[carapace]

> The blockchain, smart contracts and NFTs are amazing technologies that could do wonders for mankind

Like what? I'm seriously. (Not trolling, not trying to feed fires.)

To me the whole thing seems bad, period, but I'm willing to entertain the idea that I'm wrong.

FWIW, I think "crypto" et. al. (in quotes because to me the term means "cryptography") is pointless because the Earth is small relative to the speed of light. Once we go interplanetary maybe there is a use for blockchain &c., but until then trustworthy centralized systems are obviously better.

[birracerveza]

You say that trustworthy centralized systems are obviously better simply because even today there is no viable alternative to them, but you can clearly see how that is cause for all types of problems. Most times you don't know who exactly you're trusting, and sometimes you are perfectly aware that those trustworthy individuals/companies are anything but that, but you're left no choice but to """trust""" them and hope they don't screw you over. And even if the company itself can be deemed trustworthy it doesn't mean that its individuals are too! This applies to all aspects of our lives, mainly because centralization up until now has been pretty much unavoidable due to technological constraints.

Enter the blockchain, smart contracts and all kind of buzzwords, and decentralization is finally starting to become a possibility. This blows wide open a whole lot of assumptions we make about our daily lives, so to avoid going into the political, economical, philosophical and moral aspects of what decentralization entails I'll stick to the one thing we know best: the internet.

The web as we know it today is pretty much FUBAR. You can see it on HN too, with plenty of news about websites screwing over their customers due to profit gouging, negligence, scaling/management issues... you name it. You have to trust these centralized websites that are completely closed off from everything else, and the website owner is completely in control of everything on its servers. You go to Google in order to do Google stuff the way that Google intends you to do and you have no choice on the matter. You liked that feature? Too bad, now it's gone because our internal tests found out that by removing it our conversion rate raised by 0.001%. And here, enjoy your new bloated, overdesigned UI. No, you can't switch to the old one. Also, your data is actually theirs', so they can just decide that they don't like you and just outright delete it, or sell it, or god knows what else. What do you mean you want to migrate somewhere else? Are you insane?? ...You get it. This applies to essentially every single website that you use, big and small. The data resides on the website's servers, whose security and management is up to the website's owner, and that's just how things work. In the worst case scenario websites could even act maliciously, as it happened when reddit's /u/spez abused its admin powers to change the content of comments that criticized him. All of this is unavoidable because of centralization, and hey, you agreed to the ToS after all.

That is not the case with Web3, because your data and your activity resides on the blockchain. Dapps access and interact with that data in a decentralized manner, and the resulting "status" of your account and the dapps themselves are the verifiable, unchangeable result of a sequence of actions that users performed on the blockchain through smart contracts. An example of what that means is that if for any reason a dapp you use decides to shut down their website for whatever reason, people would still be able to access and use that dapp by simply hosting the (usually open source) interface on another server and interact with the smart contract as per usual; the data and activity is still there on the blockchain, no one can seize or alter it and it will stay that way forever. You could also build your own website instead of using the official one. Also, dapps can use any other dapps' data with no restriction. To put this in perspective, the current web doesn't let you do that: you could use the provider's APIs, IF they're provided, but even then you would be subject to the limitations imposed, not to mention the provider has to actually stay up and let you access their APIs.

Granted, there is still some degree of trust involved as you could interact with a malicious smart contract, but it's still a _massive_ improvement over what we have now.

Another really cool aspect which makes it all worth it for me is the fact that you can use your account on any dapp without having to register to it with an arbitrary registration system you could be locked out of anytime: your account is just your wallet's keys, and you use those to sign your activity. Simple and effective.

Mind you, this is just the tip of the iceberg and something I wrote off the top of my head. There's a lot of cool stuff to be excited about that doesn't necessary involve money, but of course those take a lot more time and effort to be developed compared to marketing a get rich quick scheme, and certainly generate far less headlines.

We'll see how this pans out in a couple of years, but I'd certainly be gutted to see this die off because of human greed.

