
Dapps - petethomas
https://avc.com/2018/04/dapps/
======
common_
So much of VC funding is just about being in the right place at the right
time. A lot of these guys seem like geniuses because of winning bets, but
that's because nobody talks about their flops.

It's entertaining watching all of the VCs who have made a major bet on crypto,
who are now doubling down on what looks more like an overheated casino losing
steam. Fred Wilson might end up watching the tide go out on this one. Maybe
people will finally remember that he was part of Twitter's clueless board, the
one that didn't think it was important to buy Instagram?

~~~
jasode
_> , but that's because nobody talks about their flops._

The KPCB flops in "green tech, clean energy, etc" were widely reported.[1]
Also, the VC firm DFJ and Tim Draper in particular were laughingstocks for
investing in the Theranos scam because they didn't do proper due diligence.

 _> Fred Wilson [...] was part of Twitter's clueless board, the one that
didn't think it was important to buy Instagram?_

Is there a source that says it was Fred Wilson who blocked the acquisition of
Instagram?

The story I read was that both Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg of
Facebook were courting Instagram at the same time.

Jack offered ~$500 million (all in Twitter stock).

Mark offered ~$736 million ($300 million of that in cash).

Basically, Facebook had the more enticing offer.

In 2012, Twitter wasn't generating any profits and didn't have any excess
money in the bank to include any cash component to their bid.

On the other hand, Facebook was already profitable for 3 years and had ~$4
billion in cash in the bank even before the IPO in May 2012. Having a stock
that was backed by real profits and a war chest of cash lets Facebook make
more attractive acquisition offers.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=kpcb+green+tech+lost+money](https://www.google.com/search?q=kpcb+green+tech+lost+money)

~~~
jamestimmins
Do you have any sources for the DFJ/Theranos backlash? I've wondered if that
would hit them, so I'd love to read more if you're aware of any good
journalism on that specific investment by DFJ.

------
simias
So after browsing through Blockstack's website and a few of these Dapps
there's something I don't quite understand. Storing data into the blockchain
itself is obviously extremely expensive so I wondered how they did that. Turns
out that for most of these apps they either don't tell (as far as I can see)
or have this exact same snippet of text in their FAQs:

>By default, your data is stored in a dedicated Microsoft Azure Blob. But you
can and should connect your Blockstack Browser to your own cloud storage
solutions (preferably multiple).

So... what's the idea here? I don't need ethereum to encrypt my data and
upload them to various cloud storage services. Sounds to me like blockstack is
an app framework like Google Play or the App Store, only you pay with ethereum
instead of fiat and your data is encrypted locally before being uploaded. I
mean that last bit is definitely a good thing but where's the famous
"blockchain technology(c)(tm)" exactly?

~~~
Geee
From the FAQ: Can Blockstack apps scale, given that Blockstack uses
blockchains which don't scale that well?

Yes. Blockstack only uses the blockchain for name registration. Everything
else happens off-chain, so apps work just as fast as they do on the Web.

~~~
simias
Ah, thank you for confirming that, I didn't think about looking at
Blockstack's FAQ itself. But then I reiterate my question: what does the
blockchain enable here exactly? TFA says that it's "exciting for
crypto[currencies]" but it just seems like a cloud computing framework that
happens to use ethereum for purchases.

Just to be clear I'm not saying it's useless, actually being able to host your
own data anywhere you want and having "end-to-end" encryption sounds great, I
just don't see the "blockchain is going to revolutionize the world" angle.

~~~
berberous
Part of the problem here is that we are still in the infrastructure phase of
blockchain development, so most dapps still rely on multiple centralized
services. But as the infrastructure develops that will shift. For example, (i)
all of the blockchains are working on scaling, (ii) Sia, Filecoin and a few
others are working on blockchain based storage systems, (iii) Maker Dai,
Basecoin and others are working on a stable coin, (iv) 0x and others are
working on decentralized exchanges without custodians, (v) many are working on
making addressed and key management easier, (vi) distributed identity
verification and 'user trust' systems are developing, etc. All of that will
take time, but as systems develop, more complex and more truly distributed
dapps will be enabled.

------
htormey
So what Dapps does anyone here use apart from decentralized exchanges and
crypto kitties?

One I came across recently that looks promising is joy stream:

[http://joystream.co](http://joystream.co)

Joy stream appears to be a service which rewards people for hosting torrents.
I could see this being used by a lot of people.

Are their any services that provide usage figures for any of these Dapps? I’d
be curious to know how much they are used as I think Dapp usage is a good
bellwether for utility token valuation.

I really want to see crypto currency move beyond just being used for
speculation.

