[princekolt]

The reason you haven’t heard a coherent answer to what problems web3 is supposed to solve is because there aren’t any. It’s just a continuation of the past 5-10 years of cryptocurrency pump and dump schemes (which also include ICOs and NFTs). Just a bunch of hot air. As you correctly put it, it’s just a bunch of opportunists making money off of tech-gullible people.

[bytelines]

Don't forget crypto's monetization of computer crime! You don't need to get that pesky data and figure out what to do with it, the processor time itself is money.

More seriously - I can't really speak to web 3 in general but as far as crypto here's an example:

https://www.ledgerinsights.com/shinhan-standard-bank-trial-s...

Another one: consider you go to a bar, and need to prove you are age of majority. Today you do this with a state issued ID, which are easily forged. What would a digital alternative look like?

You could certainly issue some sort of credential from the state, and present that credential to the bar, and the bar would validate it with the state. Now the state knows you went to the bar.

What if the state doesn't handle the validation, but provides some sort of cryptographically secure assertion to a distributed, decentralized ledger. And the bar doesn't validate your credential (your digital ID) with the state, but verifies it in the ledger.

Another one: distributed session management - https://www.pingidentity.com/content/dam/pic/downloads/resou...

Disclaimer: have worked at both Ping and Hedera

[violetthrift]

The bar example is a still a bit vexing to me, because it's the sort of problem/solution I often see brought up as an example, but I still fail to see the utility. A digital signature (e.g. PGP) already can act as a certificate of authenticity from a trusted party and all you need is their public key. Could you explain what the blockchain improves about that, or what it solves in that application that digital signatures don't already?

[bytelines]

That its difficult to do today, you need to manage your own private key infrastructure. So it becomes reserved for a few important things, like a digital ID.

What if it were easy and dirt cheap to make a provable claim about anything, in seconds, with a fraction of the infrastructure cost?

Like "I am signed into this application". Or "I have received a covid vaccine", or "i authorized this payment". Theres probably a lot more, my background is in identity so those are the ones I know.

Yes you can do those today but they all carry significant cost, and as a result there are significant moats around established players.

Just like Letterman asking "why do I need such information, have you heard of magazines?". Its true, magazines can do that. Just like PKI can do all those things.

[ahtihn]

Just load the state's public key into the verification apps, have the identity QR code be signed with the state's private key and you're done. You can now verify identities without the state ever being aware of verifications taking place.

No need for blockchain when a central authority is issuing identity documents anyway.

If you want to delegate signing authority just do something like SSL certs.

[bytelines]

Yes, exactly. And now think of all the limitations of running a PKI.

For many use cases, Crypto doesn't do things a PKI can't. It just does them without some of those limitations.

[runeks]

> It just does them without some of those limitations.

How so?

The hard problem is linking a public key to a real-world identity. A blockchain doesn’t help with this in any way.

[howderek]

Why would a ledger be necessary? Couldn't a root certificate store be used, such as today with HTTPS? Then, the bar doesn't even need to connect their verification system to the internet, other than for the occasional patch.

[bytelines]

It isn't. It just makes it cheap and easy. Its not a problem for a government agency to run a PKI, and for verifying identities they probably should.

But what about smaller entities, or even individuals. And what if they don't want to verify their identity but maybe an action.

Its not introducing anything new. It's just lowering the capital costs to doing it. Much like the internet lowered the costs to publishing and distributing an essay.

[NicoJuicy]

A passport can't easily be forged if you use it like it's supposed to ( read & verify data from the chip )

What can be manipulated is the visual representation of the passport. Since some people want to quickly verify a date. That wouldn't work with an Eid reader, that can be used offline.

[trophycase]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gipL_CEw-fk

You're david letterman.

[bytelines]

Wow, this is amazing.

In a way Letterman absolutely had great points: you don't need to watch baseball on your computer, you have a radio for that. You don't need access to this information via a computer, you can use magazines for that.

Looking back on this almost thirty years later, what was missing is the limitations and the consequences.

Yes, you could use your radio. But you were limited to being able to listen to certain times, or certain places. And only baseball and maybe a few sports.

Yes, you could get that information, but only through the magazine.

What the internet did was lower the barrier to this. 30 years later, and I can watch esport championships hosted in South Korea months ago, for free, after my kids go to bed.

And what were the consequences for print journalism?

I think you need the same idea for evaluating crypto: yes, you can obviously do many of the things crypto can do, without crypto. But what are the limitations? And what will be the consequences?

[hamilyon2]

As I said elsewhere, permissionlessness and effeciency. Consequences are that you no longer need to be high frequency trader to transfer large amount of value with low cost.

Similarly, now if you want to transfer very little value without cost, your options are to be within same bank or telecom operator as your receiver. Or watch an ad.

