Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

svds.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 243 posts

Re: Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

#181

Post by Anonobread »

ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #177
Anonobread wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Ethereum's raison d'etre is "X for the blockchain". VISA does 56,000 tps. So it's really simple. How are you going to hit 56,000 tps on the blockchain. The Bitcoin community, which is far bigger and generally more experienced than Ethereum's just spent 18 months vigorously debating this question. Do you suggest Ethereum has come up with a better answer? And the criticism here is around the selling point of Ethere…

56k TPS is a supposed peak at burst volumes, in reality the number is closer to 3K TPS but that's beside the point. Until there's a real need for bitcoin to support this sort of volume (if ever) I don't think comparing bitcoin to visa tps wise proves anything. If there's enough customer adoption where there's a need to handle that kind of volume you can rest assured there will be infrastructure to support it and inst…

> If there's enough customer adoption where there's a need to handle that kind of volume you can rest assured there will be infrastructure to support it and instead of a loose group of "core devs" there will be an official salaried department (at visa? :) ) working on this full time.

But since we're talking about "decentralized systems", the question is who owns the blockchain infrastructure. Is the blockchain going to be serviceable on home desktop PCs, or are you going to need a datacenter?

To really drive this example home, could you please quote me a price on building out a Tier 1 datacenter with gigabit fiber? Because last I checked most people don't have that kind of money in their sofa cushion. And it isn't even remotely feasible to acquire that sort of infrastructure anonymously.

Yet that's what it's going to take to hit 56,000 tps on a blockchain any time this decade or perhaps even after [1]:

> Next month, the worldwide semiconductor industry will formally acknowledge what has become increasingly obvious to everyone involved: Moore's law, the principle that has powered the information-technology revolution since the 1960s, is nearing its end.

A common mistake is confusing "popularity" with decentralization. BitTorrent is both popular and decentralized. It doesn't take a datacenter and a 10-machine cluster to participate in a BT swarm as a full-on peer. As an aside, it's no surprise the creator of BitTorrent is staunchly against scaling Bitcoin in datacenters [2].

[1]: http://www.nature.com/news/the-chips-are-down-for-moore-s-la...

[1]: http://www.agner.org/optimize/blog/read.php?i=417

[2]: https://medium.com/@bramcohen/bitcoin-s-ironic-crisis-32226a...

Re: Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

#183

Post by nickpsecurity »

Anonobread wrote: post #100
crazydoggers wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One key difference with Bitcoin is that, unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum has an account based architecture. In other words, you have an account that is credited or debited, and you then have a current balance for that account. If you need to get your balance or send ether, you just look up a single number. Bitcoin on the other hand uses an "Unspent Transaction Output" architecture. Basically your balance is made up of all o…

But Ethereum's raison d'etre is "X for the blockchain". VISA does 56,000 tps. So it's really simple. How are you going to hit 56,000 tps on the blockchain. The Bitcoin community, which is far bigger and generally more experienced than Ethereum's just spent 18 months vigorously debating this question. Do you suggest Ethereum has come up with a better answer? And the criticism here is around the selling point of Ethere…

"VISA does 56,000 tps."

That's what I keep telling them. The whole of credit processing and banking... even the Fed... runs on centralized, transactional architectures with redundant datacenters and optionally redundant checks from mutually-distrusting parties. What people want to do can be built on a highly-efficient, log-based system with distributed checking run by a foundation (or international collaboration) in a neutral country. It would be simpler, more secure, use less energy, faster, and so on. Additionally, we can choose what level of detail we want in reporting or auditing to reduce data overload.

These blockchain models want everything to go on a blockchain whose operational hurdles even they can't agree on. It's like this subfield of IT is ignoring simple solutions to simple problems while pushing complex solutions with complex problems.

So, I add to your own question: what is it about a smart contract on Bitcoin or Ethereum that couldn't be done with a signed email or website document optionally run through a few cryptographic notaries? The latter is not only simpler and more efficient: it's in use commercially with many courts already approving of concepts and some implementations.

Re: Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

#184

Post by nickpsecurity »

brighton36 wrote: post #141
Anonobread wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What block size for Ethereum's blockchain would be required to hit 56,000 tps? I'm really getting some deja vu in having to write this out for the millionth time in a 18 month period. None of your talking points magically address the extreme costs of prerequisite physical infrastructure needed to hit 56,000 tps. Bottom line, it's impossible to match the throughput capacity of just a single credit card company on any…

Thank-you for writing this for the umpteenth time. I write these same points myself, constantly, as well. Most of the people in the ethereum project are delusional teenagers looking to get rich quick.

What's your take on my claim?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11184214

Note: Reply there if you do.

