What Is Ethereum? • Hacker News Board

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#151

Post by chx » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 10:51 AM UTC

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…

> You could use Ethereum to create all kinds of interesting contracts for financial purposes, voting systems, insurance, or whatever else

Perhaps you could but currently no one does. There's still not a single real world legal application that needs cryptocurrency. Much as with the pro-life debate (to name a bad phrase) or with global warming now renamed climate change (to name a good phrase) the name of the thing frames the discussion. Calling it a "currency" makes people think it's not a Ponzi or a scam when it's decidedly one of them.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#152

Post by Mooty » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 10:53 AM UTC

kensai wrote: post #130

I love that the article ends in this line: "Support this website! Send ETH to: 0x1c4d1804AD9d47de0D4209882843998E03E30dF9"

I was curious so I checked, actually two persons gave him some food : https://etherscan.io/address/0x1c4d1804ad9d47de0d42098828439...

~ 40$

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#153

Post by mbrock » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 10:58 AM UTC

rspeer wrote: post #110

gfody wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do you cryptographically, trustlessly verify that food is healthy?

The ideology that everything has to be completely cryptoeconomic and trustless is hugely overblown. It's good that Ethereum eliminates the central trusted third party for the base layer, but then you are free to be flexible with how you define trust in your applications. Obviously you can't "cryptographically verify" a complex topic like health; you need to delegate decisions to intelligent actors.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#154

Post by mbrock » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 11:00 AM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #135

flashmob wrote: post #112

Earlier 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.

> It sounds more like CPU clock cycles, may be confusing to those who see it that way? Having non-CPU cycles is extremely common in emulators and VMs, you can just say it's a "virtual cycle of the eth VM", something along those lines.

Gas doesn't only measure the computation resource but also memory and storage, so "cycles" too is an inaccurate metaphor.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#155

Post by myautsai » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 11:07 AM UTC

Ethereum is an awesome idea, but before any practical Ether application booms, it's more like a bubble.

If you're interested in why there's also a token named "Ethereum Classic(ETC)", you can search "DAO" on Google to explore more about why the first largest Ethereum application DAO was failed and why this leads to the hard fork(ETH => ETC, ETH) of Ethereum.

As far as decentralized storage is concerned, there's production-already a blockchain-based product named Sia (http://sia.tech/ ), but Swarm (which is a similar thing based on Ethereum) is still in very early stage.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#156

Post by myautsai » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 11:07 AM UTC

Ethereum is an awesome idea, but before any practical Ether application booms, it's more like a bubble.

If you're interested in why there's also a token named "Ethereum Classic(ETC)", you can search "DAO" on Google to explore more about why the first largest Ethereum application DAO was failed and why this leads to the hard fork(ETH => ETC, ETH) of Ethereum.

As far as decentralized storage is concerned, there's production-already a blockchain-based product named Sia (http://sia.tech/ ), but Swarm (which is a similar thing based on Ethereum) is still in very early stage.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#157

Post by myautsai » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 11:07 AM UTC

Ethereum is an awesome idea, but before any practical Ether application booms, it's more like a bubble.

If you're interested in why there's also a token named "Ethereum Classic(ETC)", you can search "DAO" on Google to explore more about why the first largest Ethereum application DAO was failed and why this leads to the hard fork(ETH => ETC, ETH) of Ethereum.

As far as decentralized storage is concerned, there's production-already a blockchain-based product named Sia (http://sia.tech/ ), but Swarm (which is a similar thing based on Ethereum) is still in very early stage.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#158

Post by ytNumbers » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 11:08 AM UTC

rspeer wrote: post #111

jamisteven wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a serious question

Yes. Can you answer it? Assume I'm neither a libertarian nor an anarchist.

During the past decade, the Federal Reserve has created 4 trillion dollars out of thin air in an attempt to prop up the economy. The Fed seems hesitant to unwind that as it carries the risk of harming the economy. Fiat money can always be created out of thin air, and it seems to be proving difficult for those in power to resist that temptation.

https://www.thestreet.com/story/14181100/1/the-fed-normalize...

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#159

Post by abrkn » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 11:08 AM UTC

pimeys wrote: post #138

What is the best place to have discussions about Ethereum? I tried to follow the Reddit group, but I don't really need all the hype. I just need information and opinions on writing contracts and developing applications that use Ethereum network. I'm also very interested in the psychological side of trading and different trading strategies. No fuzz, just reasonable discussion.

Slack channels are widely used by developers in the cryptocurrency space. I also recommend trying to find local meetups.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#160

Post by abrkn » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 11:14 AM UTC

notadoc wrote: post #8

Are we at the "mania" stage of cryptocurrency interest yet?

It's not even close. I've been told that at the height of the Dotcom bubble, companies received investments for simply having ".com" in their name. That's where we're headed.