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Counterparty Recreates Ethereum's Smart Contract Platform on Bitcoin

counterparty.io

11–17 of 17 posts

Re: Counterparty Recreates Ethereum's Smart Contract Platform on Bitcoin

#11

IMO Counterparty is (still) the most underated technology in the crypto space. Since it utilizes the same addresses and Blockchain as Bitcoin, it has just as many users as does Bitcoin. The protocol is clearly tackling all the features that Ethereum has promised, and it works today . It's a fair comparison to suggest that Counterparty is to Bitcoin, what css is to html. They work together

> Since it utilizes the same addresses and Blockchain as Bitcoin, it has just as many users as does Bitcoin.

I don't think that's fair to say...

Re: Counterparty Recreates Ethereum's Smart Contract Platform on Bitcoin

#12
post #6
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please elaborate

(Disclosure: I own ether, but not XCP) Well, both platforms require you to use a new currency (ether and XCP currency.) Counterparty will make it easier to write contracts that involve bitcoins (I think, not totally sure how that works) ethereum will have a 12 second block time vs a 10 minute block time (very different) and ethereum transaction costs should be lower (for several reasons.) Additionally, counterparty w…

So it's confusing, but Counterparty doesn't exactly require new currency. There's a few ways to think of Counterparty's XCP, but in all of those ways it augments Bitcoin. XCP is used to store 'value in escrow', fight spam (such as in the case of asset name declarations), and now to control of execution times. There may be some other uses in there.

The 12 second blocktimes of Ethereum will be considerably longer than the instantaneous times of Bip70 insured (or let's see what medici comes up with maybe) Bitcoin/Counterparty transaction times. Further the chain will almost certainly be less secure, but since this chain doesn't exist even in theory yet, it's hard to say.

As for the rest of Ethereum's promises, yep, they're tackling just about everything that could ever be included in a protocol. As to whether any of this will scale down to a mobile device, it's just a marketing claim right now, they have way to much work to do in the base platform to care at all about mobile yet.

Re: Counterparty Recreates Ethereum's Smart Contract Platform on Bitcoin

#13
One thing that concerns me is that every node needs to run every contract. Computers that are connecting to the network for the first time and doing full verification will have many, many contracts to compute. Catching up could take significantly longer than it already does.

Re: Counterparty Recreates Ethereum's Smart Contract Platform on Bitcoin

#14
post #13

One thing that concerns me is that every node needs to run every contract. Computers that are connecting to the network for the first time and doing full verification will have many, many contracts to compute. Catching up could take significantly longer than it already does.

Shouldn't be a problem. The checking part is computationally fast. The real problem is downloading all the data. For that they can just DL the blockchain to avoid the slow transfer speed of the bitcoin network.

Re: Counterparty Recreates Ethereum's Smart Contract Platform on Bitcoin

#15
post #13

One thing that concerns me is that every node needs to run every contract. Computers that are connecting to the network for the first time and doing full verification will have many, many contracts to compute. Catching up could take significantly longer than it already does.

Shouldn't be a problem. The checking part is computationally fast. The real problem is downloading all the data. For that they can just DL the blockchain to avoid the slow transfer speed of the bitcoin network.

Yes. And 'catching up' with the blockchain is much faster before, with this set of changes (only a couple of hours on my machine): https://github.com/CounterpartyXCP/counterpartyd/pull/409

Re: Counterparty Recreates Ethereum's Smart Contract Platform on Bitcoin

#16
post #3

It's great that counterparty is adding contract support sometime soon. Counterparty technology has promise, but it has fundamental differences compared to ethereum. Running contracts on a layer on top of bitcoin vs an idependent blockchain like ethereum is a very different experience. It will take time to figure out what sort of model wins out- Let's all hope the best technology wins.

> Let's all hope the best technology wins.

I'd settle for a coherent community using adequate technology. There's always a better solution.

Re: Counterparty Recreates Ethereum's Smart Contract Platform on Bitcoin

#17
post #5
post #3

It's great that counterparty is adding contract support sometime soon. Counterparty technology has promise, but it has fundamental differences compared to ethereum. Running contracts on a layer on top of bitcoin vs an idependent blockchain like ethereum is a very different experience. It will take time to figure out what sort of model wins out- Let's all hope the best technology wins.

Please elaborate

Here's a reply from our very own Joseph, which details a bit more the differences: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2m30j6/counterpart...
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