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What Is Ethereum?

whatthefuckisethereum.com

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Re: What Is Ethereum?

#71

Post by tech_man7 »

MichaelGG wrote: post #57
RexetBlell wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to do more intense computation, https://truebit.io/ has a cool solution. It's exactly what you said, it allows you to pay someone to do the computation for you and publish the result to the contract. After the result was published, anyone can verify that it's correct by re-running the computation. If the published result is not correct, you can interactively prove this to the smart contract because the sm…

I only looked at it briefly. Very cool idea: Is it practical for heavy compute jobs though? Suppose a rendering takes 10 hours. If I don't know where the bug/difference is and just binary-search it, then they have to run at least 5 hours of computation to verify (out of the 2^^48 instructions, I'll start by asking for the 2^47th step). I guess that's solvable by requiring payment for verification runs and just splitt…

For heavy compute, it's the Golem Network (golem.network)

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#72

Post by tech_man7 »

gfody wrote: post #42
mikenew wrote: post #26

There's one point in particular that took me a while to grasp: while you can write code that runs on the Ethereum network, every single node has to process that code. So if, for example, you had a big 3d animation sequence that you wanted to have rendered, you would not just send that code off to the network to be processed. You would have to pay to have every single person on the network process that job for you, an…

Ethereum isn't trying to be some sort of generic distributed computing platform. The notion of writing a dApp to do distributed 3D rendering is outrageously stupid. The idea is to program your money. Here's a dollar that can only be spent on healthy food. Give these to your kids for doing their chores or whatever.

The Golem Network is the generic decentralized computing platform. https://golem.network/

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#73

Post by matt_wulfeck »

MichaelGG wrote: post #47
joeyspn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not until Nicki Minaj or Drake appear in a music video with a bitcoin necklace...

Certainly makes it easy to have a high-density, high-value object - much more dense than casino chips. Put the only copy of a wallet with tons of BTC on a microSD. Fun marketing gimmick, too. Put $100 worth on a bunch of micro SDs, spray 'em gold, toss em out at concerts or stuff. Would totally get headlines if someone put $1M worth on an SD, then laughed and ate it live on TV and said good luck finding it. Or tossed…

It would make much more sense to do all those things with $100 bills.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#74

Post by oh_sigh »

rspeer wrote: post #69
RexetBlell wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weather feed can provided by several oracles, and the contract can take the median value. You could program whatever logic you want into the insurance. For example, some kind of dispute resolution system that appeals to a higher authority. How do insurance companies deal with this problem today? Why do you trust the insurance company not to lie and say that the weather was fine? Whatever that mechanism is, it can…

> How do insurance companies deal with this problem today? The legal system. It can put people in jail for fraud if necessary. Do you really want "smart" "contracts" to have the power to put people in jail? Really?

A smart contract wouldn't put someone in jail(how often does that directly result from a contract dispute anyway?)...a lawsuit would he how someone resolves the issue if that remedy is available and necessary

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#75

Post by [deleted] »

rspeer wrote: post #69
RexetBlell wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weather feed can provided by several oracles, and the contract can take the median value. You could program whatever logic you want into the insurance. For example, some kind of dispute resolution system that appeals to a higher authority. How do insurance companies deal with this problem today? Why do you trust the insurance company not to lie and say that the weather was fine? Whatever that mechanism is, it can…

> How do insurance companies deal with this problem today? The legal system. It can put people in jail for fraud if necessary. Do you really want "smart" "contracts" to have the power to put people in jail? Really?

[deleted]

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#76

Post by flashmob »

mrb wrote: post #48
mikenew wrote: post #26

There's one point in particular that took me a while to grasp: while you can write code that runs on the Ethereum network, every single node has to process that code. So if, for example, you had a big 3d animation sequence that you wanted to have rendered, you would not just send that code off to the network to be processed. You would have to pay to have every single person on the network process that job for you, an…

" using something called gas " gas is ETH. It is simply a term they chose to refer to the ETH fee paid to execute the code. I don't like their terminology. Calling it "gas" make it sound like it's a different currency. They should have just call it the "ETH fee".

No, gas is a synonym for fee. However, gas is its own unit, separate from ETH.

Each op code in the EVM has a gas price, depending on the complexity of the instruction. Eg. A store op costs more gas than a comparison op.

When you do a transaction, you specify how much ETH you will pay for one unit of gas. Typical transactions use 21k gas, but contracts need much more.

More info about why it's like that:https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/guides/what-is-the-gas-i...

I often see 'gas required' 'gas limit' and 'gas price' terms confused, so careful what you read in the comments on the internet ;-)

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#77

Post by Retra »

blunte wrote: post #52
joe_the_user wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting; The document mentions creating a crop-insurance application that would depend on a weather feed. The problem is if the weather feed isn't something that's uniformly secureable the result could be bad given that the insurance application would take action automatically and no appeal to any higher authority concerning the fraud would be possible - without a "fork" as happened earlier. Hack an insecure feed…

This to me is one of the fundamental problems (or challenges) of smart contracts - they remove humans and human judgment from the core, but they just push it to the edges. You still end up trusting a human - an "oracle". You trust the weather feed, or you trust some exchange to give you the accurate price of some other asset. If that oracle is mistaken (bug, intentional misinformation), the smart contract can be mani…

It's a fundamental problem with abstractions: they will all leak once you are able to collect information from side channels.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#79

Post by m-j-fox »

MichaelGG wrote: post #44
mikenew wrote: post #26

There's one point in particular that took me a while to grasp: while you can write code that runs on the Ethereum network, every single node has to process that code. So if, for example, you had a big 3d animation sequence that you wanted to have rendered, you would not just send that code off to the network to be processed. You would have to pay to have every single person on the network process that job for you, an…

The difficulty is "prove you did it right". I'd guess that only works for cheap-to-verify (trapdoor"?) functions. However, Intel SGX does enable this. You would need an SGX-attested renderer, but the output would include a signature on the inputs in addition to the actual output image. You could verify this signature was made by the SGX-secured renderer code, then you'd know it executed as designed (i.e. the person d…

I don't know about SGX but worked on HDCP and maybe the license charge is for the same reason: lazy or malicious partners could leak a key and compromise the whole system. All the charges pay into the fund to pay damages to the injured if the system suddenly collapses like DVD encryption did.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#80

Post by Retra »

DennisP wrote: post #56
revelation wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is drivel. Protocols and decentralized applications around decentralized file storage, decentralized computation and decentralized prediction markets, among dozens of other such concepts, have the potential to substantially increase the efficiency of the computational industry, and provide a massive boost to other peer-to-peer protocols by adding for the first time an economic layer

File storage: Swarm, and several other file storage protocols getting integrated with Ethereum. Computation: pretty much the whole point of the Ethereum VM, plus there are a couple projects that put proofs on the blockchain of larger computations than the blockchain can handle. Prediction markets: Gnosis and Augur Efficiency: at least developer efficiency, in my experience Economic layer: because you have reliable cu…

Does that real code actually increase computational efficiency, or does only merely have the potential to do so?

Real code that doesn't provide the stated advantages doesn't mean much, right?

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