[princekolt]

The reason you haven’t heard a coherent answer to what problems web3 is supposed to solve is because there aren’t any. It’s just a continuation of the past 5-10 years of cryptocurrency pump and dump schemes (which also include ICOs and NFTs). Just a bunch of hot air. As you correctly put it, it’s just a bunch of opportunists making money off of tech-gullible people.

[bytelines]

Don't forget crypto's monetization of computer crime! You don't need to get that pesky data and figure out what to do with it, the processor time itself is money.

More seriously - I can't really speak to web 3 in general but as far as crypto here's an example:

https://www.ledgerinsights.com/shinhan-standard-bank-trial-s...

Another one: consider you go to a bar, and need to prove you are age of majority. Today you do this with a state issued ID, which are easily forged. What would a digital alternative look like?

You could certainly issue some sort of credential from the state, and present that credential to the bar, and the bar would validate it with the state. Now the state knows you went to the bar.

What if the state doesn't handle the validation, but provides some sort of cryptographically secure assertion to a distributed, decentralized ledger. And the bar doesn't validate your credential (your digital ID) with the state, but verifies it in the ledger.

Another one: distributed session management - https://www.pingidentity.com/content/dam/pic/downloads/resou...

Disclaimer: have worked at both Ping and Hedera

[violetthrift]

The bar example is a still a bit vexing to me, because it's the sort of problem/solution I often see brought up as an example, but I still fail to see the utility. A digital signature (e.g. PGP) already can act as a certificate of authenticity from a trusted party and all you need is their public key. Could you explain what the blockchain improves about that, or what it solves in that application that digital signatures don't already?

[ahtihn]

Just load the state's public key into the verification apps, have the identity QR code be signed with the state's private key and you're done. You can now verify identities without the state ever being aware of verifications taking place.

No need for blockchain when a central authority is issuing identity documents anyway.

If you want to delegate signing authority just do something like SSL certs.

[howderek]

Why would a ledger be necessary? Couldn't a root certificate store be used, such as today with HTTPS? Then, the bar doesn't even need to connect their verification system to the internet, other than for the occasional patch.

[NicoJuicy]

A passport can't easily be forged if you use it like it's supposed to ( read & verify data from the chip )

What can be manipulated is the visual representation of the passport. Since some people want to quickly verify a date. That wouldn't work with an Eid reader, that can be used offline.

[trophycase]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gipL_CEw-fk

You're david letterman.

[bytelines]

Wow, this is amazing.

In a way Letterman absolutely had great points: you don't need to watch baseball on your computer, you have a radio for that. You don't need access to this information via a computer, you can use magazines for that.

Looking back on this almost thirty years later, what was missing is the limitations and the consequences.

Yes, you could use your radio. But you were limited to being able to listen to certain times, or certain places. And only baseball and maybe a few sports.

Yes, you could get that information, but only through the magazine.

What the internet did was lower the barrier to this. 30 years later, and I can watch esport championships hosted in South Korea months ago, for free, after my kids go to bed.

And what were the consequences for print journalism?

I think you need the same idea for evaluating crypto: yes, you can obviously do many of the things crypto can do, without crypto. But what are the limitations? And what will be the consequences?

[dazhengca]

They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

[salawat]

You forgot the more important part:

What Web3 is pitched to be is completely antithetical to what most people want in the sense that by it's nature, Web3 basically makes AML and other financial controls pretty much impossible to reliably implement and enforce.

You will not get trivial money transfer over the Internet without a gatekeeper. Not permanently anyway. As soon as the primitive for doing so comes into existence, it is guaranteed to be regulated on a when not if basis.

Whether you try to exploit the short time before the law catches up to it says more about whether you're a gambler or not than anything else.

[StanislavPetrov]

>What Web3 is pitched to be is completely antithetical to what most people want in the sense that by it's nature, Web3 basically makes AML and other financial controls pretty much impossible to reliably implement and enforce.

I don't know a single person who is in favor of "financial controls" or other coercive behavior by the US government, the FED and various regulatory agencies to track our every transaction and tell us how we are allowed to spend and use our own hard earned money.

[Sargos]

Do you have any citations for your claim that most people want KYC? All the data I've seen indicates it's a government initiative and not debated or discussed with the general public. In fact the polls we do have show an overwhelming support for cash which is private and peer to peer.