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Introducing Token

blog.tokenbrowser.com

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Re: Introducing Token

#11

Post by jacquesm »

nsebban wrote: post #7
jacquesm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps this is overly cynical Probably not, especially not for all the coins started after bitcoin took off. Bitcoin itself may be an exception but without a reliable genesis story it's impossible to know for sure.

AFAIK Bitcoin early-mined blocks were mined and are still owned by its creator. So it's perfectly ok to be cynical about Bitcoin as well. Edit: Some details here https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-f...

They are owned or their wallet has long ago been lost.

It's not all that hard to permanently erase some bitcoins.

Re: Introducing Token

#12

Post by jacquesm »

tchaffee wrote: post #9
jacquesm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps this is overly cynical Probably not, especially not for all the coins started after bitcoin took off. Bitcoin itself may be an exception but without a reliable genesis story it's impossible to know for sure.

Bitcoin creator(s) hold bitcoin worth a cool couple billion USD. Be very cynical.

No, they mined bitcoins that have a present day virtual value of lots of $, but that they are still holding on to them is an assumption that may prove wrong and that value is there mostly because of the relatively low number of bitcoins that is actively being traded.

If those coins are still held by some individual and they decide to unload the BTC will drop like a stone.

Re: Introducing Token

#13

Post by AroundTheBlock_ »

fabiosussetto wrote: post #8

Are they using some implementation of the Ethereum light client protocol? Last time I checked it wasn't available yet: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Light-client-protocol If they are using the standard protocol then how do they connect to the Ethereum network? Do they use their servers as proxy to the network? Because if it's so, that would defeat the whole point to me.

No, they're not using the Light Client yet for that very reason, but easily could in the future. But in any case, no crypto wallets are light clients. All Bitcoin wallets, for example, use servers because it's impossible to do Bitcoin light clients (at least, they haven't found a solution yet).

This app is more about having WeChat with crypto payments and with app interactions. Light client could come later though.

Re: Introducing Token

#14

Post by AroundTheBlock_ »

_pdp_ wrote: post #3

Maybe I am not getting it but ethereum is way to complex to make it successful - and because it is decentralised it looks deeply fragmented. As I said, I am probably not getting it.

It is very complex, but also very, very early. No one is pretending that any of this is production ready or user friendly. These are just glimpses into what is being worked on for over the next 5-10 years

Re: Introducing Token

#15

Post by danielpatrick »

_pdp_ wrote: post #3

Maybe I am not getting it but ethereum is way to complex to make it successful - and because it is decentralised it looks deeply fragmented. As I said, I am probably not getting it.

I'll add some color here.

The complexity you're referring to may be the runtime? It is more complex than, say, Bitcoin because it has for most purposes a Turing complete language baked into the protocol.

Bitcoin is a blockchain that forms consensus on the state of a specific implementation of a data structure (somewhat arbitrarily, a list of transactions) and it has a very limited set of operations to manipulate that data.

Coming to distributed consensus on a transaction ledger is ultra-useful, as we have come to know. But there may be other data structures that may be useful for distributed consensus as well. Rather than building a blockchain for each one, why not build that flexibility into one protocol so the developer can choose?

Ethereum is a blockchain that forms consensus on the state of a more general set of data types, with a Turing complete language to operate on the data.

More complex? Yes. But the hope is that this flexibility drives a rich developer ecosystem, where innovation can happen within the network, rather than having to build your own network from scratch.

As for decentralization leading to fragmentation? This is a feature, not a bug. It is the feature that allowed Ethereum to grow in tangent with a thousand other blockchain mechanisms. Maybe fragmentation will bring its demise, but it as breath of fresh air from our rapidly consolidating tech industry.

Re: Introducing Token

#16

Post by fabiosussetto »

AroundTheBlock_ wrote: post #13
fabiosussetto wrote: post #8

Are they using some implementation of the Ethereum light client protocol? Last time I checked it wasn't available yet: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Light-client-protocol If they are using the standard protocol then how do they connect to the Ethereum network? Do they use their servers as proxy to the network? Because if it's so, that would defeat the whole point to me.

No, they're not using the Light Client yet for that very reason, but easily could in the future. But in any case, no crypto wallets are light clients. All Bitcoin wallets, for example, use servers because it's impossible to do Bitcoin light clients (at least, they haven't found a solution yet). This app is more about having WeChat with crypto payments and with app interactions. Light client could come later though.

So for now the Ethereum promise to have a distributed network where I don't need to trust any man in the middle is really not possible yet on mobile devices?

