Popular news aggregation and discussion website Reddit has changed its terms of service, allowing users to earn, purchase or sell currencies and items that can be cryptographically verified. The change in terms also explicitly outlined a clear separation in the definition of non-tokenized Web 2 virtual goods and tokenized Web 3 virtual goods, with a member of the Reddit product team disclosing plans to sunset the former.

  • Hello_there@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I thought we all agreed web3 was dead and killed by shills and get rich quick schemes. Why are people still on this bandwagon?

    • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      A lot of their recent moves reek of desperation. Literally anything that might squeeze keep the valuation from dropping any further is going to be thrown at the wall.

    • reddig33@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Maybe Reddit’s investors haven’t caught up yet and love buzzwords like “crypto” and “blockchain” and NFT?

      • Urbanfox@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There was a guy joined my last organisation who would not shut the fuck up about Blockchain.

        It was a retail org that sold branded mass produced stuff. There was no need for Blockchain but it was like, the only thing he knew about and his USP at interview stage.

        He got fired. It was a good day.

    • coldv@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I think whoever is still on it is just jumping from one hype train to another in denial, following other web3 bros news. They really believe it is the future without any understanding how it works.

      • AtHeartEngineer@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I believe it’s the future and I 100% understand how it works. There are a ton of bad ideas, scams, and money grabs… But at the core the fundamental technologies have a lot of potential.

        Edit: to those that downvote, I’m willing to be civil and discuss if you want. If you want to down vote and move on that’s cool too, I definitely get the skepticism.

        We all want a free and better Internet, that’s why we are on lemmy. The core principals of bitcoin, Ethereum, monero (and a few others) are that. I don’t want scams, or a bunch of “digital collectible”/nft cash grabs either.

        • Tar_alcaran@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Its a solution looking for the right problem. Unfortunately, all the problems it can solve, have already been solved in other ways.

            • Tar_alcaran@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Well, things like “How do we make sure the person who claims to own this house actually owns this house” is definitely a real problem. But we’ve already solved that problem in another way. And we’ve spent hundreds of years ironing out all the little kinks in the system.

              And the problem with blockchain (and every other ‘disruptive’ technology) is that it goes “Nah, we’re going to throw all those unneeded things out”. That then goes massively wrong, because, surprise, the system isn’t complex for no reason.

          • Philolurker@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            That’s a good way of putting it. Reminds me of how the technology behind gorilla glass had been around for decades, but its use suddenly exploded when smartphones came along and needed something like it. Wouldn’t surprise me if Blockchain ends up existing as a niche thing for a long time until a killer app for it comes along.

          • AtHeartEngineer@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            In some ways yes, but current solutions arent always the best solutions. They aren’t always the most secure, or the fastest, or the most private, or the most trustworthy. With almost all main stream solutions, you have to trust some company, and then they have their fees, and sell your personal information to data brokers, and they try to get you in debt, etc. It’s not a solution looking for a problem, it’s a solution that isnt nearly as easy to use as current systems (yet), but all the hype has let scammers ride the wave.

            Crypto is far from perfect, we have plenty of work to do, but don’t discount it entirely. There is a lot of smart people with good intentions working on the core technologies, that want to see a better world, me included. Definitely continue to be skeptical, but don’t write it off.

            • yata
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              1 year ago

              In the world of technology crypto is a rather old technology now, and so far the core technology has proven not to be applicable to any actual constructive real world scenarios, and the only existing things using the technology are all pyramid schemes.

              And it is not a question of it having to be further refined or anything like that, the problem lies with its core concept, which makes it completely unsuited for any actual life uses capable of replacing existing technology.

              Also, understandably people have long since grown weary of the constant claims of “just wait and see” or “you just don’t understand the technology”, made by cryptobros who have monetary interests in the thing and wants to inflate the artificial worth of their doomed investments by attempting to find new marks willing to shoot actual fiat into the project.

        • socsa@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          The problem is that the Blockchain needs to support actual applications with actual intrinsic value in order for the coins to also have intrinsic value in order to incentivize participation in the network. That application has to be more than just payment processing for the coins, because it’s kind of shitty at doing that compared to current infrastructure. And because that entire logic is very circular.

          The reality is that as a compute or database model, Blockchains have a lot more overhead and don’t scale well. The marginal utility of having a decentralized application with some consensus-based validation layer just doesn’t rise above those limitations imposed by the tech so far.

      • realz@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        No it’s not. It doesn’t use blockchain as it’s distributed data store.

