18 ms·

What Is Web3? Should You Care?

42 points by bwooster 5y ago

guilhas 5y ago
Yes we should. Very exciting time full of opportunities If people ignore the buzzword scams, and focus on what is possible to change with these new paradigms... I am already getting FOMO
- jwilber 5y ago
  Can you describe some of these possible changes?
  - noman-land 5y ago
    There's a lot to say but one of the big ones for me is normalizing the use of public key crypto for identity management. Now anyone can create a keypair offline and suddenly they have a way for people to interact with them and they don't have to run any of the infrastructure themselves. I like that it inverts the concept of "self hosting" into "everybody hosting".
    - hihihihi1234 5y ago
      What problem does this solve? What's wrong with the way I currently do "identity management"?
      - anchpop 5y ago
        It solves the problem of needing to make and remember a username/password on every site you use, it solves the problem of password hashes being leaked when a site gets compromised, it solves the problem of not being able to know that hihihihi1234 on hackernews is the same person as hihihihi1234 on lobste.rs, and it solves the problem of trying to make an account on a website only for your typical username to be taken already
        Spivak 5y ago
        How does me making an offline private key with the username Spivak fix the problem of someone else making their own key with the name Spivak? There is still a shared namespace of user ids. And if it’s fine that two keys have the same display name then you could just do what Discord does and do Spivak#42069. There can still only be one twitch.tv/spivak.
      - noman-land 5y ago
        It solves a few problems as mentioned below. Every single form of your identity right now is mediated by a third party. Your email. Your Instagram. Your Twitter. Your phone number. Your bank account. Not only that, but each one is independent of the other. That's 5 different accounts with 5 different providers. Each of them has a vast infrastructure and duplicate copy of everything about you and everything about everything else. Each one of them has an off switch to your identity that they can freely flip on a whim with no recourse available to you. If you invert that and say that your identity is no longer mediated by any specific entity, or array of entities, it is mediated by a provably neutral public infrastructure that is completely opt in and costs only the amount that is proportional to your usage. Now the identity resides with the user, not any third party, which means they have full control over it, without having to rely on any one entity that can fail or turn against you.
        dwaite 5y ago
        > Your email. Your Instagram. Your Twitter. Your phone number. Your bank account. These are identifiers, backed by accounts with credentials. > If you invert that and say that your identity is no longer mediated by any specific entity, or array of entities, it is mediated by a provably neutral public infrastructure that is completely opt in and costs only the amount that is proportional to your usage. What value does this have for your email provider? Instagram or Twitter? The phone company? The bank? All of these companies provide value _through_ the identifier. Checking accounts and Credit cards issued by the bank. The phone number. Your handle on Instagram or Twitter. Many of these need to have an idea of a real-world identity for regulatory reasons. For account recovery actions. For effective enforcement of abuse bans. What about this off switch? Even if I show up with my own identifier - twitter can still refuse to post my messages. My bank could block access to my funds. This vision seems to be able replacing these businesses with new businesses and new infrastructure.
        NicoJuicy 5y ago
        Your first sentence greatly exaggerates the content that follows. I don't see any actual problems with the latter. I do see more problems with the "solutions" actually. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
        5y ago
    - dwaite 5y ago
      This doesn't require web3 though. We have Web Authentication already integrated into every browser.
  - clay-dreidels 5y ago
    evilmaid.crypto
  - guilhas 5y ago
    Just being completely random imagine the internet is now the multiverse. And everything publish on it is an NFT, posts, videos, images, comments. Like the current internet but everything has a value. Creating a comment on StackOverflow could get you paid instead of just reputation The NFT concept seems stupid at first, and a 60 million NFT is definitely stupid. But imagine Youtube is the metaverse where videos, or NFTs, are published, and the owners will forever receive royalties from Youtube advert/membership profits. People can upload similar videos, but then there is, for example, music rights violation arbitrated by the site that some or all the profits of the video revert back to the original creator. And generally all free for the consumer. By no means perfect Mining could be people caching, and serving NFT content, through which they could get paid, and preserve internet. Partially replacing web hosting, and preventing censorship. Using your neighbors pcs to speed up video