Weekly General Discussion - July 02, 2023 <-> July 09, 2023 : ethfinance

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

I thought today (July 5) might be the day we break $2K, but we didn’t and we seem to be receding right now.

Which leads me to ask, having lost sight of the /r/ethfinance pulse:

What’s this community’s sentiment with regard to the next few months? Are we still stuck in a foreseeably long bear? Are we at the cusp of a crypto spring? Are there trigger points (such as the Blackrock ETF’s approval, or the XRP verdict) that you think must happen before this is even decidable?

spez: thank you for the replies. I love that among four replies, one says surge up, one says crab sideways, and one says drop back down to the local low.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Spring/bull is imminent IMO. Price action seems to support it. I am not saying that we won't get another major leg down, but I think we have bottomed for now. We can range here until most people reach apathy (I'm mostly here) and then slowly surge upwards (I think we're near here)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Echoing @laughingmime... it's gotta come with volume. There's just nothing there right now. It can be a pump or a dump, but something's gotta give. No one outside the holders cares about crypto right now sadly. It'll return though. It always does.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

I think we'll be going sideways for a while still, but without anything tangible to base that on

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

One thing a lot of people do not like about the fediverse is that you can only sign in on the instance you signed up on.

If only there was a simple solution, a way to login everywhere and ensure that it's always the same person.
Something public that could identify the person and something private the person could use to prove it's them.

Soo.. Who's going to build 'sign in with Ethereum' (or public/private keys) for the fediverse?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (6 children)

that's not needed as it's not needed to sign in anywhere other than your 'home' instance, except perhaps when it's offline

I agree there's a lot of potential to improve on the fediverse model but I don't think it makes sense to use Ethereum unless absolutely necessary

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

scary to see how many people are willingly signing up for another Meta privacy nightmare. And then there are even people defending it in the fediverse, like as if Meta isn't gunning to destroy us ASAP

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think embracing and valuing the principles of FOSS, decentralization, anonymity, privacy, ownership of one’s digital identity and data, online security, etc. requires a degree of technological literacy that most people don’t possess. For most online citizens today who’ve only ever known the current centralized Web 2.0 through the glass of a mobile device, convenience trumps those principles even when you explain their value to them.

The Meta crowd and the Fediverse crowd are not two perfect distinct sets - more like a Venn diagram with some inevitable overlap.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Adding a new trading rule for myself. Never re-buy something I’ve sold in the same day. What a moron 🤦‍♂️.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Don’t kick yourself. Perfect trading discipline is incredibly hard for everyone. It matters more to keep a cool head when the trade goes against you. You’ll make it back!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Thanks anon ❤️

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (8 children)

Sorry for the rant-y doomer post, so feel free to skip, but amidst the recent "Threads" news (as well as some other things like the whole Reddit debacle, and some dumb AI stuff), I've given up trying to advocate anything on the open or decentralized front to my peers. They only care about UX and literally nothing else.

It actually has me pretty bearish on what we try to do here in Ethereum-land as well. If normal people are only ever going to flock to centralized services (especially those who've been known to cause harm historically) because it "just works on their iPhone" or "is 100% free no matter what", and they've already been conditioned to hate (and I mean hate from what I've seen from my peers) crypto by all of the scammers and the media, how can we possibly win people over at this point? If the answer is "with the tech" like we've been saying for the past X years, will the UX ever be genuinely good enough to get people to care?

We've all been conditioned over the past couple of decades to be used to the amenities of unsustainable services, and are so used to consuming content in general, that the only viable "alternatives" on the internet for the vast majority of people is to go back and forth amongst the tech giants who can afford to subsidize their free services via their other offerings, or sell and feed users' data to the ever-growing array of AI modals, who will in turn consistently churn out "content" that displaces all of the creators, writers, artists, video editors, etc. who need these social services in the first place to get work in the online gig economy.

Unsustainable service then implodes, people flock to the next fancy unsustainable giant-controlled service, and then we repeat again.

And GOOD LUCK trying to get any of these people to conceptually understand DeFi and the like in 2023, let alone feel empowered enough to use it to the extent they do with what they're used to today. Sign in with Ethereum? Nah, Apple lets me sign in to every site now with just my iPhone; it's wayyyyy easier than that. And crypto wallets? Nahhhh, Venmo is super easy AND I can send things with silly funny emojis!

Idk, times like these make me feel silly for doubling-down and validating on Ethereum instead of just selling back in 2021; heck, I could've retired 30 years early, lol. I like to think I'm trying to help make the world a better, and more open + equitable place by helping keep the proverbial lights on as the bigger brains build, but it feels like the time to do anything with massive impact past niche market segments has passed, and I genuinely don't know, with the current state of things + tech, what the online world is going to look like in 20, or even 10 years. At this rate, it's not looking good.

/end rant. I'm just so tired. :P

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

You're not wrong. I agree that public sentiment is abysmal and trying to talk to somebody about the merits of decentralization suddenly makes you a crypto bro. On the other hand, the bar is so, so low, that small improvements over time, such as UX development, can be really valuable. And large improvements, like the Merge, are a great way to combat misinformation if you find yourself in a conversation with a crypto hater.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I guess two things need to happen so we can get out of this rut in the technology cycle.