[carapace]

> You say that trustworthy centralized systems are obviously better simply because even today there is no viable alternative to them, but you can clearly see how that is cause for all types of problems. Most times you don't know who exactly you're trusting, and sometimes you are perfectly aware that those trustworthy individuals/companies are anything but that, but you're left no choice but to """trust""" them and hope they don't screw you over. And even if the company itself can be deemed trustworthy it doesn't mean that its individuals are too! This applies to all aspects of our lives, mainly because centralization up until now has been pretty much unavoidable due to technological constraints.

There are plenty of examples of betrayed trust in our supposedly trustworthy systems (to me the LIBOR scandal is a good example, or the VW emissions testing cheating scandal, or that time most of the major US tech companies conspired together to cheat their own engineers out of an estimated eight billion dollars of lost wages.) I agree with you that trust is an open problem, but it's one that I think is getting solved automatically for free by ubiquitous surveillance, if we administer it sanely.

A friend of mine thinks that CEOs and politicians should be required to submit to brain scans to weed out detectable psychological problems.

The advantage of centralization is efficiency.

> Enter the blockchain, smart contracts and all kind of buzzwords, and decentralization is finally starting to become a possibility. This blows wide open a whole lot of assumptions we make about our daily lives, so to avoid going into the political, economical, philosophical and moral aspects of what decentralization entails I'll stick to the one thing we know best: the internet.

Speaking as an open-minded but skeptical outsider, you would have to convince me that the blockchain provides/solves decentralization better than existing alternatives.

> The web as we know it today is pretty much FUBAR. You can see it on HN too, with plenty of news about websites screwing over their customers due to profit gouging, negligence, scaling/management issues... you name it. You have to trust these centralized websites that are completely closed off from everything else, and the website owner is completely in control of everything on its servers. You go to Google in order to do Google stuff the way that Google intends you to do and you have no choice on the matter. You liked that feature? Too bad, now it's gone because our internal tests found out that by removing it our conversion rate raised by 0.001%. And here, enjoy your new bloated, overdesigned UI. No, you can't switch to the old one. Also, your data is actually theirs', so they can just decide that they don't like you and just outright delete it, or sell it, or god knows what else. What do you mean you want to migrate somewhere else? Are you insane?? ...You get it. This applies to essentially every single website that you use, big and small. The data resides on the website's servers, whose security and management is up to the website's owner, and that's just how things work. In the worst case scenario websites could even act maliciously, as it happened when reddit's /u/spez abused its admin powers to change the content of comments that criticized him. All of this is unavoidable because of centralization, and hey, you agreed to the ToS after all.

Preaching to the choir my friend! I feel ya.

> That is not the case with Web3, because your data and your activity resides on the blockchain. Dapps access and interact with that data in a decentralized manner, and the resulting "status" of your account and the dapps themselves are the verifiable, unchangeable result of a sequence of actions that users performed on the blockchain through smart contracts. An example of what that means is that if for any reason a dapp you use decides to shut down their website for whatever reason, people would still be able to access and use that dapp by simply hosting the (usually open source) interface on another server and interact with the smart contract as per usual; the data and activity is still there on the blockchain, no one can seize or alter it and it will stay that way forever. You could also build your own website instead of using the official one. Also, dapps can use any other dapps' data with no restriction. To put this in perspective, the current web doesn't let you do that: you could use the provider's APIs, IF they're provided, but even then you would be subject to the limitations imposed, not to mention the provider has to actually stay up and let you access their APIs.

Again, not to be a spoilsport, but it sounds like I could do a lot of that with git and some cryptography. Maybe I just don't get it?

> Mind you, this is just the tip of the iceberg and something I wrote off the top of my head. There's a lot of cool stuff to be excited about that doesn't necessary involve money, but of course those take a lot more time and effort to be developed compared to marketing a get rich quick scheme, and certainly generate far less headlines.

> We'll see how this pans out in a couple of years, but I'd certainly be gutted to see this die off because of human greed.

On that we both agree. This stuff you're describing sounds interesting, and nothing like the scam-fest "crypto" stuff.

[birracerveza]

>I agree with you that trust is an open problem, but it's one that I think is getting solved automatically for free by ubiquitous surveillance, if we administer it sanely.