      • XYZinferno@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah I was gonna say. I’m guessing OP meant cryptocurrencies in particular, but you’re not wrong. Federated services are an example of Web3 as well, since Web3 is defined by decentralization, which is the core premise of Lemmy

        So I absolutely agree, lambasting Web3 as a whole is rather disingenuous

    • goatmeal@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      noo arbitrum nitro is le bad you have to use SQL instead

      would you chill the fuck out? it’s just a database for fake internet points.

  • Wolf Link 🐺@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The dumpster fire has reached a critical level of stupidity now, if someone would use that same stuff for a comic villain it would be dismissed as too far-fetched and unrealistic. Maybe he and ol’ Muskie have a bet who can ruin their platform faster?

  • dhork@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The folks at /r/cryptocurrency thinks this is a sign that community points (specifically their Moons) are going to be used as part of their program to reward Redditors monetarily for content. Personally, I have my doubts. This program is rumored to apply only to people in the US at first. Given the hostile reaction of the SEC right now to crypto tokens, I doubt any company that aims to go public will pay Americans in Crypto right now. It seems more logical that those payments will be in good old cash.

    However, as someone who holds some Moons, I don’t mind that people are confused, and aim to sell mine while the hype is still here.

    • Sarsaparilla@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I have several hundred “Bricks” which is some cryptocurrency from r/FortniteBR … It’s stored in my “Vault” but I dunno how to use it or what I can buy with it. I dunno if I can sell it, but I remember them specifically referring to these Bricks as crypto when they came out, and they are earned by posting content and comments.

      • dhork@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Bricks are crypto just like Moons are, they’re not quite worth as much though, 6 cents each or so the last time I looked. These crypto tokens are smart contracts on the Arbitrum Nova network, which is itself a layer on top of Ethereum. If that all sounds a bit complicated, that’s because it is. Selling is a bit of a chore. It looks like there are services under development to make it easier, but of course those services will act as a middleman and probably take a bit of profit along the way.

        In your Reddit Vault Settings, there is a way to extract your Recovery Phrase. This is a way to access the crypto wallet inside your Reddit account in a standard form. You should save it in a safe place, on paper. Using that phrase in crypto wallet software will enable you to transact without needing the Reddit app to do so. But be careful! That phrase is like your crypto bank account, credit card number, SSN, and mothers maiden name all in one package. Anyone with access to that phrase can access your assets in that wallet. Dont use it in anything electronic until you are looking to sell. In the unlikely event hackers gain access to your personal files (on the cloud or your PC), they know what Recovery phrases look like and can use them to steal your funds.

        Regardless of whether you intend to sell or not, it’s a good idea to save that phrase, so it gives you the option in the future, even if Reddit dies.

  • magnetosphere@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    This just keeps getting weirder. There’s no shortage of fools on the internet, though, so it might actually work. Whatever.

    • raf@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      It is the 202* (brainless) CEO red flag. Don’t make money? Try speculating on crypto and saying it is your new core business

      Proudly tested by teams at

      • Twitter
      • Tesla
      • Signal
      • Discord
      • Telegram
      • Facebook
      • tens of others I have forgotten, but which also miserably failed

      Further proof of how isolated these CEOs live from the real world

        • raf@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 year ago

          Telegram has had crypto focus since ~2020, to the point of spamming me in chats with “sponsored” (official!) messages to buy their shady token a couple of years ago, and spawning a grey market to buy and sell usernames with crypto auctions.

          Signal tried including an own crypto token for in-app psyments as well (of this bunch, it’s the only company I have some compassion for - they need to make money somehow, and didn’t want to compromise the core model) but the backlash was insane and they either hid it really deep in the app, or just gave up entirely

  • phi1997@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    That reminds me, i haven’t gotten around to deleting my Reddit account yet. What should I use to delete all my posts/comments on there while I’m at it? I did get the data from my GDPR request

    • hh93@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Then why are you subscribed to the Reddit community on here?

        • yata
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          1 year ago

          Still, the etiqutte is that they should be aware which community they are posting in. If you are browsing “all” you don’t bother to comment in every single thread you have no interest in that you are not interested in it.

          • tal@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            There is a legit UI issue on kbin right now that it doesn’t make the magazine and instance name super-visible in the mobile web page, much less the description. You need to look in the URL (which some people have their browsers set to not keep visible, to complicate matters) or at the bottom of the page, which you don’t see until you’ve gone through the comments. And you don’t see an instance description.

            I strongly suspect that this has led to at least one interaction I’ve seen, where someone was complaining about furries on pawb.org. Probably had no idea that they were on a community on a furry instance.