Smart contract programming is good as a concept but its token value can go to zero.

[TilakMaddy]

I love the idea of unbreakable promises and being able to program solidity smart contracts in ethereum however its value can fall down to 0 like Terra Luna. We can never be sure of anything 100%. Solana uses GCP (a centralized cloud platform provider) behind the scenes but they don't tell you (which is why they have ultra fast transactions). Every decision in crypto is a * potential * gamble.

I am not pro or anti crypto. I simply want to know how many people agree with me. I am NOT your hater. (whatever your opinion is)

[vivart]

Not actively but I am following blockchain development for quite some time. I agree with you I also feel, it has many problems. e.g. now a days ethereum transactions are so expensive, suppose we create a Dapp twitter where you need to pay a lot of money to tweet and that tweet will also take a lot of time to publish, who will use that twitter but it's evolving continuously and I like how it works and all the concepts involved.

[Trustpad-web]

Ah I think so that

[gmluqa]

Just because a digital agreement is a smart contract, it doesn't mean that it doesn't have bugs, exploits, it's underlying infraestructure is highly centralized, the tokenomics don't work out as envisioned, etc. People with solidity knowledge can read through these contracts and verify what exactly is going on and how.

Luna/UST collapsed not due to the smart contracts not preforming correctly, quite the contrary, the contracts functioned exactly how they were programmed to, the error was to do with game theory, the tokenomics and the seigniorage system in the event of a death spiral, which is exactly what happened as many smart people predicted (see https://twitter.com/Galois_Capital , https://twitter.com/GiganticRebirth , etc).

In fact, the same types of people that knew this was going to happen read through the smart contracts or just read the whitepaper for UST/Luna, understood the underlying issues with the game-theory aspect and shorted Luna and UST. UST wanted you to trust their brand and image, the 1$ = 1 UST meme, Do Kwon's egocentric ramblings on how his project could not fail.

It is quite clear by now that programming an algorithmic stablecoin with a 1 dollar peg that relies on no collateral is a no-no, it was an interesting experiment that sadly failed, along with many predecessors (see Iron Finance, Basis Cash, etc. ).

When it comes to blockchains that use highly centralized infrastructure, it depends on the end-user whether they want to use them or not. Personally I have never used Solana and have no plans to for the reasons you've stated above and many more (being able to pause the blockchain whenever, the multiple down-times the chain has had, etc.)

Don't trust the brand, verify!!!

[Utilitycoder]

This is awesome! There is no better explanation of how things should work and where the point of failure is in blockchain tech.

[PatrickAlphaC]

This is where it's our job as developers to make sure we advocate for the real projects actually building this vision. What you're referring to is a concept called "decentralization theatre" where a number of projects say they are decentralized, when in reality they are not. The unfourtunate part is that there are so many speculators who just want to make a quick buck off the industry without actually bringing any value.

This is why I made that part about "why smart contracts matter" in this course. If we build the same broken system we have in web2, or people use web3 as just a giant money grab, blockchain as an industry will not last - at all.

Every project is a gradient of decentrality, and not all blockchain projects are the same. One of the other reasons I choose to focus on ETH as the main blockchain we worked with for the course, is that as far as security and decentrality goes, it's the best, hands down.

Plenty of other projects would have paid me a ton of money (I know, because many have approached me and other developer content creators in this space), but as far as building the mission of web3, I think right now Eth is the best.

This isn't to say other projects aren't as good - some are just more junior and on the rise, and will do great things for this space. But yes, sadly, some are not so good.

We will get better are identifying projects that are not aligned with what web3 is about. As we get better, blockchain as an industry will be the standard.

It all boils down to this:

Given two agreements, one where you are guaranteed the outcome, and one where you have to trust someone to do the right thing, which one are you going to choose?
It will never make sense to choose the latter.

EDIT:
By the way, I'm glad you're curious on this. Asking candid questions like this is exactly what we need to do to keep the mission going.

[Utilitycoder]

Oh, Patrick! This reply is as qualitative as the contents you create. With the mindset of grabbing as much money as possible in this space, we are sadly going to spend a long time to reach our destination, if at all we do.

People are being paid daily to shill shitty projects and the unsuspecting public is falling victim to the shiny objects. Whatever makes the most money is what everyone wants to do.

I know you won't like this, but I think we should start calling out bad actors by their names in this space. See a quick money-grab project? Don't turn a blind eye to it!

[PatrickAlphaC]

I think it's important to call out bad actors - however, you always should focus on facts.

Saying "f*ck project X, it's shitty dumb dumb" isn't a really effective way to get anything done.

But if you say:

"Project X has 21 nodes all controlled by the same group and project Y has 5,500 nodes. With this, we know project Y is more likely more decentralized and censorship-resistant. We should use project Y over project X. " Then, we collectively choose to ignore project X if they do not change.

