Hey,I would probably say the white paper for BitCoin is a good place to understand what a blockchain does, I find the yellow paper for Ethereum more useful for development. You probably want to run a private nodes for ethereum, & a dev node for bitcoin, cheaper & no issues of space to experiment on both. Genesis file for bitcoin is quite interesting for a soft fork. I've tried to used both React & Meteor as webframeworks for a possible dapp..had more luck with Meteor-:) Tried to connect heroku to a private chain as well..Got distracted but it seemed feasible -:) Lots & lots of solidity code on github by Ethereum developers & & even an open source framework to do static code analysis for security -:) Lots of stuff on developers on bitcoin.org. Ethereum has diff versions, so you want to look at the documentation for the latest version byzatine, i think & it was also quite interesting thar they have multiple clients in diff langs, i just started with one & got used to that -;) Information from previous versions is also useful. Lots of altcoins are also opensource so Good Luck building -:)
Building for the Blockchain
331–337 of 337 posts
Re: Building for the Blockchain
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need a blockchain to "do business transactions from the command line and shell scripts" so I don't find your personal counterexample particularly compelling
Which alternative are you referring to?
Any of the available stock, forex, merchant, payment APIs anywhere. You have zillions of options (stripe, etrade, paypal, a bunch of banks have APIs, soon you'll have a Venmo API, other payment applications are coming up). The notion of a scriptable transaction has literally nothing to do with a blockchain.
Re: Building for the Blockchain
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reading old logs may also reveal something about the project Vitalik had before getting involved with Ethereum: Selling access to his quantum computer ... for mining Bitcoins. Strange how the PR puff pieces around Ethereum never seem to mention this project. Amazing also how the quantum computer seems to disappear as the pre-mined coins were sold off.
It was even weirder than that. He believed he could gain an edge on bitcoin mining by simulating a quantum computer with a conventional computer. https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/buterins-quantum-quest/
That is a charitable interpretation. Had he truly believed in the concept himself, why did he feel the need to hunt down millions of old dollars from "investors"?
Re: Building for the Blockchain
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which alternative are you referring to?
Any of the available stock, forex, merchant, payment APIs anywhere. You have zillions of options (stripe, etrade, paypal, a bunch of banks have APIs, soon you'll have a Venmo API, other payment applications are coming up). The notion of a scriptable transaction has literally nothing to do with a blockchain.
Those aren't as convenient for me as blockchain, and of course they all involve centralized counterparties with proprietary APIs. As far as I know there is no bank in my country with a usable API. Blockchain is just a nice and easy open source solution that works great worldwide.
Re: Building for the Blockchain
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bank data is one example. We don't even own our own transaction history/data - no bank provides free APIs to access this for consumers, the only option is to download manually/scrape through their websites. And as banks own this data, they could stop or handicap exports even further anytime they choose. I know if my bank gave me simple API access to my own data I would not have any use for apps like Quicken/Mint. Cre…
> no bank provides free APIs to access this for consumers, the only option is to download manually/scrape through their websites. In Europe they will have to provide the API thanks to PSD2: https://softjourn.com/blog/open-banking-api/ > Ad tracking/browsing data is another. The current model is the people making the trackers own all your data. A model where WE own our web activity data and selectively choose what to…
It's not public, it's just massively replicated. Your data on the blockchain is encrypted. Only you with your private keys can decrypt it and decide with whom to share it with.
Re: Building for the Blockchain
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
> no bank provides free APIs to access this for consumers, the only option is to download manually/scrape through their websites. In Europe they will have to provide the API thanks to PSD2: https://softjourn.com/blog/open-banking-api/ > Ad tracking/browsing data is another. The current model is the people making the trackers own all your data. A model where WE own our web activity data and selectively choose what to…
It's not public, it's just massively replicated. Your data on the blockchain is encrypted. Only you with your private keys can decrypt it and decide with whom to share it with.
Could you clarify which blockchain you are talking about? In Bitcoin nothing is encrypted and keys are used only to sign transactions.
Re: Building for the Blockchain
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need a blockchain to prevent double spending. You only need a blockchain if you want the double spending prevention to happen between trustless distributed peers.
You are right, and I think this aptly captures just how misunderstood Blockchain is even on this forum.
I used "only when". It's a necessary, but not sufficient, condition.