Oh sorry, this way the creator of the underlying infrastructure can collect rent from all aforementioned re-implementations of existing services.

This is extremely vague and seems to be so on purpose in order to just have some nebulous "attack". Do you really think Web2 platforms aren't the epitome of rentseeking, by taking advantage of their role as middlemen?

Obviously existing middlemen are rent seekers. The question is why anyone should eat the cost of switching to a new, less proven rent seeker.

To the hopeful new rent seeker, the pitch is obvious. To everyone else, the provided rationales tend to sound like a whole lot of bullshit.

Why should people use automation at all?

This is like asking why people should switch from telephone switchboard operators, to automatic switchboards. Or why should anyone switch from livery cab services to Uber.

Technology may be "less proven" initially, but it's far more reliable in the end. It also removes a whole class of inefficiencies and conflicts that won't be possible with smart contracts, the same way that you could remove them if you switched from anything custom to anything standardized.

If you just stopped repeating the same tropes "web3 bad" for the sake of saying them, and engage with the substance, you'll see that this is a case of standardization, automation and programming what was previously ad-hoc and requires costly arbitration after the fact.

Okay but 1) arbitration is often desirable, which is why these systems allow it, and 2) traditional software can automate just about anything web3 can if you have the same degree of coordination among counterparties

No one said that arbitration isn't desirable, when there is a problem.

It's like saying doctors and medicine are desirable once a medical condition arises. But sometimes, preventative medicine and eating right in the first place is better.

An once of prevention is better than a pound of cure.

Web3 can prevent a whole class of problems that normally would require after-the-fact arbitration to fix. It's better to just have existing systems. Like for example having red lights at intersections, where everyone knows when it's their turn to move.

You understand that software can automate things. That's good. Now you have to understand that web3 is nothing but software which is decentralized and byzantine fault tolerant, so you can trust that the code is being executed correctly. This is the massive improvement over code that runs inside some server farm and can be switched up anytime.

It's weird arguing that no, we would rather have databases where certain people have the key to subtly corrupt the entire database, and then we can catch them and try to recover from this corruption using litigation. That's what MtGox was.

But you can implement transactions without any recourse trivially using existing technology today...

> Web3 can prevent a whole class of problems that normally would require after-the-fact arbitration to fix.

Such as?

> This is the massive improvement over code that runs inside some server farm and can be switched up anytime.

Massive theoretical improvement. No debate there. The question is about applicability, which I notice you've still not made concrete.

> It's weird arguing that no, we would rather have databases where certain people have the key to subtly corrupt the entire database

I don't know, it basically seems to work and as far as I can tell, you're about a billion times more likely to have your shit stolen from you in the web3/cryptoverse than using the traditional financial system... except of course if you're a criminal and/or a more grey-area "unsavory character" to some of the main stakeholders. Which that is a good usecase for this tech, of course.

Are you serious? There are so many problems it can prevent, because they are nearly impossible to occur now:

1) People can only act as themselves, they can't log into the database and corrupt all the data in a table, so there is no need to recover from massive systemic corruption (this is the big one)

2) Business rules of smart contracts are enforced, and you know that the state transitions happen exactly as they should (this is the reason that databases use stored procedures, for example)

I can list a few, but there are literally thousands:

1) In an auction, the highest bidder is the one who actually wins, it can't be hacked. You can have N winners, and once the N+1st arrives, it returns the money to the lowest bidder who can bid again. Bids increase at a predictable rate, everyone knows the deal upfront, etc.

As opposed to, say, this on the highest level: https://observer.com/2018/03/christies-sothebys-lawsuits-sho...

2) Salaries can be paid out to specific addresses, at a specific rate, and be approved by managers, with the history of all this preserved

3) Atomic swaps between tokens, escrow, each side knows the money is there and will be released if they do their part

4) Rules about staking reserves, guarantee the money is there for vendors to cash out, vendors must be whitelisted to cash out, etc. etc.

5) Large Communities can enforce their "constitution" and which roles invite which roles, at what rate, etc. Ah here, just look:

https://community.intercoin.app/t/intercoin-defi-communityco...

and so on and so forth

> People can only act as themselves, they can't log into the database and corrupt all the data in a table, so there is no need to recover from massive systemic corruption

I don't understand why you think this is so critical? This is a solved problem - just have backups and basic security. If it's really critical, there's a lot of ways to log changes. It's not a big deal.

