Don't need a whole website to tell me it is just a vehicle for fraudulent securities.
What Is Ethereum?
141–150 of 272 posts
Re: What Is Ethereum?
#142There'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…
So instead of hiring professional animator with good reputation and fair pricing, you write a sophisticated program to check correctness of animations (what would that do?), try to come up with fair price in somewhat cryptic market, and hope someone somewhere will take up a challenge of both, figuring required specs from your contract source code and actually have an expertise to do a job in question. Revolutionary i…
No, you check the quality of the rendering. The rendering is already done by computers. The animators tell the computer what to render.
Re: What Is Ethereum?
#143Ethereum 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.
Larimer has delivered them already in his previous projects: BitShares and Steemit. That's more proven track record than what Ethereum had in early 2014, and that didn't stop people from supporting the idea. I for instance have been a strong supporter of Ethereum since day 0, but now I feel EOS (with DPoS and Graphene) is the next step in blockchain tech.
Re: What Is Ethereum?
#144Can anyone help me with a reference for any study that has been published on the status of research for the conditions of successful crypto currency launches?
Or a serious reputable journal reviewing the literature comprehensively?
If I'm unable to find filling for the gaps in the study I seek, I'm inclined to think that I have a good chance of being able to work towards a (sincerely and despite being tempted by the ad rates) non spammy simple site to collate the references, this summer. So if you have any suggestions for the effort I will with about 70% probability undertake, I'd be happy to hear from you as well.
Re: What Is Ethereum?
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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Re: What Is Ethereum?
#146There'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…
I might be somewhat biased on this, but I strongly prefer database metaphor over computing metaphor.
Every blockchain is essentially a shared database. E.g. Bitcoin is a database which keeps track of address balances (as a first approximation) and enforces particular authorization rules. It's a fixed-functionality blockchain.
On the other hand, Ethereum can serve as an arbitrary, user-defined database. Ethereum smart contracts are essentially like stored procedures in SQL databases -- they can be used to enforce arbitrary consistency rules.
And the reason why transactions are quite expensive is that you're paying to update everyone's database. You can modify things locally for free, but if you need everyone to see your information, you gotta pay for it.
And computation is there just for the sake of enforcing arbitrary constraints.
Re: What Is Ethereum?
#147There'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…
I'm failing to understand how this is different from say buying a compute power from AWS or GCE. Isn't it almost the same except the transaction is done through ether instead of traditional money?
Re: What Is Ethereum?
#148Ethereum is very simple in essence: it's a Turing-complete version of Bitcoin.
The way you transfer a bitcoin from one person to another is by creating a Bitcoin transaction that contains an input script that fulfills an in-blockchain output script with which a number of bitcoins are associated. The output script may say "provide a public key that hashes to and a signature, over a transaction (which sends the bitcoins to a new output script) that redeems this output, that verifies against this public key".
Bitcoins script language -- conditions be fulfilled to transfer tokens associated with one output script to a new output script -- is not Turing-complete, which means it's limited in how complex a condition can be set up for redemption. Ethereum's script language is Turing complete, allowing arbitrarily complex conditions for fulfilling an output script (which allows you to transfer coins/tokens from that output script to a new one).
Re: What Is Ethereum?
#149There'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…
I might be somewhat biased on this, but I strongly prefer database metaphor over computing metaphor. Every blockchain is essentially a shared database. E.g. Bitcoin is a database which keeps track of address balances (as a first approximation) and enforces particular authorization rules. It's a fixed-functionality blockchain. On the other hand, Ethereum can serve as an arbitrary, user-defined database. Ethereum smart…
I also prefer the database metaphor. Bitcoin is a set of rules that lets everyone take part in (in fact this is required) the creation of a database of transactions that has happened. To make sure there are no mistakes, every single node runs the transactions to verify their validity.
Re: What Is Ethereum?
#150Earlier 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.
GitHub issue created [1]. I encourage everyone to add to it.
Thanks for the resource!
[1] https://github.com/Breefield/whatthefuckisethereum/issues/7