[HN Gopher] EU Funding for Developer Tools for the Decentralized...
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EU Funding for Developer Tools for the Decentralized Web
Author : pimterry
Score : 233 points
Date : 2021-09-15 11:42 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (httptoolkit.tech)
(TXT) w3m dump (httptoolkit.tech)
| netcan wrote:
| One thing "The EU" can do is provide demand. If they want to
| promote ethereum, IPFS, or WebRTC... use them for their
| activities in an open way.
|
| One real difficulty here is the ability of open systems people to
| communicate, lobby, advocate with governments. The reps, staffers
| and ministerial professionals aren't that numerous, specialized
| or inventive... usually. They basically work off ideas, prototype
| plans and such that are provided by (usually corporate) industry
| bodies and such.
|
| Even sympathetic politicians or public servants don't have much
| to go on. An Australian Shadow Secretary for rural development
| can pull a bold, $1bn infrastructure plan straight off the shelf
| in his parliamentary library and start talking it up the next
| day. It'll typically come with a booklet explaining the main
| ideas, easy to find allies/advocates. Etc. The "Decentralized
| Web" section is a sparse mess.
| Shadonototra wrote:
| promote ethereum?
|
| you mean promote speculators with tax payer money? so they can
| sell their ETH and make ton of profit?
|
| remove ethereum from your post, and i 100% agree with you
|
| the fact that you included ethereum alongside IPFS and WebRTC
| is very suspicious
|
| i don't believe in "decentralized web" if people wants it
| solely to make profit from 'trading' aka speculating
| "decentralized coins" with fiat currency
|
| before any decentralization, there should be a global
| transparency act
|
| so before doing anything, one should be able to know what your
| portfolio consist of, to prevent any form of conflict of
| interest
|
| and even that i'm not sure that'll be enough to move forward
|
| if it's to repeat what we lived, there is no reason to lie to
| ourself into pretending things will change for the better
|
| why do you want a "decentralized web"? to maximize your
| profits? yeah no thanks
| atatatat wrote:
| Is it REALLY _speculation_ that humanity needs a digital way
| to make microtransactions? (e.g. to replace ads)
|
| And other new types of payment?
| netcan wrote:
| Those are the article's examples, not mine.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| I think a definition of "Decentralized web" should mean is in
| order.
|
| The Internet/Arpa net was created to be decentralized from the
| beginning.
|
| If a node, or more nodes went down, the rest of the network may
| be able to keep working.
|
| If you, and me and all of our friends and all of their friends
| all ran out own web servers from our homes it would be
| decentralized to the extent that if a server disconnected all the
| others would keep working.
|
| The information on that server may be gone for all time.
|
| The prevalence of enormously centralized monopolies on the
| internet is not a result of its technical architecture, but
| rather narrow business interests and a terminal lack of
| regulation.
|
| Now we are all using AOL v3. (Facebook, Twitter, Google etc).
|
| It can get semantically confusing. Facebook is massively
| distributed in some ways. Datacenters in several locations, CDNs
| all over the place. It would take a hell of a lot (I think) to
| blow Facebook off the web. Or maybe some servers centrally will
| shut everything off it they are blown up.
|
| IPFS is weird when taking about decentralized. Storage is not on
| one big server located somewhere. It is distributed among many.
| In theory if one goes down, the data is still available. but only
| if the server/nodes that make up the IFPS network are reliable
| and dependable.
|
| If a lot of nodes are run from laptops that that are shutdown at
| the end of the day that would become a significant problem.
|
| Since more and more and more data would need to be stored in IPFS
| the need for dependable storage servers will increase rapidly.
|
| I would like a simpler approach more in line with the original
| architecture, lots and lots of independent small servers. The
| people who run them can mirror each other in some fashion to
| persist data. Like FTP used to be (and maybe still is), like NNTP
| used to be (and maybe still is)
| fleddr wrote:
| "The prevalence of enormously centralized monopolies on the
| internet is not a result of its technical architecture, but
| rather narrow business interests and a terminal lack of
| regulation."
|
| Neither business interests or regulation have anything to do
| with something being centralized or not.
|
| If you would launch "Thinkbeat's blog", in the traditional
| sense of web publishing, it is 100% centralized. Regardless of
| its size or your good or bad intentions.
|
| You would be in full control of it. You could intentionally
| retire the site, and all information and access is lost,
| forever. You could accidentally do that by forgetting to pay a
| bill.
|
| Another scenario, you publish something fishy on your blog, and
| get banned from the blogging platform, or whichever dependency
| you rely on.
|
| Further, all content on the blog is 100% owned by you, and none
| of it by the users. So you would also own and control comments
| to the blog, and arbitrarily edit or delete them.
|
| You have 100% control on everything, and users none at all.
|
| A decentralized version of your blog would be radically
| different. You can't just retire it. You can't permanent delete
| or overwrite prior entries. Commenters may actually own their
| own comments.
|
| I know, a blog is not a good example and a poor use case, just
| saying that the decentralized web very much is a difference in
| technical architecture.
