Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here?

#71

Post by ArtTimeInvestor » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:37 PM UTC

maxcoder4 wrote: post #61

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using it as internet currency? I don't know anyone who paid anything with it in the last 12 months.

I use it everywhere where it's an option (so not very often, let's say once a month). I also only use privacy services (vpn for example) where you can pay using cryptocurrency, otherwise what's the point

What are some other examples, except for a VPN where you use crypto to pay?

And how is the situation around the world - are retailers who offer digital goods/services allowed to accept crypto as payments?

Re: Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here?

#72

Post by skybrian » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:38 PM UTC

everfree wrote: post #68

skybrian wrote: post #32

I’m wondering how this compares with other cryptocurrencies that seem to be getting some attention, like Solana?

Solana does not have blobs. It’s really as simple as that.

It seems to have low-cost transactions. Isn’t that what the blobs are for? (Among other things.)

(Sincere question; I don’t follow cryptocurrencies very closely.)

Re: Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here?

#73

Post by dinobones » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:39 PM UTC

hot_gril wrote: post #47

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #36

All this crpyto technology is fascinating. But is it used for anything? I asked this in an Ask HN today, but got no answer so far: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39852389 It looks like not a single HN reader is using blockchain technology for anything. If nobody is using blockchain technology outside of blockchain projects, what are the reasons we expect that some day we will? What could be a near term use case…

Its main purpose is internet currency. The only serious uses surround that via smart contracts, like decentralized exchanges or provably fair gambling (unsavory as that is). Any time someone says "the currency aspect is separate from blockchain," I'd be wary, seeing how the entire point of blockchain is decentralization via proof of work or stake. NFTs can make sense in theory as an alternative to the already-popular…

The day a network exists where you can reliably send like $0.001 of value with little/no fees is the day the internet changes forever.

So many ideas are infeasible right now because CC fees are high, and making any payment is extremely high friction.

Re: Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here?

#74

Post by Mahn » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:40 PM UTC

Key quote from the article:

> Many have argued that the lack of large-scale applications for the past ten years proves that crypto is useless. I have always argued against this: pretty much every crypto application that is not financial speculation depends on low fees - and so while we have high fees, we should not be surprised that we mainly see financial speculation!

> Now that we have blobs, this key constraint that has been holding us back all this time is starting to melt away. Fees are finally much lower; my statement from seven years ago that the internet of money should not cost more than five cents per transaction is finally coming true.

---

All of this depends on so called "Layer 2s", which adds a great deal of UX complexity to the end user. I'm skeptical that this is best way to solve the scalability issues that plague cryptocurrency, but I will say that this looks to me like it has a much better shot of succeeding that anything Bitcoin has ever attempted to do on this front.

Re: Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here?

#75

Post by chrisco255 » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:42 PM UTC

orthecreedence wrote: post #6

I'm so out of the loop these days...I've written off blockchain junk almost entirely. Can someone break down what blobs are? Is this some kind of temporary place for transactions to go so they aren't charged fees individually? EDIT: NVM, I RTFMed https://ethereum.org/en/layer-2/ . I wonder what the trade-offs of layer 2 protocols are. Less secure?

Right now at least, layer 2s are somewhat immature. Many of them do host billions in assets, but they each have different tech stacks backing them up that are at varying levels of maturity and decentralization. L2Beat does a great job of breaking down the L2 ecosystem:

https://l2beat.com/scaling/summary

Note the pie chart in the row for each L2. That pie chart notes the security risks for each one based on their tech stack. Ideally, the top L2s should strive to reach "Stage 2" which could be considered as secure as L1 itself, but no general purpose L2 is at that stage yet and most are still at Stage 0.

Re: Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here?

#76

Post by camillomiller » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:42 PM UTC

> On March 13, the Dencun hard fork activated, enabling one of the long-awaited features of Ethereum: proto-danksharding (aka EIP-4844, aka blobs). Initially, the fork reduced the transaction fees of rollups by a factor of over 100, as blobs were nearly free. In the last day, we finally saw blobs spike up in volume and the fee market activate as the blobscriptions protocol started to use them. Blobs are not free, but they remain much cheaper than calldata.

Can someone please confirm this isn’t the incipit from an unpublished Douglas Adams novel?

Re: Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here?

#77

Post by ArtTimeInvestor » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:43 PM UTC

dinobones wrote: post #73

hot_gril wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its main purpose is internet currency. The only serious uses surround that via smart contracts, like decentralized exchanges or provably fair gambling (unsavory as that is). Any time someone says "the currency aspect is separate from blockchain," I'd be wary, seeing how the entire point of blockchain is decentralization via proof of work or stake. NFTs can make sense in theory as an alternative to the already-popular…

The day a network exists where you can reliably send like $0.001 of value with little/no fees is the day the internet changes forever. So many ideas are infeasible right now because CC fees are high, and making any payment is extremely high friction.

Even if you can send $1.

Users dislike paying on the web because it is a security risk. Because of this insane system of credit cards, where you give the other party a "secret" which enables them to take the money from you.

If you could just send the money, the barrier to pay would be 100x lower.

Most websites pay the bills via ads. And make less than $0.001 per visitor. If they could sell a monthly membership for a one-time payment of $1, they would have a way better business model.

Re: Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here?

#78

Post by jncfhnb » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:43 PM UTC

everfree wrote: post #42

bigyikes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvotes and downvotes on Hacker News. It’s a joke with some truth.

Oh. That's an uninteresting way to "back up" a statement imo. Crowd wisdom is often wrong. "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

I agree. Voting systems are just generically dumb for any sort of truth consensus.

Re: Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here?

#79

Post by qotgalaxy » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:44 PM UTC

benreesman wrote: post #49

orthecreedence wrote: post #6

I'm so out of the loop these days...I've written off blockchain junk almost entirely. Can someone break down what blobs are? Is this some kind of temporary place for transactions to go so they aren't charged fees individually? EDIT: NVM, I RTFMed https://ethereum.org/en/layer-2/ . I wonder what the trade-offs of layer 2 protocols are. Less secure?

As I always do when someone pops off with a phrase like “blockchain junk” I’ll remind everyone that Barbara Liskov, who is the second female recipient of the Turing Award (and narrowly missed being the first, Frances Allen received the honor in 2006, Professor Liskov did in 2008), the John von Neumann Medal, an honors doctorate from ETH Zurich (received alongside Donald Knuth), countless other honors, and was the doc…

[dead]

Re: Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here?

#80

Post by FactKnower69 » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:52 PM UTC

yieldcrv wrote: post #52

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #36

All this crpyto technology is fascinating. But is it used for anything? I asked this in an Ask HN today, but got no answer so far: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39852389 It looks like not a single HN reader is using blockchain technology for anything. If nobody is using blockchain technology outside of blockchain projects, what are the reasons we expect that some day we will? What could be a near term use case…

a better question is to look at how people use it, the frictions they encounter, and who works on solving those frictions just saying “speculation” as if thats not a use case misses that “financial services” are our biggest industry on the planet and thats mirrored in the blockchain space, many people solve frictions and compete with each other. it willfully ignores that all currencies are 99% held as stores of value…

>just saying “speculation” as if thats not a use case misses that “financial services” are our biggest industry on the planet and thats mirrored in the blockchain space

This is such a great comparison! Crypto and "financial services" are both a massive waste of labor that produces zero material wealth and mainly exist to facilitate money laundering and further upward siphoning of wealth.

This is why Janet Yellen is currently throwing a tantrum that those big meanies in China aren't playing fair by using their labor to actually manufacture things instead of shuffle fake money back and forth between different buckets until more money appears out of thin air: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/yellen-intends-warn-...