Web3.0

[Uneeb Agha]

I don't know if anyone here is familiar with the notion of web3.0. Metamask chrome extension is an example of such paradigm whereby an object is injected onto the webapp allowing user to login via 3rd party entity as well as allow users to keep state in 3rd party entity (typically ethereum blockchain). This allows sharing of state across multiple webapps.

This has been catching quite a lot of wind recently and there is a growing community of developers that are behind this model of web architecture. Extension plays a significant role here. Out of curiosity, is this on the radar for extension developers? Are you working with web3 devs? Is there anything on the roadmap that might development easier?

[Cuyler Stuwe]

Google is a company with an unusually self-centric culture, and so they’re unlikely to back something whose entire premise is taking away power from it and other big tech monopolies to redistribute it.

We’re having a difficult enough time getting Google not to cripple the existing features we need and have had for a decade; I wouldn’t get your hopes up for such a niche set of new features.

On Tue, Dec 28, 2021 at 8:25 PM Uneeb Agha <uneeb...@gmail.com> wrote:

I don't know if anyone here is familiar with the notion of web3.0. Metamask chrome extension is an example of such paradigm whereby an object is injected onto the webapp allowing user to login via 3rd party entity as well as allow users to keep state in 3rd party entity (typically ethereum blockchain). This allows sharing of state across multiple webapps.

This has been catching quite a lot of wind recently and there is a growing community of developers that are behind this model of web architecture. Extension plays a significant role here. Out of curiosity, is this on the radar for extension developers? Are you working with web3 devs? Is there anything on the roadmap that might development easier?

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[hrg...@gmail.com]

There's a fundamental problem that I see in this whole decentralization movement.

Nobody takes responsibility for data loss or data theft (including money).

All my personal data is valuable to Google and so they keep it safely stored and properly backed up.

If Google suffered a data loss or data theft, that would have an impact on their reputation. And they obviously don't want that bad reputation. So they very seriously the task of keeping people's data safe and secure.

The exact same thing happens with my money on my bank. It's my bank's responsibility to keep my money safe. I don't lose any money if the bank is robbed.

If north korean hackers find a flaw in my bank's transaction system (true story) and they succeed at stealing money from my bank, no client will suffer from that theft. The bank takes responsibility.

As a user of online services as well as a client of the banking system, I'm not willing to use a decentralized technology which is under nobody's responsibility.

I can see myself using decentralized technology when the value of the assets being kept in a decentralized way is low, so that losing those assets is not of too much importance to me.

In every other case I will prefer a centralized entity that takes responsibility.

[Uneeb Agha]

> Google is a company with an unusually self-centric culture, and so they’re unlikely to back something whose entire premise is taking away power from it and other big tech monopolies to redistribute it.

I don't view it as such. I think the question is about providing tooling that enhances web experiences. For instance, Facebook/Reddit and other such platforms are independently working on their own token models so users can have wallets that can be used for sending money to other users or for using platform services. However, Ethereum is uniquely positioned where they can be used as a single source of truth and used interchangeably across platforms. This is only possible via extensions. And as of right now extensions such as Metamask are independently succeeding anyways. It might be better to provide some support natively.

https://consensys.net/blog/press-release/metamask-surpasses-10-million-maus-making-it-the-worlds-leading-non-custodial-crypto-wallet/

[Cuyler Stuwe]

It doesn't really matter how you view it, though; It matters how Google views it. In case you haven't noticed, Google hasn't been a headline contributor to any publicly hyped-up blockchain projects you're likely aware of. I understand that you're excited about it, but I'm trying to help explain why it's unlikely to see Google make this a priority.

[Uneeb Agha]

> Nobody takes responsibility for data loss or data theft (including money).

I can totally understand that. And that's why I think the notion of centralized vs decentralized is somewhat of a flawed way of looking at it. One way to look at it is whether some piece of data is custodied at one place or not. In case of a data breach at Google for instance, the company Google is held responsible. The same model can be replicated in the web3/blockchain/crypto world. For instance, Coinbase is an example of a place where funds can be custodied and they are then liable to ensure their safety.

However, the bigger argument here is that if you don't trust Coinbase, you move your money to a different authority. That is not something you can do with your data at Google. Once it is there, it is there. That's the promise of web3.0, where we can have state sharing between multiple webapps.

I'm not sure if this makes perfect sense since it is a bit of an abstract way of looking at it. However, it is very hard to make progress on this front without better tooling.

[Uneeb Agha]

> It matters how Google views it

Yep. Google has not been excited about it. Can anyone do anything to change that?

[Cuyler Stuwe]

Can anyone do anything to change Google's culture? Individually? Good luck. It's such a large and heavy organization by now that it conserves momentum like a freight train.

We who participate here and in other areas fight our battles here one-by-one in the trenches, trying to advocate for all developers and for the users who want to use the things we're trying to build. Since Google isn't really user-centric whatsoever, we all constantly have to apply this external pressure upon it to advocate for our users.

I'm just a little skeptical that first-class support for blockchain tech will ever become a priority if basic extension functionality we've had for a decade is on the chopping block. To put this into perspective: With MV3, we're losing the ability to do things like inspect and programmatically-change network requests. We're even losing the basic ability to simply have the extension remain running in the background to respond to websockets or perform long-running tasks. Compared to those fundamental things which Google seems to feel are unnecessary, first-class blockchain support is pretty meaningless.

