“Who moved my JPEGs? »The ideas of Web 3 arouse controversy

Last week, Moxie Marlinspike, the creator of the popular crypto communication signal app, sparked controversy in cryptocurrencies by posting an article titled "My First Impressions of Web3" (Chinese version of Chain Catcher). Moxie would have developed two fair applications and conducted a thorough investigation after the creation of the NFT project abandoned by Opensea. It appears that MetaMask has not published the content of its account on the Ethereum blockchain. Instead, the wallet app relies on the Opensea API to determine which NFT is interacting with the blockchain account.

This advantage reminds Moxie of "Web 2" that Web3 will not leave us from the basics and that Web3 will not change our relationship with technology. As to why so many people rave about it, Moxie says web3 is new, at least on a grotesque stage, creating a space for creativity / research that is reminiscent of the internet star. But ironically, some of that creativity can come from limitations that make web3 unwieldy.

In this article, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, Facebook engineer and Dropbox CTO Aditya Agarwal, Wall Street Journal and New York Times reporter Dror Poleg shared his thoughts. Below is a list of related information.

Buterin: The technology is still being researched and Moxie doesn't understand it.

The word "server" is not very useful in the context of blockchain. Consider more specifically that the following users can connect to a blockchain:

Siv koj tus account Binance.

Run the code that asks what is the state of the Infura API blockchain and trust the response. However, the key is stored locally and the business code local and sent to the latest Infura API for publication.

Same as 2, but running the correct thin user to identify the block header signature and using Merkle evidence to identify person accounts and store data.

Same as 3, but your code communicates with N different API endpoints run by different N companies, so only one of them should give you honest answers about the communication. trust relationship.

Like 4, but not the pre-N API pre-instructions, the code connects directly to the peer-to-peer network.

Same as 5, but these rules also render the data in the models and help prove fraud so bad blocks can be discovered and denied.

Tie a real clear knot.

Run all ID nodes when involved in mining / staking.

Currently only available in 1, 2, 7 and 8, 7 and 8 are more expensive for most users. In fact, the reason blockchain is a decentralized future and not in itself is that it's harder than 8 to run 24/7 online servers. Websites are only online 95% of the time which can cause great frustration for users! ]

Moxie's subsequent criticism in the media makes the criticism of the current state of the ecosystem appear to be true (where 1, 2, 7 and 8 are the only ones where we are allowed to operate), but they do not have the following: The evolutionary direction of the blockchain ecosystem. You already have a team working hard to get 3, 4, 5 and working hard on how to get 6. Contrary to Moxie's recognition that crypto is rarely involved (and often is) today !), most of these efforts are expert and expert crypto-based. Verkle wood, ZK-SNARK in EVM, BLS signature assembly, etc.

About the view of "Why notin't", I think it is due to low-income benefits and finances. It is easier for creating easy. There is no more resources in emperor ecosystem, the last four years. Of course, until ~ 4 years ago, the ecosystem ECOSYS has many resources, but the new project was slow and operation is charming. One thing has been slowly slowly. In other words, in the following case, in this pass, we need to change from the light, so there is only a substitute together at a mixture when we arrived. Fortunately, relying of this attacked and being resolved by one, and has already done well! When many special groups are complete, it will be done to set up a complaint and you must leave this library.

So I think the world of recognizing the reality of embedded blockchains is ahead of us and closer than a lot of people think. Of course, there is still a potential for all of this technology to be developed, and many will ignore it. But I am happier. Most of the users accept the value given by the manufacturer, and many developers are passionate about distribution and reliability (which can lead to more problems if legal issues arise on the basis of increased trust). Dividing up options that users ignore today (eg run all nodes) is very difficult these days. Thus, he understands the argument for the middle option which is at least convenient for the user. None of the tips listed here are difficult, and as strategies like uninhabited and historical expiration time come into play, even running on your own will be easier and cheaper. So I don't see a single reason why the future should be like today.

Facebook Engineer: Don't focus on speculation. It's more fun to create.

Moxie has written an excellent blog post about his research on Web3 that makes him think about important questions about governance, law, platforms and finally the ability to guess things in this place.

An extension of the publication is the relationship between "rules" and "platform". In short, the process is difficult and the development is slow. There's no objection to this, but I think every standard notion of "policy" is the actual process such as HTTP, SMTP, etc. All of these rules are * non-national *. This is still accepted (and generally is) the design of the protocol.

