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Comment by smt88 | Hacker News Reader

> Is a16z still all-in on crypto?

Yes.

> Why?

Because VCs don't actually need their portfolio companies to be successful to create ROI. A16z can essentially pump/dump these companies more easily because they have tokens associated with them.

A good example is Dfinity. It claimed to be some revolutionary way to decentralize web hosting. The claims were vague, and when I looked into it on behalf of a friend, I found that it wasn't technically accomplishing any of the things it claimed.

They pumped tons of money into a big token launch, which functioned as an exit for a16z and the founder of Dfinity.

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do you mind enumerating their claims that you suppose they didn't accomplish?

This is what I remember, and I'm not going to use all of their stupid jargon.

The core concept of Dfinity was supposed to be that they allowed developers to deploy secure Docker-like containers to anyone participating. It was a two-sided market, and the protocol was the market maker: hosts would join the network, which would earn them the Dfinity token. It seemed to be a replacement for mining.

They talked about things like censorship resistance, portability, etc.

It turns out that they had only signed up a single data center, so they were like a shitty ECS with unknowable pricing and absolutely no guarantees of security.

I even went as far as watching some of their videos. It was the most insane thing I've ever seen -- slick marketing production that looked like a parody of a futuristic TV talk show. It was beyond satire.

Thanks! I do agree that most tech companies in general could use more straightforward terminology when describing what they do lol.

To make sure I understand, your issue not with their technical assertion that it's possible to do web hosting in a decentralized and trustless way as well as without massive compute overhead, but with their implementation of that claim, right? (because they only signed on one cloud provider to back their thing).

The technical assertion is impossible with current technology. It would be a huge breakthrough in computing architecture. You can't have a trustless relationship with a CPU.

Thanks!

Note to self: I really have to get around to reading fundamental papers in the area as opposed to bothering generous HNers :) .

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