This is what is going to happen to all meme cryptocurrencies

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cytg111

Lifer
Mar 17, 2008
23,047
12,715
136
Idea of Ripple, xrp is good and non invasive on the climate.
I really do like the idea of cutting out “wallstreet”
 

njdevilsfan87

Platinum Member
Apr 19, 2007
2,327
249
106
Which Eth update are you talking about? The PoS fork? There's already PoS coins, why is Eth special besides having a higher price?

The sharding update that will come after PoS. Sharding will allow a company like Microsoft to deploy its own blockchain that runs parallel to Ethereum's main network, giving it access to all of Ethereum's validators. And so Microsoft's brand new shard would be as robust and secure as Ethereum is itself, without having to setup any infrastructure at all - automatically getting to bypass what is a decade of growth for Ethereum. Microsoft would just need a stash of Ethereum to pay validators to process transactions on its shard. Additionally, because all shards run through the same validators, they will be able to talk to one another directly. PoS is one of the first scaling pre-requisites for Ethereum sharding.

As far as Ethereum being special: network effect. If you launch a new business on Ethereum right now, you've got a pool of potential users that dwarfs a lot of the new although technologically better PoS coins.
 

interchange

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
8,015
2,845
136
What do you mean Eth has real applications. I'm kinda ignorant on a lot of this crypto stuff

NFTs are probably the most tangible use case right now. It makes a lot of sense in the digital world, and I hope it becomes much more widespread with inclusion of copyright transfers in sales and track record of enforcement.

Defi is the wild west right now. It has been operating and has the goal of actually replacing banking infrastructure, but thus far most of the activity has been to try and exploit it for profit.

There is an expanding role for financial institutions to use stablecoins as backing for transactions. That has potential to bypass existing infrastructure. Visa, Chase, etc. are working on this.

It has an interesting use case in video games. Axie Infinity has blown up and essentially implements the video game economy through Ethereum tokens and uses NFTs to represent ownership. The side effect here is that you can actually trade those tokens in crypto exchanges and make real money through it. That may be the future for the Roblox, WoW, etc. of the world, although mainstream titles would have to integrate a crypto wallet themselves for accessibility sake.
 

Rebel_L

Senior member
Nov 9, 2009
449
61
91
It has an interesting use case in video games. Axie Infinity has blown up and essentially implements the video game economy through Ethereum tokens and uses NFTs to represent ownership. The side effect here is that you can actually trade those tokens in crypto exchanges and make real money through it. That may be the future for the Roblox, WoW, etc. of the world, although mainstream titles would have to integrate a crypto wallet themselves for accessibility sake.

Why would video games want to go this direction, they have been fighting hard since their inception to claim ownership of anything and everything within their own games, it would seem contradictory to start going in a direction that involves people owning things in their games. I cant see any value for a game company to go this way unless they also want to start speculating in the crypto market on top of running a game.

Also moving from the current regulated pay methods to unregulated crypto would basically make all the consumer protections we currently enjoy disappear, why would consumers want this kind of a switch?
 

conehead433

Diamond Member
Dec 4, 2002
5,565
889
126
If I were a business owner i would NEVER accept any type of crypto currency for payment. I just hope that the government does not ever support any form of crypto currency. At least a dollar today is worth a dollar tomorrow.
 

interchange

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
8,015
2,845
136
Why would video games want to go this direction, they have been fighting hard since their inception to claim ownership of anything and everything within their own games, it would seem contradictory to start going in a direction that involves people owning things in their games. I cant see any value for a game company to go this way unless they also want to start speculating in the crypto market on top of running a game.

Also moving from the current regulated pay methods to unregulated crypto would basically make all the consumer protections we currently enjoy disappear, why would consumers want this kind of a switch?

It doesn't necessarily have to follow the Axie model for ownership stake. Using NFTs and a crypto token that can be traded as a game currency (like Robux) are things I can see for the future.
 

njdevilsfan87

Platinum Member
Apr 19, 2007
2,327
249
106
Why would video games want to go this direction, they have been fighting hard since their inception to claim ownership of anything and everything within their own games, it would seem contradictory to start going in a direction that involves people owning things in their games. I cant see any value for a game company to go this way unless they also want to start speculating in the crypto market on top of running a game.

I could be wrong about this, but I believe a company could make something like an Ethereum shard private. Meaning that you wouldn't be able to transfer something like an NFT off of that shard for Ethereum or some other token on Ethereum. Such a setup would provide a good middle ground: customer ownership of an item, but constrained within a space owned by the video game company.

I have zero interest in MMORPGs, but I would pretty interested in one that would be powered by a blockchain backend saving character progress to a smart-contract connected to my hack-proof private key, as well as delivering items in the form of NFTs to again, my hack-proof private key. Blockchains would do a lot in legitimizing in game economies. In fact, they will be the first working examples of our real world economies running on blockchains.
 