~~~
RexetBlell
The Dai stable coin. Many different smart contracts are constantly working
together to keep the token worth very close to 1 USD:
[https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dai/](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dai/)

~~~
sanderjd
Why is that good?

~~~
htormey
I assume because it allows you to trade in and out from crypto positions to
something that tracks fiat.

This of course assumes that this coin can actually hold its value in the event
of a market crash. I also assume it’s not backed by real dollars held in a
bank but some kind of basket of other cryptoassets right?

~~~
mattnguyen
It's currently backed by ETH but is moving towards multi-collateral assets.
Today, they announced a partnership with Omisego [1], with one goal to allow
OMG to be used as a type of collateral. There's also chatter about using
DIGIX, which is another stablecoin pegged to the price of gold.

The mechanism by which they maintain stability is quite fascinating. From the
whitepaper [2]:

> The Dai Target Price is used to determine the collateral-to-debt ratio of a
> CDP, and thus the Target Price represents the price at which Dai is backed
> by collateral in the long term. The Target Price is continuously adjusted
> according to the current Target Rate. Automatic Target Rate adjustments
> ensure that the Dai market price remains stabilized around the Target Price
> in the short term.

> When the market price of Dai is below the Target Price, the Target Rate
> increases. This causes the Target Price to increase at a higher rate,
> causing generation of Dai to become more expensive. This leads to CDP users
> covering their CDPs and leaving the ecosystem, causing the outstanding
> supply of Dai to decrease. At the same time, the increased Target Rate
> causes the capital gains from holding Dai to increase, leading to a
> corresponding increase in Dai demand. This combination of reduced supply and
> increased demand causes the Dai market price to increase, pushing it up
> towards the Target Price.

[1] [https://medium.com/makerdao/makerdao-and-omisego-
announcing-...](https://medium.com/makerdao/makerdao-and-omisego-announcing-
dai-and-omg-collaborations-23600a080046)

[2]
[https://github.com/makerdao/docs/blob/master/Dai.md#target-p...](https://github.com/makerdao/docs/blob/master/Dai.md#target-
price-target-rate-and-the-sensitivity-parameter)

~~~
fiatjaf
How does the system gets information about its own price in relation to the US
dollar?

~~~
mattnguyen
They have a an oracle smart contract that takes the median of a variety of
whitelisted price feeds.

[https://developer.makerdao.com/feeds/](https://developer.makerdao.com/feeds/)

------
keeptrying
The big elephant in his post is the fact that you need to pay (ie buy ETH) to
start using dapps.

That’s a big stumbling psychological stumbling block that the “regular”
internet doesn’t have.

And I think that fact will shape whether any of us or the regular public ever
launch a dapp.

There will be a small set of services I believe which will cross this
threshold. Not sure if it will be a large number or not.

~~~
dereg
The whole concept of gas is user hostile and is a huge setback to broad
adoption.

~~~
simias
Isn't it integral to the way these dapps work however? Is there an other way
to achieve the same results? After all eventually somebody has to pay the bill
for there computations.

It seems to me that the big problem of dapps is not so much the fact that you
need to pay to deploy them but that you have to pay _so much_ to do anything
meaningful. The system is extremely expensive compared to regular "not-
trustless" distributed/cloud computing offerings out there.

For instance while browsing through the blockstack website I saw that the
first such application was a "docs suite" (à la office/google docs) called
"graphite": [https://www.graphitedocs.com](https://www.graphitedocs.com)

That seemed interesting but my first thought was "man, if they store the files
in the blockchain that must be absurdly expensive to use". They probably
thought the same so, according to the FAQ at
[https://www.graphitedocs.com/faq](https://www.graphitedocs.com/faq) :

>By default, your data is stored in a dedicated Microsoft Azure Blob. But you
can and should connect your Blockstack Browser to your own cloud storage
solutions (preferably multiple).

Oh. So that makes sense but doesn't that destroy the whole point of it? What
if I decide to, say, use OpenOffice on my computer, encrypt the files using
GnuPG and then upload them to dropbox, spideroak and some AWS bucket, wouldn't
that effectively grant me the same privacy and control over my data?

I'm going to sound like a naysayer but it just looks like yet an other example
of using blockchain for the sake of saying that you use the blockchain.

But of course it's just one dapp out of many. Let's see the next one,
"stealthy": [https://www.stealthy.im/](https://www.stealthy.im/)

It's a "A secure decentralized communication platform". Now storing small text
messages in the blockchain would still be very expensive but it might be
acceptable, especially if you worry a lot about censorship or your message
remaining available "forever".

>By default, your data is stored in a dedicated Microsoft Azure Blob. But you
can and should connect your Blockstack Browser to your own cloud storage
solutions (preferably multiple).

Oh. Nevermind then.

------
hudon
> The bottom line for me is that we are finally seeing some useful
> decentralized applications being built for consumers on these blockchains.

I don't know if the word "decentralized" should be used so merrily. Research
was published recently [0] showing that the blockchain protocol requires a
central authority to prevent coordination failures and externalities. Maybe
these "useful decentralized applications" should come with a caution sign to
the consumers: "product will not only be slower and more expensive than the
centralized alternative, but there is also risk of coordination failure and
double-spends".

[0] [https://www.tse-fr.eu/publications/blockchain-folk-
theorem](https://www.tse-fr.eu/publications/blockchain-folk-theorem)