| pwdisswordfish8 wrote:
| > Now we are all using AOL v3. (Facebook, Twitter, Google etc)
|
| ...GitHub (the Facebook of software development)...
| woodpanel wrote:
| Of all the institutions to promote a uncensorable web it is the
| EU?!
|
| Talking about Gaslighting.
|
| Who knows, it could be a gentle attempt at keeping talent from
| leaving, or FOMO because every other important nation is doing
| crypto-stuff and lastly, and naturally, the sheer incompetence of
| this overextended bureaucracy where one tentacle doesn't know
| what the other tentacles want to ban
| akie wrote:
| > the sheer incompetence of this overextended bureaucracy where
| one tentacle doesn't know what the other tentacles want to ban
|
| Tell me, which Murdoch newspaper have you been binging on?
| mojzu wrote:
| The EU is not a monolith, there are many groups within it
| pushing different ideas. Some of them tech-friendly, some of
| them not. From my layman's perspective though it seems as
| though national governments who want to implement unpopular
| tech policy will often try to push it through the EU first
| because then they can deflect the criticism. Overall though I'd
| say the EU has been okay at preventing the most extreme anti-
| tech legislation, although it usually requires public
| scrutiny/outcry to make them drop it
| snthd wrote:
| >where one tentacle doesn't know what the other tentacles want
| to ban
|
| William: "I'm sure we can all pull together, sir."
|
| Vetinari: "Oh, I do hope not. Pulling together is the aim of
| despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of
| directions."
|
| -- Terry Pratchett, The Truth
| superkuh wrote:
| It's disappointing to see this project, like many other
| decentralized web projects, has tunnel vision with respect to
| "cool technologies". The real distributed web is not non-web
| protocols, blockchains, or the like. The real distributed web is
| _THE WEB_ HTTP servers and every single individual running their
| own web server to host their content (and then syndicate on
| whatever walled gardens are most profitable after).
|
| Connections are fast enough. Computers are fast enough. Self
| hosting is entirely viable and it cuts the gordian knot that is
| the content moderation problem. If it's a static HTTP site then
| there are almost no attack surfaces; it's magnitudes safer than
| running JS from an arbitrary site in your browser.
|
| These non-web protocols do not dencentralize. Lets start with
| IPFS. It's a great idea but unfortunately, like other
| security/anonymization layers, it relies mostly on centralizing
| gateways to actually let people access content. Additionally it
| is _design_ to disassociate people from their files. Not a great
| start.
|
| WebRTC is just the sickness of modern browser and in-browser
| "app" architectures causing them to re-implement what already
| exists in the host OS. But this time in the browser, the most
| insecure piece of third party code running software there is.
|
| And blockchains like etherium aren't even worth talking about
| until they actually do switch over to proof of stake like they've
| been talking about for the last decade and never doing. And even
| then it directly involves monetary transactions which is sure to
| make thing suck for everyone.
|
| No, the decentralized web _is_ the decentalized _web_. And it 's
| easy to be a part of it.
| yann2 wrote:
| Its not easy at all. Try it out with your family on your LAN.
|
| People are used to so much convenience, its easy to brush under
| the carpet, just how much work is happening behind the scenes.
| Just coming up with a basic list of 3 mordern conveniences you
| want to support for your family will be non trivial.
|
| In fact, just try supporting one.
|
| (Worked as an RA in a distributed systems lab back in the day,
| and just getting everyone who proposed the algos and systems to
| use them was a nightmare)
| superkuh wrote:
| Is my family on my LAN the target for decentralized web
| projects? I figured it was more technical people that would
| know how to forward a port. I've personally been running a
| webserver from inside the LAN at home for 20 years now.
|
| Lets not kid ourselves. The vast majority of people don't use
| the web. They consume it. And they will never care about IPFS
| or etherium layers. The distributed web is to create a refuge
| from the types of companies that serve those needs. But
| adding additional layers of abstraction doesn't help
| technical users achieve that goal, it's just a fetish. They
| can easily forward the port and set up a simple static
| webserver and as a big plus their non-technical friends can
| actually access the data.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > No, the decentralized web is the decentalized web. And it's
| easy to be a part of it.
|
| The _IndieWeb_ community deserve a mention here, they 're all
| about exactly this kind of thing: https://indieweb.org/
| imglorp wrote:
| > IPFS [...] relies mostly on centralizing gateways to actually
| let people access content
|
| No, IPFS does not need gateways: they are conveniences for
| people that don't have ipfs:// support in their browser or run
| a local daemon.
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ipfs-companion/nib...