> Business rules of smart contracts are enforced, and you know that the state transitions happen exactly as they should

Ok, but we have that already. They're called regular contracts. If they have bugs or unexpected problems or someone doesn't follow through, you can get the state to make them.

> In an auction, the highest bidder is the one who actually wins, it can't be hacked

And how often is this a problem, exactly? The article says it happens maybe once every five or six years.

> 2-5

We have all of this already. Banks, HR software, escrow, reserves. It works fine.

You want the ability to unwind a contract or a transaction if something goes wrong. In fact, the contracts are only really used if things go wrong. Most of the time, the parties just follow the contact voluntarily.

To add on: if someone's "irreversible" crypto transaction goes awry, do people really think they're not going to go to court and/or that courts won't do exactly what courts do in every other case of fraud?

"Your honor, the smart contract was clear as day: this fraud was totally above board" is not going to work. I promise.

1. Well, you want to have your coin usable to pay for something in your own community. The first thing you can offer are unsold seats and other things that literally cost you nothing. People who earned your coin can buy seats at your events, or sell them to other people (e.g. who live locally) to attend the event.

2. With your own coin, obviously. If the coin has value aboard a cruise ship, or events, etc. then everyone wins. There are many businesses that can benefit from selling unused inventory, and they may as well sell it for coins earned for things like bring other paying customers, contributing great testimonials, content, etc. Imagine being able to go on stage if you earned enough "loyalty points" or whatever.

3. Loyalty points have been around forever. And no, fans are not already promoters. I know in my own personal experience that even INVESTORS who invested in your company often sit back and hope that you'll make them a profit somehow, instead of bringing others in behind them. Let alone people who just come to a show. The easier you make it for them, e.g. having your own site with custom links that they can share and earn "affiliate revenue" in your own coin, the more traffic you'll get.

4. You get more traffic. More audience. More capital. More money. More loyalty. Independence from having your speech restricted or demonetized. Look at all the youtube personalities openly saying that they can't say this or that. Many comedians and performers are sensitive to being censored.

5) Also you can easily collect money from a global audience, and pay out to a global audience, without being a central bottleneck (FinTech) and without being required to post surety bonds as a "money-transmitter", instead letting people transact directly and you don't have the liability, and they don't have to trust you like they trust Binance or FTX or Celsius with custody of their funds etc. etc. You just provide the Web interface, they do the transaction, facilitated by IMMUTABLE smart contracts.

But people can already pay for unsold seats... with money. The same way the sold seats were paid for.

And how are they going to earn this money for actions that help the community?

It's much better when you can issue your own money supply

Same way people have earned money for millennia I suppose. If it has value it will be paid for.

Yes, exactly. It will be paid for in a coin that was issued by the community or the celebrity themselves.

The celebrity gets to have their own web server, their own coin, etc. making them independent of Big Tech and Big Banks. They can't get deplatformed. Their community can organize however they deem fit. The smart contracts allow everyone to trust the system.

Just saying someone will "pay you" like they did for millennia doesn't really discuss "in what medium". We have long moved past commodity money, gold blocks, then gold coins, then paper banknotes, to electronic money inside regulated banks, this is just the latest form that money can take.

Opposing it for the sake of opposing it, is like opposing the Web and HTTP and open protocols, because you think AOL and MSN walled gardens ought to be good enough for anybody, and no one really needs any custom servers or self-sovereign websites.

Almost nobody considers "deplatforming" to be a serious concern.

The kinds of people who are concerned are almost always people who engaging in risky or criminal behavior.

In the existing system, people can claw back money if they're defrauded or money is stolen. Under the memecoin system, that's impossible.

I had the exact same thoughts. But, also, why is it a good thing that risk is passed down to the users of the currency?

In the regular system risk is passed upward to regular bank you deal with, then upward to the government bank. The frustrating part here is that the regular bank makes all, or very nearly all, the profit, yet passes on the risk. This gives them enormous amounts of power, through wealth, which is far from ideal. But, much, much worse is the concept of removing the regular bank, and government bank, replacing them with a random person online. And passing the risk downward to the users of the currency.

You don't replace the bank with a random person, but with a smart contract trusted by the community. The whole point is to eliminate trust in the middleman completely from many transactions, and prevent a growing class of conflicts from even starting. That is why you don't need to post surety bonds, for instance!