Is Discourse going to make the transition to Web 3.0 or will it remain a Web 2.0 application? For example, will Discourse move to the blockchain where it will be possible to build DAOs based on Discourse with social tokens, NFTs and cryptocurrencies?
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Blockchain, DAO, social tokens, NFT, cryptocurrency. 
What?
Discourse is a forum, not a bank.
I don’t understand any of these acronyms, though, I’m so 1.0. 
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Discourse goal is:
to raise the standard of civilized discourse on the Internet through seeding it with better discussion software - source
How do you envision
helping we (royal “we”) further achieve our goal?
Wasn’t 3.0 the Semantic and Decentralized Web?
To that extent you could argue Discourse already is very much Web 3.0, even tough we are still working on Discourse 2.8 
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Yes, Discourse has been web3 for a long, long time:
- decentralized (not one Giant Facebook To Rule Them All, but millions of smaller communities)
The other area of interest is
- micropayments – letting artists and others get paid for their hard work.
Welcome to our world, @openmind! We’re looking at two things at the moment
- Verifying avatars as paid-for NFTs via a plugin
- Login via Metamask (or other similar APIs)
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The inconvenient of blockchain (or crypto-this-that, whatever you call it) is so overwhelming (evergrowing computer amount with its evergrowing pollution), that I have always found strange that the benefits are not more obvious (still no clue).
But perhaps you will give me a clue, that is as simple as my few word description of inconvenient, a kind of blockchain benefit for dummies in a very simple few words sentence:
Pro: ___ _ ___ _ ___ _
Con: evergrowing computer amount with its evergrowing pollution
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This is the most reasonable short-term implication on Discourse (and similar platforms), IMO.
I look at something like Unlock Protocol see an immediate tie-in.
Example scenario:
User buys a token on OpenSea > gains membership to a site as part of the token ownership > site includes Discourse as part of the stack (along with, say, WordPress and a Discord server) > site authenticates membership via token in the user’s crypto wallet.
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Some people reached out to me and expressed interest in paying for a “login with metamask” plugin for Discourse and the other features you mentioned like NFT avatars etc. If you are interested we can talk as well. 
this seems interesting. Probably “Login with metamask” needs to be tackled first.
I started working on a proof of concept that does a similar thing with the check_tx_proof of monero. Wallet RPC documentation | Monero - secure, private, untraceable
The thing I really dislike about the ethereum ecosystem is that everything is public. Every website can see all the transactions you made once you decide to “Login with Metamask”.
The issue is that Monero (where everything is private, it is basically like literal digital cash) currently does not have a browser wallet like Metamask.
My thinking was: either I can implement the web3 metamask login quickly or start building a browserwallet for Monero.
I decided to pivot my focus on the latter.
I still did some initial research into what would be necessary to get the Login with Metamask working: It is not really rocket science, just give the user a random number to sign with their wallet address and then verify that it was signed correctly in the backend.
There is a ruby ethereum library out there, so it should not be too hard. If there are no major roadblocks, it could be done in one developer week.
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Being able to log into Discourse with a crypto wallet would be fantastic, and would certainly be beneficial for the community that we’ll be running. Plenty more features and plugins can be built after that should the connection with the wallet be present.
Right now the state of websites logging in with wallets is a good bit fragmented, each having different functionality for making it happen.
“Sign in with Ethereum” is a big and current effort to make such a thing seamless. It’s also supported and funded by the Ethereum foundation.
Seems to me like someone in the community would just need to fork one of the existing “Login with” plugins (such as this one for Discord) and adapt it to support Sign in with Ethereum. Here is the relevant info:
- Sign in with Ethereum project homepage: https://login.xyz
- Spec
- Documentation
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So there is already a plugin for the Unlock protocol 
I totally missed that.
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Yeah, I feel that. While wallets are ostensibly anonymous/private, there’s a breadcrumb trail that not everyone would be comfortable with.
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Just published a plugin to set verified NFT avatars 
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yeah especially because your address is most likely KYC’d through an exchange. Absolute privacy nightmare. But still the most energy is there so it is probably good to learn from it and get involved in the ecosystem.
EDIT:
I created a gitcoin grant to work on Login with Ethereum and other things:
If you are interested in this kind of functionality please contribute.
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Looks like it’s happening, and by the crew that’s building Sign in with Ethereum no less!
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And there is a meta topic for that plugin by @kam44
I just edited the topic title it to make it clearer
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I see that the conversation here focused mainly on the login, less so on the use of social tokens in a community economy that decentralizes governance and finance. My team is also in the throes of defining that economy and where to build it, so I’d love additional conversation on that front as it relates to Discourse. Much thanks in advance!
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I strongly agree with @jesus2099. He practically took the words right out of my mouth.
Discourse is not a bank, nor is it meant to be used as software for a banking service. I’m all for building communities with Discourse. Virtual banks though? Not so much… 
There are other web3 features that definitely fit into Discourse though (most notably, non-fungible tokens).
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I’m associated with a few daos, Discourse is used by several as a starting point for on-chain governance proposals, and being able to associate an on-chain identity with one’s Discourse account is an important feature, since this is how users interact with our app in the first place. Many of the solutions here are solid, unfortunately they’re all oriented toward ETH wallets such as Metamask and we’re on Solana.
Ideally, the web3 wallet would be the single method of authentication into our instance. I’m still researching how we might modify something like Sign-on With Ethereum or build a custom plugin that can connect to Solana wallet plugins.
If there are any other Solana projects exploring this space please reach out to me.
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Clearly, I’m late to the convo here. But the short succinct answer is that blockchain is a better way to store, secure and transmit data than current methods. What most people don’t understand is the same question you are asking right now was asked about the internet and many other emergent technologies when they first came out. What blockchain is known for now is not what it will be known for in the future. Great article about it here: Invisible Ubiquity. Guest Article By Wolf Pup #0 | by Doc Kev | The Guardian Academy | Sep, 2022 | Medium
On another note: Cryptocurrencies and blockchains are more efficient than their counterparts. Fiat money systems for cryptocurrencies and servers handling traditional data. If you are concerned with “pollution” (ie CO2 emissions) look at the actual usage and not headlines from news articles.
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- Why is a blockchain a better way of storing forum data?
- Why is https less secure or a worse way to transmit data than a blockchain transaction?
Out of interest, is there a single forum platform as feature rich and privacy regulation compliant as Discourse that performs as well and is based on blockchain?
Can you provide an objective list of measures which demonstrate its potential in this field?
For example, representative transaction time comparisons, tangible benefits of de-centralisation in the context of a forum, comparison of privacy potential etc.
Can you imagine the chaos of having multi-minute transactions times (thanks blockchain) for hot topic posts? The resulting conversation would be a total mess and the system unusable! That’s why a normal centralised DB with millisecond updates and push is always going to be superior.
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