Ethereum lost all my trust when they hardforked over a contract mistake. They are never getting that back. I'd recommend rebranding the project to focus on the community-driven aspect. They are no better than our current legal framework.
Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum
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Re: Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "The code is the law", they said. And the law can change if the community deems it wise.
It was pandering to big stakeholders. That's the problem with all cryptocurrencies, they don't solve big players having huge influence over the underlying currency. It is still very much a "who you know" and "how much profit is at stake" kind of game, which is one of the main reasons people hate state-run currencies. The little guys lose thier shirt and get a "too bad,so sad" response. A big player losses thier shirt…
I agree with what you're saying 100%, actually. Egalitarianism in the blockchain world remains an elusive goal, just as it does in other fields.
Re: Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did hard forking after the DAO hack increase trust? Wasn't the whole point that "no one" could modify the block chain or the results of a contract? Now it's established that there's a chance a contract can be "too big to fail". I think it would have built more trust if they had let the money go. To paraphrase a saying, they would have spent 15% of ETH on training everyone to build safe contracts, and to vet contr…
> Wasn't the whole point that "no one" could modify the block chain or the results of a contract? If you hold this view you're going to be very unhappy with the many innovations we'll see in the blockchain space in the coming years: Almost every technology in the future is going to put the desires of the community ahead of any specific piece of code- Computer code is a tool, not the final decision maker.
Forking to add features and expand capabilities is great. I'm not arguing against that. I disagree with forking to undo the effects of a hack on a contract.
Re: Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum
#34Has the primary language for writing Ethereum contracts been improved? Or is it still a poor language with respect to its type system and other features?
I wasn't that interested in it, but the idea of programmable contracts was intriguing. The main issue is that they should be declarative/logical in nature, as that's what most contracts are, instead the primary language was imperative and had a weak type system (inexpressive). Has this situation improved or are all contracts written in it still destined to have many bugs due to the poor language design?
EDIT: Had to look it up, forgot the name, it's Solidity.
Re: Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
First of all the DAO was a decentralized organisation, it didn't belong to Buterin, it isn't "Buterin's company"... The hard fork had a lot more to do with the fact the overall community didn't thought the system would survive the eventual switch to proof of stake if 15% of all ether was in the hands of malicious actor. There was also the moral matter that something could indeed be done to actually return the stolen…
> the overall community didn't thought the system would survive the eventual switch to proof of stake if 15% of all ether was in the hands of malicious actor The author of Casper, Vlad Zamfir, clearly stated on numerous occasions on Reddit that there was no risk to PoS b/c of the hack. > There was also the moral matter that something could indeed be done to actually return the stolen money to their original owners Th…
I have seen stated that even 7% could be an issue depending on the parameters used. Regardless, it was certainly a big concern at the time for most of the community.
That's a bit cynical to call the token holder gamblers, sure many of them "invested" thinking they would get some return back, but a lot of people were genuily curious in participating in this decentralized democracy experiment that never came to be. Regardless even if these people were 'gamblers' stealing is still stealing and returning stolen money is the right thing to do.
Re: Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure how anyone could trust it after they reversed a perfectly legitimate transaction. The whole pitch of ethereum was that it was supposed to be an objective platform, free of human bias, to execute contracts. "The code is the law", they said. Of course, that was a big fat lie; someone made a shitty contract with a loophole in it. When someone took advantage of that loophole, the devs said "uh, just kidding" and…
The devs didn't reverse it by themselves. There were multiple independent client teams who all agreed to code the change, then they had to convince the community to run the altered software. Not all the official devs were even on board with the change, some stayed neutral, and some of the community refused the change so now we have both ETH and ETC. So yes, it's possible your transactions will get reversed, but only…
Which is the same model as Bitcoin; although my understanding is that consensus would be less likely with Bitcoin since there is a larger and more diverse set of miners.
Re: Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum
#37The article is sensationalist, especially with regard to the "fall" part of the "rise and fall of Ethereum". The reality is that Ethereum as a platform has gained strength, credibility and market traction over the last six months. There have been 3 hard forks and 1 soft fork, partly in response to the system being under almost continuous attack (mostly denial of service). The effective response by Vitalik and company…
Not sure why the url path includes 'rise and fall' in it, it doesn't look like it's the actual headline in the article, nor is 'rise and fall' mentioned anywhere in the article.
The main point of the article isn't that people are losing trust in Ethereum. It's that there's no platform that truly avoids the need to trust other human beings (as some apparently believe). That code is not absolute law because the community can choose to change it and affect pre-existing contracts. I don't think he bashes Ethereum at all, but is just making the case that, if you believe you can rely on a platform like this to avoid the need to trust in human decisions, you're fooling yourself.
Re: Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum
#38Has the primary language for writing Ethereum contracts been improved? Or is it still a poor language with respect to its type system and other features? I wasn't that interested in it, but the idea of programmable contracts was intriguing. The main issue is that they should be declarative/logical in nature, as that's what most contracts are, instead the primary language was imperative and had a weak type system (ine…
Nope, they're still using Solidity.
http://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/smart_contracts.html :
> "Solidity, while being an interesting proof of concept, is dangerously under-contained and very difficult to analyze statically."
Solidity docs are here: http://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/solidity-in-depth....
No referential transparency, no purity, no algebraic data types . . . it's scary stuff for writing contracts.
It sounds like the core team has realized what a hole they're in and are taking it seriously, which is great. But I think a lot of the Etherium-related businesses still have no idea what a sandy foundation they're building on. It's going to be ugly.
Re: Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum
#39The article is sensationalist, especially with regard to the "fall" part of the "rise and fall of Ethereum". The reality is that Ethereum as a platform has gained strength, credibility and market traction over the last six months. There have been 3 hard forks and 1 soft fork, partly in response to the system being under almost continuous attack (mostly denial of service). The effective response by Vitalik and company…
Not sure why the url path includes 'rise and fall' in it, it doesn't look like it's the actual headline in the article, nor is 'rise and fall' mentioned anywhere in the article. The main point of the article isn't that people are losing trust in Ethereum. It's that there's no platform that truly avoids the need to trust other human beings (as some apparently believe). That code is not absolute law because the communi…
> Not sure why the url path includes 'rise and fall' in it,
These days publications are continually A/B testing headlines.
Re: Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum
#40The article is sensationalist, especially with regard to the "fall" part of the "rise and fall of Ethereum". The reality is that Ethereum as a platform has gained strength, credibility and market traction over the last six months. There have been 3 hard forks and 1 soft fork, partly in response to the system being under almost continuous attack (mostly denial of service). The effective response by Vitalik and company…
Not sure why the url path includes 'rise and fall' in it, it doesn't look like it's the actual headline in the article, nor is 'rise and fall' mentioned anywhere in the article. The main point of the article isn't that people are losing trust in Ethereum. It's that there's no platform that truly avoids the need to trust other human beings (as some apparently believe). That code is not absolute law because the communi…
It's in the document title.