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Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

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Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#141

Post by keymone »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #137
keymone wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So one has to trust distributors of the software? I mean it’s been known about PoS systems since inception, it’s just funny how it’s supporters never like to admit it.

Yes but you have to trust the distributors of the software anyway, even in PoW.

No you don’t. You only need to know consensus rules. You can use any software, you can build it yourself, you can order an audit, you can write software yourself.

Proof of work committed to the chain that is valid according to consensus rules you know is universal and objective measure that everyone will observe equally.

That’s where bitcoin’s security comes from and that’s how you can avoid to rely on trusting third parties.

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#142

Post by tomp »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #137
keymone wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So one has to trust distributors of the software? I mean it’s been known about PoS systems since inception, it’s just funny how it’s supporters never like to admit it.

Yes but you have to trust the distributors of the software anyway, even in PoW.

why/? you can just review the code manually...

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#143

Post by Semaphor »

jarfil wrote: post #66
berberous wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except he seems to give BTC a pass. I'm not familiar with this guy and just skimmed his tweetstorm, but he seems to be part of a group that thinks BTC >>>> ETH.

ETH is theoretically better than BTC, while BTC is practically better than ETH. Depending on whether you want something cool to experiment with, or something to actually use, one is far better than the other.

I got more practical use out of ETH than I did out of BTC. In my case, the use was small-ish donations. ETH was cheaper and way faster.

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#144

Post by kortilla »

kev009 wrote: post #95

When reading this I think of my deep knowledge of TCP (especially the pain points) and yet it is "The Internet" for the past while. Compared to simpler protocols like Delta-T and later/better protocols like XTP, TCP still "won" for a variety of reasons (adoption, good enough, numbers of implementation, hardware implementation, etc) There are a couple reasons I think Ethereum might prevail over bitcoin: * Vitalik is y…

Interesting that you picked TCP given the fact that the TCP everyone runs today isn’t the original one.

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#145

Post by kortilla »

sparkie wrote: post #80
stillbourne wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Anything could technically be used as currency. Historically people have always used something that is difficult to forge. It's estimated that $70 million dollars in counterfeit money is in circulation in the US. At an estimate of $0.12 per kWh of electrical use Bitcoin uses approximately 70 tWh of power a year. Lets see that comes out to about $120m. At what point is the cure worse than the disease? Again this is j…

You're missing the "extra dollars" that the central bank prints to fund the government's overspending. They call it "inflation" and tell you it is necessary and good for the economy. Before your government can create its next spending budget, it needs to pay off its debts with interest. A big chunk of every dollar of tax you pay is taken before the government can even think about what it is going to spend the rest on…

The US government is not printing money as part of its normal funding cycles. Where does this stupid notion come from?

The normal funding cycle is this: government issues bond in exchange for cash now. These are treasury auctions and they happen constantly.

There is no injection of money in this process. If you don’t believe that, ask yourself this. Why did the exact same process work when the US dollar was backed by gold?

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#146

Post by kortilla »

sparkie wrote: post #104
rubyn00bie wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying here goes against any reasonable macroeconomic theory. Deflation causes spending to stop because people hoard money, as spending stops, economies dry up, and voila... economic stagnation at best. But no one without a formal education is Economics is likely to even be remotely aware of that. Inflation, and Keynesian economics, have empirically served the world quite well. The government's and social…

Spending does not stop. It may slow. Most arguments against deflation are largely strawmen, and the historical examples of it are usually a result of too much government intervention, or it following a period of high inflation. Here's an example of deflation: Moore's Law. If computing power is going to double in 18 months, then a computer I buy now will be worth much less in 18 months. If that's the case, best not bu…

Cars and computers are not investments. They have direct utility. Money does not (unless you burn it for heat).

>the choice to hold a deflationary currency or an inflationary one, let them pick! We'll see if those economists were right after all when people actually have a choice.

We have them already. They just aren’t called currencies because their price instability makes them somewhat useless as currencies. See: gold.

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#147

Post by dhh2106 »

kev009 wrote: post #95

When reading this I think of my deep knowledge of TCP (especially the pain points) and yet it is "The Internet" for the past while. Compared to simpler protocols like Delta-T and later/better protocols like XTP, TCP still "won" for a variety of reasons (adoption, good enough, numbers of implementation, hardware implementation, etc) There are a couple reasons I think Ethereum might prevail over bitcoin: * Vitalik is y…

>TCP still "won" for a variety of reasons (adoption, good enough, numbers of implementation, hardware implementation, etc)

Agreed

Ethereum is way ahead in the ecosystem race. There are lots more developers using eth and tooling available compared to other chains, and 2019 is poised to accelerate the ecosystem.

The technology still needs work in certain areas (by the way, so does btc). Talented and experienced people are working on it, despite what this tweetstorm says

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#148

Post by man-and-laptop »

keymone wrote: post #139
erulabs wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but re-verifying every txn (a "full sync") isn't exactly the topic. You do not need to re-verify every txn to run an Ethereum node, which is what the article suggests is extremely difficult. And that's not a "light" node, it's a full node, you're just trusting the network initially (additional "trust" is "built" as transactions are processed by the node, which is the beauty of the merkle tree structure). It ce…

> you're just trusting the network initially Yeah, let’s “just” trust random strangers’ computers to tell us the state of financial system. What could possibly go wrong. If you don’t understand importance of “don’t trust, verify” than you shouldn’t have anything to do with cryptocurrencies (or cryptography for that matter).

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding, but I disagree with you.

A merkle tree is a recursive structure. If you trust a substructure of it, then you don't need to repeatedly re-evaluate that substructure. What that means in practical terms is if the merkle-tree entry summarising the state of the chain as it was a year ago is assumed correct, then you don't need to keep any of the transaction data from before that point.

But this can only work if you don't have to look back. In Bitcoin, every transaction references an arbitrary previous transaction to prove that it has sufficient funds. You would therefore need "checkpoint" transactions that say "This is the amount of money everybody's got now; we can now forget the past".

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#149

Post by h1d »

kev009 wrote: post #95

When reading this I think of my deep knowledge of TCP (especially the pain points) and yet it is "The Internet" for the past while. Compared to simpler protocols like Delta-T and later/better protocols like XTP, TCP still "won" for a variety of reasons (adoption, good enough, numbers of implementation, hardware implementation, etc) There are a couple reasons I think Ethereum might prevail over bitcoin: * Vitalik is y…

I guess BSD and Linux were aiming to take the same position as OS where Bitcoin and Ethereum are not.

No one sane would get Bitcoin staffed with complicated features beyond its simple purpose of keeping a decentralized ledger.

Nothing else would go forward if it isn't for Bitcoin running in a stable way.

Bitcoin would be positioned as TCP whereas Ethereum would be regarded as HTTP protocol ready to run apps on top.

BSD's position is more like Bitcoin Cash (or SV). Similar purpose, different philosophy.

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#150

Post by bhaak »

keymone wrote: post #141
CryptoPunk wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but you have to trust the distributors of the software anyway, even in PoW.

No you don’t. You only need to know consensus rules. You can use any software, you can build it yourself, you can order an audit, you can write software yourself . Proof of work committed to the chain that is valid according to consensus rules you know is universal and objective measure that everyone will observe equally. That’s where bitcoin’s security comes from and that’s how you can avoid to rely on trusting thir…

How do you know the consensus rules?
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