What Is Ethereum? • Hacker News Board

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#221

Post by acdha » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 4:24 PM UTC

dingo_bat wrote: post #208

acdha wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard that idea mentioned a lot but it doesn't seem like anyone has a good strategy for dealing with abuse. This seems especially problematic with a blockchain which cannot be altered: what do you do when someone creates a fake profile, uploads revenge/child porn, nazi propaganda, etc.? In many parts of the world that has a legal requirement to be blocked which would seem to either require a way to rewrite histo…

> what do you do when someone creates a fake profile, uploads revenge/child porn, nazi propaganda, etc.? Ignore it and move on. Block the user from your personal feed if you want. > In many parts of the world that has a legal requirement to be blocked which would seem to either require a way to rewrite history or the entire system being blocked in that jurisdiction. How has that worked out against BitTorrent?

> Ignore it and move on. Block the user from your personal feed if you want.

That doesn't address the questions:

1. How can you ignore something which is causing you or someone you care about harm? Will you operate a node which keeps that content available against the wishes of the target? (For that matter, how many people will use a network which prevents you from removing mistakes?)

2. You can't just ignore things with legal implications — e.g. if someone uploads legally restricted content, everyone participating in the network has to expect legal consequences even if they personally aren't troubled by it. If you're in Germany and someone else can get Nazi content from your system, do you really think “I didn't upload it and there's no way to block it” is going to lead to a court reaction other than an order to turn it off until the underlying technology is fixed?

3. Ignoring that many places do block BitTorrent, it's different in the key aspect that torrents are independent. Someone who hosts Linux ISOs doesn't have to worry about getting sued because a different user is distributing copyrighted movies. That doesn't seem to fit with a blockchain model and it seems like a major problem growing a social network beyond the immediate founders if everyone has to find a private cluster to join.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#222

Post by Drdrdrq » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 4:41 PM UTC

eyezick wrote: post #120

blunte wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a significant challenge for sure, at least with Ethereum there's no way around needing an external account (centralization) to feed data into the blockchain. However, I know of at least 1 promising project on Ethereum (Augur) that provides decentralized oracles, and you can trust these oracles due to some clever game theorish mechanics. The gist is randomized Reporters submit real-world information to the blo…

> Reporters purchased a cryptoasset to have this priviledge, and if a certain Reporter submits information in conflict with a majority of other reporters (e.g. they lied) then they lose a portion of their cryptoasset giving them incentive to play by the rules and get paid for it.

To be precise: it gives them incentive to submit the same information as majority of other Reporters. This is a huge difference.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#223

Post by RexetBlell » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 4:55 PM UTC

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?

Not quite. You could make it a legally punishable offense to provide incorrect information to a weather oracle. The provider would be sent to jail for defrauding the oracle.

I'm just saying that it's possible to solve the problem the same way that it is solved today.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#224

Post by infogulch » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 5:13 PM UTC

killerstorm wrote: post #146

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…

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…

Interesting. Can I ask for a description of the Etherium database from the perspective of someone shopping databases? Paradigms, features, transactions, distributed consensus, etc.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#225

Post by UncleMeat » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 5:21 PM UTC

Taek wrote: post #202

runeks wrote: post #148

Ethereum 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 bitcoi…

Worth adding perhaps that Bitcoin is intentionally not Turing complete, as the complexity opens up a very big space for vulnerabilities. And indeed, we see a lot of those in ethereum contacts.

Yup. Why people would want turing complete contracts is completely beyond me. There is a reason why we use heavily restricted computational systems for high integrity systems. Until somebody is doing some sort of model checking on my smart contract you can count me out.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#226

Post by SilasX » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 6:01 PM UTC

RexetBlell wrote: post #95

SilasX wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear that on every topic and have never found it justified. A high level explanation can illustrate the general structure of what you're explaining and then you can paint in details as necessary. It's always possible to find an "in between". When I wrote understandingbitcoin.us, I explained it as a global ledger with mutiple versions floating around where everyone agrees to trust the version (out of the valid ones)…

This is probably the best relatively quick explanation: https://youtu.be/66SaEDzlmP4

For me, a "relatively quick explanation" is one that I can read in five minutes, skipping around easily if I already understand part of it, and which points me to the appropriate concepts that I can research for deeper understanding.

Not one where I have to watch a 3 minute ad and a 23 minute video of someone reading off slides.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#227

Post by flaviuspopan » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 6:02 PM UTC

Yo songzme, I have to thank you for throwing this up because as a result, I've since stumbled on 3Blue1Brown and his awesome video on crypto and math in general. You linked his video the same day he posted it, and I couldn't have been happier to find something that explained it in laymen terms so well. I've been meaning to solidify my understanding for friends and family, so thanks for sharing! Cheers mate.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#228

Post by joeyspn » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 6:09 PM UTC

Jabanga wrote: post #165

joeyspn wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ethereum had no "solid" value proposition in 2014, and EOS doesn't have one now. You're overstating its proven value. We can share our opinions on the respective projects, but that's different from a demonstrable value proposition.

You should check the definition of value proposition. [0] Ethereum had one: "a cryptocurrency with a programming language beyond opcodes"

EOS value proposition is: "a platform for building DApps beyond PoW (using DPoS) and industry-ready TPS (with Graphene[1])".

Both DPoS and Graphene are inventions of Larimer. For many this is enough, and that reflects why it's already a top 15 crypto.

[0] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/valueproposition.asp

[1] http://docs.bitshares.org/

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#229

Post by pazimzadeh » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 6:19 PM 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?

A program could compare the output of a gene sequencing reaction against a known database to verify that such and such fish matches what's on the label. But then you have to trust whoever is loading your fish samples into the gene sequencer.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#230

Post by djhworld » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 6:36 PM UTC

What are people using Ethereum for though.

Outside of trading it between each other based on price speculation, is there a real world thing that isn't a prototype that people are using as part of the smart contract system?