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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

#41

Post by Jtsummers »

seagreen wrote: post #38
Jtsummers wrote: post #34

Has 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 contract…

That's unfortunate. I don't see Ethereum as the future or being long-lived in its current form, but as a proof of concept it has value. Unfortunately, critical flaws in early projects can kill momentum and interest and delay progress for years. See the 1980s and the AI Winter. Overpromised, misunderstood, and underdelivered. This led to reductions in research funding and delays in developments (admittedly, faster and cheaper computers made a lot of those developments either easier or feasible, where the problems being solved may have been intractable in the 80s and 90s).

Re: Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum

#42

Post by shuzhang »

neilk wrote: post #39
shuzhang wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fair enough. Then I'd argue maybe one headline they're A/B testing is sensationalist, but the article itself isn't, nor does it feel like the article is at all making a point about the 'fall' of Ethereum.

Re: Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum

#43

Post by wyager »

drcode wrote: post #19
wyager wrote: post #15

Earlier 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 code is the law", they said. And the law can change if the community deems it wise.

> And the law can change if the community deems it wise.

In other words, the code isn't the law, which is exactly what I said.

Re: Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum

#44

Post by wyager »

Klinky wrote: post #27
drcode wrote: post #19

Earlier 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…

This hasn't been a problem with Bitcoin. No transactions have been reversed because a big player got robbed. The only hard forks in Bitcoin have been due to implementation bugs, and it's only happened once or twice.

Re: Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum

#45

Post by onestone »

deegles wrote: post #33
drcode wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You speak as if this was an individual's decision. It was not. Vitalik may be influential, but it was not his decision to fork. The community decided so, by a significant majority.

Re: Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum

#46

Post by Klinky »

wyager wrote: post #44
Klinky wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This hasn't been a problem with Bitcoin. No transactions have been reversed because a big player got robbed. The only hard forks in Bitcoin have been due to implementation bugs, and it's only happened once or twice.

You still have most of the power concentrated within the developers, pool owners, and exchanges. This has resulted in major instability due to some of these major players operating effectively scams via either outright stealing or the hiding of major losses.

Most of the issues with currencies(and most everything) is trust and the motivations of other people. Technology might help democratize a world currency, but those who corner the market first will have major influence over it, which in turn will quickly result in the same imbalance in power which was trying to be avoided.

Re: Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum

#47

Post by kawera »

shuzhang wrote: post #37
mistermumble wrote: post #5

The 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…

I'm the OP and I didn't editorialized the title - I never do that. Probably something out of my control happened in the mean time.

Re: Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum

#48

Post by mistermumble »

seagreen wrote: post #38
Jtsummers wrote: post #34

Has 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 contract…

Solidity is the most widely adopted language, but there are other choices including Serpent (Python-like)and LLL (lisp-like).

A few developers I know use Serpent because it is simple and stable (meaning it has not been changed or updated for a while, unlike Solidity which they say is continually being tweaked in a manner that can be aggravating).

Interestingly, Vitalik's preferred language (say for prototyping Casper algorithms) is Python. He created Serpent and is now working on Viper, which sounds like a next-generation Serpent. Viper is being implemented in Python3.

You can see the work in progress at: https://github.com/ethereum/viper

Re: Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum

#49

Post by aarpmcgee »

arisAlexis wrote: post #6

for sure Etherum's hard fork was not and will not be the most important thing that happened in my or our lifetimes as said in the blog post

The article says "philosophically interesting" – unless I am missing something, that's a very different thing than what you're claiming the article says.

Re: Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum

#50

Post by DennisP »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #29
riprowan wrote: post #4

This article veers between erroneous sensationalism and strategic deception. I will attempt to debunk a few of the most important errors in this article. In short, the author takes the position that the promise of blockchains is immutability; and that by hardforking, Ethereum proves that "immutability" requires trust: > We aren’t actually trusting the blockchain technology; we are trusting the people that support the…

> anyone can create a fork - though it takes hashpower to protect a fork from hashpower attack. Minor aside, unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum doesn't use hashpower (proof of work) as its voting currency, it uses proof of stake. So in order to convince the network of a lie, you need to be willing to put up monetary bets against the truth, and then pay them. This is very unlike Bitcoin, where you buy your mining rig, and then…

That's a pretty good description of Ethereum's proof of stake but it won't be in production for a year or so; for now it's still on proof of work.
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