Now, this is an oversimplification - for example, I know some chains that have way fewer validators, but they are incredibly cheaper. So now we are getting in values a little bit and it can get tricky - and this is where clarifying your values becomes important and understanding the tradeoffs some groups make.

Then this is VERY productive and helpful. It calls out the issues with project X AND gives a better alternative in project Y.

The only way we grow as a community is to learn from bad actors and educate each other to avoid them. So yes, I agree, we should not be turning blind eyes.

But for a lot of projects, there are a LOT of "money grab" red flags. Are they offering anything new? What is the value add of the project? Can the project successfully wind down?

A question I ask a lot is:

Are they taking from, or contributing to Web3?

Examples of "taking from":

• An NFT or ERC20 project that founders abandon or don't deliver on their promises, but keep the money from investors.
• A "blockchain" where the whole chain is controlled by 1 entity
• A defi application that promises crazy returns, but can only deliver using ponzinomics (usually, any app promising 20% returns for life is either lying, a ponzi, or going to run out of money real fast - and break that promise)

Examples of "contributing to":

• An L2 rollup used to scale existing decentralized blockchains
• A new governance solution that allows for quadratic voting (a more fair voting solution)
• A new implementation using new research that solves the state bloat problem, or sharding issues.

If we have too many people "taking from" web3, web3 will not last, since there will be nothing left to take from.

Everyone taking this course, please be forces for good and focus on the "contribute to" side of things. THAT is how we all make it ✊

[eiyen]

Got it!

Even though I'm just a beginner, I'll keep this in mind: Be a contributing but not a taking from developer.

[MarkusEicher]

Hi folks. As a newcomer in the Web3, Blockchain and Crypto ecosphere, it was not easy. I heard a lot about Crypto and Blockchain and I stumbled over the Web3 part during my learning journey in the Web2 and Cloud Native space. I share Patrick's view that Ethereum is the kind of platform and philosophy I'm looking for. There are many problems that we still have to solve, that's no question. Learning more about the underlying technology and about Smart Contracts should be a goal for many more people, because it helps with finding out what covers this philosophy and what does not. I find the idea of a world computer driven by Millions of independent hosts a very intriguing idea. That this may not be possible for free, like we all are used to find it normal in the centralized system, where we were the product with our personal data, is the price we have to pay. I'm sure, we will find new ways to make it easier for new developers and users to handle things like Gas Fees and the pretty complex onboarding. We now have Account Abstraction with Gasless solutions what is a step in the right direction. If we need some centralization to speed things up or to make it more convenient, then why not, but the core must be this permissionless, distributed and censorship resistent network that doesn't even need to have an authority other than cryptographic algorithms and procedures to be safe and secure. May sound a bit idealistic, but I do strongly believe, that this can and will be the future of the web and how we collaborate and communicate together. Be it like it is, I will do what I can to contribute my part to it as good as I can. That's why I'm very thankful for such resources like Patrick offers here. May you all have a great time and enjoy the ride!

[cromewar]

I Agreed with Patrick's explanation, I'll just add the importance to audit your smart contracts, even on projects with real decentralization there are still a lot of problems, if you as a developer didn't pay strict attention on what you built. Your protocol could die miserably for "human errors". So in order to prevent most of the scenarios where a protocol looses all the credibility and funding, please be sure to audit any smart contract you are going to deploy to the mainnet.

Cheers, Vasiliy.

[Utilitycoder]

I agree with having another pairs of eyes look at the contract. But it can be quite expensive and unaffordable for developers from developing countries.

[thevolcanomanishere]

There are multiple thins you can do yourself before you go and pay for audits. Check out smart contract fuzzing, solhint, and watch Patricks course on Smart Contract Testing to learn more.

[cromewar]

@thevolcanomanishere is right I strongly recommend to use Mythril an incredible tool for auditing.

[thevolcanomanishere]

@cromewar Cool! I had seen their website but I thought it wasnt released yet. Foundry framework has fuzzing too I believe

[cromewar]

yep this is kinda the state of the art right now but you already can use the code, but yes no that much documentation yet.

[thevolcanomanishere]

Learning to program smart contracts has nothing to do with the price of tokens :)
You don't stop learning about finance because some random stock went to zero!

[PatrickAlphaC]

THIS!

[NokivaF]

You can never be sure of what is going to work for most of the people. Internet itself wasn't made for what is nowadays used, and however, it evolved not because of the technology only, it was the inner idea of sharing ideas all around the world. The spirit of freedom and being able to share and acquire knowledge. And a lot of people failed trying to leave their signature building the internet (electric engineering, data transferring protocols, entrepreneurial business ideas, and so on..) If you think every blockchain project has to make it through all the proposals, even when many of them are good enough, you have to get real. At least I'd say that the most important part of a project is the person behind of it, and that's the path all of us should follow in order to make a greater web environment, and get rid of all the trashy ideas that only seek for a revenue. Not more blind capitalism!