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Ethereum

ethereum.org

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Re: Ethereum

#41

Post by amirmc »

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.

Maybe this will help [1]. I didn't understand the site either but I kind of stumbled on to 'blockchain for contracts' (no idea whether that's right or wrong).

In any case it seems like there are a lot of people in Ethereum meetup groups around the world [2], so this isn't a new thing.

[1] https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-Pa...

[2] http://www.meetup.com/find/?allMeetups=false&keywords=Ethere...

Re: Ethereum

#42

Post by collyw »

Joeboy wrote: post #28

I'm kind of appalled by all the comments complaining that people don't understand Ethereum after spending a very short amount of time on the site. If you think it looks interesting, investigate further. If not, move on. Not being able to understand something after 30s doesn't mean that thing has no value.

I learnt more reading the first few comments on here than what I got from the site. Like someone else said, I thought it was a programming language for doing decentralised things.

Re: Ethereum

#43

Post by tlrobinson »

binarymax wrote: post #31

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, e…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sys...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption

Re: Ethereum

#44

Post by amirmc »

applecore wrote: post #32
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

The link you provide doesn't support your assertion. 5 votes for a bitcoin story that had three comments, none of which say they didn't understand the website.

Edit: and the new link you just added has 4 votes and no comments.

Re: Ethereum

#45

Post by skybrian »

The problem with generic abstractions for doing anything is that it's hard to tell how well they will work for doing specific things. Okay, so maybe you could build something like DNS on it. Does it actually work well for that in practice? How do you know? Similarly for any other application that they briefly mentioned.

You only need one "killer app" to prove an abstraction, but you do need one, and it should be front and center.

Re: Ethereum

#46

Post by tlrobinson »

markbnj wrote: post #38

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

Yes. The computing resources required to run the network (bandwidth, computation, storage)

Re: Ethereum

#47

Post by jonahx »

atmosx wrote: post #36
jonahx wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tal…

It's true I may not be the intended audience, but I am a programmer who is more than capable of understanding what they are doing. That is, there are people who could have clearly explained what they are doing to me in the same number of words they've used.

You're right that it might not be a big priority to them, but it couldn't hurt.

Re: Ethereum

#49

Post by atmosx »

binarymax wrote: post #31

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, e…

Hm, to get this a step further:

* It must be somehow possible for authorities (state owned organizations) to re-count the votes manually.

* The voter should get back to the ledger and be able to check for whom he voted.

Yeah, looks like an optimal and bright (IMHO) future.

Re: Ethereum

#50

Post by Joeboy »

Ok, after watching the intro video I'm thinking Etherium is kind of like a P2P automated trading platform. Which seems like it would put a lot of responsibility on coders. If your automated trading bot is losing you billions, you can just flick the off switch. If your code is running on a million strangers' computers, not so much.

It will be interesting to find out how this pans out. Possibly in the Chinese proverb sense.

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