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Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

timdaub.github.io

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Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#301

Post by rawtxapp »

whimsicalism wrote: post #295
rawtxapp wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know someone who got a 7 figure loan backed by cryptocurrency collateral in a matter of minutes using makerdao. The best part? They didn't even had to provide their name. This is the future folks, I highly recommend that you actually try some of these projects before writing them off.

The value of that loan is less than the value of the collateral they put in though, that's how vaults work. You're never going to get an amazing loan deal from a trustless system.

But you can access liquidity without selling your asset which is exactly what they want.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#302

Post by bitcoin01 »

langitbiru wrote: post #248
yulaow wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short answer: it is Hell. Long answers: - "linking libraries" between FE and blockchains are constantly broken, have _a_lot_ of undefined behaviours, and their error codes are few and totally opaque to what's really happening. Bonus part: they also change fast, a lot, and mostly with breaking changes. See web3.js and ether.js issues if you wanna cry - you mostly will have to use third party services like infura or we…

You know what? That makes me think. So I applied for YC with a non-blockchain startup. In the application form, they asked whether I had another idea. So I answered a development tool for smart contracts / blockchain applications. A Jetbrain IDE but for smart contracts. I already develop Mamba ( https://mamba.black ). It's like Truffle but for Python instead of JavaScript. We'll see how it goes.

Amazing, continue! There is a huge demand for it I'm sure. I know I do.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#303

Post by rawtxapp »

sabas123 wrote: post #298
rawtxapp wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know someone who got a 7 figure loan backed by cryptocurrency collateral in a matter of minutes using makerdao. The best part? They didn't even had to provide their name. This is the future folks, I highly recommend that you actually try some of these projects before writing them off.

How is being able to do this good? There are reasons why this shit has been regulated.

It gives freedom to people, how is that bad? The whole point is that it's a permissionless, borderless technology that anyone can participate in. There's really nothing holding innovation back.

Flash loans are an example of that innovation, where if you see an arbitrage opportunity in the market, you can profit from it even if you don't own huge capital, so it levels the playing field for all these financial actors.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#304

Post by StavrosK »

Lazare wrote: post #224
baq wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i guess the whole point of tracking containers on blockchain was that you don't have to trust middlemen to do the right thing anymore.

I've read some detailed discussions from people in the industry explaining how blockchains don't help. And I've read some very high level, breezy assertions from people outside the industry asserting that blockchains can help (although they never spell out how, exactly). As far as I can tell: 1. There's a pretty big issue with containers having the wrong contents (eg, counterfeit items loaded initially, or contraband…

And, more importantly, a blockchain provides a trustless data store. Why can't I just trust myself to keep the data?

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#305

Post by duckfang »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #56

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…

The hardest pill to swallow is that we already had a very low cost of moving money around between hostile nation-states. And it's been around since the 8th century - read 700ACE-800ACE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala

Its money dealer to money dealer, and the money dealers keep scrips. Average fees are from 0.2% to 0.5% . It's definitely un-sexy since its not technology based. No chains of blocks or programmers needed. Fees are low, so the money transferrers can make a living, but not allow speculation or other hazardous acts.

And the only reason why it's not more massively used is because of the US's adherence that it's "terrorism".

I'd imagine that the terrorism angle is more of a "allows people to ignore central banks ran by USA and Europe"... as the US didn't much care when HSBC was financing drug cartels, terrorists, and the like ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2012/07/16/hsbc-h... )

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#306

Post by takoid »

imtringued wrote: post #263
lawn wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash: the intent to scale on-chain while Bitcoin has given up that leading to today's ridiculous transaction fees. Monero is the best approach to actual privacy as it conceals sender, receiver and transaction amount for all transactions. I do agree that the speculation focus is misguided, but there are cryptos that are useful the way Bitcoin was meant to be.

I consider Monero useful but most of its users are unethical. It's pretty telling that the author of the blog post bashes it in the exact way you should. "Don't buy it" as if it was meant to be speculated with.

Wasn’t Bitcoin painted in a similar light before it became mainstream? Monero’s users being unethical (in your opinion) is a testament to the usefulness of the technology, not the other way around. Would you say the same thing about Tor?

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#307

Post by martindale »

timdaub wrote: post #20
throw8932894 wrote: post #14

> 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. > Instead, we need an approach for the average Joe developer to create their idea within the Ethereum ecosystem without the need for hardcore unproven technologies. So instead of…

Hey, I think you're making a valid point and I probably should have explained more what I meant by my statement. IMO, there's a middle ground we can go between slow PoW on L1 and scaleability. I think that it can be done by having tools that give us the same guarantees like deploying a smart contract on the main chain. It's difficult to explain: But what I want is Plasma but as a framework to develop dapps. This proj…

We're building this, but on Bitcoin ("Plasma but as a framework for dapps" [with a focus on developer experience]) [0]. There's already robust infrastructure for L2 contracts in Bitcoin-land, and we've already heavily optimized the L1 to prepare for the load that a global, ubiquitous solution would need.

Honestly, I see no use for Ethereum (or other Turing Complete L1s) looking forward — smart contracts can be purely peer-to-peer, with the only pressure applied to L1 being dispute resolution. By pushing complex contracts up into Layer 2, we can keep the dangerous, money-destroying, theft-enabling Turing machines away from the main chain.

[0]: https://fabric.pub

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#308

Post by tootie »

177tcca wrote: post #290
ethanbond wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize it’s law and not technical incapability that prevents financial institutions from lending like this, right?

It is technical incapability of some financial institutions to set this up inside of their regulated position. Other freely operating entities across the globe are not in the same position.

It's an interesting thought. Any online brokerage, lender or retail banker could probably set up an anonymous verification of asset ownership without going through background checks or credit agencies. You just need 2-party consent and verification, not a whole blockchain. The trick is not proving you own a thing, it's that you need to prove you haven't used it as collateral for anyone else or don't hold outstanding debts somewhere else. Blockchain will be completely useless for solving that. A universal identity (ie SSN) is the only option.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#309

Post by whimsicalism »

rawtxapp wrote: post #301
whimsicalism wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of that loan is less than the value of the collateral they put in though, that's how vaults work. You're never going to get an amazing loan deal from a trustless system.

But you can access liquidity without selling your asset which is exactly what they want.

ie. So they can have cash while continuing to be speculatively exposed to eth.

I think that ethereum might have great applications, but a loan backed by more collateral than it is worth doesn't seem like one of them, unless Dao starts allowing for the use of collateral that is less liquid than eth.

The issue is that contracts don't have any way of "calling in" to the legal API, so you can't put up your house as collateral.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#310

Post by nootropicat »

thebean11 wrote: post #297
nootropicat wrote: post #249

For some reason ethereum devs refuse to (recommend to) increase the gas limit, even though it's the only short-term way to decrease fees while increasing decentralization, in a mistaken idea that if a node doesn't run on a raspberry pi (it does) the network isn't decentralized. People run nodes when they need them. Decentralization is a function of fees and node costs, not just node costs. Right now deploying a large…

The hardware it takes to run a node now isn't the only consideration. Higher gas limit means the storage size of the history grows at a faster rate; every single full node needs to store that history forever.

By the time it becomes a real problem (when the db containing state starts to approach 4TB) presumably some other solution would be in place, like state witnesses in blocks (verification without needing to access local state), or other ideas like reducing the size of 'hot' state and requiring witnesses for old state. In any case, it's better to have ethereum with heavier nodes than everything move to a completely centralized DPoS or PoA network.
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