For Site 3, the main difference is that this is a valid process. In that sense, I don't think the value of the evolutionary process is really a psychological model. Remixing and orchestration is easier when the state is universally accessible.

There aren't many examples of such "rules" yet. So it's no surprise that not all of us know how to compare to existing models.

More generally, I think there are a lot of "decision" considerations on Website 3. For example, Web3 centralizes some content (eg Alchemy, OpenSea) and therefore does not follow the format goal of achieving decentralization.

I think this review is a bit naïve as it ignores the technology that will eventually be brought to the next product market. Most things don't come well in one world or another. It will be frustrating. It would be like something that crosses ideological boundaries.

The future is here, but it is unevenly divided and is capturing part of it. Maybe the future has to do with the long past. It's a forum where you see autonomy, AI, SaaS, etc.

The world is too hard to predict in any form. Instead, we like to ask ourselves if the following ideas are effective and applicable. In this understanding, blockchain, NFT, DAO, Challenges, etc. are great design concepts used to create interesting products.

Don't focus on speculation. The house is more fun.

Dror Poleg, journaliste au Wall Street Journal :I don't believe web3 is honest and free

Crypto is interesting because of the freedom it brings, not the freedom that users currently enjoy. (answering Moxie)

Hungarian sausage stories

Dictator Nicolae Ceaušescu boasted in 1970 that "the Jews, the Germans and oil are our main exporters". He spoke about my grandmother, my father and my uncle.

Some people want to live in the Socialist Republic of Romania, but not grandfather. After living in Auschwitz, he wanted to give his children something better to fight for. But he can't pack up and go. We should buy it.

Since 1945, Romania has raised over $ 100 million in cash and other commodity exchanges for Jews. As Zahra Tara explains in The Great Depression:

Romanian money and Jewish businesses began to be kept secret after WWII. A London-based Jewish businessman named Henry Jacober has become the mediator between the two countries. Westerners and Romanian secret services. As a rule), exchange for a permit issued in the west.

When the Israeli authorities learned of the agreement, they decided to join the operation with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. At Khrushchev's request, Romanians began to ask for agricultural products instead of cash. Romanian Jews were quickly traded for everything from cattle and pigs to chicken farms and corn farms ... Depending on the immigrant's age, education, work, family and political experience, the cost of leaving the country can reach $ 50,000. "

In 1962 my grandmother, father and uncle got their visas and flew to Rome. They are only allowed to wear travel clothes, equipment and food. Everything, including tools, accessories, jewelry, books and pictures, must be in Romania.

To start a lucky family in the New World, father and uncle brought Hungarian sausages. They have heard rumors that Italians are generous with this extraordinary thing. But this rumor is false. After a few days of traveling from Naples, unable to find a consumer, their father and uncle dropped their sausages and boarded a boat bound for Israel.

In general, being able to pack and unload is not a problem for most people. But when it does, it matters.

The recent discussion of cryptocurrency terms and restrictions / Web3 reminded me of Hungarian sausages. Our current situation looks incredible in light of historical events. But they can have serious consequences in the end.

By 2022, the smartest people in the world will be debating digital tokens, red JPEGs, and the Super Bowl. Last week the Financial Times reported on my review of the negative publicity that led to Matt Damon, and The Guardian wrote an article explaining why Boring Ape's NFTs weren't created.

Another addition to the debate about the future of the Internet is that of Moxie Marlinspike, the creator of the personal messaging app Signal. Moxie shared “First Impressions of web3” in a blog post.

The power of decentralization

The vision of web3 is very good. But Moxie is starting to understand just how decentralized "sausages" can be. However, that didn't make him happy.

Moxie's first concern is that it is not dispatched based on Web3 requests. In this case, access to the web3 infrastructure (Ethereum blockchain) is provided by several popular API providers. So, although the blockchain itself is decentralized, most of the applications that depend on it still suffer from the power of centralization and are managed by private companies.

For example, for example, someone buys a gold coin and stores it in a key safe at the foot of a hill controlled by a Swiss bank. When a user logs into the banking app and checks their balance, the app does not send a person to a safe place to check whether the temperature is safe or not, that someone has interfered with the key to the bank. safe space. Instead, it presents data from a third-party data collection on the flows and flows of hot objects flowing through a mountain. Thus, the consumer receives the most recent information, but not necessarily inaccurately.