One, the Web3 developers and contributors need to shed their engineering mindset and start getting preoccupied with UX and ease of adoption. As you mentioned, we’re not going to convert the market to embrace the tech for tech’s sake; the onus is on us to adapt to the market’s expectations that “it just works”. That’s the Apple model and there’s a ton of money to be made for those who crack that magic formula.

Second, but related to the first point, is that the tech needs to take a backseat and become an invisible layer. No mass market user needs to even know that their next-gen Venmo or SSO is settled on, or powered by, the Ethereum network. We as a community want our champion L1 network to get the name recognition we think it deserves, but the reality is that just like no average user cares about TCP/IP or even knows about it, our own tech needs to efface itself and be a silent enabler of higher-level apps and use cases.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Agreed across the board. Good friends of mine that would ideologically align on most issues could not give less of a shit about any of this.

NFTs are a joke to almost everybody, Crypto is just FTX and/or a pyramid scheme to them and a source of some of the most annoying people on Twitter. There is no value in any of this for anybody but the most stubbornly ideological / anti-bank nerds. When it was easy money, it pulled in some normies. Now nobody cares. People are happy to use threads, Instagram, Facebook, Wells Fargo, etc. and I’m not arguing with any of them.

[–] Veltoss 5 points 2 years ago

You're not wrong. This push to decentralize gives me some hope, but even many of the pro-decentralization people mindlessly hate blockchain technology because it's what they were conditioned to do. They can't even begin to argue their belief but god damn do they believe it strongly.

I don't have a lot of faith in the future of the internet or social media. I think it's going to continue to fracture. We'll have the centralized internet, and the decentralized internet on the fringes that the rest of us live on.

The people on the centralized services will spend all day complaining about all the awful things the centralized services do while hating on the decentralized services that fix all the things they want fixed, because that's what they're going to be conditioned/brainwashed to think. People are too easily tricked and misinformed, and not educated against it, for modern social media. It's just too fucking easy to manipulate people.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I get the feeling. I've been a linux desktop user for 20 years now, waiting for people to see the light. But, sadly they don't, for all kinds of reasons.

And I've made peace with that.

Because things like linux, or ethereum, or the fediverse don't need huge, widespread adoption to succeed. They need a core of serious, dedicated folks willing to keep pushing it forward while it's presence in the market acts as a very real check on the centralized and walled off ecosystems.

And eventually, the core of what's been built will end in up in consumers hands and running their servers in the background, and will gain billions of oblivious users.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

For the weekly doots livestream today (Friday, July 7) we'll be joined by Frisson from Tally, an on-chain DAO framework. To listen in and participate, join the EVMavericks Discord at 12pm EST (4pm UTC+0) in the #public-voice channel, or follow along on YouTube!

If you want to help support the work being done to make these livestreams a reality, consider minting the POAP for this week. All proceeds go to those helping out with the stream.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Should I EigenLayer?

I'm having a hard time deciding if I should point one of my validators at an EigenPod, and I'd appreciate some input.

I've been thinking about this for weeks. I went through all the documentation, created a pod, and have a json file ready to set my withdrawal address for a single validator (I still have 0x00 credentials, because I don't want to declare my reward income yet, and the process of changing credentials is frankly terrifying).

In contrast to LST restaking, native restaking on EigenLayer has been slow to gain traction. As of this writing, 134 validators have signed up, out of an expected initial cohort of approximately 300. Based on Sreeram's recent Bankless panel participation, I believe those fewer than 300 brave (stupid?) souls will receive a significant airdrop in the future, and may have privileged access to lucrative opportunities.

I'm honestly torn. If there's a problem with the BeaconProxy contract, losing a validator would suck, but it wouldn't significantly damage my crypto prospects. Part of me thinks EigenLayer is a grave threat to Ethereum, and should be shunned. Another part of me is excited about the possibility of being among the first to participate in something genuinely innovative.

What say you, fam? I'm leaning toward broadcasting the message. It should be an interesting journey, even if it ends in disaster

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I’m personally sitting this one out. I’ve watched Sreeram’s lectures and I share some excitement about the innovative concept of Eigenlayer. I can see that the additional degree of abstraction that it brings creates novel use cases that cleverly leverage Ethereum’s consensus protocol.

But I’ve also chosen to forego some yield by solo-staking instead of playing the LST game because I want what’s best not just for myself, but for the Ethereum network of which I consider myself a modest but principled steward.

For now, I’m applying the same cautious logic to Eigenlayer. I may be foregoing some hypothetical future airdrops and extra yield, but I won’t rush into something so fresh that its impact is not yet fully understood. Like you, the risk of slashing my own node is not even my main concern; the risk of subverting the network is.

