Re: Update on Web Payments Working Group [The Web Browser API Incubation Anti-Pattern]

> On 4/3/16 9:39 PM, Pindar Wong wrote:
>
>> I'm sorry Tim, Fabio but onwards and upwards -- really?  You're both
>> too polite.
>>
>
I have mostly lurked in this group, the work has been done by other folks,
so I don't feel to be the right person to come out with critique.

Some of my barrier to actually actively participate was my percepcion that
the group was leaning towards existing processes, institutions and
structures - first and foremost financial institutions. No this is no "I
told you so" or something at all. I applaud the work being done here.

However - I am myself quite wary of this approach. Often ignroring the bigs
is suicide. But the financial space is TOO ripe for innovations in order to
tinker around playing nice with them - IMHO. I believe only a real
disruption will make things change for the ideals most in this group
actually stand for. If some of the big players (Apple, Google, Goldman
Sachs, Citi etc.) comes up with an innovatoin which turns out to be a real
breakthrough, there will be no apology and any standardization effort will
be lost.

I believe one scenario to achieve some of the ideals behind this group:
- A decentralized evolution of the blockchain/bitcoin protocol (features:
fast and easy confirmation of TX, no need to download 60GB of data in order
to participate, and more)
- Results in obliterating current financial powers and promises more open
interactions
- A strong interledger protocol, as THE blockchain should not exist IMHO,
or we have a decentralized central single point of failure
- Money NOT designed for scarcity, with built-in rules to shrink/grow the
money supply according to REAL (and real-time) economic data
- With reference to a tangible value for value accounting (how much is a
bitcoin? It only holds value in reference to something else, and it
fluctuates too much. Could be kWh)
- Bake these underlying protocols into the web (via browsers or the
evolution thereof).

This is a very high level outline and it may take many years (if it's even
more than Utopia) to implement, but I believe it holds promises of
interesting results.

On the other side I want to close this post with a thought which stroke me
the other day: no technology will fix any human issues. If humans want to
play bad, they always will, circumventing any nicely desigend system...This
struck me after reading an article about wikipedia, which we all love, but
apparently has become a place where big players with big interests have
taken over.