encoding For example the Google News problem with Spain and Australia URLs can be NFTs, and have rules. If a site is referencing a URL and is profiting, a part should go to the URL owner, but if the URL is clicked then a part goes to the site that referenced it https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/3/22761041/google-news-relaunch-spain-payments-publishers-eu-copyright-directive https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/3/22761041/google-news-rela... You might say that people don't like these new concepts, or mining is bad for the environment, but right now we can make them what we want them to be. The internet will evolve somewhere and if we don't think about it, someone else will and we won't like the result! Everything is up for grabs, payment systems, identity authentication, personal data management, web3 economic model, social media, news platforms...
    - iudqnolq 5y ago
      Just ask: How much money do you expect to get? Who currently has that money? Why would they give it to you?
      - clippablematt 5y ago
        1) more than I get now 2) ceo of Spotify is worth estimated $5billion maybe start there, shouldn’t that (be it money or ownership in Spotify) be going to the musicians who actually make the content and who get fractions of pennies? 3) they probably don’t want to. But we can just build systems that replace them. It seems to be working so far.
pketh 5y ago
web 1 and 2 promised very little and delivered a lot, web3 looks like the opposite
- 0xcoffee 5y ago
  I feel like web 1 & 2 was really about sharing things. Newsgroups and forums. Then videos and social media. However 'web3' seems the opposite. Decentralization is touted as a feature, because we cannot place our trust in other people. NFT hype is all about 'claiming' ownership over something. Where is the sharing and community? For these reasons I do not think it is something interesting.
  - enos_feedler 5y ago
    also the early web had some hype with claiming ownership of web domains.
  - tomByrer 5y ago
    "because we cannot place our trust in corporations" Fixed your statement to demonstrate why Web3 is a thing. Once we saw how many scientists on FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, YT, etc got muted the past few years, the need for communication outside of the corporations is desperately needed.
    - dwaite 5y ago
      There has never been a web problem with people being published. Run your own website. What you are talking about is how large companies are not willing to amplify those voices. Web3 so far has not been about new forms of publishing _or_ amplification nearly as much as it has been about owning generated cat drawings. I don't think it is meant to solve this problem. There's also the question of whether uncontrolled and anonymous amplification is a societal harm.
      - 8note 5y ago
        I'd rephrase amplification as discovery. As a consumer of publications, I am limited by the centralization of discovery mechanisms, to only see what big companies want to show me. It becomes a bigger problem when they choose to show different people disjoint information. Eg. Somebody could plan and attempt a coup without me hearing about it till after the fact, even though they conspired quite openly
dropnerd 5y ago
you can lose half of your logins (oauth) if faang's algorithm don't like you. decentralized identities fix this for free (no-onchain transactions required)
- md_ 5y ago
  Indeed, but I do wonder whether most users need a single global identity anyway. FIDO keys or—gasp—passwords-per-site seem to solve the real problem most users have (which is, you know, maintaining logins). I do think if there were strong user demand for a unified web identity (beyond email identifiers, which aren’t obviously improved by blockchain), we’d see more adoption of OIDC, including offered by IdPs who only provide that service. Instead, the common providers are providing federated identity as a sideline—you don’t create an Apple or Facebook account because you want to be able to sign in with Facebook elsewhere on the web; you create it ‘cause you want to use Facebook’s app. Users don’t care—or don’t understand—federated identity, so they sure as hell aren’t going to be interested in blockchain-decentralised versions.
  - clippablematt 5y ago
    I’ve shown rainbow to a few of my friends. Shown them how to log into a site by scanning the wallet connect code and all their data moves with them and their wallet. From my experience they all really like it and prefer it to passwords and password managers. Add to this everyone getting used to scanning QR codes during COVID and suddenly what was seen as a big point of friction in ux isn’t such a big deal anymore. Give it a couple years for more social-recovery wallets to be developed and we’re good. I’m really happy that alternatives to passwords/login with facebook/emails are taking off. Good to have options. There was a while there where sites only had a google log in and it was painful.
    - md_ 5y ago
      How is it different than WebAuthn+FIDO2?
diveanon 5y ago
Can’t wait to see the tone of this forum change when YC starts investing in metaverse projects using web3 for auth.
- dang 5y ago
  HN commenters hardly take their cues from that.

