Do you feel the same about Tor? That the anonymity is an implementation detail and you don't care?
... anonymity isn't a killer feature for me personally, but it is for some.
Anyway, the parent post's point is just that it's not clear what the 'killer feature' that web3 is offering is.
Without that, it's just expensive and pathetically underpowered compared to other platforms.
You can use it to do crypto. hm... ok. I don't have crypto, and I don't have piles I money lying around I want to throw away gambling or turning into crypto.
That doesn't seem to leave any 'Killer features' for me to care about.
> Assuming you live in the US, the government can swoop in at any time (provided they have a legal reason to do so) and demand that AWS or whoever's hosting your servers shuts them down. If you're hosting them yourself, they can raid the physical locations where you host them. If you're not in the US, I'm sure your country has equivalent security forces that would be more than capable of doing the same should the government find a reason to.
> Good luck raiding every single Ethereum node in the world to take down a smart contract.
> Also, you didn't address code immutability guarantees. You can change your server code at any time and your users would be none the wiser. The darknet markets, once compromised by federal agents, did exactly this, and stopped actually encrypting user messages with PGP while continuing to pretend to do so. A smart contract, unless it has upgradeability built in, offers just this sort of guarantee to its users.
> Oh, and if your app deals with finance, and the US government (or your own) wants you to stop letting John Doe use your app because they just placed new sanctions on Mr. Doe? You'd better code that compliance feature up real quick or see yourself getting heavily fined or even imprisoned. Tough luck doing that sort of censorship on the blockchain -- as long as a single miner is willing to include that user's transaction, they're basically in.
And when it comes to "That doesn't seem to leave any 'Killer features' for me to care about", I'll also say what I said to somebody else:
Good for you. These are not killer features you'd care about. They are, however, killer features that some others care out. Why is it a bad thing that an option exists for those that do care about these features?
Also I hope you can understand that leading the conversation with these "fight the government" sentiments really sours the debate on crypto, to me that only cements the idea that this stuff only appeals to other nation-state actors, activists, journalists, and scammers/criminals. Which I suppose is fine, except for the criminals, but at that point it's the same niche that Tor fits into.
Yes, that would cut off most of the fiat on/off ramps, but your assets there are still untouched. You could still, if you wanted, go to another country that hasn't banned crypto and exchange it for other assets in those countries. That's far different from the US freezing your US bank account, in which case it doesn't matter which country you go to, your assets are still locked in the US bank.
And even in the US, I'm sure there will still be people on the street willing to exchange cash for crypto, albeit obviously at a markup. Like I said elsewhere, we've been unable to stop the billion dollar drug trade. What makes you think we will be able to completely stop a trillion dollar crypto market from within our borders?
> There's no need to take down every node; I can't see how any of those translate to killer features for this reason.
Because you need to take down every node (or prevent anyone in your country from accessing any node) before the smart contracts stop executing. So long as that's the case, it's a killer feature for anyone who is concerned about traditional financial services shutting them off. You can't see how any of these are killer features because that is presumably not you.
> For PGP, I don't understand why the user isn't encrypting them on their own machine. That seems like an incredible waste to implement encryption in a smart contract.
I didn't mean that PGP would be implemented on the smart contracts, I meant that functionality wouldn't change from under you like they did with the darknet markets. The functionality you see in a smart contract is the functionality you get, and it'll stay that way forever unless you built your smart contract to allow for such change in the future.
> As far as sanctions go, the fact that criminals and ransomware and other fraudsters can't be stopped or sanctioned is an anti-feature if you ask me.
That's fine. It's a feature for others. In other words, it creates value for people who are not you.
> but at that point it's the same niche that Tor fits into.
Well yes, I do strongly believe this is the case. Which is why I make repeated references to Tor. Do you also think that Tor's strong anonymity guarantees protecting pedophiles is an anti-feature too?
>I meant that functionality wouldn't change from under you like they did with the darknet markets
I still don't get why it did, it sounds like they were not using secure tools? Crypto isn't necessary there, just an ordinary E2E encryption scheme.
>In other words, it creates value for people who are not you.
Yes, criminals, who actively decrease value for me when people I know get hit by ransomware attacks, people I know get addicted to drugs purchased online, companies I work with get taken offline with ransomware attacks, government services I need to use get taken down by ransomware attacks, etc. All of this has already happened to me, by the way; I'm not an investor so the only real effect crypto has had on me is loss of money and well being.
>Do you also think that Tor's strong anonymity guarantees protecting pedophiles is an anti-feature too?
Well just like a lot of promises about crypto being faulty, I think this one is also faulty; I've heard a lot of stories of deep web child sex abuse rings being busted up. Tor is not a panacea. But if we say for a moment that it was, I don't think I would be ok with it. Would you be okay with finding sex abuse content on Tor that included your children? What would you do?
- Aave allows you to lend and borrow different crypto assets. If you wish to short a crypto, or if you wish to borrow against your portfolio so that you're spending fiat rather than your portfolio (a feature offered by traditional assets as well), this lets you do both of those.
