Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

threadreaderapp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 272 posts

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#251

Post by brighton36 »

asynchrony wrote: post #249
drcode wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I agree that to a casual follower of the space, the lack of mainstream use cases should arguably raise some red flags. However, as someone now deeply involved in the tech, I'm pretty confident that the use cases are coming and are delayed solely because of peculiar obstacles that will likely get resolved in the near future.

So to be clear you're confirming that nothing works now and that not only use cases but also working tech is still entirely speculative?

My two cents: We've been waiting for a non-speculative use for ethereum since 2013. After how many years might it be time to suggest that there is no non-speculative use?

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#252

Post by XorNot »

stale2002 wrote: post #240
XorNot wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The electricity company has bills to pay. If some company can find a way to make unlimited energy without expending resources, then yes, they will become the richest entity in the world, regardless of the presence of Bitcoin or not. There is a finite amount of Bitcoin total by nature of the protocol. The electricity company is vital to Bitcoin being usable since it's a digital currency. The miners might be necessar…

> And every bit of Bitcoin they get is worth slightly more after they get it then it was when it was paid, so their purchasing power is going up and up and up. So you are saying that bitcoin would only ever become more and more valuable? How can you similtaneously believe this statement, and that bitcoin is worthless? They can't both be true. Either bitcoin is deflationary, IE, it goes up and up in value, and becomes…

It's a fact about deflationary currency in general, and why it's a bad idea. It grants that for some reason we suppose Bitcoin is worth holding - i.e. some government or entity accepted Bitcoin (or another deflationary currency) as payment for taxes. Maybe someone builds a seasteading community and decides to try this.

The reality is, with nothing backing it (i.e. no government accepting it for taxes), it's not actually worth anything in the long run because eventually everyone has to cash out.

Which isn't to say it's not worth anything now - but the market is exploitative. The goal is to convince everyone to buy in, so those who are in can get out, hopefully taking a profit (not in Bitcoin) along the way.

My point, is that anyone looking at Bitcoin and wondering if they should enter it should absolutely not. Deflationary crypto is a rigged game in favor of those who got in first, and you can never catch up (barring their irrationality). Bitcoin's highs are not going to be repeated, and anyone asking you to buy in wants you to do so so they can get out.

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#253

Post by EGreg »

drcode wrote: post #208
brighton36 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is successful about ethereum? The price?

What metric interests you? Number of stories in mainstream publications? Number of projects based on the tech in corporations? Amount of developer interest? Market cap? I agree that it is still in need of mainstream use cases, if that is your metric then you can justifiably argue no cryptocurrency is "successful".

As someone who started a project to FIX the scaling problems of Ethereum, I have one metric I’d like to ask about:

NUMBER OF TOKENS USED FOR ACTUAL EVERYDAY PAYMENT IN AN ECOSYSTEM ON THE MAIN NET and not just pre-buying for speculative purposes.

Has there been a single one? Cryptokitties is the only one I can think of and that has nearly brought the whole “world computer” to a halt.

Projects like Kik Messenger which raised hundreds of millions even say in their whitepaper that they will get off ETH as soon as they can, because it can’t handle the volume of transactions they have.

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#254

Post by aik »

brighton36 wrote: post #251
asynchrony wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So to be clear you're confirming that nothing works now and that not only use cases but also working tech is still entirely speculative?

My two cents: We've been waiting for a non-speculative use for ethereum since 2013. After how many years might it be time to suggest that there is no non-speculative use?

It will naturally die if/when all ideas have been extinguished, and we all should hope no sooner. This is literally the process all invention goes through, some tech just more publically visible than others. What do you think?

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#256

Post by plywoodtrees »

aik wrote: post #254
brighton36 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My two cents: We've been waiting for a non-speculative use for ethereum since 2013. After how many years might it be time to suggest that there is no non-speculative use?

It will naturally die if/when all ideas have been extinguished, and we all should hope no sooner. This is literally the process all invention goes through, some tech just more publically visible than others. What do you think?

Resources and creativity are being drawn into crypto, that could be spent elsewhere, perhaps more usefully. Not to mention vast amount of electricity.

A brute force exhaustive search of all possible technologies is not smart engineering.

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#257

Post by rictic »

runeks wrote: post #184
rictic wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't looked into this in quite some time, but as I recall, a new user can look at the available chains and determine which has the majority of stake behind it. Is there a subtlety that makes that unworkable?

> Is there a subtlety that makes that unworkable? The reason this can’t work is because it has no cost to create a new chain from scratch. I can create a thousand valid PoS chains in virtually no time, and there’s no decentralized way for you to choose the one everyone else chooses. The only way to solve this is to give special rights to some set of stakers.

Isn't that only an issue for a chain that's starting from PoS from the beginning? Ethereum already has a PoW chain that they plan to turn into PoS. If the ethereum protocol agreement is to switch to PoS at block N, then I don't see how you can create a valid-looking N+1 block without yourself putting a large amount of real eth at stake.

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#258

Post by swift532 »

danaos wrote: post #173
DennisP wrote: post #39

> state channels (ETH’s version of Lightning), but it is unclear whether main-chain issued ERC20 type tokens will be portable to this environment. The Raiden project is the closest thing to Lightning, was recently deployed to the main chain, and explicitly supports any ERC20 token. The article says Plasma is dead because...Peter Todd, a Bitcoin dev, claims they had a similar idea and rejected it? Meanwhile, on Ethere…

> The entire article is of similar quality. You cherry-picked some points and rebuffed them, then proceeded to generalize and dismiss all of them. The reality is that any SQL database would be superior to every blockchain unless your motives are criminal nature. Disclosure: I sold all of my cryptos in Q1 2018, after buying my first bitcoin in the summer of 2013 and loosing a (luckily) small chunk of it in the infamou…

> The reality is that any SQL database would be superior to every blockchain unless your motives are criminal nature.

What if you're a person in China in the future, your social credit is crap, and the only way you can buy bread is over a government approved payment app?

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#259

Post by keymone »

tim333 wrote: post #223

There's a reply to each of the 50 tweets by Vitalik Buterin on Reddit here https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/aac4hr/tuurs_crit... By the way, not much mentioned in the discussion but I'm for Ethereum and kind of anti Bitcoin because of the awful environmental impact of proof or work which the Ethereum folk are at least trying to find a solution to.

> awful environmental impact of proof or work

compared to what? you can't have free cheese and environmental (and social) impact of existing fiat systems is far worse.

> Ethereum folk are at least trying to find a solution to

PoS was known long before PoW. PoS is not and cannot be a solution because it doesn't provide objective measure by which competing chains can be compared. only trust in third parties that can be hacked, coerced, etc. oh and ofc "the rich get richer" - so much for fixing awful impact from fiat systems.

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#260

Post by collyw »

plywoodtrees wrote: post #256
aik wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will naturally die if/when all ideas have been extinguished, and we all should hope no sooner. This is literally the process all invention goes through, some tech just more publically visible than others. What do you think?

Resources and creativity are being drawn into crypto, that could be spent elsewhere, perhaps more usefully. Not to mention vast amount of electricity. A brute force exhaustive search of all possible technologies is not smart engineering.

I have been getting a number of people trying to get me to apply for crypto jobs recently. They list a load of buzzwords expecting me to be enthusiastic about the hot new tech. I explain that I am not (but that I will work for them if they are interested in a solid software engineer and they pay me enough).
Post reply on HN