The problem is, who watches the watchmen? And who watches the watchmen who watch the watchmen? And so on, because at some point you have to trust someone not to act maliciously. Not to mention that ubiquitous surveillance is a problem in itself, because again who can we trust to administer it sanely? It all goes back to the same root problem: trust, which is fundamentally incompatible with human nature. The best course of action, IMO, is to do away with it entirely by using trustless systems.

>The advantage of centralization is efficiency.

Exactly! And because of that a certain degree of centralization is pretty much unavoidable, and it's why decentralization is not a silver bullet, and why the answer lies in the middle. A balance has to be found. A purely decentralized system is very slow to develop, maintain and update compared to a centralized solution; because of the glacial pace of development in the space, lots of detractors say that Bitcoin has been around for 10 years and nothing has changed, but I disagree with that! The ecosystem has matured a lot under the hood in these years, but it took a very long time to get to this point compared to what a centralized could do in the same span of time, with a lot of fragmentation and plenty of time spent coordinating actors towards a common goal. It's the complete opposite of "move fast and break things" :D

>Speaking as an open-minded but skeptical outsider, you would have to convince me that the blockchain provides/solves decentralization better than existing alternatives.

The only decentralized solution I see that works and has adoption is just torrents. Maybe git, if you stretch the definition a bit. But I don't see a way to build and deploy websites that doesn't involve blockchain, for example. What are the alternatives? The fediverse? Someone still has to maintain the instances, and once those go down the content is lost. Scuttlebutt seems to fit the bill, but barely anyone uses it.

>Again, not to be a spoilsport, but it sounds like I could do a lot of that with git and some cryptography. Maybe I just don't get it?

Well yes, but you'd just be reinventing web3 with none of the adoption. git can be thought of as a sorta blockchain, and wallets are simply public-key cryptography. The core issue is making it accessible to everyone and then actually getting people to use it, but luckily (and sadly) there is an economic incentive to drive adoption and usage, which is why crypto has experienced an explosive growth in the last years. Without that you're never going to put any kind of dent into the existing centralized systems, anything one would develop would just be a passion project at best. (again, scuttlebutt)

>On that we both agree. This stuff you're describing sounds interesting, and nothing like the scam-fest "crypto" stuff.

It is! I am one of the few who is unironically in it for the technology. Sure, the money would be a nice bonus, but these are shark infested waters so any money I throw in I just consider it a lost gamble. But it's interesting to see what people are building, there's plenty of people chasing stars and impossible pipe dreams, such as a fully decentralized society down to the government, and it's really hard to discern who is a snake oil salesman and who is actually interested in developing whatever they're peddling, but interesting projects do exist. The hard part is wading through the scams, of which crypto is 99% comprised of because of the lack of regulation. Hopefully this crash will cleanse the ecosystem and finally let actually useful projects that aren't just overly complicated financial games to shine through.

[carapace]

First off, let me apologize for not writing a more in-depth reply, you've put a lot of thought and effort into this and I appreciate it. I'll try not to waste your time. :)

> The problem is, who watches the watchmen? And who watches the watchmen who watch the watchmen? And so on, because at some point you have to trust someone not to act maliciously.

I've thought about this and I think the likely answer is that the system has to be self-referential (a recursive function, if you will.) The infrastructure and personnel of the panopticon must be subject to the panopticon. E.g. members of the CCP must be subject to the Chinese "social credit" system.

It seems to me that if everyone is subject to the system then we still have a techno-tyranny but it's ruled by Mrs. Grundy. Otherwise, if there are privilege levels to the panopticon, you're going to wind up with masters and slaves.

> Not to mention that ubiquitous surveillance is a problem in itself, because again who can we trust to administer it sanely?

I don't think we can avoid solving that problem, I think ubiquitous surveillance is unavoidable due to economic factors (e.g. the fleet of self-driving cars is a de facto surveillance network. See also "sensing for wi-fi": your router can see you.) It's already happening, eh? Our cell phone track our locations, etc.

> It all goes back to the same root problem: trust, which is fundamentally incompatible with human nature. The best course of action, IMO, is to do away with it entirely by using trustless systems.