- Tornado cash allows you to anonymize your Ethereum, because unfortunately Ethereum just doesn't have strong built-in privacy guarantees like Monero
- All the gambling websites. If gambling is illegal in your jurisdiction, but you'd like to gamble anyway, it's hard to stop you from doing so. Depending on your political sensibilities, this could be a good or bad thing. Personally, I say let adults do what they want, including making dumb decisions for themselves. (Of course, if you want to hide your tracks well, you'd probably want to use the aforementioned Tornado Cash.)
Where's the "Youtube" of the dark web? The famed red rooms don't even exist.
What's the "killer app" of the dark web? Doesn't even exist, unless maybe you count the drug markets. I'd hazard a guess that they're by far the most popular.
> Everything you've listed is just different ways to throw away cryptocurrency.
I literally gave as an example how you could use fiat-backed crypto to buy gold-backed crypto. These assets literally track their real-world equivalents. Or do you have an issue with modern banking and the stock market too, because it's "just different ways to throw away" fake fiat money?
> The average Joe is going to look at that list, chuckle, and go back to browsing Twitter on their iPhone.
Good. The average Joe has no business using Tor. Hell, the average Joe doesn't even care enough about privacy to stop using Facebook. The average Joe doesn't need a lot of things. Who cares what the average Joe wants or doesn't want, unless you're trying specifically to market a product to the average Joe?
Crypto exists for those who actually find a use for it. You seem either unable or unwilling to acknowledge this fact. Which is it?
If the only people using Tor are people who actually need it, then 'using Tor' becomes a very dangerous marker.
- Trade blockchain tokens for other blockchain tokens. Or trade blockchain tokens for tokens that claim (with dubious, temporary and totally non-cryptographic evidence) to be backed by something else.
- Lend and borrow blockchain tokens.
- Try to launder your blockchain tokens. They have to be really dirty for it to be worth it, since obscuring how you got hold of something valuable is already a crime in itself.
- Give your blockchain tokens to blockchain casino owners.
The Perth Mint is "dubious" and "temporary" to you?
If you dislike examples of assets backed by centralized entities, then look at decentralized algorithmic stablecoins.
> - Lend and borrow blockchain tokens.
Yes, including tokens that track "real world" assets. Lending and borrowing is afater all an integral part of the modern economy. This bulletpoint stands by itself.
> - Try to launder your blockchain tokens. They have to be really dirty for it to be worth it, since obscuring how you got hold of something valuable is already a crime in itself.
Just because you don't see any value in money laundering doesn't mean others don't. It's a billion dollar industry.
> - Give your blockchain tokens to blockchain casino owners.
If you want to, yes, you should absolutely have the freedom to do that. Alas, some jurisdictions in real life prevent their people from doing just that.
And yes, it is actually a surprisingly dubious organization (that corporations fully owned by a state and performing some minor official service for it, can still be extremely dodgy, should not come as a surprise).
They seem to be profiting off the assumption that from the name, they would be as tightly controlled as a central bank. But it's very clear from dodgy stuff they've already been involved in, that they're absolutely not.
But of course, I wasn't first and foremost talking about them, I was talking about the 800 dollar gorilla, Tether. They're now where Mt Gox was ca. mid-2013, with "everyone" knowing they're extremely dodgy and likely to collapse, but hoping to make money off those who haven't realized it yet.
As to "tracking" real world assets, that mechanism of tracking is a weak point, rendering all the other "guarantees" moot.
> Just because you don't see any value in money laundering doesn't mean others don't. It's a billion dollar industry.
So is other fraud. Doesn't mean it isn't money out the window. For that matter, you don't know how much of the economic activity is real. Saying "this laundromat must be really good, see how much money is going through it" is a lot like saying "this service for purchasing fake reviews must be great, look how many 6 star reviews it has".
Alright, then don't trade in their token. Or short it, if you think it's going to collapse in value anytime soon.
> But of course, I wasn't first and foremost talking about them, I was talking about the 800 dollar gorilla, Tether. They're now where Mt Gox was ca. mid-2013, with "everyone" knowing they're extremely dodgy and likely to collapse, but hoping to make money off those who haven't realized it yet.
Well yes, the whole point of a decentralized ecosystem is that it gives people the freedom to do things without government stepping in and telling them no, for better or for worse. Tether is free to print as much Tether as they want, and everyone else is free to hold or not hold USDT if they want. Caveat emptor.
> As to "tracking" real world assets, that mechanism of tracking is a weak point, rendering all the other "guarantees" moot.
Sure, that is still a centralized point of failure. But the other decentralized benefits still hold. No government sanctions can prevent you from buying this gold-backed crypto, if you so wish. Or if you have it already, from selling it for something else. Nobody to enforce pattern day trading rules on you. For better or for worse, it still gives you all the benefits that decentralization entails.
> So is other fraud. Doesn't mean it isn't money out the window.
It's money circulating through a different part of the economy than it would've otherwise. It's valuable to the people participating in it. Not to you, obviously. To other people.
> For that matter, you don't know how much of the economic activity is real.
Of course, that's the whole point. But you can still make educated guessing. Looking at the size of various illicit businesses, money laundering is obviously a billion dollar global industry. Why? Because a lot of people find it valuable. Not you, obviously. Other people.