42 points by bwooster 5y ago

Yes we should. Very exciting time full of opportunities If people ignore the buzzword scams, and focus on what is possible to change with these new paradigms... I am already getting FOMO

jwilber 5y ago
Can you describe some of these possible changes?
- noman-land 5y ago
  There's a lot to say but one of the big ones for me is normalizing the use of public key crypto for identity management. Now anyone can create a keypair offline and suddenly they have a way for people to interact with them and they don't have to run any of the infrastructure themselves. I like that it inverts the concept of "self hosting" into "everybody hosting".
  - hihihihi1234 5y ago
    What problem does this solve? What's wrong with the way I currently do "identity management"?
    - anchpop 5y ago
      It solves the problem of needing to make and remember a username/password on every site you use, it solves the problem of password hashes being leaked when a site gets compromised, it solves the problem of not being able to know that hihihihi1234 on hackernews is the same person as hihihihi1234 on lobste.rs, and it solves the problem of trying to make an account on a website only for your typical username to be taken already
      - Spivak 5y ago
        How does me making an offline private key with the username Spivak fix the problem of someone else making their own key with the name Spivak? There is still a shared namespace of user ids. And if it’s fine that two keys have the same display name then you could just do what Discord does and do Spivak#42069. There can still only be one twitch.tv/spivak.
    - noman-land 5y ago
      It solves a few problems as mentioned below. Every single form of your identity right now is mediated by a third party. Your email. Your Instagram. Your Twitter. Your phone number. Your bank account. Not only that, but each one is independent of the other. That's 5 different accounts with 5 different providers. Each of them has a vast infrastructure and duplicate copy of everything about you and everything about everything else. Each one of them has an off switch to your identity that they can freely flip on a whim with no recourse available to you. If you invert that and say that your identity is no longer mediated by any specific entity, or array of entities, it is mediated by a provably neutral public infrastructure that is completely opt in and costs only the amount that is proportional to your usage. Now the identity resides with the user, not any third party, which means they have full control over it, without having to rely on any one entity that can fail or turn against you.
      - dwaite 5y ago
        > Your email. Your Instagram. Your Twitter. Your phone number. Your bank account. These are identifiers, backed by accounts with credentials. > If you invert that and say that your identity is no longer mediated by any specific entity, or array of entities, it is mediated by a provably neutral public infrastructure that is completely opt in and costs only the amount that is proportional to your usage. What value does this have for your email provider? Instagram or Twitter? The phone company? The bank? All of these companies provide value _through_ the identifier. Checking accounts and Credit cards issued by the bank. The phone number. Your handle on Instagram or Twitter. Many of these need to have an idea of a real-world identity for regulatory reasons. For account recovery actions. For effective enforcement of abuse bans. What about this off switch? Even if I show up with my own identifier - twitter can still refuse to post my messages. My bank could block access to my funds. This vision seems to be able replacing these businesses with new businesses and new infrastructure.
      - NicoJuicy 5y ago
        Your first sentence greatly exaggerates the content that follows. I don't see any actual problems with the latter. I do see more problems with the "solutions" actually. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
      - 5y ago
  - dwaite 5y ago
    This doesn't require web3 though. We have Web Authentication already integrated into every browser.
- clay-dreidels 5y ago
  evilmaid.crypto
- guilhas 5y ago
  Just being completely random imagine the internet is now the multiverse. And everything publish on it is an NFT, posts, videos, images, comments. Like the current internet but everything has a value. Creating a comment on StackOverflow could get you paid instead of just reputation The NFT concept seems stupid at first, and a 60 million NFT is definitely stupid. But imagine Youtube is the metaverse where videos, or NFTs, are published, and the owners will forever receive royalties from Youtube advert/membership profits. People can upload similar videos, but then there is, for example, music rights violation arbitrated by the site that some or all the profits of the video revert back to the original creator. And generally all free for the consumer. By no means perfect Mining could be people caching, and serving NFT content, through which they could get paid, and preserve internet. Partially replacing web hosting, and preventing censorship. Using your neighbors pcs to speed up video encoding For example the Google News problem with Spain and Australia URLs can be NFTs, and have rules. If a site is referencing a URL and is profiting, a part should go to the URL owner, but if the URL is clicked then a part goes to the site that referenced it https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/3/22761041/google-news-relaunch-spain-payments-publishers-eu-copyright-directive https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/3/22761041/google-news-rela... You might say that people don't like these new concepts, or mining is bad for the environment, but right now we can make them what we want them to be. The internet will evolve somewhere and if we don't think about it, someone else will and we won't like the result! Everything is up for grabs, payment systems, identity authentication, personal data management, web3 economic model, social media, news platforms...
  - iudqnolq 5y ago
    Just ask: How much money do you expect to get? Who currently has that money? Why would they give it to you?
    - clippablematt 5y ago
      1) more than I get now 2) ceo of Spotify is worth estimated $5billion maybe start there, shouldn’t that (be it money or ownership in Spotify) be going to the musicians who actually make the content and who get fractions of pennies? 3) they probably don’t want to. But we can just build systems that replace them. It seems to be working so far.

