“Is ActivityPub paving the way to web 3.0?” – Maloki
conf.tube
A talk about how we're walking away from Web 2.0, and paving the way to Web 3.0 with ActivityPub development. We'll discuss what this could mean for the future of the web We'll look at some of the history of the web, and also consider the social implications moving forward. :: ActivityPub Conference Praha 2019 – https://redaktor.me/apconf/ A conference about the present and future of ActivityPub, the world’s leading federated social web standard. This two day event will include presentations of prepared talks on Saturday followed by a loosely structured unconference on Sunday, Talk by Marie Axelsson (Maloki)

Hi.

Recently I got a little bit curious about web 3.0, after noticing the idea seems to be a contractualisation and valuationist take on the web and indeed the internet.

ie All network actions seem to be thought of as Contracts with Values to be executed by blockchains and possibly IPFS (Inter planetary file system).

These seem, to me, very far from a future when the spontaneous need to exchange comes as a without one side using the other’s need for exchange for profit.

I thought that maybe activitypub kinda spaces might develop ways to circumvent - if not outright better - such web3.0 visions and efforts…

Is this the right kind of forum?

Found a short clip from 2017 regarding ideas in a similar kind of direction, but not much else: https://conf.tube/videos/watch/7d0aa9a1-d9fb-4dbd-9183-aec6cdf1ec35

stay safe!

  • smallcirclesM
    1·
    4 years ago

    There is a lot of complexity in web/internet technology, but the communication between a browser and a server refers to something else than what blockchains are typically used for. Browsers communicate via the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and the hypertext is your html page (text, images, links).

    What makes blockchain special is its trustless consensus mechanism. In a global decentralized web of interconnected (p2p) applications, you want to make transactions with many other parties that you don’t know, and can’t trust. Blockchain solves this, by ensuring a transaction is only committed if it guaranteed is was not tampered with. In cryptocurrency for instance the consensus mechanism is used to solve the “double spend” problem. When I pay someone it takes time for the transaction to be verified, and without blockchain I might make another payment with the same money in the meantime.

    Most blockchain technology - like Bitcoin - comes with a lot of downsides, like insane energy use, and incredibly low transaction speed. New blockchain projects try to solve this, but in many applications where blockchain is used, it is not adding much value. Most of the technology already existed before, except for the consensus mechanism, and are often a better choice.

    ActivityPub is communication protocol where you sent meaningful messages over HTTP. Such as a ‘Like’ message. You can extend the protocol with your own objects and activities, such as ‘Product’ and ‘Buy’ and in that way build a great variety of applications on top of it.

    For peer-to-peer use of ActivityPub we need some changes. HTTP is bound to domain names, and e.g. your phone doesn’t have its own domain. A different protocol below AP is needed, and research is underway to define this (e.g. in the DREAM project). Things get even more complex in P2P context, but eventually we will have a hybrid decentralized Fediverse (federated + p2p).