This whole Tor/Gitcoin drama is the most retarded thing I've ever heard. "Oh no! The Tor project is using a crowd funding platform that uses crypto." For the love of God, if there is anything that crypto is useful for it's donating to things like open-source projects or Fediverse instances without relying on payment processors.
Sure, a LOT of crypto/blockchain related things are scams, but it's still useful for things like this, and I personally think that Monero/XMR would be a better choice, but I don't know of any crowd funding platform that uses it (yet). This is what jumping on the "all crypto bad" bandwagon does to you.
And if you are one of those people who believe that FOSS developers don't deserve any compensation for their work, even through voluntary donations, seriously fuck off! The only reason why these developers can work full-time (or at least work less at their day job) is through donations. Seriously, I'm sick of people acting like assholes when projects ask for donations. Your fediverse instance probably wouldn't be around or would be pay-walled or ad-filled if it weren't for donations.
@gabriel @xianc78 They launched this "passport" thing because quadratic voting can be easily gamed by creating multiple accounts (the more votes you get, the more money your project receives on Gitcoin platform). This is not a KYC procedure, and I think you can verify the uniqueness of your account anonymously.
So in this particular case they are doing it out of necessity, not because they want to build a dystopian digital ID system.
Though in general I agree that a skepticism towards such systems is justified. Most of them are designed for control (e.g. Worldcoin).
And I think you're right about de-platforming, Gitcoin would drop Tor Project the moment it becomes politically inconvenient, just like any other major crowdfunding platform.
to some extent it doesn't matter why people do certain things. *anything* that builds a dystopic world ID system--no matter how well meaning--just normalizes the capture of that same system and rollout of it.
rambling about web3
@gabriel @silverpill @GrapheneOS
>That said, I think there are good reasons to avoid almost a vast majority of blockchain projects. >Even though the people who take an extreme anti-cryptocurrency stance are misguided, there's a lot more merit to the approach than it would seem.
Yeah, I've already written an article on my website about this very subject.
@xianc78 Monero based crowd funding platform
https://kuno.bitejo.com/
Only coin that should be used it Moneroz rest is surveillance shit
rambling about web3
@xianc78@gameliberty.club
I agree with your overall points: It's important not to throw out the baby with the bathwater on funding important projects merely because blockchain based projects or platforms are involved. @silverpill@mitra.social does a good job pointing this out as well.
That said, I think there are good reasons to avoid almost a vast majority of blockchain projects. Even though the people who take an extreme anti-cryptocurrency stance are misguided, there's a lot more merit to the approach than it would seem.
You've likely heard "the medium is the message" and I think it does apply to blockchain projects. There's something ironic about funding an online passport in parallel to funding the Tor project. Over time, I've grown much more suspicious of efforts to validate online activity and interactions. I think many (not specifically gitcoin) blockchain projects are merely age-old top-down control structures with a glossy coat of paint.
Someone could go to Reddit and mistake it for an organically run community because of things like upvotes and downvotes. They would be mistaken due to the level of control the reddit admins have over the platform. I don't really believe that any proof-of-stake system will inherently improve things (corporations themselvesare arguably proof-of-stake).
Doubling down, if projects like @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social are going to start getting de-platformed en masse, very few blockchain based platforms are not so embedded in establishment structures that they'd be forced to comply as well. To me, If they're not actually providing censorship resistance, it's a farce even if the project isn't necessarily an outright scam.
RE: https://mitra.social/objects/018a0971-6633-8deb-c7c1-4e1f941f589b