Web3 Is Not Decentralization

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

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  • bee

    Bee is a Swarm client implemented in Go. It’s the basic building block for the Swarm network: a private; decentralized; and self-sustaining network for permissionless publishing and access to your (application) data.

    I've been kicking around the Ethereum community since the early days, and what people were calling "web3" back then is not what we have now. The original idea was for everything to be hosted on IPFS or Swarm[1]. The latter was to be an Ethereum-native protocol similar to IPFS; it turned out to be harder than expected and hasn't gotten traction so far but it's still an active project. One of its goals was to enable payments for keeping files available.

    Still, decentralized naming and digital signatures go a long way towards turning p2p filesharing into something more. I think it'll all come together eventually.

    [1] https://www.ethswarm.org/

  • awesome-list-rpc-nodes-providers

    A curated list of awesome Node providers and public RPC endpoints for Ethereum, BSC, Gnosis (xDAI), Fantom, Avalanche, KuCoin, Fuse, Harmony, Tezos, IoTeX, Arbitrum, Optimism and more :)

    For Metamask alternatives, Rabby https://rabby.io/ (MIT-licensed) (it routes all queries through its own RPCs atm) and Frame https://frame.sh/ (GPLv3) are the best desktop alternatives I've tried. The latter is my preferred client and IMO is a strict upgrade from Metamask. It's also getting a $7/$1 match on Gitcoin Grants GR12 right now if anyone wants to contribute in the next week: https://gitcoin.co/grants/1143/frame

    There are many, many WalletConnect https://walletconnect.com/ compatible wallets that can be used with most dapps as well. There are close to 100 of these: https://walletconnect.com/registry/wallets

    As for RPCs, here's a list for you: https://github.com/arddluma/awesome-list-rpc-nodes-providers

    If you want to run you're own RPC node, it's not so hard as there are docker and docker-compose images that will let you get geth (or nethermind, or erigon) that will let you spin up an RPC pretty trivially.

    The more important thing for decentralization IMO, is that you can reasonably switch, even if most people don't. Think about how this plays out in the browser or email markets and compare it to how much of a difference that is to completely locked in services like Facebook.

  • SurveyJS

    Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App. With SurveyJS form UI libraries, you can build and style forms in a fully-integrated drag & drop form builder, render them in your JS app, and store form submission data in any backend, inc. PHP, ASP.NET Core, and Node.js.

  • Rabby

    The game-changing wallet for Ethereum and all EVM chains

    For Metamask alternatives, Rabby https://rabby.io/ (MIT-licensed) (it routes all queries through its own RPCs atm) and Frame https://frame.sh/ (GPLv3) are the best desktop alternatives I've tried. The latter is my preferred client and IMO is a strict upgrade from Metamask. It's also getting a $7/$1 match on Gitcoin Grants GR12 right now if anyone wants to contribute in the next week: https://gitcoin.co/grants/1143/frame

    There are many, many WalletConnect https://walletconnect.com/ compatible wallets that can be used with most dapps as well. There are close to 100 of these: https://walletconnect.com/registry/wallets

    As for RPCs, here's a list for you: https://github.com/arddluma/awesome-list-rpc-nodes-providers

    If you want to run you're own RPC node, it's not so hard as there are docker and docker-compose images that will let you get geth (or nethermind, or erigon) that will let you spin up an RPC pretty trivially.

    The more important thing for decentralization IMO, is that you can reasonably switch, even if most people don't. Think about how this plays out in the browser or email markets and compare it to how much of a difference that is to completely locked in services like Facebook.

  • consensus-specs

    Ethereum Proof-of-Stake Consensus Specifications

    Disclaimer: I work on Ethereum core development. One of the coolest things happening that will be available to everyone over the coming year is something called a light client, which is essentially a very light, validating node that tracks the head of the chain with certainty, and can be used as an alternative to services such as Unfura. In the future, Metamask will probably be a light client that actually tracks the head of the chain and can validate proofs of user account state. Source: https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs/blob/dev/specs/a...

  • ens

    Discontinued Implementations for ENS core functionality: The registry, registrars, and public resolvers.

    ENS on Ethereum has gotten a lot of traction.

    https://ens.domains/

  • web3.js

    Collection of comprehensive TypeScript libraries for Interaction with the Ethereum JSON RPC API and utility functions.

    web3 has existed since 2015, see here: https://github.com/ChainSafe/web3.js/releases?page=14

    How does it not exist to you?

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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