W3C

– DRAFT –
Where's the Web in Web3? - TPAC 2022 breakout

14 September 2022

Attendees

Present
Alex_Lakatos, benoit, betehess, cel, Cullen Jennings, David_Turner, decentralgabe, Gregg_Kellogg, Ian, igarashi, ivan, jyasskin, Karen, Karen Myers, Karl_Carter, marie, pchampin, Rossen_Atanassov, Uchi
Regrets
-
Chair
Erik_Lagerway
Scribe
Ian, Karen

Meeting minutes

<Geun-Hyung_Kim_> present Geun-Hyung Kim

<javadch> p+

Erik: Any objections to recording?

[No objections heard]

Erik: Thanks all, for coming. I also want to introduce Karl Carter who will speak to some of the topics here.

[Alex introduces himself]

Erik: Would like to hear your expectations about Web3? What does it mean to you or is it just a swear word?

Karl: Interested in young creators...I think of web3 as an intersection of crypto, web, ....
… how do you create new inclusive systems, including peer-to-peer monetization
… blockchain has been around for a while,
… but artists are taking note with the rise of NFTs
… the creator class has spearheaded a lot of that adoption.
… we think of web3 as creating new business models, enabled by this new tech
… we build a social media front end with a fintech background.
… to help creatives monetize their work; they are always looking for new ways

Erik: How have you implemented your platform?

EriK: How did you choose various components? Are there standards opportunities?

Karl: I'm not the CTO so I won't dive into the tech details.
… I can connect you to Tawanda (the CTO)
… we looked at a lot of blockchains and chose Stellar
… we chose social media because it is familiar.
… we built KYC into account creation
… existing technologies for cross-border payments did not meet our needs.
… so we turned to the Interledger Protocol.

Erik: Check out what snake nation is doing

<marie> https://snakenation.co/

Erik: Open the floor to other views on web3

Erik: Here are some of my use cases....
… primarily in the early days of Web3 a lot had to do with converting US dollars to the token-du-moment as fast as possible.
… it was and remains clunky to convert fiat to a token
… most decentralized finance (defi) is happening on Ethereum today.
… But Ethereum is doing a massive refactoring.
… they are moving away from Proof of Work to a Proof of Stake

Erik: This is, to a large extent the genesis of Web3, where most apps are deployed.

<marie> https://ethereum.org/en/

David_Turner: Could you briefly define Web3 (if not synonymous with blockchain)?

Erik: Web3 is a collection of technology to connect "the Web" to blockchain.

Web3 in Wikipedia

Quoting that: "Web3 (also known as Web 3.0[1][2][3]) is an idea for a new iteration of the World Wide Web which incorporates concepts such as decentralization, blockchain technologies, and token-based economics.[4] "

Erik: Web3 might involve transactions or proof of ownership.
… exchange of tokens in a distributed ledger, using Web as the UI

Erik: My experience has been building Web 2/3 blockchain games
… they are strategy games. You have an NFT deployment (a bunch of JPEGS), then some game mechanics
… in our case we had 10K "goblins" that were put on the Ethereum blockchain.
… Ethereum "gas" (the cost for presenting a transaction) was at an all time high.
… we had 1000s of users who wanted to purchase these NFTs. So we published a whitelist.
… and that cost multiple thousands of USD.
… we learned that doing this blockchain game on Ethereum would become untenable.
… we moved away from Ethereum as a result and moved to Polygon.
… Polygon is a side chain; didn't have the transactional fees that came with Ethereum.

Erik: The movement is from web2 video games to web3 video games
… there are studios that are investing in and incorporating blockchain components in their games
… why would they do that?
… the argument is that the items inside these games -- the economies in these games -- live in the games and that's it.
… one advantage of using blockchain is that you can itemize each piece in the inventory (e.g., a new helmet or skin)
… can be extracted from the game and possibly ported to another game as an NFT
… or sell it

AlexL: My question was going to be "what game mechanics need blockchain?" You may have answered my question. Games existed before blockchain.
… is it necessary for the game to run on the blockchain?

Erik: You don't need to run the game on the blockchain; the economy part is on the blockchain (the inventory). It's a hybrid model.
… there are some people who are suspect due to some scams in this space

Erik: There are other aspects to games beyond the items. For example, in World of Warcraft, if you want to level up you pay.
… and those payments involve transaction fees.

