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Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

timdaub.github.io

171–180 of 650 posts

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#171

Building something useful on something that is primarily used as highly volatile financial speculation instrument always rubbed me the wrong way. The whole crypto scene is just about making quick dough with a technology, that for some reason remains hyped through and wrapped in mysticism. Face it, there is no sexy killer app for the masses. Wait. There is one: Crypto trading to... make quick dough. And the cryptonerd…

> "that is primarily used as highly volatile financial speculation instrument " How is that different from any other asset; stocks, land, property. It's all speculation nowadays. From what I've read there are pretty much three use cases: 1. store of value akin to gold (bitcoin) 2. decentralised privacy money (monero etc, to avoid taxes?) 3. a platform on which to build decentralised technologies (ethereum, ada, thorc…

Land (for example) is NOT primarily used as a speculation instrument. Speculation on land is theoretically a bet on whether the inherent value will go up.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#172
post #155
post #84

> I need a hero, and by that, I mean that I need a usable methodology for building scaleable decentralized apps. Yes, you've heard that right. We don't need more "Ethereum killers" that can do 10x more tx/s than Ethereum. Those are useless. Having worked on large Ethereum smart contracts (running a decentralized auction on chain) over two years, I fully agree with this. Ethereum needs better smart contract languages,…

If you're working on "large Ethereum smart contracts" you've missed the point. On chain logic should always be as minimal as possible. Uniswap v1 was two vyper files. One was 46 lines, and the other was 496 lines[1]. It took like 20 minutes to read through the code thoroughly, and was one of the most impactful contracts ever deployed to the network. Solidity also matured a lot, which is why Uniswap v2 moved back. If…

> On chain logic should always be as minimal as possible.

The goal of the project was to make the auction as transparent as possible, doesn't that imply moving as much of the logic on chain as possible?

> If you find yourself writing an EVM assembler from scratch, and you're trying to build something other than a compiler, you have veered way way off course, and need to re-evaluate your system architecture.

This was a different project aimed at implementing a new smart contract language. Didn't take off internally though because of shift in direction.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#173

Building something useful on something that is primarily used as highly volatile financial speculation instrument always rubbed me the wrong way. The whole crypto scene is just about making quick dough with a technology, that for some reason remains hyped through and wrapped in mysticism. Face it, there is no sexy killer app for the masses. Wait. There is one: Crypto trading to... make quick dough. And the cryptonerd…

> "that is primarily used as highly volatile financial speculation instrument " How is that different from any other asset; stocks, land, property. It's all speculation nowadays. From what I've read there are pretty much three use cases: 1. store of value akin to gold (bitcoin) 2. decentralised privacy money (monero etc, to avoid taxes?) 3. a platform on which to build decentralised technologies (ethereum, ada, thorc…

> At the end of the day, crypto is mountain you can't ignore anymore

Is it really? Is there anyone that can say that a company has suffered because it didn't adopt crypto? It seems like it's perfectly safe to ignore crypto completely. You could gain a bit of advantage. You can use it as a marketing tool, or to attract certain kinds of investors, by cashing in on the blockchain hype. But I haven't seen that there's any advantage yet in using the technology itself.

Regarding the use-cases you mention:

> 1 store of value akin to gold (bitcoin)

Bitcoin is not a store of value. It's a destructor or sink of value. A store of value should have some reserves behind them or some physical asset. Something that has value to others that have not invested in it. Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrency only has value to those that hold them. The value of Bitcoin could crash to 0 tomorrow, and nobody except the investors would care at all. If the gold price crashed I'd be very interested. Would be cool to buy some gold just to play with. Maybe make my own jewelry. But WAY before that there'd be plenty of others buying it for a higher price, for jewelry or manufacturing.

> 2 decentralised privacy money (monero etc)

Aka a gift to crime. I mean, in an ideal world it'd be amazing to have a currency like this. But in practice it does more damage to good. Yes, IMO it's a bad thing even in corrupt countries where you might have legitimate reasons to hide from the state. Because having currency like that doesn't solve all the other problems with having a corrupt government, so it's really just a distraction from solving real problems.

> 3 a platform on which to build decentralised technologies

This is the only legitimate use-case IMO. But it has yet to be proven that using a platform like this has a real advantage.

I think the issue is that problems that you can solve with trustless decentralized algorithms are mostly very trivial. Who has ever had issues with a bank money transfer itself? Meanwhile, the problems we'd really like to solve around currencies, payment and financial services, are basically impossible to solve with trustless. The real problem in payment is to ensure that the seller delivers the product. The real problem in lending is to ensure that the borrower can afford the loan and uses the money on what he says he will.

So you really can't get rid of the human component in most of these applications, if you want a solution that's as good as what you're trying to replace. And in that case, the blockchain is just a fancy and expensive implementation detail that serves little to no practical purpose.

