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What does $100 Ether mean?

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Re: What does $100 Ether mean?

#31

Post by jaibot »

mikejarema wrote: post #21
jaibot wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I routinely pay for things with ethereum - and if the target only accepts btc, then I can just shapeshift. The "Halting Problem" is a red herring here - eth transactions are technically not Turing complete since they automatically halt when they run out of the finite supply of ether attached to the transaction. Saying that ethereum isn't feasible because of the halting problem is like saying cars aren't feasible beca…

Here (and when I see people generally using the term) is the meaning of "shapeshift" simply that you go to shapeshift.io and exchange from one cryptocurrency to another?

Yup!

Re: What does $100 Ether mean?

#33

Post by avaer »

45h34jh53k4j wrote: post #24

Bitcoin has had several drastic price corrections in its life. We are yet to see this from Ether. I suspect the fall will be greater if it starts >$100. Of course, we will look back on this in 5 years and think $100 ETHER was cheap!

If everyone agreed this was "of course", Ether would be more than $100 today.

Re: What does $100 Ether mean?

#34

Post by leashless »

djh_ wrote: post #13

The author talks about making Ethereum more humane and user-friendly, but jargon like "The Internet of Agreements" and "Humanizing the Singularity" makes me think he's mostly interested in becoming a thought-leader through Branding™. Those terms and his bombastic language in general will not help bring Ethereum to the masses like he claims to want to do. Also, the idea that Ethereum at $100 implies this amazing decen…

"Internet of Agreements" we hope to stand up as a series of conferences, and then a trade association a bit like a more participatory "Internet of Things." Remember that Linux, Ethereum, Internet of Things are all trademarks. It's very much how the world works: if you want to build a commons, first you have to have something to share.

Re: What does $100 Ether mean?

#35

Post by leashless »

RichardHeart wrote: post #15
djh_ wrote: post #13

The author talks about making Ethereum more humane and user-friendly, but jargon like "The Internet of Agreements" and "Humanizing the Singularity" makes me think he's mostly interested in becoming a thought-leader through Branding™. Those terms and his bombastic language in general will not help bring Ethereum to the masses like he claims to want to do. Also, the idea that Ethereum at $100 implies this amazing decen…

I think Vinay has great insights into gun control, the hexayurt, and some other topics, however, on ETH, I think he's totally in error. I'd be happy to livestream chat him about it.

What do you think I'm missing about ETH?

Insufficient political radicalism?

Re: What does $100 Ether mean?

#36

Post by leashless »

rocqua wrote: post #27
joeblau wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But does BTC randomly reward the miners like ETH does as being described in this post?

Both BTC and ETH don't actually reward randomly. Instead, everyone is just trying a large amount of 'solutions' until one works. The first to find and distribute such a solution is said to have 'mined' such a block and gets to add his reward into the record by modifying that block. Because there is no way to know the true solution, everyone is just guessing so in the end it is random chance that determines who gets t…

Bigger computers equals faster search, which we could explain to non techies as buying more lottery tickets. I try never to explain mining to a general audience. It's too low level for a clean semantic mapping between what they want to know about, and how it all really works.

Re: What does $100 Ether mean?

#37

Post by leashless »

rocqua wrote: post #27
joeblau wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But does BTC randomly reward the miners like ETH does as being described in this post?

Both BTC and ETH don't actually reward randomly. Instead, everyone is just trying a large amount of 'solutions' until one works. The first to find and distribute such a solution is said to have 'mined' such a block and gets to add his reward into the record by modifying that block. Because there is no way to know the true solution, everyone is just guessing so in the end it is random chance that determines who gets t…

Bigger computers equals faster search, which we could explain to non techies as buying more lottery tickets. I try never to explain mining to a general audience. It's too low level for a clean semantic mapping between what they want to know about, and how it all really works.

Re: What does $100 Ether mean?

#38

Post by nugget »

cjslep wrote: post #12

They forgot the feature where if a smart contract doesn't go the way they want it, they create a default-opt-in hard fork of the currency. Sorry if I don't trust the "small group of legends" more than the government.

I am a fan of Ethereum but I wish they (and other alt-coins) would be honest about the fact that there is very much a central authority at work; in Ethereum's case, it's a small network of developers and mining pools. That's not necessarily bad, but let's at least be honest about it. Admit that central authorities have a role to play (and may take many different forms). Recent events clearly reflect, to me at least, that the value of a blockchain doesn't depend upon the lack of a central authority (indeed, investors may feel safer with a steady hand on the wheel) or immutability (Ethereum violated supposed rule #1 and look at how the market has voted, i.e. ETH/ETC price variance).

Re: What does $100 Ether mean?

#39

Post by leashless »

RichardHeart wrote: post #2

I think it means a lot of people are going to lose a lot more money than $1 Ether would have meant. 1. The halting problem states you can't predict what a turing complete program will do, until you run it. This means to some degree, that you can't predict what your "smart" contract will do, until it does it. Thus turing completeness causes security to be far, far harder than non turing completeness. This is how you l…

To be fair, BTC had a lot of problems in the early years too.

And note I'm trying to be technology agnostic as we build out the VC firm and the Internet of Agreements organisation - I am not of the opinion any of these systems are going to scale cleanly. I think we will need to go back and build it from scratch on an abstraction like pi calculus and work it up from there, not try to accelerate the Proof of Work systems by increments.

Only time will tell, though. I'm flexible on this.

Re: What does $100 Ether mean?

#40

Post by 7373737373 »

lumberjack wrote: post #29

The problem with smart contracts is that they are only 100% trustless as long as all the input data is already present on the blockchain. Even something banally simple as "if such and such win the world cup deposit earnings there" cannot be 100% trustless. How does one overcome this problem? I don't think smart contracts can overcome this problem while remaining 100% trustless.

"Trustless" is a terrible meme, as the term is misleading and the implementation of the concept is impossible. The truth is:

There is no cloud, just other people's computers.

Smart contracts can make trust relationships explicit.

By using a blockchain system, you entrust a network - which you may have no control over - with application state. If you rely on such a network, you indirectly also rely on the network infrastructure and operators' social and economic incentives.

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