Ethereum • Hacker News Board

Re: Ethereum

#31

Post by binarymax » Sat, Mar 29, 2014, 5:54 PM UTC

Ethereum can be used to codify, decentralize, secure and trade just about anything: voting, ...

So, just the other day, I was lamenting with my friend and we had a thought experiment on whether it would be possible to use a bitcoin-like network/blockchain to solve the identity problem for voting on the internet.

We had some rock solid ideas for lots of details, but got stuck on the anonymous vote part. For example, everyone should be able to tell that I actually voted, but not who I voted for.

Does anyone know how this could be accomplished?

This looks like a great project. Would be interested to see what they meant when they listed voting as their first example.

Re: Ethereum

#32

Post by applecore » Sat, Mar 29, 2014, 5:54 PM UTC

milesf wrote: post #11

Spend 30 seconds on the site. Didn't get it. Move on. If this is important, it will appear again on (HN|Reddit|etc) for me to take a closer look. Oh, and 30 seconds is a looooong time to spend on a site. I would guess people spend no more than 5 to 10 seconds on a site before they decide to investigate further or move on.

That was pretty much the response to Bitcoin five years ago, when it first appeared on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=463793

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852

Re: Ethereum

#33

Post by bsg75 » Sat, Mar 29, 2014, 5:54 PM UTC

rabbyte wrote: post #10

eragnew wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because presentation of the idea matters.

Sure but context also matters. If they were building something for web or everyday consumers, maybe I would agree. There are plenty of useful platforms and tools that belong to not-so-great site designs (ie: http://curl.haxx.se/ ). Seems silly to have that weigh in on the idea at all but maybe that's just me.

> If they were building something for web or everyday consumers...

Exactly, first impressions matter. If it were a consumer product, than the flashy decoration would have a purpose in marketing terms.

Re: Ethereum

#34

Post by tlrobinson » Sat, Mar 29, 2014, 5:55 PM UTC

mbrameld wrote: post #17

rabbyte wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that unfortunate if you know it has nothing to do with what they're building?

Because if they can't develop a simple web site properly how can I trust them to host my application?

The skills required to make smooth website animations and the skills required to develop Ethereum don't overlap at all.

Re: Ethereum

#35

Post by wesley » Sat, Mar 29, 2014, 5:55 PM UTC

You may also want to check out http://nxtcrypto.org which is also working on turing complete functionality. They're working on a decentralized exchange at the moment, testable at http://nxtra.org/nxt-client

They do not have the marketing skills of ethereum tho..

Re: Ethereum

#36

Post by atmosx » Sat, Mar 29, 2014, 5:55 PM UTC

jonahx wrote: post #18

milesf wrote: post #11

Spend 30 seconds on the site. Didn't get it. Move on. If this is important, it will appear again on (HN|Reddit|etc) for me to take a closer look. Oh, and 30 seconds is a looooong time to spend on a site. I would guess people spend no more than 5 to 10 seconds on a site before they decide to investigate further or move on.

It's such a common paradox with technically gifted people: They spend so much time and energy on a product, but almost none thinking about how to present it clearly and succinctly to a complete outsider.

You are completely right, I've had the same feeling many times in the past for a vast array of technologies.

In this case thought, the authors are making clear that it's for advanced technical audience[1]. They are just trying to get developers, but mainly communities that will run their blockchain (their version of bitcoin), which comes with a language that makes easy to implement all the beautiful things we're talking about when the discussion revolves around the bitcoin protocol (as opposed to the currency).

[1] https://code.ethereum.org/

Re: Ethereum

#37

Post by z3phyr » Sat, Mar 29, 2014, 5:58 PM UTC

Can someone explain in short what is it and what it does? It 'looks' exciting, but in excitement I cannot understand its full purpose.

Re: Ethereum

#38

Post by markbnj » Sat, Mar 29, 2014, 5:58 PM UTC

I think I _sort_ of got it. Still confused over what "ether" is paying for: computing cycles? Bandwidth? Trust?

Re: Ethereum

#39

Post by collyw » Sat, Mar 29, 2014, 5:59 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #27

drpancake wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with you that it's not clear for newcomers. I'm not affiliated, but basically Ethereum is an alternative cryptocurrency (or alt-coin) to Bitcoin with it's own separate mining algorithm and blockchain. The really interesting part is that it comes with a Python-like Turing-complete language, such that you can embed small scripts into transactions to define smart contracts. This theoretically allows you to impleme…

Hmm I thought it was a programming language for a distributed system. Yeah I guess they need to do a better job on the presenting who/what/how

That's exactly what I got from the "what" link.

Re: Ethereum

#40

Post by jetblackio » Sat, Mar 29, 2014, 5:59 PM UTC

Come on guys, there's a video right on the front page. It's only a couple of minutes. It explains very well what Ethereum is. I almost always prefer that the site be self-explanatory in just a few seconds as well, but if you're not very familiar with Bitcoin, it would be a wall of text to explain what this product is. In this case, I think a video was definitely the way to go.

On another note, this looks like an awesome project. I wonder what implications this could have in net neutrality.