There may be some crossover point where these technologies provide some value. But I suspect it's a much smaller niche than most blockchain proponents would like to admit. I think settling international transactions between banks is one of the very few use-cases where it may be valuable.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#174
post #64

I really, really don't understand where cryptocurrencies are going. Billions have been poured in this technology for almost no actual return technologically wise. And I understand, because interest are not aligned. It really seems like nobody actually care about advancing the state of art, except actual researcher who work in universities and not in crypto startups... Cryptocurrencies had a goal and a usefulness when…

> Polkadot and Kusama

I don't think you're actually expecting an answer, but the main difference is that Kusama is a "canary chain" with faster iteration speed (governance votes last 7 days instead of 28 days for Polkadot).

https://wiki.polkadot.network/docs/en/learn-kusama-vs-polkad...

You can see it as a long-living testnet.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#175
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "for some reason" is that's obvious abd straight forward to anyone being honest and not trying to push propaganda is that Bitcoin, and other blockchains structures like it, are MLM schemes - and that it's decentralized and on a global scale is why it's been able to pick up so much energy - aligning people and industrial complexes globally to bring it mainstream. Design a blockchain system where it's agreed upon…

Can you point to a legitimate problem that “blockchain” can solve, which can’t be solved with existing tools? I think every smart person working on any kind of blockchain-related tech is seriously wasting their talent and life.

Can you point to a legitimate problem that "whatsapp" solved that could not be solved with existing tools?

Between SMS, MMS, 'normal' calls and Skype, whatsapp added nothing technically new to the world.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#176

Building something useful on something that is primarily used as highly volatile financial speculation instrument always rubbed me the wrong way. The whole crypto scene is just about making quick dough with a technology, that for some reason remains hyped through and wrapped in mysticism. Face it, there is no sexy killer app for the masses. Wait. There is one: Crypto trading to... make quick dough. And the cryptonerd…

What about a voting system? That's the only application of a public, decentralized ledger that can kind of makes sense to me. I'm from Switzerland, every few months we have a public voting for various changes to the federal or cantonal laws. I currently do not have a way to be certain that my vote is taken in account. With a public ledger I can check and be sure that my vote is correct. I'm generally opposed to softw…

The main problem as I see it is that such a system would be completely inaccessible to anyone who is not a software developer.

With a paper-based system, all you need to understand is that your paper goes into a box and someone counts it later on. Everyone understands every step, including the steps required to secure that box. But once you require people to understand blockchain you are putting the intregrity of the election in the hands of a privileged elite.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#177
post #131

I was away from the crypto space for a while and I decided to try shorting some currencies yesterday using a DEX based on Ethereum. I wanted to create a position with 1000 dollars. The estimated fee for my transaction was 490 dollars. Something is broken in this environment.

How does that even happen?

Three things.

1. The contract in questions is doing a lot more on chain logic than it should be doing.

2. The network is currently incredibly active, pushing up the average gas cost per transaction.

3. The price of Ethereum itself, in which gas price is denominated, has risen about 10x in the past few months.

Usually the prices die down in a couple weeks, but if there is concern that people are being priced out of the network for an extended period of time, miners will raise the global gas limit, and things will rapidly go back to "normal".

The thing is though, people are paying the high fees. This chart has a really great breakdown of where all the fees have been going to in the past 30 days: https://ethgasstation.info/

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

System that can't be shut down by governments?

You mean that government that just shuts down internet, making your 'system' totally useless? Yes, right! You can't fix societal problems with tech.

Yes you can, access to free information and finance should be a human right. Just like cash can be used by anyone, so electronic cash should be.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#179
Face it - there are no users for Dapps. Top apps get ~50k users. That's nothing. Whenever I think about creating something in Ether, I apply the "do I really need blockchain" question to it, and combined with low user count I realize I'll have a much larger audience without Ether.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about a voting system? That's the only application of a public, decentralized ledger that can kind of makes sense to me. I'm from Switzerland, every few months we have a public voting for various changes to the federal or cantonal laws. I currently do not have a way to be certain that my vote is taken in account. With a public ledger I can check and be sure that my vote is correct. I'm generally opposed to softw…

> With a public ledger I can check and be sure that my vote is correct Any voting system with a public ledger where you can later check your vote is a disaster for election integrity. It's probably surprising, and certainly counter-intuitive, but that's a vector for fraud. That's why we have a long history of secret ballots. And no cameras in the voting booth. From a comment a few weeks ago ( https://news.ycombinator…

Isn't this more about whom I trust less, the politicians or a third party (that might as well be the politicians)?

If so, why is it in the state's power to decree that we have to trust the politicians but not the 3rd parties?

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