> I care about the bloggers that make these flippant dismissals instead of talking about the impractical things that are possible. I simultaneously observe that the impractical things can be made more practical.

Why, though? What's the sell? What does a decentralized future get me, concretely, that I don't have now? Appeals to user privacy and data ownership aren't concrete things. Concrete things are faster loading times, or new features that are impossible or infeasible in other architectures. In these dimensions -- the only ones that matter -- I can't see how decentralization is anything other than an enormous step backwards?

Those fortunate to live in a place with somewhat stable currency, decent rule of law, and decent banking often don't see the advantages of holding assets without custodians.

My keys, my coins.

> Those fortunate to live in a place with somewhat stable currency, decent rule of law, and decent banking often don't see the advantages of holding assets without custodians.

This describes every place on Earth except -- arguably -- Venezuela and Somalia. And the solution to Venezuela and Somalia is to fix the government! Not to just sigh and assume their broken societies are somehow inevitable and to treat them as default.

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> My keys, my coins.

When you lose your keys -- which, statistically, you absolutely will -- is it appropriate that you should also forfeit your wealth? (This is a rhetorical question.)

"Custodians" are not a bug. They are a feature.

> This describes every place on Earth except -- arguably -- Venezuela and Somalia.

That's just ignorance. Argentina, a G20 member, has had banks not allow it's citizens access their accounts in 2002. Currently they don't allow their citizens to buy dollars and have a black market for it. Banks change rules constantly trying to adapt to new laws. This is a similar thing occuring in many countries. Russia and Ukraine have also strong issues due to the current situation, and citizens are adopting crypto because of it.

Just because you don't know about it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

>And the solution to Venezuela and Somalia is to fix the government

Oh. So as a citizen I have to just fix my goverment! Thanks for the suggestion.

Argentina has a curious economic situation but inarguably the rule of law and a coherent banking system. Russia self-subverts their currency but is otherwise stable. Ukraine is under siege so many things are up in the air. None of these nations qualify under your rules.

And yes, you have to fix your government. That's how society works.

This sort of argument reminds me of the old doctrinaire Marxists, who insisted communism could work if only it could be done without authoritarianism.

Turns out Web3, in theory, sounds fine, but the implementations and uses of it all fall back to centralised networks and nefarious purposes.

I think it's time to recognise Web3 for what it is: a massive con fronted by people who sell a fantasy of open, decentralised computing designed to free everybody from the excesses of government, but are actually implementing something far worse than the system it's supposed to replace.

This is precisely correct. I am hugely sympathetic to the theoretical benefits of web3, but it clearly does not deliver on these promises. Rather than move on to something else which can deliver, its proponents are insisting the emperor is fully clothed because honestly most of them don’t care a single bit about the philosophical or political dimensions of the technology but only about the profit margins they can get by deluding others to join in.

Yeah. Tech (hell, humanity) already has a big enough problem with cults forming around bad or discredited ideas and defending them to the death, but the intrinsic characteristics of crypto make its adherents substantially more aggressive -- specifically the fact that crypto fans are not only emotionally and ideologically invested, but generally also quite heavily materially and financially invested, usually to the tune of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, if not more. The consequences if they're wrong are so much worse which necessitates a completely different level of self-deception and defensiveness.

Okay.

The disconnect here is what you think that I think web3 to be.

I recognize the decentralized capabilities and find it marginally interesting and optional when convenient.

I don't think it is a sales pitch. And therefore I dont think the whole concept is a con. I empathize with people that come to the space and products within the space for an inaccurate sales pitch.

I like the platforms. I would be fine with an optional EVM that was not censorship resistant, where I could deploy my existing products on simply because the code was compatible. I want the other censorship resistant ones to exist too. You are assuming I care about the sales pitch and am trying to sell that fantasy. I think people should be aware of how to use that part of the technology.

> I would be fine with an optional EVM that was not censorship resistant, where I could deploy my existing products on simply because the code was compatible.

This sounds sort of like AWS. Or if you want decentralization then something built on DHTs.

I mean this is neither here nor there, but "communism could work if only it could be done without authoritarianism" is not a Marxist take, doctrinaire or otherwise. If you're a bolshevik, you believe that having and defending a revolution requires a vanguard of devoted party members who run shit. If you're a democratic socialist, likewise you think there needs to be a centralized group in control during the revolution -- you just think that this centralized group should be selected by vote rather than self-appointed. If you're an anarchist (and anarchists are typically not marxist), then you're someone who thinks that managing a revolution without centralized control is possible.

And you might be thinking: why on earth would someone argue that putting the centralized party in control is a good idea? There's a simple reason for that: the Paris Commune.

Why does the Paris Commune matter? They tried to run a revolution on anarchist lines... and so, instead of immediately marching on Versailles to take down the extant government, they just sort of faffed around in committee meetings until a couple of months later the extant government's army came and killed them all. Leninism (the centralized, essentially authoritarian stuff) was a reaction to that. Because they observed how thoroughly fucked over the Commune was, specifically due to the lack of the sort of centralized control that would get people to take up arms and march on Versailles, the bolsheviks decided that they would do everything they possibly could to centralize the fuck out of everything.

And I mean, they lasted for longer than the commune did? At the very least, the bolshevik experiment had some measure of democracy until Stalin came along 7 years after the revolution.

So, yeah. people don't believe "communism could work if it could be done without authoritarianism." Instead there's an active debate (running for a century and a half now) about what type and level of centralized control is necessary to do a revolution without being immediately killed by the old government, and what level of centralized control is so hyper-centralized that it makes a Stalin happen.

Interesting - thanks for clearing that up.

> I simultaneously observe that the impractical things can be made more practical.

I'm not sure this is feasible.

Software tends towards complexity. How many people work on a system that hasn't grown tentacles and increased in complexity over time? And that's with a centralized organizational structure motivating change! Look at how much more complex the blockchain ecosystem has become over the last decade. Sure, individual pain points may become less painful. But I'd be stunned if the overall complexity of the systems didn't increase dramatically over the next decade.

> Node software still sucks! It can be improved!

Talk is cheap. Show me the code.

Not sure what you mean or expect, but pretending - I mean assuming - that is a question in good faith, then for EVMs, I would start with Erigon

https://github.com/ledgerwatch/erigon

Every time someone on a discussion forum identifies a fundamental problem with the web3 space, it's inevitable that someone will reply with a link to an essentially arbitrary project and claim that it solves that problem. I've never seen the same project linked twice in this way, it's always brand new, and usually from a group I've never heard of, either. Just wild.

A fundamental problem?? Somebody just said they don't like node implementations and asked for something else. The poster included a URL for an alternative node implementation... What were you expecting? In an open software world there can be many implementations for a given problem...

In a centralized system you cannot even ask this question. If someone said Banks implementation of SWIFT sucks, show me a better implementation what do you think the end result would be?

> that is a question in good faith

More of a statement on how cryptocurrency projects like to make a lot of promises and how their followers eat it up without having the necessary expertise to evaluate the claims. See e.g. "one more year" on proof-of-stake for ethereum for...how many years now?

I don't get this, it's a work being done by multiple teams.