~~~
jjallen
What is the "blockchain protocol"? I think we really need to pick A blockchain
and criticize it specifically.

And with applications: some will be more expensive, some won't be. Ethereum
developers are already exploring ways for dapps to pay for gas instead of
users (searching for link).

~~~
hudon
They define what blockchain is in the first two sections of the paper. Their
model of the blockchain applies to both Bitcoin and Ethereum, for example, and
seems general enough to apply to most networks people today refer to as
"blockchain".

------
sargun
So, I might be an idiot.

I investigated “Dapps” the other day, and I’m struggling to see the point of
these. Yes, they use a blockchain to store their data, and their data
manipulation logic (“contract”, or schema, and stored procedures as we’d call
it in the RDBMS / Monolith days). The UI, and such is all run by some
centralized entity. If the App needs cryptocurrency in order to work, you have
to run your own wallet.

If (1) I need to run my own “geth” daemon, and (2) some central authority’s
ownership is reigns over the apps availability, I don’t see how this is better
than the current world. Until there is a Coinbase-like experience to solve
(1), I think it’ll be very difficult to get real market adoption. (2) to me
strikes a whole set of problems — What’s the point of Dapps? I would think
it’d be better if the UI and API was hosted on a blockchain, and there was
some kind of UI (browser?) with an embedded wallet, and agent to be able to
interact with contracts. I know some of this is in development, but is anyone
close to the ability to run a Reddit-like site without the existence of some
central authority, along with being economical to run?

~~~
shazow
You can host the UI wherever you want. You can put it on IPFS, you can
broadcast it as a bittorrent, you can put it on Github, you can put it in a
pastebin, you can even put it on the blockchain.

A lot of developers choose to have a replica hosted on traditional HTTP for
easy onboarding, but the point is that the application itself can be
completely decoupled from the developer.

Even if the developer hosts their app on their own domain, there is nothing
stopping you from forking it and replicating/hosting it elsewhere. It's like
the ultimate extreme of open source, but also applied to APIs that can't be
taken away.

For example, you can launch a smart contract which hard-codes an IPFS hash to
a GUI that can never be changed, even if the original owner wanted to.

It's more about what can be done, rather than what is being done today. The
possibilities are inspiring and attractive.

~~~
sargun
But, if you put it on IPFS, what hosts the wallet, and wallet API?

Also, last I checked, IPFS is not censorship resistant:
[https://github.com/ipfs/faq/issues/36#issuecomment-140567411](https://github.com/ipfs/faq/issues/36#issuecomment-140567411)

~~~
shazow
> But, if you put it on IPFS, what hosts the wallet, and wallet API?

Which wallet? You can use whatever wallet you want which supports the
functionality the DApp requires. There are dozens of wallets, some are in-
browser.

> Also, last I checked, IPFS is not censorship resistant:
> [https://github.com/ipfs/faq/issues/36#issuecomment-140567411](https://github.com/ipfs/faq/issues/36#issuecomment-140567411)

While I didn't mention anything about censorship, I suggest reading that
entire thread and its continuation. All it discusses is the ability to have
curated blocklists. It's up to you whether you want to use them or not.

What I did mention is that you don't have to use any specific replication
protocol. Don't like IPFS? Use something else.

If you did want to use IPFS and you're concerned about censorship, then
consider that IPFS is a distributed hash table protocol with some default
client rules. If you don't use their default bootstrapping nodes, you can
create your own IPFS network. In fact, IPFS is totally usable in an isolated
local network, or even over a sneaker net.

------
thisisit
Sure Dapps might be an interesting concept but let's not pretend it is free
from manipulation. Miners are the gatekeepers to the system.