pketh 5y ago

web 1 and 2 promised very little and delivered a lot, web3 looks like the opposite

0xcoffee 5y ago
I feel like web 1 & 2 was really about sharing things. Newsgroups and forums. Then videos and social media. However 'web3' seems the opposite. Decentralization is touted as a feature, because we cannot place our trust in other people. NFT hype is all about 'claiming' ownership over something. Where is the sharing and community? For these reasons I do not think it is something interesting.
- enos_feedler 5y ago
  also the early web had some hype with claiming ownership of web domains.
- tomByrer 5y ago
  "because we cannot place our trust in corporations" Fixed your statement to demonstrate why Web3 is a thing. Once we saw how many scientists on FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, YT, etc got muted the past few years, the need for communication outside of the corporations is desperately needed.
  - dwaite 5y ago
    There has never been a web problem with people being published. Run your own website. What you are talking about is how large companies are not willing to amplify those voices. Web3 so far has not been about new forms of publishing _or_ amplification nearly as much as it has been about owning generated cat drawings. I don't think it is meant to solve this problem. There's also the question of whether uncontrolled and anonymous amplification is a societal harm.
    - 8note 5y ago
      I'd rephrase amplification as discovery. As a consumer of publications, I am limited by the centralization of discovery mechanisms, to only see what big companies want to show me. It becomes a bigger problem when they choose to show different people disjoint information. Eg. Somebody could plan and attempt a coup without me hearing about it till after the fact, even though they conspired quite openly

dropnerd 5y ago

you can lose half of your logins (oauth) if faang's algorithm don't like you. decentralized identities fix this for free (no-onchain transactions required)

md_ 5y ago
Indeed, but I do wonder whether most users need a single global identity anyway. FIDO keys or—gasp—passwords-per-site seem to solve the real problem most users have (which is, you know, maintaining logins). I do think if there were strong user demand for a unified web identity (beyond email identifiers, which aren’t obviously improved by blockchain), we’d see more adoption of OIDC, including offered by IdPs who only provide that service. Instead, the common providers are providing federated identity as a sideline—you don’t create an Apple or Facebook account because you want to be able to sign in with Facebook elsewhere on the web; you create it ‘cause you want to use Facebook’s app. Users don’t care—or don’t understand—federated identity, so they sure as hell aren’t going to be interested in blockchain-decentralised versions.
- clippablematt 5y ago
  I’ve shown rainbow to a few of my friends. Shown them how to log into a site by scanning the wallet connect code and all their data moves with them and their wallet. From my experience they all really like it and prefer it to passwords and password managers. Add to this everyone getting used to scanning QR codes during COVID and suddenly what was seen as a big point of friction in ux isn’t such a big deal anymore. Give it a couple years for more social-recovery wallets to be developed and we’re good. I’m really happy that alternatives to passwords/login with facebook/emails are taking off. Good to have options. There was a while there where sites only had a google log in and it was painful.
  - md_ 5y ago
    How is it different than WebAuthn+FIDO2?

diveanon 5y ago

Can’t wait to see the tone of this forum change when YC starts investing in metaverse projects using web3 for auth.

dang 5y ago
HN commenters hardly take their cues from that.