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ipfs-companio...
|
| https://brave.com/ipfs-support
| superkuh wrote:
| That's exactly what I said. I don't appreciate you twisting
| my words to make a point. No one has IPFS support. I have
| some IRC friends that are big in to it and they always link
| the gateways because no one can access their content
| otherwise.
| imglorp wrote:
| Yeah, but not no one. It's native in Brave and Opera Touch
| now.
|
| At some point those ^ extensions should be folded into
| mainstream browsers unless Big Content pushes against it.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| I agree with your arguments completely, and I've come to
| similar conclusions (except with dat and ipfs) when I decided
| how to build my peer to peer web browser network.
|
| Unfortunately, in the real world peer to peer is a different
| problem due to carrier-grade NATs everywhere. I have to
| implement malware-like exfiltration and smuggling techniques in
| order to build an end to end encrypted network, because pretty
| much down the infrastructure is unreliable and manipulated by
| ISPs wherever they can, including unencrypted DNS or even DNS
| via TLS ports being blocked completely off the internet. [1]
|
| Without those protocol in protocol techniques there'll always
| be a single point of failure, like with all "dApps" that are
| actually just gatekeepers on a centralized domain as a point of
| entry for their network. Those usually can be blocked off so
| easily that it's ridiculous to call them decentralized.
|
| Somehow, between the 2000s and now, the internet got so
| crippled for endusers that it boggles my mind how that happened
| without resistance.
|
| [1] https://github.com/tholian-network
| lxpz wrote:
| Thank you for stating this. I absolutely agree with you, and
| this is what we are trying to do with the Deuxfleurs collective
| which is also getting funded by the EU to work on our project
| Garage [0, 1]. We are working on making self-hosting easier,
| and also more reliable, by exploiting geographical redundancy
| [2]. We will use the grant money mostly to develop Garage, our
| self-hosted data server (an object store implementing the S3
| protocol, and soon also an email inbox server with IMAP
| access). We are also working on automating opening ports on
| your router to get around NAT (with our project DiploNAT [3]),
| and on facilitating distributed deployments with the Nomad
| orchestrator. Our vision is to help technical users set up
| local self-hosting collectives by setting up servers at three
| or four geographical locations for redundancy, which can then
| be used by their friends, neighbors, etc. We are of course very
| keen on deploying federated protocols such as Matrix to link
| all of these communities together.
|
| [0] https://garagehq.deuxfleurs.fr
|
| [1] https://git.deuxfleurs.fr/Deuxfleurs/infrastructure
|
| [2]
| https://git.deuxfleurs.fr/Deuxfleurs/garage/src/branch/main/...
|
| [3] https://git.deuxfleurs.fr/Deuxfleurs/diplonat
|
| Not linking our main website because it's in French.
| tifadg1 wrote:
| For an outsider, yet one that has a soft spot for
| decentralization, I can't understand what niche the projects
| are solving.
|
| Technical users can already rent a vps for very cheap and do
| it there. HA works only as well as it was tailored to - no
| generic solutions will change that, unless they impose harsh
| complexity.
|
| Who are the potential users?
| dusted wrote:
| How is the web not already decentralized? everyone's got an IP
| address and is free to plug in a server at home.. If the EU
| should do anything, it should be require by law that any Internet
| connection comes with a non-carrier-gade-natted ip address, and
| that it can be made static if the customer desires, for free.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Yeah, this ain't gonna happen. Telecoms in Europe are way to
| tightly politically connected (at least in Germany and Austria)
| to force them into stuff like this.
|
| Plus, most consumers here don't care about their IP status
| (most don't know what an IP is), they mostly care if they can
| stream YouTube and play Fortnite good enough on their
| connection.
|
| I wish we could force (and fund) telecoms to extend their fiber
| network as at least in Germany and Austria it's awful, like
| going back in Eastern Europe but 15 years in the past.
| jitix wrote:
| This! Legislating for network infrastructure upgrades and IPv6
| adoption will go a long way towards decentralization.
|
| The market will produce a bunch of privacy focused "Facebook in
| a box" kind of products on top of such infrastructure.
| dylkil wrote:
| This is funding for developer tools for building decentralised
| services
| magila wrote:
| The web as a whole is decentralized, but the HTTP URL scheme
| can only reference assets through a single authoritative
| hostname (or IP address). Thus the ability to retrieve a
| particular asset is always beholden to a single, privledged
| entity. When people talk about the "decentralized web" they are
| generally talking about combining a means of referencing assets
| in a self-authenticating manner (e.g. using cryptographic
| hashes and signatures) with a way a retrieving those assets
| which does not rely on a privledged authority (e.g. using a DHT
| and a P2P transfer protocol).
| openfuture wrote:
| Precisely. The internet is all the protocols, the web is
| HTTP(S), the dweb would be protocols like bittorrent and now
| with zero knowledge proofs we can hash executions of programs
| also...
|
| The biggest problem is how do you prove your right to
| participation? Proof of work and proof of stake are both
| laughably inadequate. Machine learning things are being
| applied incorrectly imo but it'll converge eventually.
| drKarl wrote:
| IPFS is pretty awesome, and the ideas it builds upon like a
| Merkle tree DAG are really cool. I love the idea of DApps or
| Decentralized apps. I've played with some cool projects like
| MetaMask etc. But I really don't like the idea that all (most?)
| DApps are based on Ethereum and require huge amounts of Gas to
| run. Can't we have DApps without Blockchain/Ethereum?