F2Pool is one of the biggest pools in Ethereum. It was alleged that they
manipulated the Status ICO:

[https://themerkle.com/f2pool-allegedly-prevented-users-
from-...](https://themerkle.com/f2pool-allegedly-prevented-users-from-
investing-in-status-ico/)

They controlled 26.6% of the total Ethereum hashing power.

So, lets say this twitter clone - Peepeth takes off. And then there is someone
who wants to post some stuff _against_ F2pool. What is stopping F2pool from
manipulating the feed? You might say other miners controlling 75% of the
hashrate will pick it up. Sure, you might be correct. But what if the post
shits on every other mining pool out there? What happens then? What if the
post is time sensitive?

Decentralized apps can only go so far considering there has to be a record for
the system to work. And if record keepers manipulate the system it will fail.
The question becomes then:

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

~~~
jjallen
Having a huge mining pool is super lucrative.

Why would you want to mess with your underlying cryptocurrency and threaten
your income if you're a mining pool?

~~~
homakov
Incentives dont matter, any centralized entity has no incentive to do bad
things about their system yet here we are.

~~~
jjallen
In most centralized entities, interests are conflicted. With mining, the value
of the income is directly determined by the price of the cryptocurrency.

~~~
homakov
There are other incentives beyond most obvious ones. E.g. hijacked miner could
attack to pump another currency (crypto/fiat) the miner holds.

Incentives are out of equation when you speak of fault tolerance. Incentives
are not calculatable. Only "tolerance" (# of tolerable byzantine nodes)
matters. And that's 2 for eth and btc. TWO.

------
rco8786
> it sure feels like 2018 is the year we start getting decentralized
> applications (Dapps) we can use.

does it, though?

~~~
jjallen
Yes, it does to me:

0) Augur, decentralized prediction markets and a very early ICO has reached
the bug bounty phase, getting much closer to launch
([https://medium.com/@AugurProject/announcing-the-augur-bug-
bo...](https://medium.com/@AugurProject/announcing-the-augur-bug-bounty-
program-36034da9a4cf))

1) Golem, another early ICO has launched ([https://www.coindesk.com/golem-
arrives-one-ethereums-ambitio...](https://www.coindesk.com/golem-arrives-one-
ethereums-ambitious-apps-finally-live/))

2) Distense, a decentralized code-cooperative with be running on the Ethereum
mainnet in a few weeks (disclosure: my project)
([https://disten.se](https://disten.se))

3) 550 more live here:
[https://www.stateofthedapps.com/](https://www.stateofthedapps.com/)

~~~
davidivadavid
So they're close to launching or just launched. Any evidence suggesting
they're not going to crash and burn in the short term?

~~~
jjallen
Well, yes, actually.

Augur has undergone multiple security audits.

[https://medium.com/@AugurProject/augur-core-security-
audit-r...](https://medium.com/@AugurProject/augur-core-security-audit-report-
cd6b4060ccf3)

------
fiatjaf
Not exactly a Dapp, but to me the first killer cryptocurrency use case is/will
be Althea: [https://altheamesh.com/](https://altheamesh.com/), incentivized
mesh-networking and internet provider services with micropayments.

~~~
adangert
Hmm, I think one thing people forget, is that most of the time benevolent
centralization, and revolution to another centralization when necessary is
more valuable to consumers, than always on decentralization.

~~~
fiatjaf
I don't know how that comment applies to Althea.

------
sancha_
Can someone explain to me why I should pay to use the dapp Twitter clone?

~~~
lifty
One reason is to move from being the product to being a user, so that your
attention is not sold to the highest bidder and your behaviour manipulated in
such a way that it produces the highest value. Of course, paying with your
attention is a valid way of paying for things as long as the implications are
clear.

edit: spelling mistakes

~~~
paulgb
IMO, federation is a better model of this. With Mastodon, sure somebody is
still paying server costs, but there is no unavoidable fee for the
software/service and it has the same censorship-resistent properties.

(I'd like to see signed messages in Mastodon but that's not a problem inherent
to a federated model)

------
angilly
`Error establishing a database connection`

So is the joke that is this wouldn't happen if their blog was hosted on a
dapp?

------
apo
_Error establishing a database connection_

There's a Dapp for that:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System)

Interesting points:

\- there is no token, and so IPFS isn't as sexy as some of the stuff running
on Ethereum

\- there may be no role to be played by VCs in advancing IPFS.

There's a lot of innovation going on that ticks both boxes. I'm curious to see
how venture funding will adapt (or not).

