[teebs]

> This gets to the other mistake Diehl makes in that article, which, ironically, echoes a similar mistake made by many crypto absolutists: there is no reason why the Metaverse, or any web application for that matter, will be built on the blockchain. Why would you use the world’s slowest database when a centralized one is far more scalable and performant? It is not as if WhatsApp or Signal are built on top of the plain old telephone service; they simply leverage the fact that phone numbers are unique and thus suitable as identifiers. This is the type of role blockchains will fill: provide uniqueness and portability where necessary, in a way that makes it possible to not just live your life entirely online, but as many lives simultaneously as your might wish, locked in nowhere.

Halfway through this paragraph I thought Ben was arguing that phone numbers are a centralized service that shows that blockchain isn't necessary. Instead, he's arguing that blockchain will create "unique portable identities." This is an old vision that many companies have been pushing for a long time - "log in with Facebook" "sign in with Apple" etc. Today, we've pretty much settled on phone numbers and email addresses as a unique, portable identifier (plus accounts from big tech companies). You can even easily create new email addresses if you want multiple identities. Why do we need the blockchain to solve this problem either?

Another example of the same thing: he says that it doesn't make sense to use LLCs, which are built for the physical world, in the digital world. He says that the digital world can use DAOs. But, of course, "Stratechery" isn't a DAO - it's an LLC. Meta is an LLC. LLCs are already non-physical, even if they're not purely digital. That's precisely why LLCs were invented - to decouple capital from physical ownership. Why do we need DAOs when we already have LLCs? Is it just that you don't need a lawyer to make a DAO?

Ben spends a lot of time in this article arguing that blockchain can be better than centralized services for some purposes - but then fails to argue what those purposes are, in my opinion.

To me, conflating the metaverse/VR - which I think is overhyped but has some obvious value - with blockchain - which is a lot harder for me to understand - is a mistake.

[dhosek]

What the hell is a DAO anyway? The link on the article was to a paywalled article and I know it only as Data Access Object.

[kamray23]

Imagine that you have a network which connects millions upon millions of devices and which has two inherent properties we care about here: it keeps track of tokens, and it can keep track of and execute pieces of code you upload to it in exchange for those tokens.

A DAO is a piece of code which performs all the functions you would expect an organisation to perform. It, entirely automatically, keeps track of its finances, provides services, and makes sure it has enough tokens to keep running. It can even provide some means for control, perhaps even a voting system. Uploading it to the network makes that piece of code permanent, both unremovable and uneditable. Since it exists autonomously across a network of millions of machine, and behaves like an organisation, we call it a decentralised autonomous organisation.

Then imagine accidentally writing in a bug you didn't catch. Yeah, there goes the DAO. These things have in the past caused major online financial crises because they are code and have bugs.

[finnh]

You're in for a treat. Look up the "Decentralized Autonomous Organization", aka "the first big thing written on Ethereum, in which a huge amount of ETH was (predictably) immediately stolen". Thus leading to a fork of Ethereum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization)