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What Is Ethereum?

whatthefuckisethereum.com

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Re: What Is Ethereum?

#261

Post by joe_the_user »

joosters wrote: post #241
Drdrdrq wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This seems to be a massive flaw in the gambling markets that they propose. For example, let's say Augur (or any number of competitors) host a market on a football match, where team A are supremely better than team B. The odds on A will be extremely short, and there will be far far more people backing team A than team B. Now, imagine that team B somehow win the match. How can the system prevent the overwhelming majori…

Indeed, not only do you have a problem with corrupt backers of a particular view, you have a problem with systematic slipshodness. A whole raft of reporters would have an incentive to report "what you would expect" for any given outcome since that actually is what happens most of the time. So even if reporters can be separated from outcome bettors somehow, outcome bettors wind-up with an incentive to be on "what people expect will happen".

In a lot of ways, it seems like you could create something like a theory that it impossible to create a system that distinguishes "real world input" from "noise that I get from outside" without that system having a model of said real world.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#262

Post by eyezick »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #222
eyezick wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is the more precise definition, and there is reason to believe the majority will be honest as reporting events are randomly distributed, and you can't possibly know who's reporting what until the reporting results are all submitted.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#263

Post by eyezick »

joosters wrote: post #241
Drdrdrq wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This seems to be a massive flaw in the gambling markets that they propose. For example, let's say Augur (or any number of competitors) host a market on a football match, where team A are supremely better than team B. The odds on A will be extremely short, and there will be far far more people backing team A than team B. Now, imagine that team B somehow win the match. How can the system prevent the overwhelming majori…

For Augur, how it works is reporters are randomly handed events to report on. Meaning you can't buy REP and then choose to report on a specific event in order to further your financial interest.

Further even if you did that and by random chance are selected to report on your sporting event, you have to hope that majority of other reporters who were also chosen do the same thing you do (keeping in mind you don't know who they are), so if you still choose to report a lie you further risk losing a portion of the REP that you previously bought.

The only practical way to game the system is to have a majority of all REP holders collude and they would in truth control the outcome of all events. However it would be a waste of their money to do so, because the value of REP is derived from trading fees, and their trading fees would be non-existent because no one would use Augur if the reporting wasn't reliable, so the value of their REP holdings would plummet.

It's just like a 51% attack on Bitcoin, it's physically possible but you're financially incentivized against it.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#264

Post by moomin »

DennisP wrote: post #189
moomin wrote: post #129

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.

Here's a masters thesis by someone who made Idris compile to the Ethereum virtual machine. https://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/234939...

That's cool (Idris seems to have an infinitely pluggable back end), but it's not the same thing. You can code in a higher-level language, but you can't inspect another program's guarantees and you can't safely use them within your own system.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#266

Post by K0SM0S »

jakecopp wrote: post #251
K0SM0S wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Count me in as well. For about a decade I've argued that 'we' need a decentralized, encrypted, peer-to-peer way of communication wherein each user physically and legally owns their data (only granting temporary/revocable read rights to other users) and controls said rights on an ad-hoc basis. Including making it public as long as you damn please. Basically a digital metaphor that you own your 'space' (eg home) and gr…

This is an incredible fleshing out of similar thoughts I've had for a while, thanks! Even just simple 'sharing' things get to me: I want to get a huge bunch of files from my computer to a friend. For semi frequent transfers I just give my friend credentials to a guest account on a VPS so he can rsync them down. I wonder if we'll ever get a fundamental method of moving files peer to peer that is as easy as email (and…

Well thank you for the comment first of all.

About moving files it also numbs my mind that we still haven't really solved this as we close the 2010s. I think it'll get easier as we gradually move mainstream storage to clouds but it begs the question of ownership; the now-old meme of dropbox etc being "someone else's computer". I strongly believe that a decent cloud provider should encrypt everything before data leaves the user's screen and until it reaches some end user's (blind transport and storage, just like the post office doesn't peak on your letters and boxes). Provided decent API and tooling some of these providers could indeed allow peer-to-peer management. Local storage is dying for the mainstream as networks get better, and it's ok if we tackle the privacy issues the right way. I think.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#267

Post by K0SM0S »

spynxic wrote: post #184
K0SM0S wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Count me in as well. For about a decade I've argued that 'we' need a decentralized, encrypted, peer-to-peer way of communication wherein each user physically and legally owns their data (only granting temporary/revocable read rights to other users) and controls said rights on an ad-hoc basis. Including making it public as long as you damn please. Basically a digital metaphor that you own your 'space' (eg home) and gr…

> ..I thought this would be long done by now. I evolved into thinking this is actually somewhat of a hard problem (per real-world constraints of all kinds, ie social, political, ethical, not strictly technically) that I want to actively try to tackle personally A notable act would be to join the course of an ongoing project, if one which is flexible enough to build onto exists.

You meant noble act? I agree with you, wholeheartedly. I'm just not aware of any good candidate right now. However even if I or anyone were to build an original solution, it's just 'new' conceptually, but technically all the bits of tech exist already (peer-to-peer eg torrent, encryption eg rsa, etc.), so that solution would likely be about assembling the pieces together. Again no magical billion dollar idea here, but a matter of great execution, ie integration and value proposition in our case.

For cost reasons, quality, and security, I think it should absolutely rely on open-source pieces (and be an open-source project itself, to allow for public review and efficient feature growth). Whoever (individual, group) assembles said solution should therefore become a de facto contributor to all projects used, if only for the sanity of the arch-project.

The matter of profitability bugs me though, because it should not be for profit but you need full-time devs and actually a whole company to run the project with excellency (it needs to be 'sold' to users, I mean promoted to be known and used, a bit like NGOs, and supported/maintained), so I think opt-in marketing (ads, or taking a cut on peer-to-peer contracts like Spotify I mentioned) could be one way of doing it. Ideally, the corporate structure would be not-for-profit so there's no dividends (people and businesses get value but the actual structure doesn't beyond paying employees and contributions, that should be enough incentive for all actors, B or C or states, to root for its neutral continuation, kinda like DNS or email). The point being that everyone had motives for it to exist but no one would profit directly from it, only through it. It's like the police, or the state itself, or public streets: collectively supported.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#268

Post by DennisP »

dogma1138 wrote: post #245
DennisP wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason to use a blockchain within a single entity. Use a database for that. Private blockchains do appear to be useful among a consortium of companies who don't completely trust each other, and don't want to pay a single company to maintain a central database.

It's not about "trust" it's that keeping the accounts and books consolidated even within a single bank is problematic and between banks even more so. Banks lose billions each year and i mean lose as they have no idea where the money went. Account consolidation within a bank is a huge enterprise. Even within a single entity like a bank a blockchain that governs all accounts and transactions is hugely beneficial becaus…

Interesting. I hadn't thought through the scale of a large bank.

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#269

Post by metasyn »

dahoramanodoceu wrote: post #257
flaviuspopan wrote: post #227

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.

Link?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4

Re: What Is Ethereum?

#270

Post by spynxic »

K0SM0S wrote: post #267
spynxic wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ..I thought this would be long done by now. I evolved into thinking this is actually somewhat of a hard problem (per real-world constraints of all kinds, ie social, political, ethical, not strictly technically) that I want to actively try to tackle personally A notable act would be to join the course of an ongoing project, if one which is flexible enough to build onto exists.

You meant noble act? I agree with you, wholeheartedly. I'm just not aware of any good candidate right now. However even if I or anyone were to build an original solution, it's just 'new' conceptually , but technically all the bits of tech exist already (peer-to-peer eg torrent, encryption eg rsa, etc.), so that solution would likely be about assembling the pieces together. Again no magical billion dollar idea here, b…

> The point being that everyone had motives for it to exist but no one would profit directly from it, only through it. It's like the police, or the state itself, or public streets: collectively supported.

The Open Source community needs an open committee founded on promoting projects of this nature. -- [Open committee over closed since such a foundation could easily be corrupted by personal interests]

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