|
| I know IPFS doesn't use Ethereum, and neither do things like SSB
| (Secure Scuttlebutt, based on the gossip protocol) but the
| biggest ecosystem of DApps is based on Ethereum and requires
| gas...
| Geee wrote:
| There's RGB which is built on Bitcoin Lightning Network. [0]
| It's not ready for use yet.
|
| [0] https://www.rgbfaq.com/what-is-rgb
| exdsq wrote:
| Not looking to get into a crypto-war with anyone, but I suggest
| looking at Cardano which just launched smart contracts. They
| have much more reasonable gas requirements that are calculated
| upfront, and there's a lot of space for innovation as they
| released this week. Fun reason to look into Haskell too.
| opatdchan wrote:
| >But I really don't like the idea that all (most?) DApps are
| based on Ethereum and require huge amounts of Gas to run. Can't
| we have DApps without Blockchain/Ethereum?
|
| Previous generation dapps were mostly on Ethereum because it
| was the only real solution available. But the ecosystem is
| maturing, there are chains that consume so little gas it's
| effectively a negligible cost, and more and more dapps are
| making use of them. Not to mention that Eth 2.0 is coming
| soon(tm).
| esperent wrote:
| >there are chains that consume so little gas it's effectively
| a negligible cost, and more and more dapps are making use of
| them
|
| Can you give some examples? How far along is the development?
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| It's important to note that these chains that are cheaper
| to use have to make trade offs to enable that. The trade
| off they choose is generally to be more centralized. A
| better approach over using a new "cheap" blockchain is to
| use a Rollup network on top of a decentralized blockchain.
|
| Rollups inherit the security of the blockchain they are
| based on, and a user can always leave the rollup network if
| they become censored.
|
| The downside of current Optimistic Rollup networks is that
| many still have centralized points of control in place
| (such as arbitrary contract upgrades), but those are
| expected to be removed in the next few months for at least
| one of them.
|
| Zero-Knowledge rollups are also coming out and have key
| advantages over Optimistic Rollups, including much lower
| costs.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| DAG based networks (rather than blockchains) such as
| Fantom and Avalanche seem to be emerging as a way to
| address scalability issues found on blockchain-based
| smart contract platforms. Currently, Fantom is doing more
| transactions per day than Ethereum, with gas costing 1-2
| cents for simple transactions and 1-6 cents for smart
| contract interactions.
|
| The tradeoff, based on my understanding, is that there's
| not as much resilience to node outages (on both of these,
| 33% of validators by stake concentration going down could
| lead to block production halting)
| opatdchan wrote:
| I'll speak for myself, as I just finished developing a
| fully functional dapp on the Polygon blockchain.
| Transactions are usually confirmed <30s (not fantastic, but
| acceptable) and cost less than $0.0001 worth of gas each.
| There are also other solutions which may work better for
| certain dapps. For example there is Arbitrum, which has
| much higher gas costs but instantaneous confirmation times.
| Regardless, the ecosystem is moving fast, improvements are
| always coming soon(tm) and new solutions are popping up all
| the time. But what's right here, right now is already good
| enough to be usable.
| whitepaint wrote:
| Polygon
| zwarag wrote:
| I guess http://gun.js.org/ goes into that direction.
| searchableguy wrote:
| I looked into their [0]codebase and I'm concerned about
| stability and maintenance.
|
| 0] https://github.com/amark/gun
|
| https://github.com/amark/gun/blob/master/src/chain.js
| gardnr wrote:
| I was investigating GUN for a project last year. The core
| developer, Mark Nadal, is really inviting and responsive. The
| project does a good job of publishing numbers and research to
| prove the technology is a viable option to classic
| centralised architecture that developers are currently paid
| to produce. Definitely worth a look.
| Ruphin wrote:
| Only operations that change the state of the Ethereum network
| require gas. You can use an application and as long as you only
| perform read operations, you don't require any gas.
|
| For example, in a decentralized Youtube-like application, you
| can browse and watch videos without using any gas. You would
| only need gas if you wanted to add content to the system, like
| uploading a video or posting a comment.
|
| If such an application required no cost to write data, what
| would protect the system against spam? Who would bear the costs
| of operating the application?
| cdiddy2 wrote:
| It is hard to get away from a gas based system because of spam
| and resource limitations.
|
| Regarding the expensiveness there are a lot of new technologies
| rolling out today such as optimistic rollups(arbitrum/optimism)
| and zkrollups(dydx,zksync) that allow for cheaper dapps to run.
| Then there is also things like Avalanche or Solana that are
| completely separate chains with different decentralization
| trade offs that allow for cheaper transactions. The space is
| still going through rapid advancement and experimentation.
| vmception wrote:
| > It is hard to get away from a gas based system because of
| spam and resource limitations.
|
| I went to a Hyperledger workshop just to get a more objective
| opinion on it.
|
| All the demo functions were showing us how it was possible to
| threads and put the state on an internal blockchain, but that
| all nodes had to run the threaded functions we wrote.
|
| _hmmmm, why is this taking so long_ , oh because everyone in
| the class was spamming the nodes with arbitrary executions!
