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Solarpunk and web3
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this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
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Web3 is just crypto scams in a trenchcoat. Blockchains had some cool applications for being a good database engine for high data integrity and transparency. Unfortunately what I imagine happened was some business school duche walked in on the development and went like "I can make the stockmarket with no regulations or safety with this" and that is what it became.
Lets be real with ourselves: web3 was created to be a scam. It never had any legitimacy other than what fascist corporations and media gave it.
Yea, that's what I meant with my first sentence.
I feel the same way, but I think there must be some cool application, right? RIGHT?
There is, as I said: Database engine focused on data integrity and transparency. My favourite real world example is a database for vehicles to show previous owners while being incredibly simple to look up. Currently if you wanna buy a used car and want to look up previous ownership you need to make an application and wait for at least a week while people stich the data together. That would be a built in feature in a blockchain, zero additional work required. Also plenty of open source front ends to modify and show the data.
You can do this in about 20min with an actual database.
Blockchains aren't capable of storing any significant amount of data, so at best you'd still have a normal database and an overengineered verification layer. Even then, you still haven't solved the actual problem: availability of the data.
The reason it takes a long time to retrieve the information you want is that it's not already in a searchable database, so someone has to be paid to look it up by hand and create a report for you. If the people with the data were to simply publish a CSV, you'd get everything you need without having to waste time, money, and energy on a blockchain.
It actually ran on MSSQL, the issue was connecting every previous owner and service report to that vehicle. They did that by hand because it was cheaper.
A blockchain is just a very different database engine and it would be easy to deploy for this with very low cost. With a traditional DB you need a developer for both a front and backend so customers can get the data themselves while most blockchains are pisseasy to set up and configure to your needs and have a ton of open source frontends to choose from and you only end up needing someone to redesign the page.
Um, no.
A blockchain provides zero value to solving this problem. It's more complicated, doesn't lend itself well to web-based deployments, can't store the data we need, and requires the consumption of more energy than necessary while slowing down the process of adding records and making them more expensive.
But that is only useful if a centralized authority enforces the use of it?
Yea, decentralisation isn't that useful for stuff like blockchains.
I loved the idea of bitcoin as a decentralized currency. However, to this day it has proven it is not a currency because it is used for investing and speculating. People in some countries use USD rather than their local currency because of the unstable nature of their curency. Bitcoin is not stable so the only way it works as a currency is if you buy bitcoin and immediate use as it won't hold its value.
But the idea seems so wonderful for a solarpunk world. Is there anyway a cryptocurrency could be made that wasn't investing/scamming/etc?
The biggest issue with crypto as a currency is that there is no real way to revert transactions. That pretty much guarantees it will never be adopted as a currency. And forking the whole thing is not a solution.
There are a ton of other issues as well but those are more solvable.
So, no, with the current tech, I don't think it's happening and even if someone comes up with better tech it may be too tainted by scammers and finance bros.