whatisweb3

> the human minds it consumed

oh no, engineers will start to talk about cryptography, privacy preservation, zero-knowledge proofs, distributed systems, Sybil resistance, game theory - instead of talking about the next hot frontend framework. /s

Centralized exchanges may be consuming minds - like those people who have only ever interacted with crypto through buying a shitcoin on Coinbase and hoping it will go up next week, and think they have a good understanding of what crypto and the blockchain is.

Rollups have a few properties that are distinct from a centralized VISA system. One is that they are cryptographically verifiable, with this data posted onto Ethereum. Another is that they often include permissionless traits - such as L1 smart contract calls that allow users to “force” transactions from L1 to L2 and back even if the centralized sequencer is trying to censor or block the user’s transaction. In this way, you can always withdraw from a rollup L2 back to Ethereum just by signing with your key.

This goes in hand with forkability - lots of rollups are open source - and composability. You can withdraw your L2 tokens back to L1, and put them in another rollup. If VISA or PayPal blocks your account, you are stuck.

Preaching to the choir. Game devs collectively hate web3 and NFTs because it is associated with finances and speculative markets. Meanwhile they have no problem locking their game into a single mega corporate walled platform and letting that company take a 30% cut of their in app purchases.

Eventually I suspect many game devs will seek decentralized protocols for payments and asset ownership.

An option for a crypto payment system could make a difference for this seller and shift some of the power away from Shopify. They would have no way to block access to funds or restrict a willing customer from paying the seller for an item.

There should be an option for a payment provider that is a credibly neutral protocol.

I see - I am sure those sort of attacks will happen. If you secure thousands of ETH in a single validator and are tied with something that could be shorted - such as a company and its stock or token - then your situation is just as vulnerable to attack as keeping your cold wallet in your home's safe. Somebody could break into your house and either coerce you to provide the staking keys, or crack the device, or find another vulnerability if your opsec is not effective enough. If you're staking in the cloud with Amazon you are probabbly even more vulnerable.

But isn't this the whole idea? By staking, you are placing your capital at risk in order to help secure the network. This is how staking is often described by Ethereum developers.

> or with a more sophisticated scheme, a resulting fork

I'm not following this.

The discussion stems from my original post [1] presenting the idea of a new economic model for media that is free - production and distribution isn’t reliant on restricting access to only purchasers.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32011346

Yep - users have to actively decide to use a new Bitcoin client. Users who are against PoS would just not upgrade to the new client, or would fork it.

What? This isn’t ending the system - it is proposing a new model that some creators and consumers can use to avoid some of the problems in current model.

So how long will this mania last? They were sold during a bear market and at one of the lowest points of NFT market volume, but still did pretty well. If NFTs continue to be seen as tulips or beanie babies* for the next several years, and wildly outperform regular band merch sold through a distributor, maybe it’s worth considering as a new model for artists and creators. If NFTs crash to zero next month and artists stop earning from them, then I will agree with you.

* by you, I should add. Others see it as a digital object worth owning that is not tied to a single speculative bubble.

Also clearly documented and open to researchers to examine. The full code for the various Eth2 clients is open source.

[1] https://eth2book.info/altair/part2/building_blocks/randomnes...

[2] https://eth2.incessant.ink/book/06__building-blocks/02__rand...

In Eth2 PoS the validator has two keys: signing key, and withdrawal key. They are derived from the same mnemonic seed phrase that can be kept in cold storage. The signing key must be stored on the device doing the staking, but the withdrawal key does not need to be, it is only secured by cold storage.

How is it backwards compatible? Clients cannot continue to secure the protocol by hash mining after switching the protocol from PoW to PoS. Bitcoin moving to PoS would probably lead to a hard fork and split - two protocols, one where some group want to stay on the PoW fork, and another where some group want to migrate to the new PoS fork.

Decide on what? They are not governing the protocol or restricting who can use it, only proposing blocks and submitting attestations. They have limited capabilities to make changes in the ledger, and if they do enact undesirable changes they risk their capital being slashed. If you as a user wants to participate in protocol validation and its rewards without staking 32ETH, you can use a decentralized staking pool like RocketPool.

As of yet there are no sound methods of securing a public ledger without either PoW, PoS or PoA. Bitcoin uses PoW, most central banking and traditional payment processors use PoA, Ethereum will soon use PoS.

It is probably better to describe it as pseudo-random. See here: [1]

[1] https://eth2.incessant.ink/book/06__building-blocks/02__rand...

> An attacker accessing a staking node can, on purpose, double vote or surround vote to get the ETH slashed.

What is the incentive for them to do that? If the node is secured physically they would need to break into a person's house and decrypt whatever security setup they might have in place. The whistleblower reward is typically fairly small, probably not worth the criminal behavior.

Yes it would need a hard fork - but Bitcoin community is notoriously resistant to change, so it probably would not happen for some years or decades.