[Uneeb Agha]

> It's such a large and heavy organization by now that it conserves momentum like a freight train

Not surprised. I have worked at Amazon in the past. It's extremely difficult to advocate for small features here and there.

> With MV3, we're losing the ability to do things like inspect and programmatically-change network requests. We're even losing the basic ability to simply have the extension remain running in the background to respond to websockets or perform long-running tasks.

That's very insightful. Thanks for sharing. I wasn't aware of those changes.

I will just add one more thing to the conversation which is that whether we are accepting it or not, the momentum behind web3/blockchain/crypto is extremely strong. Which means that if Google doesn't provide a path, then they'll go elsewhere. Is that going to be Brave browser, a sophisticated extension solution or a totally new browser is still TBD.

[hrg...@gmail.com]

However, the bigger argument here is that if you don't trust Coinbase, you move your money to a different authority. That is not something you can do with your data at Google.

This is something that users should be able to do. We can do it with money assets. Why can we not do it with our data assets?
For example, if I don't trust Google any more, I should be able to transfer all my data to Microsoft or some other company.

Unfortunately, this kind of data portability is not possible yet. It requires industry standards that don't exist. And I'm not aware of any big player interested in such a thing for obvious reasons. They wan't to keep the power they have.

I don't think that Web 3 is about this kind of data portability, though. It seems to be more about the capabilities provided by the blockchain technology, which is a distributed data base. 

 

[Cuyler Stuwe]

Crypto/blockchain isn’t actually really as widespread and prevalent as you might assume.

Sure, lots of people has heard about it, but an extremely small proportion of the population is excited about it and/or has participated in it. I remember reading a study in this past year which had done some interesting work to suggest that only ~5% of those who had the equipment and/or understanding to participate in crypto chose to. 

This misperception that crypto/NFTs (and other blockchain applications) are something that everyone is excited about is an exaggerating/polarizing outcome of today’s “echo chamber” social feeds, where what you see is tailored to your perceived interests (either manually, e.g. via something like Reddit subs, or automatically, e.g. via something like mobile Chrome’s “new tab page suggestions”).

In short, I don’t think Google really cares. There’s no good reason to believe that public blockchain ledger applications will ever expand beyond niche utility. It’s just a speculative hype bubble that some people are turning to in hopes of escaping our current economic stagflation.

To top this all off, my own market research suggests that the type of people really excited about crypto tend to use Brave anyway. They tend to be wary of large companies like Google, plus it already has one foot in that world w/ BATs and such. Those who use crypto for its utility tend to do so because of a preference for anonymity, and Brave also caters more than Chrome does to that market.

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[Uneeb Agha]

> I don't think that Web 3 is about this kind of data portability, though. It seems to be more about the capabilities provided by the blockchain technology, which is a distributed data base.

I think web3.0 can mean different things. But DApps (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_application) do solve this exact problem. Although they are largely unusable until we solve the scaling issues on the blockchain. That being said, I'm optimistic. I think we are in early stages.

[Uneeb Agha]

> Sure, lots of people has heard about it, but an extremely small proportion of the population is excited about it and/or has participated in it.

Not too sure about that. I work at Coinbase and have been in the crypto industry for >4 years. I don't know absolute numbers, but every metric I know is growing exponentially year over year. Also, I know crypto devs are constantly entering the space and are quite passionate about it. It's probably the fastest growing sector right now. There is always a new thing that comes up. That being said, am I biased? Maybe. 

[Cuyler Stuwe]

Vaccination rates grew exponentially as well, until they didn’t anymore; A high rate of initial growth won’t necessarily persist unbounded.

What’s more, retention is something to consider; Not everyone who tries crypto/blockchain will keep using them, and not everyone who continues dabbling in it cares about it all that much.

I would agree that if you’ve worked in crypto for 4 years as an outcome of being excited about it, you’re probably biased. You probably surround yourself (both intentionally and unintentionally) with the types of people who would share that sentiment, making it feel as though the entire world feels the same way. Furthermore, you have incentive to hope for it to succeed, given that your livelihood depends on it.

Anyway, this whole tangent has gone pretty far into the weeds.

If you want to advocate for some specific means of first class blockchain support, you can file an issue here: 

https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues

I just have my doubts that it will reach a level of priority where it will ever be worked on (and if it is, it will probably be as a web platform API rather than anything extension-specific).

[hrg...@gmail.com]

The fundamental problem with a decentralized data base is still the same. It belongs to nobody, and so nobody asumes responsibility for it.

People can use a system like that as long as the risk doesn't outweigh the benefits. Trading of cryptocurrencies is a good example of this. Nobody would convert all their savings to bitcoin and keep it that way in the long term. It's just too risky. No institution is in charge of keeping your money safe. It's basically the wild west. All your money could turn into nothing overnight.

What people actually do is to convert some money to bitcoins for some time and then they convert back to a different kind of asset in which they trust in the long run, such as investment funds.

When it comes to data assets, a similar problem occurs. Would anyone want to keep all their personal data generated by all applications in a distributed mechanism that nobody controls, that cannot be deleted and that nobody ensures to be secure?

I would definitely not trust any such system. I would only put into it specific kinds of data of low importance.