The most neutral advice I can give is to read Vitalik’s post on the topic if you haven’t done so already (https://vitalik.ca/general/2023/05/21/dont_overload.html) and decide how much risk the restaking use case you’re considering brings to Ethereum.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

My validator has been running for two weeks and it hasn't crashed once. Exciting times!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Which CL/EL clients are you running?

spez: updooting your comment takes me to an error page, WTF

spez^2: what should we replace “spez” with for edits now that we’re free from Steve Huffman’s influence?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Just checking that everyone has purchased their copy of Paul Brody's Ethereum for Business (ISBN 978 195 489 2101). I'm currently working my way through it and it's very good indeed.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What do you like most about it?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

For me, it's the number of carefully researched case studies. These lend the book relevancy for our current time (future editions will need to keep up to date) but also show that Ethereum is being used to solve real world problems.

Most folks I talk to don't have any kind of grasp of why decentralisation is important. They want a service that just works without any kind of hard thinking required. The book explains why decentralisation is so important as we move away from web2 to web3.

Definitely recommended.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Thank you, I’ll have to look into it. I dislike that Ethereum keeps getting painted as a solution in search of a problem, when there are tangible use cases we should keep in our back pocket as talking points for the skeptics.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

A bit meta, but in parallel to migrating to Kbin, I also started playing with the news aggregator https://news.kiwistand.com/, which is a Hacker News clone for Web3.

As I understand it, a key difference from HN, though, is that Kiwi is an open protocol for submitting and upvoting links. It does not contain identity management features nor the ability to store comments and replies. All you can do, as a user, is connect your Ethereum address to post and upvote links. You also need one ERC-721 Kiwi NFT in your wallet to have the ability to post.

Clients are then free to build their own commenting system (similar to Kbin or Lemmy) on top of the Kiwi protocol. Those clients may store comments data on the blockchain (e.g., an L2) or on a traditional server instance (federated or otherwise), and they may use Web3 authentication, e.g. Metamask or SIWE.

I thought this community might be interested given the Web3 focus and the openness of the protocol. Read more at https://paragraph.xyz/@kanfa/what-is-kiwi (disclaimer: I have zero affiliation to this project).

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Hi all, finally made it through. Nice little community here, from what I've seen the signal to noise ratio is even better than on r/ethfinance. I'll probably be posting/reading both here and reddit for a while. So, a newbie question: Is there a way to use this on a cellphone, or an android app so I don't have to go to my desktop every time?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

have you tried going to the site with your phone and installing it as a web app? Chrome asked me immediately the first time, or if it didn't I'm sure you can go to settings in Chrome and use "add to homescreen". I haven't tried this with kbin as I'm here from a lemmy instance, but the lemmy interface is really quite good when installed as an app

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Not the parent, but that’s also what I did with Kbin on iOS and it works well.

Kbin was struggling to display properly in Chrome iOS but works smoothly in Safari iOS, so I used Safari’s “Add to Home Screen” option and the icon took the place of the recently-departed and much-regretted Apollo app.

Eventually I’m waiting for the Artemis app to come of age, though I believe that’s just for iOS and not Android.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Is anyone visiting from a lemmy instance, if yes which one?

I've found some very interesting UIs for lemmy, but on the instances that I checked, [email protected] couldn't be found.

Old reddit Ui for lemmy: https://mlmym.org/lemmy.world/
Apollo Ui for lemmy: https://wefwef.app/posts/lemmy.world/all

Apparently there are some issues with the ddos protection of kbin.social that hinders federation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

yep, I'm visiting from discuss.tchncs.de

It took quite a while for the federation to be as reliable as it is now

[–] Veltoss 4 points 2 years ago

I'm just using lemmy.world's default website UI and it seems alright, haven't had any trouble with it from the apps I've tried either.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

As fireworks explode around me, I'm dreaming about a time in the future when Ethereum itself will rocket upwards and bring me one step closer to FIRE. Happy 4th. 🎆

[+] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

@kbrot thanks for the liquity recommendation. I feel like an idiot for using MKR all these time. I seriously have no idea why LUSD is not used more with the low fees that they are giving.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

For sure, liquity is pretty great. As to why it's underutilized, it's similar to what mouse is saying. Particularly in the early days, LUSD commonly ranged from 0.97 to 1.03. It was always fine in the end, but it requires that one extra step of making sure you're repaying at a beneficial time (or buying troves at a beneficial time). And of course, any add'l step makes a protocol slightly less tasty. I think the range is much smaller these days with added liquidity.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Fair enough. I have basically abdicated from Maker due to their weird changes with the new 'endgame' roadmap.

Is there a similarly big lending protocol in L2? I imagine gas costs would be quite prohibitive during the bull

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

When there is a crash and you need to delever, LUSD tends to go up in price a penny or two, which can really increase your repayment costs relative to shorter term maker loans.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Finally!! https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/06/29/canadian-etf-issuer-3iq-to-work-with-coinbase-to-offer-eth-staking-in-its-funds/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Could be interesting in the long term: https://phys.org/news/2023-07-quantum-physicists-unconditionally-digital-payments.html

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

What's everybody using for gasprices nowadays? It looks like gasprice.io has joined the long list of now dead gas prediction tools.

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[+] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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