating. Which is simply not the case right now. To use his example:

> Elon selling Elon's tweet is the real thing, and Jeff doing the same is not. Once again, millions of dollars of value are being controlled and allocated, not by individuals or cryptographic keys, but by social conceptions of legitimacy.

> But they could also be a missed opportunity: there is little social value in helping Elon Musk earn yet another $1 million by selling his tweet when, as far as we can tell, the money is just going to himself (and, to his credit, he eventually decided not to sell). If NFTs simply become a casino that largely benefits already-wealthy celebrities, that would be a far less interesting outcome.

Of course. But what if all of the edgelords that love Elon (and happen to also have much of the control of share of wallets for ETH) decide he should make the $1M? Vitalik's view would be "well that's what the public decided". However it assumes that EVERYONE is an active participant with full knowledge of the situation.

And finally he admits himself:

> There are definitely more ideas, but this is an area that certainly deserves more active coordination and thought.

> But this goes far beyond just Ethereum itself. NFTs are one example of a large pool of capital that depends on concepts of legitimacy. The NFT industry could be a significant boon to artists, charities and other public goods providers far beyond our own virtual corner of the world, but this outcome is not predetermined; it depends on active coordination and support.

He's actually just regurgitating the ideas of a direct democracy vs a representative democracy. If the public is not fully engaged and fully informed, then this whole theory essentially breaks down.

> This is exactly the crux. How do I prove who is the original creator?

Consensus. We all agree that 0x123457890 is the "Bored Ape" contract, so everything spawned from it is a "real" Bored Ape. It's kind of how we all agree who the real "Picasso" is. This isn't really controversial or hard to grasp, and imo Vitalik's article just muddies the waters.

> This isn't really controversial or hard to grasp

It is. Who precisely is "We"? I personally never said 0x123457890 was the OG Bored Ape. What if I band together millions of people and determine that 99x12345678 which I own is actually the OG Bored Ape. How can you stop me? Isn't that what OpenSea is effectively doing...providing a centralized trust system to say "well of course everyone knows OpenSea is the source of truth because everyone knows it and the consensus is on the blockchain"

> What if I band together millions of people and determine that 99x12345678 which I own is actually the OG Bored Ape. How can you stop me?

I mean, that's exactly how decentralization works. I can't stop you by design. Simply put (and for better or worse), it's tyranny of the masses. If you can do that (get everyone to treat another contract as the real Bored Ape contract), then you've effectively "forked" -- this has happened a couple of times in BTC and ETH.

Got it - makes sense. Thanks for being civil.

NFTs are stupid and awful ideas, but I suggest actually reading up about how they work so you can more accurately shit on them instead of repeating things you read on twitter.

It seems like the person you're responding to is raising a legitimate criticism of NFTs, or at least, criticism of the touted benefits of them: an NFT provides absolutely no value to its owner unless there's some kind of enforcement of the "property" rights it suggests. If I own an NFT of a JPEG, there's nothing to stop anyone else from simply right-click-downloading that JPEG and hosting it somewhere else. At that point, my NFT is just me shouting "dibs!" to a room full of people who don't care.

>unless there's some kind of enforcement of the "property" rights it suggests.

That's the entire point of a blockchain. It's valuable because other people agree that it is. Of course, the actual JPEG can be copied, but that doesn't mean your blockchain ownership of it does. You are kind of shouting dibs, but the difference is that a lot of people care. And as long as someone cares enough to pay you money for your dibs, then it has value.

Or how about it was a genuine question and you don't have to be rude. No wonder crypto gets a bad rap.

You'd have to be conflating about half a dozen different concepts to write that sentence. I can't help you. If you want to learn, you can.

So then explain it instead of the personal attack. You guys seem fun.

> So what happens if someone just copies the JPG and puts on their web host? Isn't that essentially what OpenSea is...a hosted service for the JPG.

The question then is whose problem is that?

“What happens” to who?

There are about 6 or 7 distinct parties in the NFT market, so which person are you thinking about? Who would care and why? What does the rehoster get out of it?

That’s a good start

Random example I found on reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/MichaelReeves/comments/js1ib8/someo...

Now let's say instead of Reddit he posted it on OpenSea. The person that owns it OpenSea then lists the image on Redbubble for financial gain. Who then owns it? Clearly the person who owns it on OpenSea? How do we know the person that posted it on Redbubble isn't the true owner and bblaineC isn't the scammer?

Wait, did someone suggest to you that NFT's were a solution to this millennium old reality? Because they aren't. In both scenarios like on Reddit or your NFT version of the scenario, it is up to the consumer to discern (the person that buys a piece of work). These are consumer protection issues before NFTs and after NFTs. People buy non-original work, thats not an NFT problem. People might or might not be able to resell things they buy, whether it is an original or not, that's not an NFT problem. Its not news. Other people try to make it news when NFT's are in the same sentence, but its not clear why. Sometimes when people sell plagiarized work, they receive money, also not news. Its weird I have to even write that, but I guess I have seen people advertise NFTs as something they are not. So try not to be confused by that.

