I enjoyed this article, i still never finished infinite jest as much as id like to. but this idea of burn-in is really interesting as a way to present ideas. I guess ill try again ha
Both basic income projects. Proof of humanity ubi tokens are more easily tradeable and meant to provide Sybil resistance to eth projects, but circles has a nice self contained design which is probably more interesting as a form of basic income/ community currency.
I equally find it strange that people continue to come to hackernews- the Silicon Valley VC startup land - and can’t grasp that the infrastructure for programmable money might have some value. And write off p2p communication and coordination tools as zero-sum/ fraudulent games. And then wish for the government to ban other people’s jobs and hobby’s and communities because they don’t like it.
Blows my mind that people might spend their day coding, and night playing mmorpgs, and still not understand crypto. I guess we need better UX and storytellers.
Can’t really talk beyond Europe viewpoint, so might be different elsewhere, but here in the UK the left often talks of removing Westminster central control and empowering smaller local politics. I’m left wing/labour/union/coop worker and work in crypto, same with my colleagues. I really disagree with the projection that it is right wing ultracapitalist. It’s one of the best tools I’ve seen for cooperatives and community organisations
I guess there creator of dogecoin always saw it as a joke, so this isn’t surprising.
Cryptocurrency is about choice and voice. Coordination and communication tools. There are American right wingers with their tokens and systems they’ve designed. But there is also things like CirclesUBI which is much more socialist and gaining momentum in the Berlin indie art scene.
Of course if you aren’t engaging with the space you just see speculation and hear about hacks and crime and people who became millionaires. what you will hear about is what Silicon Valley vcs pour millions of dollars into things they want you hearing about.
But actually engaging with devs in the space and the different subcultures you can find people you get along with. You can find communities and daos doing things you are interested in and share your political alignment.
Most people I know working in the space have European left wing leanings.
Also a reminder. You don’t have to spend any money to be involved. Write code, join chat rooms, work on things you enjoy and want to make. That is going to obviously be much more rewarding than gambling on the back of VCs bags.
People are always surprised when I describe how bad the internet connection I have is here in the UK. 3meg down 0.2 up.
If it rains or is too windy the connection dies. I’ve spoke to bt and openreach hundreds of times but it never gets any better. I’m the last house on the end of a copper line and there is no interest in fixing it. Four years ago the village was supposed to get fibre, recently “delayed” again. I rely on the 3G signal, which isn’t much better tbh.
My Starlink arrives next week :) I’m so exited to be able to finally download some photos I put on google drive a couple of years ago.
There isn’t a cap on validators so you can’t buy up a fixed percentage of the network. More people can always join. You will be diluted over time unless you choose to reinvest(same as mining).
As we reduce the hardware costs and energy usage costs it becomes easier to participate in the network (especially via pools, same as mining but much much cheaper).
Being able to run a validator on a solar powered raspberry pi is a great improvement to making participation in the network accessible.
We should see the exact opposite of what you suggest, anyone who wants to participate not having energy or hardware restrictions should make it less Matthew-effect-like.
PoS increases both the cost of a direct attack on the network as reorganised/51s are more expensive to perform with slashing mechanisms in place, and also removes the threats of supply line disruption by either nation states or cartels forming to control the flow of the hardware.
I agree, it seems like results are getting worse, a few years back I could ask a question and get an answer. Now I don't even bother and go straight to sites to search, be it wikipedia/ github/ stackoverflow/ ebay. Googling for it is just a waste of time.
Worth pointing out “initial investors” is anyone who sent 1 btc to the crowdfund back in 2014. It wasnt some closed off thing for vcs, anyone could participate. People just bought their tokens before the network started.
Totally agree with the article though, DAOs are starting to shine and it wouldn’t surprise me if those who went down the nft rabbit hole found their way into daos. we’re gonna see more things like community record labels running this way. There’s a ui/ux curve that needs working out (across all of crypto) but it’s really nice to be finally getting these things we imagined 5 years ago.
Similar I read a line a year or so ago (can’t remember where) that really stuck with me:
All anyone ever really says is “I love you” or “help me”.
I try remember this whenever I am frustrated with what someone is saying to me. You can’t always help them, and sometimes it’s hard to love them, but you can reframe where they are coming at as being from them not about you, and with that resist arguing and feeling insulted or threatened.
Plenty of people doing it, defi exploded in use last summer mainly driven by collateralized debt positions in combination with lending tokens.
Lock up ethereum -> borrow dai against it -> lend dai out and earn interest on it, withdraw whenever you want.
There are more complex yield farming strategies to get the best rates on your assets, leveraging them through debt positions and lending. There are pools to automate this like yearn.
There are now sites like alchemix where you can lock up your collateral into a lending pool, borrow against it, and the yield on the locked collateral pays off the borrowed debt position. Self-repaying loans!
Multiple times over the past year I have locked eth, taken $s to pay rent/buy stuff. Then come back later paid back the owed $ and get my eth back.
https://defipulse.com tracks the value locked in different protocols, it was less about $0.5 billion this time last year, now over $40 billion.
This is a tired take, Vitaliks position is not any greater than anyone else and there is nothing stopping anyone who has contributions from having the same level of participation. It is much easier to participate than any other open source project i have been involved in.
Vitalik just happens to be very good at his job, consistently insightful, and a wonderful clear communicator. He contributes a lot because he has a lot to contribute.
There is a difference (with the introduction of slashing and user activated soft forks) in 51% attacks that revert finalized blocks. In PoW this type of attack would become cheaper as it persists, in PoS we have some defense that keeps making this attack expensive.
On top of that the costs of attack are much greater in PoS than PoW, making these attacks much harder to begin with.
Matic is not an L2 though, it is a side chain. The reason L2s like optimism are exciting is because they inherit the security of ethereum mainnet. (matic has its own consensus mechanisms).
The general idea is Layer 2s solve high gas. Most users will be using apps that run on a layer 2 and will make rare trips to the mainnet. The next thing being worked on is onboarding users direct to layer 2, and layer2 interoperability so you can move from one l2 to another
You can already use an L2 DEX to exchange tokens (and have been able to for about a year) https://exchange.loopring.io/
With those we can redeploy code from mainnet to layer 2. With the apps on layer 2 the transaction fees will be fractions of cents and almost instant and a lot of the programs we have dreamed about but not been able to make become possible at scale.