| with no anti-spam resource it was as actually dumb as the
| theory suggested.
|
| that said, I've come to accept that _the market can bear_
| many things in the distributed ledger space, so even if other
| theoretical solutions can make participants cooperate, an out
| of the box solution is here that the world is selling so hard
| that it is easy to sell itself.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| There are a bunch of EVM-compatible platforms that can host
| dapps now, and many projects are running cross-chain or have
| equivalent projects on those. Personally I think Fantom is
| worth taking a look at (and as a disclaimer I hold some); it
| already is handling more transactions per day than Ethereum and
| has a massive dapp ecosystem, NFT marketplaces, etc. Gas fees
| are typically 1-2 cents (simple transactions) or 2-6 cents
| (contract interactions)
|
| Others worth looking at would be Avalanche (also PoS and DAG-
| based) or Polygon/Matic (which is L2)
|
| Further away from Ethereum, the launch of smart contracts on
| Cardano from a few days ago is the beginning of dapps there as
| well. The fees on Cardano are getting to be prohibitive for
| casual usage unfortunately (minimum $0.50 per transaction), but
| what's nice is that the fees are deterministic, and you can't
| have a failed transaction that consumes or runs out of 'gas'
| without finishing (though they don't actually use gas)
|
| (further disclaimer, I actually hold some of all of the above +
| Ethereum... but I guess it's fair to say I hold these because
| of the potential of what they're doing)
| natural219 wrote:
| You absolutely don't need some crypto-based financial scheme to
| run decentralized web applications. Just some kind of open
| standard & a set of motivations and incentives to keep the
| system running and improving.
|
| American ideas of decentralization tend to make the root
| assumption that financial incentives are the only thing that
| drive human motivation, so almost every decentralization
| project gets "blockchained" eventually, at which point progress
| on the core standards or applications gets halted because the
| attention, focus, and energy shifts to figuring out the myriad,
| predictable problems with adding "operate a global financial
| system" to your JIRA tickets.
|
| I don't really know any way out of this bottleneck for
| Americans; they're simply too obsessed with complicated
| financial schemes to make clear progress on usable dApps.
|
| I have slightly more hope for Europeans; if you notice the
| Matrix project has been chugging along for years, with millions
| of users, and is poised to actually compete with big tech
| products via traditional funding and company operation, like
| normal people.
| oleganza wrote:
| What you call "american ideas" is the only thing that works
| in the anonymous environment. Communal solidarity works fine
| in small social groups where "having something at stake" that
| keeps people cooperate honestly is measured in many things
| beyond money, which includes the multi-faceted hard-to-
| quantify reputation. But if you want random people to
| cooperate on the internet, you can't have any of those
| properties but stupid cold cash.
|
| And, if you try to recreate reputation mechanisms, consider
| how exposed people would be with persistent perfectly precise
| digital identification of their cooperation efforts whenever
| such efforts cross interests of some other group. In non-
| internet life a lot of things are understood and agreed upon
| without making those decisions public. Even in private
| contracts, parties prefer that the details of the contract to
| remain known only to themselves unless (in rare and
| unfortunate circumstances) their dispute warrants
| participation of an arbiter.
| someguyorother wrote:
| > What you call "american ideas" is the only thing that
| works in the anonymous environment.
|
| What about BitTorrent or its various file-sharing
| predecessors? It has no cash, they had no cash. Or Tor?
| Exit nodes don't demand money as compensation from
| attracting the attention of people in authority.
| Geee wrote:
| Someone has to pay for the resources. If you're going to
| compete with Facebook, then someone has to pay for billions
| of dollars worth of infrastructure. Voluntarist P2P can work
| to an extent when everyone donates their computer to the
| task, but a better way is to allow people to pay and let
| experts run the nodes. People get better quality service, and
| experts can make a living by providing the service.
|
| Voluntarist networks can't guarantee quality of service. You
| just get what you get. If you want to have 1 Gbps downloads
| and 100% content availability, you have to pay someone to
| provide that.
| natural219 wrote:
| I 100% get that, and fwiw I'm fully supportive of any
| scheme that eventually works out to fund traditional app
| development.
|
| I admit I was more skeptical in ~2017 when these grand
| claims were made, and it seemed like you needed to be
| deeply up-to-date with latest crypto happenings to be able
| to navigate the 'blockchain dApp' world.
|
| I'm very supportive and admiring of things like Protocol
| Labs, which have put their money where their mouth is to
| translate the windfall from the Filecoin IPO into projects
| that make more sense to my traditional webapp brain, like
| the latest Matrix. So genuine kudos to everyone involved,
| I'm happy that this model exists and the ecosystem does
| eventually deliver in some cases.
| butz wrote:
| How to get EU funding for a new, intependent browser engine and
| internet browser?
| cookiengineer wrote:
| ...the internet browser has to be based on a blockchain,
| otherwise the NGI fund won't accept it.
|
| Source: wanted to apply with my Web Browser that is peer to
| peer but doesn't go with the blockchain hypetrain.
