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Learn Ethereum smart contract programming

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Re: Learn Ethereum smart contract programming

#141

Post by KirinDave »

mbrock wrote: post #119
kbody wrote: post #109

The sad reality of Ethereum: 1. Bitcoin is slow and expensive, Ethereum is the future 2. Ethereum software has security hole, gets hacked 3. Ethereum fans say it's an experiment there are lots of things that will transform Ethereum (Casper/PoS, Raiden, zkSNARKs, Enterprise Alliance) 4. Low price getting pumped by Ethereum Foundation & big-holder affiliates 5. Back to #1 We've seen it happen again (DAO) and again (Par…

The belief that Turing machines aren't amenable to formal verification is a hobgoblin that shows up in every thread like this, but it's not real. Of course there are limited formalisms that make certain types of verification easier, but proving programs has been possible since, like, the 1960s. A multisig, for example, has a finite number of states when considered under symbolic execution. A model checker can rip thr…

Etherium should have launched with a language that wasn't a high-school-extra-cirricular-level in terms of construction and consideration.

Solidity doesn't have a problem with formal verification of programs. Check their bug tracker: you can't even trust the runtime to do what it claims to do. On several levels.

Re: Learn Ethereum smart contract programming

#142

Post by ym705 »

rdiddly wrote: post #140

Thread warning: I'm actively downvoting any argument that tries to address (read: not address) a cryptocurrency's flaws by changing the subject. Example: Person A: Cryptocurrency X is insecure isn't it. Person B: So is { the dollar | driving | flying | the internet | * }.

Don't you have anything else to do?

Re: Learn Ethereum smart contract programming

#143

Post by PeterisP »

repomies691 wrote: post #137
PeterisP wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, people are not saying that "risks exist", they are saying that the risks are very very likely . It's a near certainty that I won't get hit by a car tomorrow - people do get hit by a cars but most people don't get hit by cars most of the time. There is a risk (a fraction of percent), but it's acceptable. It's an even larger certainty that code will have bugs. As far as I've seen, all code will have bugs, as e…

Come on. Quote from original comment: "Until we have near-perfect code writing AIs every new smart contract is just a disaster waiting to happen." If smart contracts are at all useful, they most definitely will be useful before we have near-perfect code writing AI's.

It is possible that with sufficient investment in tools for writing safer code, unoverridable smart contracts will become useful enough to outweigh the risks.

It's also possible (and I feel that this will be the case) that in the end the risks will be too large anyway for large adoption, so we'll collectively decide that for most use cases smart contracts are useful only with a "social" mechanism for overriding them, contrary to the current "code is law" policy of Ethereum.

Re: Learn Ethereum smart contract programming

#144

Post by lawless123 »

guscost wrote: post #126
kbody wrote: post #109

The sad reality of Ethereum: 1. Bitcoin is slow and expensive, Ethereum is the future 2. Ethereum software has security hole, gets hacked 3. Ethereum fans say it's an experiment there are lots of things that will transform Ethereum (Casper/PoS, Raiden, zkSNARKs, Enterprise Alliance) 4. Low price getting pumped by Ethereum Foundation & big-holder affiliates 5. Back to #1 We've seen it happen again (DAO) and again (Par…

> the takeover-the-world echo-chambers of ethereum You toss out this pejorative description, and then in the next paragraph : > When talking about engineering on such a critical subject, people should be way more responsible. This is absurd. How could it ever become critical without a lot of research and development first? I've been holding a handful of Ethereum since there was a decent dip in the price. I haven't sp…

>"I've been holding a handful of Ethereum since there was a decent dip in the price. I haven't spent much time on it and I have no good leads for program ideas yet, but if the code is buggy and I get hacked and lose my investment, that's fine. A smart contract is a project, and it could fail like any other. Don't put your retirement savings in a smart contract right now unless you're OK with losing it all. Maybe in the future Ethereum will move beyond this phase, and maybe not. All the drama is ridiculous, everyone needs to chill out."

This is the exact spiel we're all sick of hearing.

Re: Learn Ethereum smart contract programming

#145

Post by simias »

halflings wrote: post #25
omarforgotpwd wrote: post #16

Programmable smart contracts are a great idea in a world where programmers write bug free code. That world does not exist yet. Until we have near-perfect code writing AIs every new smart contract is just a disaster waiting to happen.

That's like saying legal contracts are a disaster because we do not live in an ideal world where lawyers don't do mistakes, and there are no legal loopholes. Granted, bugs are much more common than legal loopholes, but in the same way an operating system's APIs and constraints are tested until it becomes reliable enough for other people to rely on it, I can see some standard types of contracts (in the same way as in…

I think I'm going to end up pasting this link in all discussions surrounding Ethereum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law

>When one obeys the letter of the law but not the spirit, one is obeying the literal interpretation of the words (the "letter") of the law, but not necessarily the intent of those who wrote the law. Conversely, when one obeys the spirit of the law but not the letter, one is doing what the authors of the law intended, though not necessarily adhering to the literal wording.