Uchi: I wanted to add my view of Web3 and from a standards perspective.
… I think a connection between Web3 and Web2 includes DIDs and VCs.
… and Interledger protocol
… I see an opportunity to discuss standards in this space

erik: Work on "Web5" also seems relevant

<Zakim> jyasskin, you wanted to ask concretely what web standards would be needed to help this

jyasskin: What standards do you think are relevant here, and which need to be implemented in browsers?

Erik: WebRTC ; signaling
… I would also agree with Uchi's mention of DID, VC

IJ: your game inventory example was helpful
… you can export/import these assets into other contexts
… in designing a game, were there other browser capabilities that you needed
… or do you leverage the browser for most elements of game, and put other elements into blockchain
… in your experience, what was the experience?

Erik: We did not have guidance on how to do this hybrid thing securely, mitigate potential attacks.

Erik: We used existing Web2 for UI and linked it to blockchain via some decentralized and some centralized APIs.

Erik: We may not need more standards; we may have more questions and need to learn

pchampin: I heard here a definition of Web3 as glue between Web as we know it and blockchain...that's different from what I've read.
… what I've read is that the web as we know it is broken and not decentralized enough; so let's throw it away and create new technology.

Erik: If I may, I think there was a "lofty aspiration" of Web3 initially, but that's not what's happened in practice.
… nearly every form of Web3 app has some centralization tied to it.

<Zakim> jyasskin, you wanted to mention web3.js

jyasskin: One area of seen for web browser capability is to move web3.js into the browser.
… I would be hesitant to do that as a browser vendor if there is unclear governance and lots of fraud. How do we do this ethically?

Erik: I agree it will be difficult to move capabilities into the browser until we have more user protections.

<cel> regarding the more lofty web3: https://fosdem.org/2022/schedule/track/web3_infrastructure/ https://jaygraber.medium.com/web3-is-self-certifying-9dad77fd8d81

Karl: I think technology is outpacing both user understanding and regulation.
… I think of Web3 as enabling new business models.
… others I think see it as an opportunity to stake a claim in an emerging Metaverse.
… I think there will continue to be evolution.

jyasskin: What does blockchain get us? Why not use simpler technology?

Karl: Blockchain makes settlement faster, cheaper and more secure.

Erik: A lot of blockchains have learned from the mistakes of Ethereum. Fees are going down.

<Zakim> gkellogg, you wanted to suggest we move on from using Web3 as a term

gkellogg: I want to suggest that the community use another term besides Web3.
… it's not an inclusive term, or may be understood that way

<phila> +1 to gkellogg

gkellogg: There's not a linear progression.
… maybe "blockchainweb"

javadch: There are other related techs like Immersive that have a browser element but also ties to Web3

Erik: I think the overlap between Web3 and the Metaverse will become more prolific
… how do economies work among avatars in a digital world?

Ian: Next steps?

<jyasskin> Tantek mentioned https://indieweb.org/Web_3.0 as a history of uses of "Web 3"

Erik: This breakout was just a starting point for thinking about this and standards.

<gkellogg> +1 to Tantek for finding the history of Web3

Ian: Any interest in a CG?

Erik: It would be of interest to me (cf. ORTC->WebRTC)

Ivan: Suppose we solve the concern about security and scamming; does it make sense to standardize an API to blockchain when there are new blockchains minted every day?

Uchi: I wanted to give a +1 to a CG.

Erik: Regarding Ivan's question, I think there are technologies that had many options that ended up in one standard.

Ivan: What about ILP?

AlexL: Interledger only deals with the value stored in ledgers, not the information.
… you need to think about blockchain as 2 things.
… it's "CRUD" without the "UD"
… there are valid use cases for "CR" only such as key registries.
… some of these blockchains store value with a coin or token.
… ILP deals with moving the value.
… I don't think of ILP as bridging blockchains for data...ILP is just for bridging ledgers (accounts that store value)

jyasskin: I think that web3.js is ethereum based, so would only scale so far.

<Zakim> jyasskin, you wanted to ask snakenation how we can help

jyasskin: It sounds like you are using Web3 to let people buy things from artists.

jyasskin: The people reading posts provide money, platform provides money, etc.
… that's much more connected to Interledger than to the more general writing data to Ethereum.

Karl: We need smart contracts as well

jyasskin: How can browsers help you?

Karl: We're exploring that now.
… for example, we are fully mobile.
… so part of the answer is in PWAs.

Erik: Thank you all.
… there are probably a handful of blue chip blockchains.
… most of the daily new ones are derivative of the blue chip ones.

Karl: +1 to the CG

<Creole_Queen> Hi

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version repo-links-187 (Sat Jan 8 20:22:22 2022 UTC).