Re: Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

#185

Post by [deleted] »

kang wrote: post #52

Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9987142 Give me any ethereum use-case & I'll tell you how to do it with bitcoin. Is it advantageous if a DSL is turing complete? It is not that bitcoin 'cannot have' a turing complete script but that it is unsafe & there is no need to do so. Turing completeness can be applied on an upper abstraction. There is nothing that ethereum can do that bitcoin cannot! Th…

[deleted]

Re: Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

#186

Post by Anonobread »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #183
Anonobread wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Ethereum's raison d'etre is "X for the blockchain". VISA does 56,000 tps. So it's really simple. How are you going to hit 56,000 tps on the blockchain. The Bitcoin community, which is far bigger and generally more experienced than Ethereum's just spent 18 months vigorously debating this question. Do you suggest Ethereum has come up with a better answer? And the criticism here is around the selling point of Ethere…

"VISA does 56,000 tps." That's what I keep telling them. The whole of credit processing and banking... even the Fed... runs on centralized, transactional architectures with redundant datacenters and optionally redundant checks from mutually-distrusting parties. What people want to do can be built on a highly-efficient, log-based system with distributed checking run by a foundation (or international collaboration) in…

Ironically, the only people who have made money on smart contracts - cough Ethereum - did it by convincing other investors to part with their money subsequent to selling those investors on the idea of smart contracts. That whole sub-niche industry is just a big cess pool of people chasing investment gains that we're told can be had by pointlessly tilting at windmills.

Conversely, Bitcoin never promised smart contracts. To the extent Bitcoiners take part in Ethereum debates, we're only doing it because we know the real game Ethereum is playing is diverting investment capital away from Bitcoin.

Re: Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

#187

Post by eterpstra »

pmarreck wrote: post #160
whypeoplepeople wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were tons of techniques to preserve home-made foods - canning, vacuum drying, salt curing, fermentation, etc. - and then someone invented the fridge. What is widely adopted? As an average developer, I can launch a smart contract with 20 lines of code in Ethereum. I have no idea in earth how to even start writing those things on classic blockchains, let alone prove they work as I expect.

> I can launch a smart contract with 20 lines of code in Ethereum Where's the github gist for this?

There's this: https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/12/03/how-to-build-your-own-c...

Re: Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

#188

Post by bryanrasmussen »

jarsin wrote: post #180
ApplaudPumice wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can launch a smart contract with 20 lines of code in Ethereum. Have you done this before? I tried to learn Ethereum (as an average developer) but it was over my head.

here is the a basic example. https://ethereum.org/greeter more in depth tutorials exist on ethereum.org

as far as the language goes - that is a very verbose "hello world".

does the level of verbosity decrease as you get into more advanced applications?

Re: Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

#189

Post by eterpstra »

repomies69 wrote: post #135
eco wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't mean fork ethereum and create a new currency. They mean create a new currency running on the ethereum platform. A bitcoin fork means you have to build up a group of miners sufficiently large and diverse enough that everyone trusts it. Making a currency on ethereum means it inherits the trust that ethereum has. Here is the tutorial about creating your own coin on ethereum. It's pretty short and interesting:…

I know what they mean. > A bitcoin fork means you have to build up a group of miners sufficiently large and diverse enough that everyone trusts it. Of course, you need miners. However the mining is the easy part, otherwise you need marketing, use cases, etc, for the currency to get any traction. I think an altcoin working on top of the ethereum blockchain would not be as convincing as invidual altcoin. However of cou…

Tokens created on Ethereum can have very niche use cases. Digix has tokens that are pegged to a gram of gold sitting in a warehouse. Augur uses tokens to track user reputation. Free My Vunk uses tokens as currency to buy and sell items in video games.

The developers can focus entirely on their business use case for the currency (and the marketing) without the need to create an entirely new cryptocurrency.

Re: Ethereum: Rise of the World Computer

#190

Post by ChemicalWarfare »

Anonobread wrote: post #181
ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

56k TPS is a supposed peak at burst volumes, in reality the number is closer to 3K TPS but that's beside the point. Until there's a real need for bitcoin to support this sort of volume (if ever) I don't think comparing bitcoin to visa tps wise proves anything. If there's enough customer adoption where there's a need to handle that kind of volume you can rest assured there will be infrastructure to support it and inst…

> If there's enough customer adoption where there's a need to handle that kind of volume you can rest assured there will be infrastructure to support it and instead of a loose group of "core devs" there will be an official salaried department (at visa? :) ) working on this full time. But since we're talking about "decentralized systems", the question is who owns the blockchain infrastructure. Is the blockchain going…

"To really drive this example home, could you please quote me a price on building out a Tier 1 datacenter with gigabit fiber? Because last I checked most people don't have that kind of money in their sofa cushion."

"Big boys" do though. And that is my point exactly - if there's enough tx volume (driven by consumer adoption first and foremost) to warrant this expense - someone will do it. Also, in reality bitcoin isn't all that decentralized. Sure, individual nodes on the p2p network are all over the place however the vast majority of them are members of mining pools, with 3 biggest Chinese pools accounting for 30+ % of the total hashrate.

So if one of the major card networks steps in and takes over that chunk, as a consumer I'd be looking at a more reliable system to deal with.

Post reply on HN