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DisarmedDespot

Senior member
Jun 2, 2016
587
588
136
NFTs are probably the most tangible use case right now. It makes a lot of sense in the digital world, and I hope it becomes much more widespread with inclusion of copyright transfers in sales and track record of enforcement.
NFTs are by far the biggest bubble and also the biggest solution looking for a problem. They don't solve any problems that artists have and if anything they only amplify them. They fall apart exactly where every crypto project does: the moment you touch anything outside the network. Blockchains verify the integrity of their chain but they can't prove that whoever is selling the thing is who they say they are, so selling other people's art (or even entire collections of NFTs on another chain) is rampant. And that's not even getting into the issue of insider trading, with people passing NFTs between their own accounts to pump up the price.

I mean, honestly, do you think some autogenerated apes that look like something out of 2006 Deviantart is worth 2.7 million? The art world is crazy, yeah, but NFTs are that on meth.

Defi is the wild west right now. It has been operating and has the goal of actually replacing banking infrastructure, but thus far most of the activity has been to try and exploit it for profit.

I haven't looked into defi for a long time, when I last did it was limited to collateralized loans that had to be entirely in crypto. I don't see its use for anything but more speculation or putting off capital gains taxes as long as possible, since you need the crypto up front.

There is an expanding role for financial institutions to use stablecoins as backing for transactions. That has potential to bypass existing infrastructure. Visa, Chase, etc. are working on this.
God I hope this fails, stablecoins like Tether are an awful idea.

It has an interesting use case in video games. Axie Infinity has blown up and essentially implements the video game economy through Ethereum tokens and uses NFTs to represent ownership. The side effect here is that you can actually trade those tokens in crypto exchanges and make real money through it. That may be the future for the Roblox, WoW, etc. of the world, although mainstream titles would have to integrate a crypto wallet themselves for accessibility sake.
No offense, but turning up the most predatory practices in free-to-play games up to 11 is an awful idea. No one plays Axie, they do it to try and speculate and make money on the tokens. It costs something like $300 to start. At that point it's not a game, it's speculation. Real-world money markets in games aren't new (nor are they good), why do they need NFTs besides to get the hype train rolling?
 
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DisarmedDespot

Senior member
Jun 2, 2016
587
588
136
Once a few developers build successful large scale games - Blizzard will have no choice but to adapt or lose out on a lot of future growth.

I have zero interest in MMORPGs, but I would pretty interested in one that would be powered by a blockchain backend saving character progress to a smart-contract connected to my hack-proof private key, as well as delivering items in the form of NFTs to again, my hack-proof private key.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

yeah enter your rsa key every time you want to log in

yeah replace their databases with a slower public leger just because

this is nonsensical
 

njdevilsfan87

Platinum Member
Apr 19, 2007
2,327
249
106
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

yeah enter your rsa key every time you want to log in

yeah replace their databases with a slower public leger just because

this is nonsensical

I've never once entered any key with my hardware wallet to make transactions with it. Or my software core wallets.
Edit: This actually isn't entirely correct. There is a PIN code I need to input when I connect my wallet.

And the public ledger is getting pretty fast: anywhere from hundreds to as much as 50,000 TPS in the case of Solana - likely more than enough to handle a medium-scale MMORPG. So yes, let's replace centralized security holes with tamper-proof decentralized public ledgers if they're fast enough.
 

DisarmedDespot

Senior member
Jun 2, 2016
587
588
136
I've never once entered any key with my hardware wallet to make transactions with it. Or my software core wallets.
Edit: This actually isn't entirely correct. There is a PIN code I need to input when I connect my wallet.

And the public ledger is getting pretty fast: anywhere from hundreds to as much as 50,000 TPS in the case of Solana - likely more than enough to handle a medium-scale MMORPG. So yes, let's replace centralized security holes with tamper-proof decentralized public ledgers if they're fast enough.
I mean, sure, you can use a hammer to drive screws as well, but why? You're using blockchain as a magical anti-hacking tool that's a drop-in replacement for everything no matter what. That example is just so fundamentally removed from any semblance of reality I honestly don't know where it's coming from.

Why are you using a blockchain when you aren't doing trustless transactions? That's the entire point of cryptocurrencies, going all the way back to the bitcoin whitepaper.
Why on earth is the thing public? You're exposing the entire playerbase's characters and items to the whole world for, why? So you can have a list of players to be targeted for fishing attacks?'
Why is all this anti-leet-haxor nonsense focused on people running updates on the character and item databases you're exposing to the world? The security worry is compromised accounts and stolen personal data, not someone giggling while setting levels from 99 to 0.

If there's an MMO that does anything like this, please let me know because it has got to be an abject dumpsterfire.
 
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nickqt

Diamond Member
Jan 15, 2015
7,535
7,660
136
Let's be clear, cryptocurrencies are a casino. Gamble what you can afford to lose, maybe you hit it big, probably you walk away with less than you came with.

Won't matter much in 20 years or so when 24/7 electricity is only for the billionaires and their company towns.
 

hal2kilo

Lifer
Feb 24, 2009
23,326
10,230
136
I mean, sure, you can use a hammer to drive screws as well, but why? You're using blockchain as a magical anti-hacking tool that's a drop-in replacement for everything no matter what. That example is just so fundamentally removed from any semblance of reality I honestly don't know where it's coming from.

