Are we at the "mania" stage of cryptocurrency interest yet?
Not until we have cryptocurrency bootcamps and people pursuing degrees in cryptofinance.
What Is Ethereum?
41–50 of 272 posts
Re: What Is Ethereum?
#42There's one point in particular that took me a while to grasp: while you can write code that runs on the Ethereum network, every single node has to process that code. So if, for example, you had a big 3d animation sequence that you wanted to have rendered, you would not just send that code off to the network to be processed. You would have to pay to have every single person on the network process that job for you, an…
Ethereum isn't trying to be some sort of generic distributed computing platform. The notion of writing a dApp to do distributed 3D rendering is outrageously stupid.
The idea is to program your money. Here's a dollar that can only be spent on healthy food. Give these to your kids for doing their chores or whatever.
Re: What Is Ethereum?
#43Re: What Is Ethereum?
#44There's one point in particular that took me a while to grasp: while you can write code that runs on the Ethereum network, every single node has to process that code. So if, for example, you had a big 3d animation sequence that you wanted to have rendered, you would not just send that code off to the network to be processed. You would have to pay to have every single person on the network process that job for you, an…
The difficulty is "prove you did it right". I'd guess that only works for cheap-to-verify (trapdoor"?) functions. However, Intel SGX does enable this. You would need an SGX-attested renderer, but the output would include a signature on the inputs in addition to the actual output image. You could verify this signature was made by the SGX-secured renderer code, then you'd know it executed as designed (i.e. the person didn't just draw an image in paint).
SGX would also enable hidden contract data. Right now, you can't publish a contract like "guess my weight and win $100", because the guess code is public (has to be, for miners to exec it). With an SGX-enabled system, this is now totally doable. (Though, you must trust Intel, and assume hackers can't reverse engineer the Intel chips with magic physics or other breaks. So it's probably safe for a few millions but not billions of dollars. (Upper bound, for a few hundred billion you could acquire Intel and compromise SGX secrets.))
SGX is pretty exciting and I'm in the early stages of getting at least one project working with it. There's also research called "Town Crier" to enable TLS-retrieved website data into Ethereum contracts.
For all the people that cry about SGX being big, bad, DRM, it really has its upsides. Too bad Intel requires special licensing to use it - it should just be enabled for all purposes. Maybe they're worried about malware backlash?
Also, an SGX-enabled Ethereum, apart from the Intel/SGX trust issues, means you can skip the computation and just verify the result. It also means you could replace the proof-of-work multi-hash with a single iteration plus a sleep.
Re: What Is Ethereum?
#45This doesn't seem to do it for me. The multiple explanations it offers are all either: 1) Extremely vague and handwavy, or 2) Links to extremely long documents. Neither one is an explanation, something that hits the key points and gives you enough to know what to ask to get greater detail. Edit: toned down criticism.
Unfortunately it's simply not something that can be explained easily and clearly. Imagine trying to explain the Internet to someone who has never seen a computer.
This is actually a sign that something innovative is happening, because it can't be explained in terms of something that already exists.
Re: What Is Ethereum?
#46Are we at the "mania" stage of cryptocurrency interest yet?
Not until Nicki Minaj or Drake appear in a music video with a bitcoin necklace...
Re: What Is Ethereum?
#47Are we at the "mania" stage of cryptocurrency interest yet?
Not until Nicki Minaj or Drake appear in a music video with a bitcoin necklace...
Certainly makes it easy to have a high-density, high-value object - much more dense than casino chips. Put the only copy of a wallet with tons of BTC on a microSD. Fun marketing gimmick, too. Put $100 worth on a bunch of micro SDs, spray 'em gold, toss em out at concerts or stuff.
Would totally get headlines if someone put $1M worth on an SD, then laughed and ate it live on TV and said good luck finding it. Or tossed it out of an airplane, or boat, etc. People show off wealth in all sorts of ways...
Re: What Is Ethereum?
#48There's one point in particular that took me a while to grasp: while you can write code that runs on the Ethereum network, every single node has to process that code. So if, for example, you had a big 3d animation sequence that you wanted to have rendered, you would not just send that code off to the network to be processed. You would have to pay to have every single person on the network process that job for you, an…
"using something called gas"
gas is ETH. It is simply a term they chose to refer to the ETH fee paid to execute the code. I don't like their terminology. Calling it "gas" make it sound like it's a different currency. They should have just call it the "ETH fee".
Re: What Is Ethereum?
#49Few weeks ago I decided to spend a weekend to try to understand Ethereum. I found the whitepaper to be pretty instructive (it even helped me cement my understanding of bitcoin). Here is an annotated version of the whitepaper by vitalik: http://fermatslibrary.com/s/ethereum-a-next-generation-smart...
Interesting; The document mentions creating a crop-insurance application that would depend on a weather feed. The problem is if the weather feed isn't something that's uniformly secureable the result could be bad given that the insurance application would take action automatically and no appeal to any higher authority concerning the fraud would be possible - without a "fork" as happened earlier. Hack an insecure feed…
The weather feed can provided by several oracles, and the contract can take the median value.
You could program whatever logic you want into the insurance. For example, some kind of dispute resolution system that appeals to a higher authority.
How do insurance companies deal with this problem today? Why do you trust the insurance company not to lie and say that the weather was fine? Whatever that mechanism is, it can be programmed into a smart contract.
Re: What Is Ethereum?
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
As soon as I understand ethereum, I will!
Shoot! Explainer site missed the target. I wrote the "average person" page to be quite high level. Unfortunately the "nerdy" page became a little too nerdy. I should work on an "I'm a software developer who wants an intermediate technical understanding" or something like this.
I'm still learning what the fuck ethereum is, but it seems like it could have some revolutionary implications for the political process, am I right? Maybe add an "Explain it like I'm a nerdy politician" (and also an "Explain it like I'm a nanny-state politician" for the politicians more interested in regulating it and protecting the children, than leveraging it)