[ique]

The idea that blockchain tech is somehow invented out of nothing and then we search for a problem to match couldn't be further from the truth. Talk to anyone who works in the industry and they're trying to solve a problem.

I used to work in blockchain tech and the main problem I was focused on was "How do we prevent internet monopolies like Facebook and Google?".

If you don't see those monopolies as a problem, then you're disagreeing with the problem space, that doesn't make it "trying to find a problem".

[tjs8rj]

How does blockchain tech prevent monopolies exactly? Any environment that respects property rights and has activities that can be done more efficiently with scale and concentration will have centralization. Cryptocurrencies themselves are centralized by almost every dimension because mining exhibits those characteristics. Nearly any interesting on chain technology is centralized in that a minority disproportionately receives the vast majority of the upside. None of this kills monopolies

[ique]

You are using a very different meaning of centralisation and decentralisation than blockchain people do.

That's neither here nor there though.

The way you kill Facebook, Google and any Web2 company is to kill their business model. These are all 100% ad-funded businesses. Kill the advertising funded internet and these monopolies categorically die with it.

The only _attempt_ I've ever seen at addressing the issue that all the major websites are ad-funded has been within the blockchain space. Show me any other realistic alternative to ad-funding and I will happily adopt it.

[meheleventyone]

The question is how does additional fund sources prevent people from also using advertising or collecting data? For example subscription services for newspapers often still show ads. Usually additional revenue streams are used to capture more revenue.

If the answer to killing the ad funding business model was individuals pay directly it’s going to face a steep uphill battle because right now for most people the cost to read is free. What improved experience does it provide for the additional cost?

[ique]

> If the answer to killing the ad funding business model was individuals pay directly it’s going to face a steep uphill

Indeed, we tried that and it failed, so we need something else.

Blockchain will probably fail because the narrative has been taken over by greed and NFTs.

But Web3 will fail because the tech world seemingly (as evidenced by the comments here) have no interest in solving the problems of Web2, rampant privacy violations, predatory business models and advertising. The answer to all these problems by HN is ”no one cares about privacy so it’s not worth solving”.

[meheleventyone]

I personally think that all those things won’t be solved by technology but by social measures like regulation.

[ique]

Then we're all doomed. Regulation has proven they have neither the interest nor capability to do anything about it, GDPR being the perfect example which have achieved nothing more than make Web2 more annoying to use.

[CRConrad]

> The answer to all these problems by HN is ”no one cares about privacy so it’s not worth solving”.

I think that's bullshit. It's just that most normal, sane, people think something like ”burning down the planet is no solution to the problem of privacy, and even if it were it would in itself be just as much of a problem, so it’s not worth attempting to solve it that way”.

It is frankly astounding that this isn't immediately obvious to anyone; verges on psychopathy in my book.

[CRConrad]

> For example subscription services for newspapers often still show ads.

And cable TV.

[meotimdihia]

how about https://github.com/oneclickdapp/ethereum-auth

And decentralized storage coins for example.

Bitcoin can solve USD monopoly.

And a lot of other examples...

[democracy]

What's wrong with USD monopoly? I am genuinely clueless, it's good to have currencies that are accepted anywhere in the world, isn't it?

[The_rationalist]

The issue is that USD use imply to follow a few conditions/rules which the the U.S use to its own interest IIRC

[democracy]

By having USD in my pocket I need to follow certain rules? Like what?

[usrbinbash]

And how does a distributed Ledger solve these problems?

Monopolies like Google and Facebook exist, in no small part, because the amount of computation and data they handle is vast, and they have the data centers to deal with that.

How much data gets has to be stored on the servers of such services? Per second? I'd assume its in the range of several GiB...again per second.

Okay, so how does the blockchain compare to that? Ethereum can store data, each byte requires about 600 of its "gas" computational equivalent. A block represents 30,000,000 gas, 1 block is generated every 15sec, so we can store a grand total of about 1MiB every 300 seconds...that is, if none of the gas is used for anything other than storing data, which means, no other computations running.

So how is "blockchain technology" going to solve the problems that come from such highly centralized services exactly?

[ique]

Monopolies like Google and Facebook exist because of advertising. Remove advertising and they don't exist.

The fact that they're processing a lot of data is in large part because they need to for advertising.

Still, your understanding of blockchain tech is misleading here. Ethereum is public key registry at best and is not and should not be used to store or process data.

In a blockchain world you can still have service providers, but the user is the one with the power, not the service provider. Users are free to switch service providers as they see fit because their identity and data isn't tied to a single company.

[usrbinbash]

> Remove advertising and they don't exist.

Remove advertising and the amount of users for most social networks drops to oblivion, because barely anyone wants to spend money every time they post a picture of their cat.

> The fact that they're processing a lot of data is in large part because they need to for advertising.

They need large amounts of storage because millions of hours of video & audio, billions of food-pictures, tens of billions of lines of text, and a megagagazillion of references on who-like-clicked-what-when, take up a lot of storage.

> and is not and should not be used to store or process data.

Well then, what should be used? What decentralized storage solution can handle something like youtube, where 500 HOURS of video were uploaded PER MINUTE in feb. 2020?

And storing is half the deal. The solution also has to have high availability, consistency, low latency, and needs to be environmentally sound.

[dmitriid]

> Users are free to switch service providers as they see fit

No they are not. That is, they will need just as "free" to switch in the non-blockchain world.

Why? Obvious, isn't it?

- Blockchains can't store the amounts of data required (Youtube/Instagram/TikTok on blockchain? What a nice joke)

- Even if you somehow can, companies will store data in their own proprietary ways incompatible with each other

- And, of course, this data will be on different blockchains, some of them invented specifically for the purpose

In reality though, as we're seeing it with NFTs all the data will be centrally stored with only some meaningless tokens referencing it stored on blockchains

[ique]

Data will never be stored on blockchains, its not what they’re for. It’s amusing that you’re so vehemently against something you know nothing about.

[usrbinbash]

So if its not stored on the chain, where will it be stored, if not on central servers, where its ultimately under control of whoever owns them?

In a distributed network? How does that handle the data loads and requirements (availability, latency, security) of services on the scale of fb or youtube?

[dmitriid]

ique: Users are free to switch service providers as they see fit because their identity and data isn't tied to a single company.

me: data can't be stored on the bockchain, it will remain proprietary, so good luck "being free" and switching between service providers

ique: Data will never be stored on blockchains, its not what they’re for.

So, how exactly are users going to be "free to switch service providers" if their data will literally remain in a walled garden of the service provider?

[obstacle1]

> Talk to anyone who works in the industry and they're trying to solve a problem.

Sure. But are those problems worth solving? How many VCs does the world need to pump cash into NFT-enabled video games before we ask the question, "why?"

https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/22/nba-top-shot-creator-dappe...

[ique]

What makes a problem worth solving exactly?

How many SaaS businesses do we need? How many todo apps do we need? How many game engines do we need?

[x86_64Ubuntu]

There's quite a bit of distance between blockchain tech and preventing Facebook/Google monopolies isn't there? And as long as blockchain tech has some dependency on capital investment, your better funded outfits are always going to have the terrain tilted in their favor.

[ique]

If it has dependency on capital investment, it's not blockchain tech. Like almost by definition. Unless you adopt a super dumb idea of "blockchain = linked list". If you're talking about more than the data structure then what you're saying makes no sense.

[democracy]

I am trying to solve world's hunger with my OpenGL game using 8080 assembler. I think I am getting somewhere...

[ique]

Good luck! I hope you succeed, it’s certainly a goal worth pursuing!

[The_rationalist]

Well they might be able to render food thanks to you.