| ognarb wrote:
| I have a project that is currently funded by ngi and it has
| nothing to do with Blockchain...
| cookiengineer wrote:
| On the open calls page [1] it seems that the only open fund
| in the context of a web browser is the one related to
| search and discovery.
|
| All the other ones specifically mention blockchain based
| technologies.
|
| Or did your project get funded by NLNet directly via
| another fund?
|
| [1] https://www.ngi.eu/opencalls/
| mhitza wrote:
| Got a bit of envy for the people that get funds/grants for their
| idea. I'm always "lucky" enough to find the call for proposals
| that match my skills and interest past their closing date. Must
| be a sign :)
| Vinnl wrote:
| NGI0 is relatively often, and relatively approachable (though
| not major sums, usually), so there's almost always a call open.
| I got a grant through them and found the process very
| approachable, which I can't say of almost every other grant-
| giving organisation.
|
| See https://nlnet.nl/NGI0/ and consider following them on
| Mastodon: https://mastodon.xyz/@ngizero
| black_puppydog wrote:
| These NGI grants come around quite regularly. I'm sure they
| have a newsletter. :)
| mariusor wrote:
| I always look at the problem as the people that actually build
| cool tech don't really have the time to find grants and submit
| proposals. I personally haven't really seen something concrete
| and useful coming out from someone that has won one.
| wb14123 wrote:
| I never really understand the hype behind blockchain related
| technologies. The low transaction throughput, high compute
| resource demands makes it pretty unusable in most cases. Lots of
| workaround either has security problem or violated the idea of
| decentralization of blockchain, which makes it meaningless to use
| blockchain. Oh, there is also PoS which doesn't need CPU for
| mining, but doesn't anyone think it's irony that it makes rich
| people richer?
|
| Decentralization doesn't mean there shouldn't be one or some
| centralized nodes. That means open protocol, and server cannot
| control everything (for example, with end to end encryption). So
| that anyone can run the server, and user can use the service
| without trust the server.
|
| Most importantly, non regulation doesn't always mean good.
| Otherwise why we need law and government? Why not live in the
| wild west and let strong people kill weak people? Why not let big
| company play the monopoly?
| abetusk wrote:
| Cryptocurrency uses the blockchain as a fundamental building
| block. For good faith proponents of cryptocurrencies, the
| appeal is that they provide the potential to do low friction
| digital payments (e.g. "micropayments"), reduce the barrier to
| entry to participate in financial transactions and allow for a
| single, global unifying currency.
|
| You may disagree that Bitcoin, or any other cryptocurrency, has
| the potential to do this or whether it can actually do this,
| but that's the appeal.
|
| Proof of Work (PoW) is probably necessary for a decentralized
| currency [0]. Proof of Stake (PoS) can be a valid
| cryptocurrency but fails in it's centralization criteria [1].
|
| The Lightning network provides a layer-2 solution to payments,
| increasing transaction throughput and, thus, reducing PoW
| energy usage [2]. This might get into centralization territory
| but maybe this is a happy compromise between energy usage,
| throughput and centralization. In some sense, we have many
| "layer-2" like structures on the internet, with DNS caching,
| replication and load balancing etc.
|
| > Most importantly, non regulation doesn't always mean good.
| Otherwise why we need law and government? Why not live in the
| wild west and let strong people kill weak people? Why not let
| big company play the monopoly?
|
| As a counterpoint, regulation isn't always a good thing when
| it's been captured by hedge funds, oil companies,
| pharmaceutical companies or other special interests.
|
| I'm having a hard time understanding if the line "Why not let
| big company play the monopoly?" was meant to be rhetorical in
| the affirmative or the negative. Are you suggesting that
| company monopolies are a good thing? Or are you suggesting that
| a decentralized currency unseating what is essentially the
| current banking monopoly is a bad thing?
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDGliHwstM8&t=490s
|
| [1] https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-
| system/wiki/Proof-o...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network
| [deleted]
| Geee wrote:
| It's becoming clear that decentralized blockchain isn't worth
| it for anything else than solving the trust issues in monetary
| and banking systems, which Bitcoin does.
|
| Meanwhile, the altcoin "crypto industry" is becoming more and
| more like a casino and not even trying to solve anything. These
| people just chase profits, without even thinking of use cases
| any more. Decentralization isn't important any more;
| decentralization is old and the next buzzword is more valuable.
| There are the glorious leaders, the influencers, and the fans.
| Everyone is doing their part to perpetrate the scam for their
| own profit.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > isn't worth it for anything else than solving the trust
| issues in monetary and banking systems, which Bitcoin does.
|
| No, it doesn't solve that.
| themolecularman wrote:
| I like crypto, but damn it's inefficient and costly.
|
| Even the crypto that's newer than Bitcoin (all of it?) and
| therefore more efficient (not proof-of-work/stake?) is still
| not efficient in cost/time/other-resources/etc.
| milansuk wrote:
| >inefficient and costly
|
| That is the best part of today's blockchains - huge space for
| improvements! I don't see the same opportunity in centralized
| services/protocols which are kind of "done" and control by
| few big tech companies with so many resources, which they use
| to keep that control.
