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Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

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Re: Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

#41

Post by vonklaus »

empath75 wrote: post #15
teraflop wrote: post #13

The article is pretty light on technical details. Does Ethereum suffer from the same design limitation as Bitcoin, where every operation must be verified by every node? If so, I have a really hard time believing it will scale. Look how much difficulty the Bitcoin network is having with just a couple of transactions per second.

That's a political problem with the miners and developers. There's no technical reason they couldn't raise the block size.

Is this true? I believe there is a tradeoff but want a more in depth explsnation if possible

Re: Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

#42

Post by Crespyl »

Hermel wrote: post #16
teraflop wrote: post #13

The article is pretty light on technical details. Does Ethereum suffer from the same design limitation as Bitcoin, where every operation must be verified by every node? If so, I have a really hard time believing it will scale. Look how much difficulty the Bitcoin network is having with just a couple of transactions per second.

The Bitcoin network is not having much difficulty with a couple of transactions per second. It is the community that struggles with adjusting to an appropriate throughput.

"a couple" transactions per second is not enough for a global network that intends to have millions of participants.

Re: Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

#43

Post by vonklaus »

davidgerard wrote: post #35
teraflop wrote: post #13

The article is pretty light on technical details. Does Ethereum suffer from the same design limitation as Bitcoin, where every operation must be verified by every node? If so, I have a really hard time believing it will scale. Look how much difficulty the Bitcoin network is having with just a couple of transactions per second.

Every computation runs on every instance of Ethereum, yes. It is important to note that this is not a resource for distributed general computation - it's for running smart contracts. Per the Ethereum development tutorial, "you will not be able to do anything on the EVM that you cannot do on a smartphone from 1999." https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Ethereum-Development-T... This is not a very good article - it's…

Ethereum refers to itself as this on the website, ethereum.com

Re: Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

#44

Post by jnpn »

powera wrote: post #24

I still don't understand how anyone can believe that paying ten to a hundred times as much for algorithmically provable trust or whatever will get any market traction ever.

There are many services in this world which require a trusted intermediary between users. The fees these services charge are _not_ a function of compute cycles. They are, however, often a function of pricing power derived from competition (or lack thereof). Where decentralized computation is less expensive than the fees charged by incumbents in the trusted intermediary business, there is the opportunity for a new entrant to leverage the tech to profit on the spread.

Re: Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

#46

Post by na85 »

Has it been six months since the last Ethereum post already?

Is Ethereum still "engendering positive disruption"? I see they've updated their site to make it more approachable and read less like proecdurally-generated Venture Capitalist jargon. That's nice.

I see they've added a javascript environment. Yuck.

Re: Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

#47

Post by semiel »

teraflop wrote: post #13

The article is pretty light on technical details. Does Ethereum suffer from the same design limitation as Bitcoin, where every operation must be verified by every node? If so, I have a really hard time believing it will scale. Look how much difficulty the Bitcoin network is having with just a couple of transactions per second.

Currently, yes. However, the Ethereum foundation is actively working on addressing that limitation, and there are some very clever proposals for how to get around the problem. Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum development is very active and the community welcomes major changes if they are worthwhile. I agree that Ethereum needs to solve the scaling problem to be successful, but I think Vitalik and the foundation have a good shot at doing it.

Re: Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

#49

Post by eternalban »

heliumcraft wrote: post #32
teraflop wrote: post #13

The article is pretty light on technical details. Does Ethereum suffer from the same design limitation as Bitcoin, where every operation must be verified by every node? If so, I have a really hard time believing it will scale. Look how much difficulty the Bitcoin network is having with just a couple of transactions per second.

It's not meant to be used for 'distributed' computation.

Any system based on distributed consensus is by definition a distributed system.

Re: Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

#50

Post by vonklaus »

davidgerard wrote: post #36
oakhaven wrote: post #2

I wonder to what extent is the price rise a bubble, and to what extent it's valuation of the potential.

It was a pump'n'dump. Lots and lots of people on the Reddit bitcoin-related subs reported PM spam about Ethereum, for instance.

Pump and dump the way you phrased it, seems to auggest the entire thing is a pump and dump scheme.

Either way, the price fluctuates woldly as people try to do this scheme, but the company raised $15m and appears to be actively developing the tech. So whether it works(it appears promising) or not, they seem to be svidly trying

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