This is a very ancient concept and like all ancient concepts it's bound to be rediscovered every other decade on average.

"The code is law" is a wet dream for a dystopic authoritarian state and I don't understand why anybody, much less actual coders, would think that's a good idea.

"Thank you for subscribing to our contract for your $2 weekly subscription. By the way through a clever loophole obfuscated in our code the amount actually doubles every week. Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, Code is Law. Have a good day sir".

In the real world you have a safety net for these types of things, in many case you can break an abusive contract because society has created regulations that ban certain tactics. Ethereum has no such thing. A single mistake or intentional deception and like that, you've lost all your money. The code is law, nothing we can do sir. How is that a feature exactly?

Look at how dumb the average spam is, and yet there's no shortage of people falling for them. Yet it seems like the ethereum crowd genuinely believes that my mother is suddenly going to be able to proof Solidity scripts, something I wouldn't even trust myself to do with decades of programming experience behind me. I don't know if Ethereum is an economic bubble but it definitely is an intellectual one.

Re: Learn Ethereum smart contract programming

#146

Post by cesarb »

BaronSamedi wrote: post #99
staticelf wrote: post #17

The problem I see with Ethereum is that it is way too complex. I have read perhaps at least 10 times on their home page without even understanding what it does, what problems it solves etc. This is the sole reason why I don't think it will be successful in it's current state. With most successful tech or services or whatever the core idea is often super simple to grasp and you can instantly see the benefit. I don't s…

Ethereum reminds me of what happened to the web: the desire to add code. The blockchain by itself wasn't good enough so Ethereum added code to it, just like HTML wasn't good enough so people added applets, Flash, and JavaScript. I understand why they would want to do this but I think it gets the priorities wrong. It prioritizes features and functionality over security and reliability. Given how hostile the Internet h…

> Ethereum reminds me of what happened to the web: the desire to add code.

Also known as Zawinski's law: "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

Re: Learn Ethereum smart contract programming

#147

Post by dallashoxton »

masklinn wrote: post #43
hexhex wrote: post #33

I didn't have high expectations for Solidity considering the recent vulnerabilities, but even these were disappointed. If some guy writes this kind of code at home, alright, but this as the alleged foundation for our future financial system? Frightening. Just one example: "Our function EndLottery() must be only accessible by the owner of the lottery." [0] function EndLottery() public { if (msg.sender == owner) { ...…

I understand the eth VM is pretty limited and limiting, but Solidity is just sad, it's like somebody saw Javascript and thought "ok that's a pretty terrible basis for writing contracts, but surely we can make it even worse ?" And then they succeeded at failing.

Can't remember where I read it, but someone put it best during the DAO fiasco last year when they wrote "Imagine Javascript but your bank account accessible through the Document Object Model."

Re: Learn Ethereum smart contract programming

#148

Post by lou1306 »

BaronSamedi wrote: post #99
staticelf wrote: post #17

The problem I see with Ethereum is that it is way too complex. I have read perhaps at least 10 times on their home page without even understanding what it does, what problems it solves etc. This is the sole reason why I don't think it will be successful in it's current state. With most successful tech or services or whatever the core idea is often super simple to grasp and you can instantly see the benefit. I don't s…

Ethereum reminds me of what happened to the web: the desire to add code. The blockchain by itself wasn't good enough so Ethereum added code to it, just like HTML wasn't good enough so people added applets, Flash, and JavaScript. I understand why they would want to do this but I think it gets the priorities wrong. It prioritizes features and functionality over security and reliability. Given how hostile the Internet h…

This! A money exchange platform can't be both distributed and unrealiable. If PayPal screws up, at least you can call them and get a refund.

Re: Learn Ethereum smart contract programming

#149

Post by richardknop »

throw2016 wrote: post #112

The problem with crypto coins is some have bought in and thus are vested making balanced discussion impossible. We see even with something as trivial as choice of programming language some can become very religious in their support. When money becomes involved expecting rational discussion is perhaps naive. Money is a social construct that needs societal consent and a framework to manage it that is accountable to the…

I agree with this view.

Re: Learn Ethereum smart contract programming

#150

Post by justadeveloper2 »

anilshanbhag wrote: post #103

Here is a cool application - https://predictiontoken.github.io/#TRMP . It lets people bet on outcomes and bets be settled in a decentralized manner. There is a video in the link if you want to understand how it is accomplished.

Are you familiar with Assassination Politics?
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