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What Is Ethereum?

whatthefuckisethereum.com

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Re: What Is Ethereum?

#121

Post by baybal2 »

rdl wrote: post #114
MichaelGG wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The costs to subvert SGX are unfortunately far below millions. Probably hundreds or thousands after you have some one time research. It is a viable additional client protection, especially against remote malware, software-only tampering (unless there are implementation bugs or backdoors), but not a viable server trust substitute.

Probing a live chip for 30k - https://zeptobars.com/en/

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#122

Post by zodiac »

gfody wrote: post #53
revelation wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Sokal level writing. If this was a random person trying his hand at a writing class, whatever, but this is the guy writing the code behind your crypto coin.

Literally everything I read about Ethereum that's written by Vitalik stinks of something I haven't been able to put my finger on. "Sokal-ish" nails it exactly. The writing is never straight-forward, and always appeals to mainstream idealogical preconceptions. It's liberally salted with economical-jibberish-nonsense that sounds good as well. I believe blockchain technology is important and I think Ethereum is a strong…

Really? I think Vitalik writes with a lot more precision than most in the space. E.g. https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/08/16/secret-sharing-erasure-...

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#124

Post by mrb »

flashmob wrote: post #112
mrb wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A much simpler terminology Ethereum should have picked instead of "gas" is the "cycle". Each operation takes a predefined number of cycles to execute. For example SLOAD takes 20 cycles, SSTORE 100 cycles, etc. Then a transaction defines the maximum number of cycles it will need, as well as the ETH per cycle it will pay as a fee. That's it. Basically: gasCost -> cycles gasLimit -> max cycles per transaction gasPrice -…

Hmm, not sure about cycles too. It sounds more like CPU clock cycles, may be confusing to those who see it that way? Note that there is also one more limit, the max gas per block limit.. Personally, I quite like gas, not too hard for a casual dev like me to understand. However, perhaps in the future it could be something that is totally abstracted, since asking everyone to understand how gas works is too much.

The fact the #1 comment on this HN submission refers to "something called gas" (as if it was an advanced concept) instead of "fee" is another data point showing the gas metaphor is confusing :)

Also gas is not its own unit. gasPrice is the unit. Or... actually it's not even a unit. A "unit" implies a constant. But it's not constant since each tx can set its own gasPrice.

The more I think about the cycles metaphor the more I love it. Sorry I have zero sympathy for "gas"

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#125

Post by Itsdijital »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #96
ksikka wrote: post #78

What is Ethereum _useful_ for? When would I need it? Why is AWS (et al) not sufficient?

well, not specifically ethereum but stuff like siacoin provide cheaper options than AWS and while I personally cannot attest to the performance, they seem to be interesting alternatives.[1] In the case of siacoin, at face value it seems to be significantly cheaper than AWS or Google Cloud for providing bulk cloud storage. [1] http://sia.tech/

siacoin is relatively slow, it took me ~2 minutes to upload 40mb of stuff. But really it's meant to be cold storage and at $2/mo/TB it isn't that bad. The speeds will also increase with adoption.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#126

Post by Jabanga »

metroidfan832 wrote: post #100
RexetBlell wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's very important. There are several other languages that can compile down to EVM bytecode. A cool one is Viper ( https://github.com/ethereum/viper ), which is NOT Turning complete, but decidable. This makes it easier to reason about the correctness of the code, and formally proving that your code is correct.

several ? Really ? Please link me other languages that compile to EVM bytecode.

Ethereum developers use Solidity almost exclusively, because it is by far the most developed, but there is also Serpent, Viper and LLL. I don't know if Serpent and LLL are still being actively developed. Yoichi Hirai is also developing Bamboo [1].

[1] https://github.com/pirapira/bamboo

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#127

Post by chuckdries »

Breefield wrote: post #34
SilasX wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as I understand ethereum, I will!

Shoot! Explainer site missed the target. I wrote the "average person" page to be quite high level. Unfortunately the "nerdy" page became a little too nerdy. I should work on an "I'm a software developer who wants an intermediate technical understanding" or something like this.

Me and all my coworkers are in this boat and would greatly appreciate a "I'm a software developer who wants an intermediate technical understanding" page!

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#128

Post by Jabanga »

joeyspn wrote: post #51

Ethereum has had a good start being the first mover in smart contracts, but EOS is coming and the value proposition is much more solid... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUZWZj1pu94 Blockchain tech is evolving...

EOS doesn't currently exist. It makes a lot of strong claims, and has delivered none of them yet.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#129

Post by moomin »

I'm being sniffy here, and the technical achievement of Ethereum is considerable, but were I talking about a general contract computing platform, I'd want one where I could demonstrate the assertions the code makes. And that basically means a dependently typed functional programming language. I'd start with Idris, but even that might need strengthening before DAO-style issues were hard to find.
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