The NFT version of this scenario simply makes prior possession, price history of the prior possession, and royalties to the NFT creator, apparent and makes all of that persevere even after the unauthorized listing on the next site is "taken down" or removes it from their GUI due to reports (there is a scenario where the NFT is the plagiarized one, or a second NFT is created that is the plagiarized one. as opposed to just a raster image uploaded onto a pay-for-photos website). The NFT (both the first and second NFT) would still be tradable as there is no way to actually remove it (some implementations can modify the image shown by the NFT, the NFT itself will still exist because the NFT is just a wrapper, more akin to a picture frame). People like that. In the art world, prior possession required lawyers and courts to only partially ascertain and recreate consensus on, price history was also impossible to get with a whole crop of appraisers and insurers involved to recreate consensus on guesswork, and royalties are practically nonexistent except to the most luckiest and privileged content creators who still have to hope they don't need to bring a legal team to ensure payment. NFT's automate all of those things, and that's a massive tweak to a large market that I can see has been a very misunderstand large market. NFT's won't solve a copyright and license dispute.

In the scenario where both uploads are NFTs, you could check with the artist. Again because its up to the consumer or collector to figure out if the thing they want to buy/consume is authentic and NFT's aren't there to solve that.

NFT's help after consensus on provenance has been reached once. It helps that consensus persevere. Something the art world has lacked for several millennium.

> Its weird I have to even write that, but I guess I have seen people advertise NFTs as something they are not. So try not to be confused by that.

You just stumbled on the problem. NFTs are inherently confusing.

> you could check with the artist.

Ugh. How do I check with the artist when I don't know who the artist is?! That was precisely my point...in that reddit scenario I can only build consensus about ownership if I have ALL OF THE FACTS. But I don't.

> FT's automate all of those things, and that's a massive tweak to a large market that I can see has been a very misunderstand large market. NFT's won't solve a copyright and license dispute.

> NFT's help after consensus on provenance has been reached once. It helps that consensus persevere. Something the art world has lacked for several millennium.

Ok, so NFTs help with lineage and ownership of value but does nothing to determine who actually originated the art? In other words, NFTs don't care about origination, as long as there is a traceable consensus of monetary value and ownership, regardless of whether that ownership was derived unintentionally.

> Something the art world has lacked for several millennium.

So you solve one half of the equation (lineage and transfer of ownership) but not the other (origination ownership)? Why on earth would an artist want to pursue that model if both aren't true?

> Ugh. How do I check with the artist when I don't know who the artist is?!

If you have interacted in the NFT space, you'll see that consensus on who the artist is forms from the community. Many projects are posted in areas with the artist information there. These are GUI additions that the marketplaces and websites post. Linked Twitter accounts you name it. The NFT itself can also have metadata about the artist, and the image itself can also have metadata or EXIF data about the artist. The address on the blockchain which created the NFT code can also be linked to a particular person by that own person's admission at some point in the past or simultaneously. So all is possible, a centralized component, or a decentralized component but none of the semantics matter: it is possible to determine, unless it isn't, and if it isn't, maybe don't trade that piece of work? Really fascinating to me that this obligation has been shoved onto the technology instead of personal responsibility, I'm more so curious where other people talk about NFTs this way because I don't know where the confusion is coming from.

> So you solve one half of the equation (lineage and transfer of ownership) but not the other (origination ownership)?

The NFT standard does not prescribe these things, but for you it is possible to get these things, or to just simply ignore the ones that don't give you the assurances you hope for. It's a consumer issue, you have the choice of buying things that fit your criteria. Not an artist issue, not an NFT concept issue.

> Why on earth would an artist want to pursue that model if both aren't true?

Because the first half of the equation is light years ahead of the alternative already. The most attractive thing to artists is the royalties concept. This is also attractive to the communities of art purchasers, who want to support living artists but found it extremely hard to determine value and community beforehand or in the other art markets. Outside of NFTs, artists have to be celebrities or have hundreds of years of provenance to have a collective conscious on their value. It is extremely limiting and hard to maintain. Now it is very easy, so overnight things have changed.

It is useful to know that the ratified NFT standards do not have a way to send royalties after a trade, and the marketplaces themselves do that on the NFT's behalf (ie. when an NFT is traded within a marketplace, royalty information is read from the NFT metadata and funds are sent to the original creator. when an NFT is traded outside of a marketplace no royalties are sent. Some people are working on that.)

Also its quite simple: many artists are broke and have no other marketable skills. many other artists have developed other marketable skills but would rather be doing art, if they could exchange time for food and shelter doing it. NFTs are an opportunity for them so they'll take what it provides and let consumers inherit what it provides, and not waiting around for another millennium for origination of ownership to be solved with telepathy (but its also very easy to include who should be the creator of the art depicted and the NFT issued, so I really wonder about what you are experiencing to better understand why you think this is an issue with the NFT space or the NFT concept). Both parties need to be sure they are understanding what they are trading and what they aren't.

Lol have you tried running own Ethereum node?

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