[jd007]

IMO this diagnosis is still one level away from a more fundamental truism, which is that people don't want to pay anything for digital goods. Running servers can and has been massively simplified over the last couple decades, and I don't see any inherent technical barrier preventing it from being as simple as registering for an account on FB (i.e. anyone can do it). The deeper problem is the lack of willingness to pay (directly) for anything online.

The reason for this is complex, with lots of unclear cause and effect dynamics (e.g. did our unwillingness to pay push the ecosystem to gravitate towards ad-based revenue models, or the other way around?). The inevitable race to the bottom between competitors, under the massive incentive for platforms to centralize/consolidate (if you charged any amount for your service I can always under-price and out-compete you) is likely a major contributor. We do not exhibit such reservations against payment for anything physical, probably because of the innate sense we have that anything in physical reality should have a cost, yet not so in the digital world.

[Robotbeat]

I’m not sure I agree with that. People wanna pay as little as possible but they gladly pay for Netflix or whatever. People spend a lot of money on Amazon because they make it really easy to pay. One of the original promises of cryptocurrency is it would make micro transactions easy and painless (with something to do about trust, but… that goes in the opposite direction than consumers would like as it’s the provider that doesn’t have to trust the consumer instead of the other way around like with credit cards which allow you to back charge stuff).

The key is still making stuff easy to pay for. Low transaction fees. Low risk to the consumer. Low friction overall. Ideally we would want to enable that without enabling monopolies like Amazon. Because the low friction is Amazon’s real moat.

[XorNot]

Netflix sets up a very obvious dollars-to-value relationship. "Subscribe" and watch "things you already want to watch" - easily.

Most types of online monetization fail that test: subscribe and then you'll use this website for 15 minutes, then the promise is it will do something later that will be worth $10 a month to you. They're the gym-membership of digital services.

They want you to pay to join, but you don't actually know what you're getting and you don't know if you're going to find it usable at even a minimal level. Netflix deals with this too: they sell you access to a movie catalogue, not a specific movie - built into the model is a hedge against local risk for a product which already has very broad appeal.

[Robotbeat]

That's why micropayments are a neat idea. Sure, I'd pay a dime or a quarter to read you crappy news site. A quarter doesn't matter, as long as you don't bug me, I'm not subscribed to anything, and I just click. That's kind of what Bitcoin was promising... Of course for several reasons, that doesn't actually work with Bitcoin.

[prox]

This the Zinger comment for me. Low friction.

Steam does amazing because it’s all so easy and well developed. Steam is also very conservative in its development and doesn’t add stuff for the sake of it, like so many other companies fall for (Norton Crypto anyone?)

Also, we think we are there when it comes to UX, but I feel we haven’t even started to make good UX paradigms.

I am fervently anti crypto, and haven’t seen any argument that makes me move an inch, because all of the current alternatives are so much safer and easier. However, the idea of an internet wallet does appeal that’s distributed rather than centralized does appeal on some level. Crypto enthusiasts should focus on that more.

[wpietri]

Agreed. There are significant audiences where cognitive load is a much bigger barrier than spending actual money. But people do want privacy, independence, and control, so I think non-centralized services could still work.

I think "virtual server" is the wrong abstraction here. It's like "radio with pictures" or "horseless carriage" in that it's telling us we haven't found the right new way to think about it.

[wmf]

people don't want to pay anything for digital goods

Which brings up a different problem: Web3 assumes that everything you do online will cost money. Even assuming that fees go to zero, virtually nobody wants that. Web3 advocates will say that the money you earn will offset what you spend, but you only have to look at Patreon/Substack/OnlyFans earnings to see that it won't happen for most people.

[FridgeSeal]

It also strikes me that there’s an implicit requirement to “already have sufficient capital” to operate in the crypto space - even more so that normal finance. I don’t see middle-to-low income people being willing to adopt this as any interaction will burn even more of a limited resource than normal mechanisms.

If the majority of people can’t get in, or can’t afford to do anything in the space, is there any real chance this will actually take off?

Now I’m sure someone will respond along the lines of “crypto is an investment/asset not a currency, etc etc etc” in which case, why is it trying to do all these currency things?

[wmf]

Buy $10 of crypto, use play-to-earn to turn it into $100, then you can afford to use Web3. /sarcasm

[IanCal]

Arguably, everything does. You just also either sell something at the same time or someone else subsidises it for you. Neither of those approaches are forbidden in web3. It may be more explicit at least.

More generally though, "everything" there means state changing operations. Read only doesn't.

[dmarcos]

Fortnite made $50 million selling NFL skins alone:

https://www.sportskeeda.com/amp/fortnite/the-fortnite-skin-g...

And the total sales volume since release is in the billions.

Maybe a generational thing?

[bmeski]

Kids who get a hold of their parents credit cards or the new generation of people who will live off stocks their parents gave them.

We’ll see how much they’ll be spending on skins when they grow up/can’t game all the time.

However I think this new class of all day gamers isn’t going anywhere. It’s the perfect time sink for the new leisure class.

Orgy porgy