Re:Keep the web free, say no to Web3 (2021)
by coffeeblack on Monday May 23, 2022 @07:32AM
(#31477679)
Regarding point 2, not all blockchains use the useless calculation of hashes as a method to establish trust.
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This comes up everytime someone mentions the energy waste, so please answer one simple question: Which web3 services that are CURRENTLY online are not based on proof of work?
Any Ethereum L2 that commits transaction bundles to the mainnet, plus anything on Binance's EVM chain, Cardano, Solana, Polkadot, Avalanche... They're all proof-of-stake or not based on PoW.
And, Ethereum will transition to PoS by this year, ideally in August. All of the popular nine Ethereum execution/consensus clients should be ready for the merge, and mainnet has already been test-merged five times successfully.
The first existing PoW testnet will be merged on the first week of June. After that, there's two testnets remaining that will be upgraded (Ropsten -> Goerli -> Sepolia), and then it's time for mainnet.
Re:Keep the web free, say no to Web3 (2021)
by skocznymroczny on Monday May 23, 2022 @07:56AM
(#31477870)
> Ethereum will transition to PoS by this year, ideally in August.
I feel like every year is the year when Ethereum will finally transition to PoS, but it never happens.
Name another year that has had feature-ready clients across the board, with a working merge transition mechanism implemented across all of them. The proof-of-stake chain we're merging to was launched in December of 2020, and has been running since, with almost 400'000 validators currently.
The difference is that this time we actually have testnets already running the full Proof-of-Stake code, most recent news on this front is that the Ropsten testnet will merge on June 8th, that's a huge milestone considering Ropsten is like _the_ testnet if you're developing for the EVM, and is only slightly younger than the ETH mainnet itself.
Re:Keep the web free, say no to Web3 (2021)
by DogLover_ on Monday May 23, 2022 @08:26AM
(#31478101)
Bit harsh when many software projects in the world are delayed. Ethereum was released in 2015
I've seen stories detailing how they were ready to switch to PoS by "the end of the year" as far back as 2017. Ethereum has been PoW for it's entire existence, and has also been promising PoS for almost 3/4 of that time. It's not impossible that this time it's really true, but I'll believe it when it happens.
Re:Keep the web free, say no to Web3 (2021)
by juanci_to on Monday May 23, 2022 @08:20AM
(#31478050)
It's like The Year of Linux Desktop
Cardano, Solana, Polkadot, Avalanche, Ropsten, Goerli, Sepolia, Iota, Algorand, Iota...? You're all making fun of me by making up funny words now, don't you?
No, just kidding. To be fair, I wasn't aware that there is SO MUCH going on in the crypto space that I have never heard of. But these (as far as I can see) are different blockchains, not actual sites that a user can use do do useful stuff or access useful information.
That's why I was asking for services - to my understanding, just creating a new coin does not make it "web3".
These are all chains that support smart-contracts, meaning that services can be built on top of them! I don't know much about the DeFi ecosystem on other chains, but all of them should have at least _something_ going on.
Re:Keep the web free, say no to Web3 (2021)
by DonHopkins on Monday May 23, 2022 @08:50AM
(#31478330)
None of them have critical mass because none of them are scalable.
So no, actually, they don't have very much going on at all.
It's trivial to solve one single aspect of the much larger problem by deciding to punt on solving other extremely crucial aspects, like scalability, or decentralization.
Polkadot is actually a layer 0 and does not have smart contracts. Parachains, like Moonbeam, are your layer-1's that provide smart contracts.
Avalanche is also layer 0.
Re:Keep the web free, say no to Web3 (2021)
by coffeeblack on Monday May 23, 2022 @07:50AM
(#31477820)
Interesting. Never thought that Eth will actually transition it’s consensus method. So that means there’s hope for Bitcoin to do the same some day.
https://www.projectserum.com/
I'm not pro web3, but it didn't take much effort for me to find an example.
Re:Keep the web free, say no to Web3 (2021)
by sascha_sl on Monday May 23, 2022 @07:37AM
(#31477721)
It's not like they don't exist, they just have a lot of problems scaling to capacities that are in any way meaningful.
Might you or someone else say what or where the bottlenecks are that prevent these from scaling?
The biggest challenge in general is that the approach of storing every transaction forever leads to petabytes of storage. And you can't expect a decentralized system to require petabytes of storage.
I apologize if this a naive question but Proof of work is also decentralized no? Why does Proof of Stake incur these scaling limitations but Proof of work does not?
Re:Keep the web free, say no to Web3 (2021)
by coffeeblack on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @02:44AM
(#31501327)
Both do.
Re:Keep the web free, say no to Web3 (2021)
by bogomipz on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @11:48AM
(#31506225)
Can you elaborate? The person I was replying to indicated that the problem was one of storage however the only scalability problems I have seen written about have been around transaction processing.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_scalability_problem
Re:Keep the web free, say no to Web3 (2021)
by MacroChip on Thursday May 26, 2022 @06:40AM
(#31516767)
Not every node has to store every transaction ever. Nodes can prune old state
Re:Keep the web free, say no to Web3 (2021)
by coffeeblack on Monday May 23, 2022 @07:41AM
(#31477761)
Not an expert, but as far as I know IOTA and NANO as two examples.
Algorand, Cardano
Yeah, the alternative is called proof of stake. Now please explain to me how "having a lot of money means you get more control and more money in the future" as a system is in any way adhering to the promise that crypto will disrupt the existing oligopolies and bring power back to the people (unless you define "the people" as "other billionaires who missed out on being part of the current tech oligopolies and want to be Caliph in the place of the Caliph).
Re:Keep the web free, say no to Web3 (2021)
by Kbelicius on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @06:41AM
(#31490298)
Now please explain to me how what you wrote doesn't apply to PoW.
It does. What's your point? The only difference is proof-of-work measures it more indirectly by letting rich people compete in how fast they can burn cash rather than just flaunting what they have. Both are bad.