Here's where I strongly disagree. I don't accept the "it's human nature" argument against our higher values. I've lived in high-trust and low-trust enclaves and high-trust is just better. It's more efficient, but more importantly it's just fantastic! It feels great! It's just as natural if not more so to love and trust each other as it is to hate or fear each other. The best course of action, IMO, is to foster the higher human values and establish and grow trustworthy regimes within the chaotic larger systems and eventually establish a kind of techno-utopian Golden Age. :)

Well met!

[birracerveza]

Cheers! It's not wasted time to have a sane and level headed exchange with someone who is interested in actual discussion. Usually it's just people looking to dunk on those dumb cryptobros for le epic upvotes, so this was a nice change of pace. Thank you! I enjoyed the talk, it has been a while since I geeked out about it.

>E.g. members of the CCP must be subject to the Chinese "social credit" system. It seems to me that if everyone is subject to the system then we still have a techno-tyranny but it's ruled by Mrs. Grundy. Otherwise, if there are privilege levels to the panopticon, you're going to wind up with masters and slaves.

The problem with this, panopticon aside, is that someone is bound to have these rules bent to their will: if the system is centralized then someone will inevitably have more power than someone else, and that someone will inevitably abuse that power. Bonus points if they create a narrative that convinces the public that the abuse was a good thing(tm) and is therefore accepted, swept under the rug or even considered the system working as intended. You know, as it already happens on a daily basis.

In an ideal decentralized system, everyone watches everyone. There is no one who has more power than any other, and everyone is bound to the same system with the same rules with no room for abuse. Of course, this is a utopia and not at all appliable to the real world, but it's an interesting thought experiment: how would such a system work if applied to humanity as a whole and no trust is required in your fellow human being anymore, as that trust is guaranteed by The System? It's not necessarily a good thing, mind you, as we'd have a different kind of panopticon: it might not be abusable by a single person, but it can be abused by the masses... and as we've seen lately that might be even worse.

>I don't think we can avoid solving that problem, I think ubiquitous surveillance is unavoidable due to economic factors (e.g. the fleet of self-driving cars is a de facto surveillance network. See also "sensing for wi-fi": your router can see you.) It's already happening, eh? Our cell phone track our locations, etc.

That's exactly why we need to solve the problem! We can't escape ubiquitous surveillance because it's here, and as long as we have the internet and electricity it will be here to stay. What we need to ensure is that it cannot be abused, bringing us back to my first point of watchmen all the way down.

>Here's where I strongly disagree. I don't accept the "it's human nature" argument against our higher values. I've lived in high-trust and low-trust enclaves and high-trust is just better. It's more efficient, but more importantly it's just fantastic! It feels great! It's just as natural if not more so to love and trust each other as it is to hate or fear each other. The best course of action, IMO, is to foster the higher human values and establish and grow trustworthy regimes within the chaotic larger systems and eventually establish a kind of techno-utopian Golden Age. :)

It's understandable that we disagree on this point, because doing away with trust is to reject part of what makes us humans in the first place. Trustless systems cannot be applied to all aspect of our lives, lest we become meat automatons bound by The System, but it can be applied to critical pieces of societal infrastructure to make lives better for everyone and distribute resources in an efficient manner. How? No idea, because such systems don't exist yet. I often see detractors parrot the "cryptocurrency is a solution looking for a problem" line, and that is partly true. We can fix some of the problems that plague society with cryptocurrencies (or better, tokenized decentralized systems), but we need to analyze these problems first and then create decentralized systems to fix them. Again, I've seen plenty of attempts at tackling such problems in the space; some turned out to be scams, some died, some are currently being worked on, but hopefully, eventually, some will see the light of day and bring some much needed positive change in our life... should it take years, if not decades.

In the meantime, we must do our best to improve society with the tools we have at hand. Even if those tools are often broken.

See you!

[birracerveza]

* But I don't see a way to build and deploy websites in a decentralized manner (as in, you don´t have to host the servers yourself or to a centralized entity like AWS) that doesn't involve the blockchain.

Fixed