Banks do this because managing the central database of all deposits and exchanges is easier than sending someone to verify someone every time a customer enters the app. Ethereum-based applications use API resources for the same purpose. It's easier and more convenient than finding each query itself on the blockchain.

The choice of these simple methods rather than distribution is disadvantageous in some applications and not harmful in others. The issue of Moxie's Rise is well known and Ethereum developers have spoken and written to the public about it and are working on ways to reduce it. And I've also written about how each wave of decentralization creates a wave of centralization at the same time.

However, Moxie ignores (or doesn't mention) the significant differences between these issues and what's going on in Web 2.0 today. We'll talk about that in a moment. But first, let's take a look at Moxie's second interest.

no money

After trying to develop distributed applications and encountering APIs in the middle, Moxie developed NFTs and launched them into the most popular NFT industry, OpenSea.

NFT is a prime example of web3's commitment to freeing its users from a robust platform. You can create NFT and use it on a platform like OpenSea, but it is not stored on that platform. When you create or purchase an NFT, this function is locked onto the blockchain itself. This means that you can buy NFTs on one platform, then “transport” them to another platform, or sell them to others without permission. You can use cryptocurrency wallets like Metamask or Rainbow to access all of your money and assets on the blockchain without having to access a special platform.

It may sound absurd. Why do some people buy and sell tokens that give their owners digital products? But when you determine that by 2021 people will spend over $ 60 billion on games, $ 13 billion on music streaming, and over $ 22 billion on digital video, we start to see the cost of digital ownership. .

In Web 2.0, you can buy videos on Amazon Prime or songs on Apple Music, but if you decide to leave the platform (or be kicked out) you will lose access to the products of the stage. The purpose of NFTs is to empower consumers to own and transport their own products, and harness the power over platforms and businesses.

But it wasn't Moxie's experience.

Who moved my JPEGs?

Moxie developed NFT in OpenSea and deliberately implemented the tutorial to differentiate between different platforms (by uploading different images depending on the IP address of the requested website). At first, he could see NFTs in his cryptocurrency wallet, meaning that its members were listed on the Ethereum blockchain. However, a few days later, OpenSea decided to take NFTs off the market, accusing Moxie of violating their services (due to rule changes users are seeing).

Technically, the fact that OpenSea decided to take NFTs off the market shouldn't be a problem. Moxie still owns it, and its members are independent of the OpenSea blockchain shutdown itself. However, when Moxie searched for the cryptocurrency wallet app, they found the NFT was gone. How is it possible?

Moxie digs deep and finds that the wallet app he uses (Metamask) has not published its content on the Ethereum blockchain. Instead, its wallet app relies on the API to determine which NFT is interacting with the blockchain account, and that API is the OpenSea API! Moxie's NFT has been removed from OpenSea, indicating that this API no longer exists.

It's like the development of Web 2.0. The powerful platform can supplement / delete data and assets from their accounts without user consent.

However, there are significant differences between what happened to Moxie and what happened when the Web 2.0 platform decided to remove user data or names.

If Moxie uses another app to analyze the status of NFT directly on the blockchain, he will know that NFT still exists. In fact, you can see the NFTs on OpenSea's competitor, Rarible. Going back to the previous comparison, the bullion is still in the vault, in the mountains, even if it does not appear in the banking app.

The problem, of course, is that popular wallet apps don't show anything about human money. But the good news is that even though OpenSea removed Moxie's NFT, the NFT is "alive" and still there. If you buy Moxie as a gift during the whole event, I'm sure Moxie will make a lot of money. And I already guessed.

P.s.

Unlike his father, he was able to take most of his assets and business money with him if he had to move. If the US decides to send me (or resell me in Romania!), You'll get extra money if you access your Twitter, Gmail, Maven, and Stripe accounts. The biggest threat to my lifestyle is not losing my citizenship, but losing access to my account on multiple platforms.

Crypto and web3 promise me the freedom to switch between the platforms I rely on and give me the ability to maliciously survive on any of those platforms. The current contract is only half completed and will not be fully implemented.

Unlike some, I don't think web3 defaults to fairer, fairer, or better. But I believe it can increase our independence and our organization. And based on my broad and personal story, that is enough to pique my curiosity and encouragement.

For most users, the freedom to pack and move their digital assets and symbols is insignificant. But it will be an important day, and then it will be very important.

There is still a lot to do along the way. Congratulations, Moxie.