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Comment by Stevvo | Hacker News Reader

Take a look at https://gitcoin.co/ and try and tell me that is not a "real productive use".

This is such a typical web 3 page. It doesn't even try to tell me what it is about, except promising "quadratic" money showers for open source Blockchain apps.

Apparently "the mathematically optimal way to fund public goods in a democratic community". Mathematics sure have increased in scope since I left uni.

Is quadratic funding better or worse than quantum liquidity?

It's probably on par right now, but I think we can expect HUGE improvements on the one, so it gets better than the other and the NEXT BIG THING.

Hope that helps.

The webpage doesn't make even a token effort to explain what their product is.

Its a cool project but nothing about how it works requires web3 technologies or blockchain technologies. Web3 still isn't "solving" any problem in that system.

Javascript is cool but no websites really need it. You could build a website without javascript. There's really no reason for it to exist other than to enrich the pockets of consultants. It's not solving any problem on the internet.

You can make this argument for any technology at this point. If people like crypto it will exist. It's the same with a lot of other things I think shouldn't exist like gold.

Gold is kind of useful aside from its human invented use as a store of value and solving the coincidence of wants problem.

But not useful enough to justify the current price. And not a smart investment according to Warren Buffett.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31816193

I don't have any teeth filled with gold. It's not necessary unless you are Post Malone.

Gold is useful as a unit test of physics theories, since most of them until the modern day couldn’t explain why it’s yellow.

> Javascript is cool but no websites really need it. You could build a website without javascript. There's really no reason for it to exist other than to enrich the pockets of consultants. It's not solving any problem on the internet.

That was a perfectly reasonable position to hold until, like, Google Maps. Meanwhile we're 10 years and counting into the crypto hype and still zero legitimate use cases where it adds value.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31825723

The only difference I can tell from the Plain Jane Web is they pay you out of the premine coins they held on to at the beginning. I assume, maybe people donate also.

I’ll have to poke around later and see if I can quit my day job while getting paid to solve real problems.

Ok, I looked. And now I will tell you with great ease.....it is not of a "real productive use".

I've used Brave/BAT to tip open source contributors on github. They appreciated it.

After waiting 20 seconds for that page to load for some reason, I scrolled all the way to the bottom without being told what it does. It appears to be some sort of foundation that provides grants to open source projects, except given it's "web3," I'm guessing that means it isn't actually a non-profit so gives none of the tax advantages a real foundation would give, doesn't have a board with a non-financial interest in the mission the way a real foundation would, and pays creators in cryptocurrency, which is a much less predictable and usable funding source since it varies so wildly in real currency denominated value and needs to be off-ramped to real currency to actually pay your developers and energy bills and what not.

After waiting 20 seconds for that page to load for some reason, I scrolled all the way to the bottom without being told what it does.

There are far too many web sites like that. Not just crypto-related ones. The ones with a flashy design, a blank for your email address, and far too little useful information. I refer to this as "the giant sucking sound of the onboarding funnel".

That's a marketing operation for Etherium.

Looked at it, was a bunch of crypto buzzwords.

If there's a productive use, it escapes me.

lol

> Gitcoin grants quadratic funding is not just for funds allocation, it's also a great signaling tool!

From the gitcoin footer:

  Gitcoin is a platform where you get paid to work on open source software in Python, Rust, Ruby, JavaScript, Solidity, HTML, CSS, Design, and more.

I'm assuming that payment is in some crypto token/currency.

That sentence sounds good!

But why was it hidden all the way down in the footer? Why was the rest of the page vacuous marketing copy that made my brain turn off?

And why does any of that need cryptocurrency? Grants for open source work have been around before cryptocurrency even existed.

Yes, I remember reading about this site on Hacker news post. There are a lot of search results here for gitcoin. Also, Product dropdown at the top shows what it does. Payment in crypto coins seems to be free from a lot of regulatory burden, I'm not saying that it's a good thing, but it's just there. Getting a crypto wallet is also a lot simpler than creating a bank account, I'm again in favor of KYC norms, but there's an appeal to it, if you're too young or because of some other reason you cannot get a bank account.

> Payment in crypto coins seems to be free from a lot of regulatory burden

The key word there is seems, you’ll probably find a lot of jurisdictions require you to report receiving payment through crypto.

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