The spec is open and documented pretty clearly.[1]

[1] https://notes.ethereum.org/@vbuterin/Sys3GLJbD#Misc

According to Eth docs:

> One validator is randomly selected to be a block proposer in every slot. This validator is responsible for creating a new block and sending it out to other nodes on the network. Also in every slot, a committee of validators is randomly chosen, whose votes are used to determine the validity of the block being proposed.

The annotated code for this can be found in [2].

[1] https://github.com/ethereum/annotated-spec/blob/master/phase...

[2] https://notes.ethereum.org/@vbuterin/Sys3GLJbD#Misc

I don't think there is a "true sense" of ownership - the term is contextual. You can purchase and "own" an art print, vinyl record, or book even though you don't own the intellectual property rights of that copyrighted material. In the context of blockchains - ownership means having the private key to a public address associated with a token ID.

Camp Chaos and various creative-commons NFT projects are interesting because they generate revenue on the work without having to enforce strict licensing and IP agreements. Users are not buying these tokens to claim "licensing ownership" but "blockchain ownership."

There is no need to hold secrets - the economic model is not based on restricting access to media.

The songs are distributed DRM-free on IPFS which is peer-to-peer[1]. It remains to be seen how well Camp Chaos and its fans are able to host and pin this into the future as the media storage requirements are heavy - but that is an economic rather than technical discussion.

[1] ipfs://QmYRTuAA61E2kM9izfS13qk8JXTeKPYDWXvtHqqTykwQ7F/Act%202%20Band%201%20-%20Walls.wav

Or listen via CloudFlare, ipfs.io or another gateway:

https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmYRTuAA61E2kM9izfS13qk8JXT...

I am not suggesting a model where revenue is built on restricting access to media. I will just link to Camp Chaos article again[1] which is free to listen to[2].

[1] https://www.billboard.com/pro/camp-chaos-songcamp-nfts-50-pe...

[2] https://chaos.build/

NFT is not a donation or swag. It may be closer to a stock option or share in an organization or idea.

None of this is likely to sway massive Hollywood studios. But it may present a new economic model for some independent creators to get paid directly by consumers and fans to produce and distribute work - musicians, artists, filmmakers. See Camp Chaos example. Another example: the filmmakers behind sci-fi film Prospect (2018 - budget of $4M) are now exploring NFT and web3 models for their next production, we will see how successful it is when or if it is finished in a couple years.

huh?? none of this makes sense.

> the content I purchased [...] is required to allow me to download it

This would work if laws mandate that media like movies, eBooks, music must be downloadable DRM-free by purchasers, which will probably never happen as the entire industry is built against peer-to-peer file sharing and media piracy.

The industry likes this model but the consumers do not. They like the convenience of having all their media in a single nice UX like Netflix, PlayStation store, or Spotify. They do not like that profits are usually directed away from creators, and that "ownership" in these stores is more like temporary licensing of DRM content. This is where a new economic model could be introduced to fund some media production and distribution - for those creators and consumers willing to embrace it.

I don't think you understood my post. I am not proposing a way to replicate PlayStation store with NFTs - and restrict access to the media files based on who purchases the NFT. I am proposing a new model that does not rely on limiting access in order to fund the production of artistic media.

I suggest you read the two posts in full that I linked, as it might make this a little clearer.

> Content producers get to decide the economic model.

Only insofar as we keep paying them, and ceding control of our media to them. The Camp Chaos example has no content producers dictating an economic model - because consumers and fans are paying the artists directly.

Another commenter mentioned “NFT” and got downvoted to oblivion but I do think there is merit in considering new economic models that disrupt current platforms.

Not a new model where access to the media is restricted only to the purchaser - and corporations fight to maintain DRM and inevitably become gatekeepers of popular culture. Instead, a model where creator revenue is not tied to media access. See [1] and [2].

[1] https://www.billboard.com/pro/camp-chaos-songcamp-nfts-50-pe...

[2] https://mirror.xyz/herndondryhurst.eth/S-W2ZXRbrcy8bVGrKwMXS...

The article in question relates to an incident with a bridge to a proof-of-authority sidechain that was controlled by a multisig. I have not looked deeply at Axie but it is possible that a rollup could replace their bridge and sidechain tech, and their need to "prove" the authority of validators that were upholding the side chain.

Only in theory - multiple streaming services would have to be licensed rights to the movie, so that if PlayStation revoked your right to watch it, you could use the NFT in another service like Netflix. This is unlikely to happen with big Hollywood movies cause of their tight IP laws.

NFT could be applied to movies in new ways[1], but probably not in the way of limiting access to the file.

[1] https://www.billboard.com/pro/camp-chaos-songcamp-nfts-50-pe...

Tell this to the stock market? Or any other form of finance that isn’t strictly focused on buying an apple from your local grocer?

You can move money across the world, take loans or lend assets, place investments, manage funds, deposit into escrow, do peer to peer exchange of assets across a range of stability and fungibility, donate immediately and anonymously to nonprofits, setup auctions and crowdfunds. These are useful financial tools, and still working fine in DeFi even after prices crash. You can also do many of these things in tradfi and CeFi in some countries, but without the “De” part, decentralization.

I am curious - have you tried DeFi?