Imagine you could transfer 0.5 cent internationaly every minute or every page load for no added cost. What kind of service would that enable? Content monetising without ads, one example. Censorship-free hosting as a service, the other one.

[trophycase]

It's much more than that even IMO. We're just getting started.

[dazhengca]

They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

[trophycase]

Ok, but the argument against it here seems to be: "I don't really understand it, haven't tried to, and haven't bothered to use it. Therefore it's dumb and has no use case."

[bytelines]

Bozo was intentionally funny though. "they also laughed at DeLorean"?

[salawat]

You forgot the more important part:

What Web3 is pitched to be is completely antithetical to what most people want in the sense that by it's nature, Web3 basically makes AML and other financial controls pretty much impossible to reliably implement and enforce.

You will not get trivial money transfer over the Internet without a gatekeeper. Not permanently anyway. As soon as the primitive for doing so comes into existence, it is guaranteed to be regulated on a when not if basis.

Whether you try to exploit the short time before the law catches up to it says more about whether you're a gambler or not than anything else.

[StanislavPetrov]

>What Web3 is pitched to be is completely antithetical to what most people want in the sense that by it's nature, Web3 basically makes AML and other financial controls pretty much impossible to reliably implement and enforce.

I don't know a single person who is in favor of "financial controls" or other coercive behavior by the US government, the FED and various regulatory agencies to track our every transaction and tell us how we are allowed to spend and use our own hard earned money.

[salawat]

again, that's cool. However, you elect people who then go to Washington, turn around, give their blessing to tge Fed/DHS etc... to do it, or delegate doing their jobs to tge Executive with a minimum of oversight.

if it truly were so unpopular, it'd be on legislators hit lists and talking points. That's the opposite of what I see.

[Sargos]

Do you have any citations for your claim that most people want KYC? All the data I've seen indicates it's a government initiative and not debated or discussed with the general public. In fact the polls we do have show an overwhelming support for cash which is private and peer to peer.

[salawat]

it really doesn't matter whether the public hates KYC or not, because Law Enforcement will alwaya have the regulators ears, and eventually the KYC and AML can get pushed hard enough to increase traceability enough to start potentially prosecuting white collar crimes.

And if you don't think there's a war on cash with the push for CBDC's you're high. Or have you not noticed the going on 2 year coin shortage entirely because someone just isn't interested in keeping up the coinage supply? Or how there are currency transaction reports to law enforcement on any sizable cash withdrawal, or how banks train employees to red flag any type of regular transacting just below the SAR monitoring point?

It is too profitable and powerful a diplomatic tool to be a realistic outcome in my cynical view for government to do anything but double down on financial surveillance.

[Sargos]

I was responding to this

>What Web3 is pitched to be is completely antithetical to what most people want in the sense that by it's nature, Web3 basically makes AML and other financial controls pretty much impossible

So you've pretty much made my point with your reply. People don't want KYC, authoritarian governments do. People decide what they are okay with and not governments and as the failed war on drugs has shown governments don't really get what they want long term.

People want private cash and an open financial system and then will have it regardless of what government thinks.

[salawat]

>People want private cash and an open financial system and then will have it regardless of what government thinks.

What people want, and what they actually get are two completely different things, and the process of moving from one thing to another is slow, bump filled, spans lifetimes, and requires a refresher every few generations.

I'm not denying that KYC and AML is a pain in the arse most people wish would go away. Hell, I'm ready for a bit of that. I have, unfortunately, been part of that system though. I have also seen from sampling of job offerings in the space, that the hires getting planned out paint a picture of societies getting ever more tightly integrated, and doubling down on who can participate in the financial system.

A theoretical question for you. Do you believe that authorities will blink at enacting some coercive structural implementation that will give them an effective lever to use for controlling cryptocurrencies? Do not mistake slow progress, for no progress. Especially when immutable stores of data are concerned.

Hard limits on power consumption, limits on hardware manufacture, protocol filtering, other more intrusive measures; it is all on the table.

KYC/AML itself was at one point far outside the Overton Window. It only took a short time for the circumstances to arise for that to rapidly change.

This isn't a case of Tech doe tech's thing, and society does another. The tech will be judged by the rest of society on it's utility, what it enabled, and whether that justifies adoption or regulation.

People are not stupid. Do not mistake not agreeing with you or silence as assent. I apologize if I'm sounding preachy, as it isn't my intent; I merely caution to temper your estimation of societal uptake with a comprehensive reevaluation of the objectives and end goals of the apparatus to which everyone delegates the responsibility of making the infrastructure that even spawned the potential for technology/technique possible.

All tech throws more work at creating minima in terms of facilitating some way of life. By the act of an allegedly representative government, it was decreed there was utility to higher friction in this particular sector of human endeavor.

Wait til the ink is dry to pop the champagne is all I'm trying to say. It's far from a settled question, and life never ceases to find ways to surprise.