Why are you using a blockchain when you aren't doing trustless transactions? That's the entire point of cryptocurrencies, going all the way back to the bitcoin whitepaper.
Why on earth is the thing public? You're exposing the entire playerbase's characters and items to the whole world for, why? So you can have a list of players to be targeted for fishing attacks?'
Why is all this anti-leet-haxor nonsense focused on people running updates on the character and item databases you're exposing to the world? The security worry is compromised accounts and stolen personal data, not someone giggling while setting levels from 99 to 0.

If there's an MMO that does anything like this, please let me know because it has got to be an abject dumpsterfire.
Definitely going to be investing in something that I have no clue what was being discussed in the previous 5 or 6 posts above. /s
 

njdevilsfan87

Platinum Member
Apr 19, 2007
2,327
249
106
Why are you using a blockchain when you aren't doing trustless transactions? That's the entire point of cryptocurrencies, going all the way back to the bitcoin whitepaper.

Bitcoin doesn't have any capability aside from doing peer-to-peer crypto transactions. But the space has evolved beyond Bitcoin.

As far a trustless transaction goes: a trustless transaction is nothing more than a trustless state change of the blockchain, where user account balances are modified and then validated by the network's nodes. One more time: a state change.

Since Ethereum people have started to realize you can also utilize the network to store and retrieve information, because all you're doing is... state changes to the blockchain! The Ethereum protocol and its smart-contracts (custom algorithms) have enabled a ton of flexibility on what you can actually do with a blockchain. And it's not a free-for-all as there are rules and limitations. But it is flexible enough that the space goes far beyond crypto-to-crypto transactions now.

So why use something like Ethereum? Take the case of a MMORPG, most of the code and processing would be done both locally and server-side. But for things like a login system, character progression, and item storage - smart-contracts can handle all of that, and remove the need to backup data, or setup any sort of IT security for any of it: the Ethereum is the backup and the security.

Also, not all information is public. Bitcoin balances, Ethereum balances - yes all of that is public - to a public key (not a private one). With smart contracts you can also set private variables that can only be retrieved the admin key owner. So not, users won't be phished because you can set all accounts within a smart-contract to be private viewable only. Not to mention you won't need to use an email address anywhere. And finally, once Ethereum shards exist - companies will be able have their own private blockchains backed by the integrity and security of Ethereum itself.
 
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Roger Wilco

Diamond Member
Mar 20, 2017
3,856
5,688
136
Apparently the mayors of NYC and Miami are choosing to receive their paycheck in Bitcoin.
 

DisarmedDespot

Senior member
Jun 2, 2016
587
588
136
So why use something like Ethereum? Take the case of a MMORPG, most of the code and processing would be done both locally and server-side. But for things like a login system, character progression, and item storage - smart-contracts can handle all of that, and remove the need to backup data, or setup any sort of IT security for any of it: the Ethereum is the backup and the security.

Also, not all information is public. Bitcoin balances, Ethereum balances - yes all of that is public - to a public key (not a private one). With smart contracts you can also set private variables that can only be retrieved the admin key owner. So not, users won't be phished because you can set all accounts within a smart-contract to be private viewable only. Not to mention you won't need to use an email address anywhere. And finally, once Ethereum shards exist - companies will be able have their own private blockchains backed by the integrity and security of Ethereum itself.
Oh, so this thought experiment doesn't take place on earth but the magical real of cryptoland, where everyone uses public-private key infrastructure for everything and no one ever loses their keys.

But hey, maybe smart contracts will really be that secu-
DeFi Protocol Indexed Finance Suffers $16M Exploit
Cointelegraph Consulting: Recounting 2021’s biggest DeFi hacking incidents
Oh wait, they're trash and have been trash going back all the way to the DAO hack that forced Eth to fork. Are they still using the turd that is Solidity, or have they moved to a language not based off ECMAscript?

Again, you're not doing trustless transactions, you don't need it to be public, why are you trying to shoehorn crypto into something where it makes no sense? I like Hadoop, but I'm not gonna try to use it for small data sets. Do you think Eth is some magical thing with zero flaws?
 

UNCjigga

Lifer
Dec 12, 2000
24,800
9,002
136
So right now would be a really good time to start buying crypto and hoarding video cards,,, right????
 

UNCjigga

Lifer
Dec 12, 2000
24,800
9,002
136
Also—how many sanctioned Russians and their corrupt Cypriot/Swiss bankers are shitting their pants right now??
 

dullard

Elite Member
May 21, 2001
24,998
3,325
126
What happened today?
At one point today they were down 10% to 20% from yesterday's values*, but they did recover much of that already. However, the medium-term trend is down:
1652384742469.png

* That likely stemmed from the fact that wallet holders are reporting that if they run out of money, then you lose your crypto that they hold for you. Of course, you don't need a wallet, but then the crypto is basically a useless shiny bauble sitting on a shelf (or landfill as the case may be).