| vkk8 wrote:
| I'm also puzzled by the fact that EU is funding this. Usually
| states and state-like entities are exactly the ones who don't
| want people to use decentralized technologies, because they
| often make laws difficult or impossible to enforce.
|
| In fact, wanting to circumvent laws is the only reason why
| people en mass would ever want to use decentralized
| technologies. I'm not necessarily always against this (there
| are some really stupid laws that should be broken), but I'm
| pretty annoyed by how people try to pretend that there is
| demand for these technologies for any other reason.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Then again, perhaps political tropes about the role and
| motivations of state actors only partly capture reality, and
| the dynamics of public vs private interests are not
| necessarily zero-sum games.
| angelzen wrote:
| EU is way behind in tech. Centralized web means centralized
| web in US or China. Probably the push for decentralized web
| will fail, but at least it appears that EU does _something_
| to reduce dependence on foreign superpowers.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The EU could also subsidize centralized EU-based tech. What
| are the largest tech companies in the US and China based
| around? Ads, payments, cloud computing, and media
| consumption ("FAANG"). Europe already has solid, utility-
| priced payment infrastructure. Ads are arguably toxic
| (especially Facebook), and cloud computing is relatively
| straightforward to implement with talent and funding.
|
| Europe could even take a page from China and use regulation
| to strongly encourage European customers and businesses to
| not use US products and services (GDPR, for example).
| pkos98 wrote:
| > The EU could also subsidize centralized EU-based tech
| [...] cloud computing is relatively straightforward to
| implement with talent and funding.
|
| Exactly this is already happening with Gaia-X[0]. Its
| mostly pushed by German companies, along with French
| ones. But because of huge involvement of Deutsche
| Telekom, BMW and such I dont have high expectations.
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAIA-X
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I agree with the degree of your expectations. Europe
| needs a DARPA/YC model led by doers, not entrenched
| corporate interests or bureaucrats. Europe and America
| are their own worst enemies, in different ways.
| native_samples wrote:
| The EU sprays grant money around like candy. They'll fund
| more or less anything that appeals to academic sensibilities
| - at the scale it subsidizes things there's no time to
| consider the impact on political strategy.
|
| This one was pitched as, "a European initiative for a Human
| Internet that respects the fundamental values of privacy,
| participation and diversity". So the EU would have just seen
| the buzzwords "privacy" and "diversity" and said great, have
| some money.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Sounds awful (/s)
| wisethrowaway1 wrote:
| How will bureaucrats burn the next few billions of taxpayer
| money?
|
| * spins roulette *
| wisethrowaway1 wrote:
| Bitcoin!
|
| Devtools!
|
| How about lowering taxes? Have they ever considered aligning
| with the rest of the world to make it easier to do business, or
| they pretend to succeed being approximately the most hostile
| region for businesses?
| wisethrowaway1 wrote:
| Will they do something about the fact that when YC (to put a
| very random example) invests, they ask the recipient to move
| to US as EU regulatory environment is extremely hostile to
| startups?
| Kbelicius wrote:
| What part of the EU regulatory environment is extremely
| hostile to startup? I really don't know but if I had to
| guess my guess would be worker rights and regulators that
| are unwilling to let startups enter whatever industry doing
| whatever they want while disregarding established rules.
| Happy to be corrected.
| netcan wrote:
| Please relax. You don't have to leave your politics out of
| it, but you can't just start slinging it around
| belligerently. Stick to context. Be polite.
| xondono wrote:
| Belligerently? He is just rising a point.
|
| Government "innovation" subsidies move a lot of money into
| shinny "new" ideas, but in EU there's no thought about how
| to create innovation itself.
|
| Just as an example, a friend of mine roasts coffee for a
| living. He is considering closing shop, because he is
| succeeding too much. At the point he is, he'll be required
| to register as a business, which in Spain means he will
| have to pay ~300$ a month whether he makes money or not,
| plus 20% VAT and 20% in income taxes. Add to it the massive
| amount of time he'll have to spend in paperwork (or paying
| someone another 100$/mo for handling it). Another good side
| job that will go to waste, instead of growing into a
| company. And it's by no means an exception. I've work for
| tens of companies here, _all of them_ have admitted to be
| flunking regulations intentionally to avoid costs during
| their creation to be able to exist.
| throwaway739 wrote:
| Do you realize you are saying that companies shouldn't
| pay any taxes?
| xondono wrote:
| No I'm not, I'm saying that some tax systems make no
| sense. The only way to create a company in Spain is to
| flunk regulations. Some are meaningless and people ignore
| them all the time, some aren't.
|
| Another example. When escape rooms we're trending, me and
| some friends considered building one. One of the partners
| didn't want to get into trouble on it, so he wanted
| everything by the book.
|
| Spanish regulation requires a business to specify their
| "economic activity" with a codified value. The list is in
| the thousands, with a lot of non defined ambiguous terms.