~~~
amasad
IPFS has a token called filecoin and has a whole slew of VCs invested in it.

~~~
diggan
It's important to get the relationship between IPFS and Filecoin correct.
Saying "IPFS has a token called Filecoin" is not true, as IPFS works (today,
right now) without Filecoin, which has not been built yet.

Filecoin is simply a way to store things in exchange for FIL (or vice-versa).
Filecoin does depend on IPFS, but IPFS is a standalone project and does not
require Filecoin to be useful.

Disclaimer: I work for Protocol Labs, specifically on the IPFS project

------
gammacrawler
crypto should not mean cryptocurrency it should mean cryptography

~~~
laurentoget
And distributed should mean distributed, not 'using a blockchain'.

~~~
beepboopah
Agreed

------
timvdalen
I'm getting a database connection error, which seems ironic given the subject
of the post.

------
i04n
One project I really like is Streamr. It looks promising. Monetizing realtime
data on top of ethereum. It's great to see projects on top of ethereum
creating real value.

~~~
weego
There's no value here! Even their own examples are so tenuous it's bizarre to
me that anyone could post that with no sense of shame.

'what if what people know for free today would be wrapped up in an insane
network of constantly negotiating prices for that same information'

~~~
i04n
I respect your point of view. I like the project as i like Golem. They are
trying to build decentralized cloud services on top of an existing blockchain.
Hacker news is not read by idiots, so please don't accuse me of trying to
deceive readers. The average reader here is quite smart, they don't need your
defense.

~~~
weego
I was just counter pointing your opinion, I absolutely don't think you were
actively deceiving anyone.

------
pg_bot
Fred may as well be describing the turboencabulator[0]. I get that VCs should
swing for the fences, but this seems like they are totally ignoring first
principles when it comes to cryptocurrency/blockchain apps.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag)

------
ssuva
Link appears to be down - try here: [https://avc.com/](https://avc.com/)

------
natch
This is the guy who supports back doors for encryption. Proceed with caution.

and there's this:

>Error establishing a database connection

------
jraedisch
cached version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://avc.com/2018/04/dapps/)

------
homakov
True dapps dont exist yet. Now they all rely on some authority or served as a
website

------
imartin2k
Down. Damn, of all the people, I wouldn’t have expected that this happens to
Fred.

------
ythn
In my day we called "decentralized apps" simply "programs".

~~~
codetrotter
What makes dapps "special" (i.e. why we have a separate name for them) is that
they utilize a blockchain in one way or another. For example for storage or
transfer of data.

~~~
tree_of_item
I think the point is that's not actually an interesting feature. The programs
use an over-hyped database hoping to siphon off a bit of the hype...did we
have a separate name for programs using NoSQL too?

~~~
maxencecornet
>have a separate name for programs using NoSQL too?

Yeah, horrible legacy projects that are a pain in the ass to maintain

Source: I am working on a legacy API based on a noSQL database with a very
dumb design (because the data was relational of course) in a very large
company

~~~
ythn
> Yeah, horrible legacy projects that are a pain in the ass to maintain

How can a "legacy" project be using noSQL? In my company, "legacy" projects
are projects that have been around for 10+ years. MongoDB hasn't even been out
a full 10 years, yet...

~~~
maxencecornet
>How can a "legacy" project be using noSQL?

A project doesn't need to be 10+ years old to be legacy.

This API is 3y old, and was the first iteration, the v1, of the company's
digital asset management API, it's only maintained for a few teams around the
world, whereas the v2 is well crafted and has a way more logical datamodel

Legacy != old

~~~
ythn
It's just weird when I read stuff like "Yeah, I've had to do a bunch of
maintenance on our legacy webpack/Angular 2 system" because in my mind webpack
and Angular 2 are still very recent technologies, just not recent compared to
webpack 2/Angular 5

------
subbz
Basically that's centralizing the decentralization. Am I right?

------
bourneliu
know the real data of dapps [https://dappinsight.com](https://dappinsight.com)

~~~
AngelloPozo
Looks like I will have to submit HelloSugoi:
[https://tickets.hellosugoi.com](https://tickets.hellosugoi.com)

------
stuartaxelowen
Page appears to be down from Tokyo.

------
Dowwie
How does Blockstack make money?

------
bourneliu
visit the real data of dapps [http://dappinsight.com](http://dappinsight.com)

------
devilmoon
"Error establishing a database connection"

~~~
paulgb
If only he used a dapp as the database backend, we'd be able to read the post!
/s

------
chvid
"Error establishing a database connection"

Is that irony?

