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.
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.
If people ignore the buzzword scams, and focus on what is possible to change with these new paradigms... I am already getting FOMO
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".
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-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...
If we have profit incentives in everything, we will see optimization for profits at the expense of everything else, including quality of information.
i’m of the opinion that everything monetization touches dies, tho i’m sure META will be full of content creators getting their royalties as people have no choice but to buy an NFT of any MP3 they want to play in their zuck-sanctioned surveillance-spaces, I still believe in the old cyberspace declarations [0] where government regulations and copyright law are considered quaint anachronisms.
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.
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.
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.
Take off the rose colored glasses; it’s all been a speculative game. That’s the root node of our economics at this point.
At the end of the day it’s electron state in a box of metal and plastic. It’s been generating “value” for owners distracting people from their lives.
I’ve been online since the 80s; people were complaining about web 1 ruining usenet, irc, and everything else.
Time moves on.
Supply chain tracking is a fairly perfect match. An example in production usage today is https://simbachain.com/ and https://www.computerworld.com/article/3439843/how-pharma-wil... and a particularly interesting vaccine distribution database from IBM: https://www.ibm.com/blockchain/industries/vaccine-distributi... - or how about voting: An example in production usage today: https://www.govtech.com/products/utah-county-makes-history-w...
There is the obvious securities trading usages, but that may or may not qualify as speculative. Anyways, you could argue blockchain is a stupid tech for all those reasons and all the startups mentioned in these articles will fail - and fine, maybe you're right. Maybe postgres is better for all those jobs. But these are non-speculative use-cases. If they're the right fit for those problems -- well, I'm not running a crypto startup, so... But in the long expanse of history, I do believe trustless societies will eventually emerge.