|
| Evidently "escape room" was new, so it wasn't on the list
| (and it still isn't). The closest was "gambling
| business", which of course a escape room isn't. It also
| has a lot more paperwork and additional taxes.
|
| Faced with this conundrum, we went around to the 3 or 4
| escape rooms that were near enough to visit and asked
| them. Some of them just wrote a random number and called
| it a day. One of them was registered as a butchers...
|
| The legal exposure it represented was simply too big and
| we abandoned the idea. _there was no good reason for that
| legal exposure_.
|
| The statistics then are hardly surprising. Unemployment
| here is >14%, just to name one.
| PaywallBuster wrote:
| not really, you can run the business on your name and pay
| personal income taxes.
|
| Avoiding to create a separate entity which will carry
| additional compliance and tax costs is something else
| altogether, and some governments just make it too onerous
| nottorp wrote:
| > but in EU there's no thought about how to create
| innovation itself.
|
| You mean "innovation" like the predatory monopolies that
| tend to form in "business friendly" jurisdictions?
|
| Just a random example because I had the page open:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/09/big-isps-
| fight-t...
|
| So much innovation...
|
| Edit: the EU does have a problem with barriers to entry
| when starting a new business without gobs of funding, but
| the US solution is not a good answer to that.
| zoobab wrote:
| A new chip foundry entirely paid with tax payers money, and
| where the profits will go to a private corporation? (the
| 'socialize losses, privatize profits')
|
| https://twitter.com/EIF4eu/status/1438041794940395523
|
| "The @EU_Commission announced a new European Chips Act, in
| order to jointly create a state-of-the-art European #chip
| ecosystem including production."
| notimetorelax wrote:
| At this point with chip shortages it's in EU's interest to
| attract businesses to build it. Even if it costs us to build
| it, overall we'll benefit from it. How much is lost due to
| stopped Audi plants?
| zoobab wrote:
| "attract businesses to build it"
|
| I am wondering how that will work with the current "state
| aid" framework.
|
| The current crisis is an opportunity to empty the public
| coffins, full of state aids everywhere, especially to large
| corporations, and send the bill afterwards to the people
| that have to pick up the bill. No thank you.
|
| As for cars, we don't need those chips, cars were fine
| before without all those useless electronics.
| throwaway59553 wrote:
| >As for cars, we don't need those chips, cars were fine
| before without all those useless electronics. But how
| will they make sure you need to have your car checked
| every 12 months and bill you for some vague "electronic
| component"?
| wisethrowaway1 wrote:
| The EU Commission is desperate to find niches where it
| becomes an essential dealmaker.
|
| To their dismay, after 50 years of trying hard, they are
| still an irrelevant institution economically, a net negative
| for businesses and individuals.
|
| The chip industry will and can sort their issues perfectly on
| it's own. In fact one of the top chipmakers is already
| European, and they are doing extremely well, they don't need
| any political help.
| throwaway59553 wrote:
| It's either a private firm that will keep all the profits,
| instead of sharing a part, as if paying a loan or royalties,
| beyond paying wages for the created jobs, or a bunch of
| University teachers that have no clue about managing a
| company.
| JW1800 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero
| nickik wrote:
| Among all the things the EU waste money on this is not even in
| the Top 1000 of things that should not be done.
|
| Fundamental research into next generation technology that is
| also open source seems like the exact kind of thing governments
| should be doing.
| wisethrowaway1 wrote:
| Classic politician.
|
| They take 50% or more of your income, and then give back 1%, and
| then ask us to thank them!
| shrimpx wrote:
| With apologies to my European friends (I'm also European), this
| article illustrates how the EU is a second rate sucker in
| technology. While they boast and believe that they're cutting
| edge because they're investing in Blockchain, the likely reality
| is that they're jumping on a false trend and Blockchain and its
| thousands of buzzwords will fizzle out, as it's sustained only by
| fomo and speculation.
| y4mi wrote:
| As neither webrtc nor ipfs have anything to do with the
| Blockchain I'm guessing your talking about their Ethereum focus
| and I have to agree. but you have to admit that eth probably
| sounds like a great idea for non programmers.
|
| Implementing smart contacts that do non trivial stuff is just
| basically impossible, but it's a very interesting concept to
| run code if it were.
|
| Non-programmers just don't really realize how error riddled the
| average software is, so they get caught on the promise itself.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| I think they are calling out to the IPFS and Filecoin
| relationship. The projects used to be much closer but have
| move apart.
|
| https://docs.filecoin.io/about-filecoin/ipfs-and-filecoin/
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| I'm curious who oversees these expenditures, and what their
| qualifications are.
|
| Governments typically have sub-par IT and software engineering
| (when done in house). When it's venture capital, investors are
| playing with their own money*, so there's a good incentive to
| be right and pick the right people/tech. But here, it seems
| like it's bureaucrats that are going to be deciding what to
| invest in, isn't it?
|
| DARPA got it right a couple of times in the past, so I could be
| wrong.
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| That's only one of the protocols they're funding though. The
| others being IPFS and WebRTC.
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