Re: Introducing Token

#17

Post by beaconstudios »

Freak_NL wrote: post #5
aaron-lebo wrote: post #4

I would find your pitch much more interesting if you didn't go from "look at this very cool technology" to "look how we're changing the world for the better for these poor people in Africa". Be realistic. How many Sub-Saharan Africans are using Token or working on it right now? You're first-world devs working on first-world tech and wrapping it up in humanitarian terms because it makes you more attractive. It's kind…

> It's all about money at the end of the day, isn't it? I'm still having a hard time seeing any cryptocurrency based application as anything but an attempt to facilitate speculation based on that currency's value. There seem to be so many perverse incentives inherent to this technology that I automatically find any idealistic application of it suspect. Perhaps this is overly cynical, but all cryptocurrencies seem to…

I agree with your sentiment with regard to the huge number of altcoins that have emerged since bitcoin's arrival, but I still believe there is a core value to cryptocurrencies. However, I disagree with the common statement that that benefit is related to anonymity or privacy. I think the core benefit of cryptocurrencies is in their immutable ownership and exchange - if I buy something with PayPal on eBay I might get a chargeback or PayPal may arbitrarily decide that my transaction was fraudulent.

With cryptocurrencies, I don't have to worry about that. The fact that I can store them in a physical location (e.g. a phone app, on a paper wallet in a vault) is immensely useful - I can keep coins in my phone wallet for sending to friends for shared bills, and don't have to think about whether the company that owns my cash is going to make some bizarre policy change or if they are secure enough to prevent hackers manipulating my balance or crashing the company's infrastructure. There's also a sense of ownership that comes with that, similar to owning physical cash.

I think there's two innovations beyond bitcoin that are necessary to become properly useful instead of just a tech toy: economic stability, and fast transactions. Also, potentially offline transactions if that's feasible. Economic stability would provide the ability to trust the coins' ability to maintain value rather than using them for fast exchange and cash-out cycles (inflationary) or speculation and investment only (deflationary). Fast transactions for synchronous exchanges, e.g. in-person or business sales funnels. I don't know if Ethereum (or any other altcoin) provides these capabilities, but that's just my 2 satoshis.

Re: Introducing Token

#18

Post by terhechte »

_pdp_ wrote: post #3

Maybe I am not getting it but ethereum is way to complex to make it successful - and because it is decentralised it looks deeply fragmented. As I said, I am probably not getting it.

It is indeed looking very complex, but that's because (as others have pointed out) it is still rather young. Ethereum itself is being implemented with a phased roadmap: Frontier, Homestead, Metropolis, Serenity. We're still in the Homestead phase, and Metropolis (the next phase) will, for example include "a relatively full-featured user interface for non-technical users" [1]. But even this is probably still years away from simple usability for an average user.

Also, remember that understanding happens in layers. The web with all its components also once looked very alien to all of us (DNS, REST, Server, Client, Browser, FTP, Gopher, P2P, HTML, Javascript, the list goes on). We just take it all for granted because we grew up while layers were piled on top. But if you can't even tell a client from a server, then understanding how a modern web app works will also take a long time and will look way too complex.

This is not to say that ethereum will be as revolutionary as the web, just that simplicity can easier grow out of complexity than complexity can grow out of simplicity

[1] https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/03/03/ethereum-launch-process...

Re: Introducing Token

#19

Post by terhechte »

fabiosussetto wrote: post #16
AroundTheBlock_ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they're not using the Light Client yet for that very reason, but easily could in the future. But in any case, no crypto wallets are light clients. All Bitcoin wallets, for example, use servers because it's impossible to do Bitcoin light clients (at least, they haven't found a solution yet). This app is more about having WeChat with crypto payments and with app interactions. Light client could come later though.

So for now the Ethereum promise to have a distributed network where I don't need to trust any man in the middle is really not possible yet on mobile devices?

In theory, you could run a private client on DigitalOcean and then connect to that. Apart from that, true light clients are coming [1]. Particularly interesting is this comment by the ethereum light client developer: [2] "Can't promise anything yet but we're not that far from real trustless O(1) light client syncing."

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5x27ss/after_metr... They may even

[1] https://blog.ethereum.org/2017/01/07/introduction-light-clie...

Re: Introducing Token

#20

Post by wslh »

AroundTheBlock_ wrote: post #13
fabiosussetto wrote: post #8

Are they using some implementation of the Ethereum light client protocol? Last time I checked it wasn't available yet: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Light-client-protocol If they are using the standard protocol then how do they connect to the Ethereum network? Do they use their servers as proxy to the network? Because if it's so, that would defeat the whole point to me.

No, they're not using the Light Client yet for that very reason, but easily could in the future. But in any case, no crypto wallets are light clients. All Bitcoin wallets, for example, use servers because it's impossible to do Bitcoin light clients (at least, they haven't found a solution yet). This app is more about having WeChat with crypto payments and with app interactions. Light client could come later though.

> All Bitcoin wallets, for example, use servers because it's impossible to do Bitcoin light clients (at least, they haven't found a solution yet).

No, SPV clients exist to avoid running a node: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/4649/what-is-an-...

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