> ENS’s job is to map human-readable names like ‘alice.eth’ to machine-readable identifiers such as Ethereum addresses, other cryptocurrency addresses, content hashes, and metadata.
So, for $5 (as of right now) a year, I can create a DNS-ish entry that points at a static piece of data (though not an IP?)? There are plenty of companies who sell DNS addresses (which can do the same things, plus IP), and while they do report to a single authority, that's to keep them in line, not to keep me in line.
Unlock Protocol:
> Create memberships and sell access NFTs in minutes
How is this not possible without a "central authority"? Exclusive community membership and cryptographically signed tokens have been around longer than you or I, likely even on the internet.
Being honest, neither of these are compelling technologies. At best, they're re-implementations of existing distributed technologies, just with a new backend. This isn't a bad thing, but neither is it very exciting.
You can point to anything.
> How is this not possible without a "central authority"?
Ask that to the people that got shut out of Patreon, OnlyFans, business in Russia that have nothing to do with the war and yet got blocked from transacting with the rest of the world, a freelancer in Venezuela who does not want to have their funds confiscated by Maduro's thugs...
> At best, they're re-implementations of existing distributed technologies, just with a new backend.
The big thing that you are missing out is that this backend is permissionless and that it can not be captured by any single entity. It's not so much about what it can do, but what it prevents from being done.
Basically, web3 can be the place where we can build the next search engine that is as revolutionary as early-day Google, without worrying that it will become a Goliath that controls every aspect of our lives. And that to me is very exciting.
We asked for an example of "good/useful/entertaining websites", and you are giving us technology demos, something that is only interesting to Web3 people.
How about some real-life useful stuff? Don't give me youtube, show me Kurzgesagt channel. Don't talk about Javascript, DOM and browser optimization, show me Google Maps.
Right now, all the stuff Web3 people produce is only interesting if you are into Web3 as well.
It's not because this is not "real-life" enough for you that it means that it is not worthy of being done.
And guess what? In just 4 years since GNU started, they had "assembler, an almost finished portable optimizing C compiler (GCC), an editor (GNU Emacs), and various Unix utilities (such as ls, grep, awk, make and ld)" [0]. Something that could be used even if you don't care about Stallman or software freedom.
If the goal of Web3 was to create blockchain libraries, no one would complain. But people, like you, say that Web3 has "useful applications" -- so what are those? Web3 is around for way long than 4 years, and it has much more people working too.
> so what are those?
Make up your damn mind! What counts as "useful" for you, GCC or Google Maps?
My guess is that you don't really care. You just want to take whatever answer you get and spin it in a way that pleases your biases and can score you some internet points.
So please quit wasting my time and go find something better to do with your life. Come back when you have done something that actually matters to people.
For a project whose target audience is "regular people", like the Web, the goal is the things which matter to people. Example: google maps.
For a project whose target audience is "programmers", like the GNU, the goal is the things which matter to programmers. Example: emacs, GNU make.
What is the target audience of crypto websites?
> What is the target audience of crypto websites?
People that care about self-sovereignty. Anyone that can not /does not/wants not to rely on central authority as their only means to interact with others around the world.
Yes we are. Yes, we re saying that. Because Unix was announced outside Bell Labs in 1973, and VisiCalc's first release was in 1979. It wasn't released on Unix, but that's really beside the point. Two years later it was available for basically any consumer system in existence.
And on top of that there was a wealth of other software available on those systems. For example, vi and emacs are both from 1976.
What you are saying is that "well, bitcoin paper is from 2008 (14 years ago), smart contracts are from 2014 (7 years ago), and we still have nothing even resembling VisiCalc, scratch that, we don't even have an equivalent of emacs or vi, `it's still early boohoo`"
The point is not just in having an application, the point is in having an application created under the new paradigm.
Goalposts: shifted.
The shift itself is also extremely funny because web3's entire premise is: "you pay for everything"
> The point is not just in having an application, the point is in having an application created under the new paradigm.
So, where are they? Where's web3's VisiCalc (1979), emacs (1976), vi (1976)? Douglas Engelbart's Mother of All Demos was in 1968 [1].
Oh, I know the answer. "Bitcoin paper was 14 years ago, smart contracts first proposed over 30 years ago, appeared on Ethereum 7 years ago, but it's still early for this new paradigm because Visicalc, Unix erm Linux, muble mumble"
Not at all. It was you and OP who asked for some kind of "killer app" from web3 as a way to justify its existence. My response is to say that this is an absurd ask.
Not only is absurd, it already exists, you just prefer to ignore it. I may agree that Bitcoin as a currency is a failed experiment, there is no denying that the possibility of sending value across borders is the killer app already.
"Oh, but BTC is volatile!". Yes, but I could in 2011 send money from the US to Brazil instantly without going through any international bank (buy in US exchange with USD, sell it in Brazilian exchanges in BRL, wire from the exchange to my brazilian bank) with minimal exposure to BTC volatility and at a lower cost than the fees charged by the banks.
But I am sure you want to ignore that, or find a reason to say that "it doesn't count". I can not fight your own prejudices.
No. Your response is literally "you wouldn't ask Unix people to create VisiCalc instead of compilers", but they did, to which you responded "but it isn't free".
> it already exists, you just prefer to ignore it. I may agree that Bitcoin as a currency is a failed experiment, there is no denying that the possibility of sending value across borders is the killer app already.
You mean, the thing that people have been doing since the invention of borders is the killer app?
> But I am sure you want to ignore that
No, I'm not ignoring that. And the reason it doesn't count because original question was about web3, and if all web3 has to offer is sending money across borders, it's not web3, it's Western Union 2.0.
This is disingenuous. (Also, ENS appears to be functionally similar to App.net [1]. I'm open to being challenged on this.)
One thing pervasively lacking from Web3 is compelling fiction. Not "this and that trustlessly," but a functional narrative of someone doing something useful or compelling they presently can't. VR has that. Crypto, not so much.
Instead we have pitches of doing the same things one can currently do, but decentralised. (Again, see App.net.) That will be appealing for a certain political niche. But Truth Social for libertarians, while definitely worth something, isn't the narrative web3 wants.