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Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

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Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#41

Post by extrapickles »

nosuchthing wrote: post #23
seibelj wrote: post #6

Cryptocurrencies, and especially Ethereum, are truly novel innovations in computer science that cross many academic disciplines. The linked example is a great write-up. It’s sad that there is a vocal group, especially on HN, that knee-jerk hates everything blockchain related and wishes with their entire being for it to fail. However, I think smart contracts are fascinating and wish more people would keep an open mind…

The term “Smart contracts” (Ethereum/EOS/hyperledger) is often used with wild claims for supply chains and cross border business deals, but why would any real business want to use a public blockchain? Smart contracts can’t even do anything interesting without a trusted source of data input. The threat model and legal questions of smart contracts are another huge deterrent for most businesses. Latency, throughput, sec…

The "best" use of blockchain type technology I have seen is the NIST randomness beacon, though I can't think of many applications other than a lottery or where you need to formally prove you used random numbers to pick something.

[0]: https://www.nist.gov/programs-projects/nist-randomness-beaco... [1]: https://beacon.nist.gov/home

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#42

Post by tomc1985 »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #24
LeoPanthera wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to be anti-blockchain, but I have yet to come across any problems that are solved better with a blockchain than with any other traditional technology - except for the original one, a distributed electronic currency.

I don’t understand why you would be anti- something so new at all. To me it’s preposterous that you would evaluate a new technology based on how many problems it and only it can solve. Don’t you get that new technology has an incubation period where its fundamental challenges must be overcome? What problem could early steam powered cars solve that horses couldn’t solve better? I doubt the earliest ones performed bett…

You're praising innovation blindly. Not all innovation is good, and many supposed innovators are crocks. I understand blockchains enough to where I could build one of my own (note that I say blockchain, and not cryptocurrency) and I really don't see much use for this particular datastructure outside certain niche applications.

What are these truly innovative uses for a nested chain of data blobs whose contents include a hash of the previous link?

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#43

Post by [deleted] »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #19
seibelj wrote: post #6

Cryptocurrencies, and especially Ethereum, are truly novel innovations in computer science that cross many academic disciplines. The linked example is a great write-up. It’s sad that there is a vocal group, especially on HN, that knee-jerk hates everything blockchain related and wishes with their entire being for it to fail. However, I think smart contracts are fascinating and wish more people would keep an open mind…

I don't want to be anti-blockchain, but I have yet to come across any problems that are solved better with a blockchain than with any other traditional technology - except for the original one, a distributed electronic currency.

[deleted]

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#44

Post by arcticbull »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #24
LeoPanthera wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to be anti-blockchain, but I have yet to come across any problems that are solved better with a blockchain than with any other traditional technology - except for the original one, a distributed electronic currency.

I don’t understand why you would be anti- something so new at all. To me it’s preposterous that you would evaluate a new technology based on how many problems it and only it can solve. Don’t you get that new technology has an incubation period where its fundamental challenges must be overcome? What problem could early steam powered cars solve that horses couldn’t solve better? I doubt the earliest ones performed bett…

It's not new, BTC is a full decade old. At this point the internet had a billion users.

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#45

Post by arcticbull »

thecatspaw wrote: post #40
erikpukinskis wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand why you would be anti- something so new at all. To me it’s preposterous that you would evaluate a new technology based on how many problems it and only it can solve. Don’t you get that new technology has an incubation period where its fundamental challenges must be overcome? What problem could early steam powered cars solve that horses couldn’t solve better? I doubt the earliest ones performed bett…

I am not anti-blockchain, there are applications where it makes sense. But 90% of the time when I hear about a blockchain related application its a regular application which just so happens to use the blockchain as storage because its a buzzword. It feels like the world suddenly discovered the hammer, and now we think everything is a nail

Like what? Everyone seems to hand-wave this, but nobody in the full decade long history of bitcoin and blockchain has come up with a single good use case that isn't better solved by MySQL.

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#47

Post by arcticbull »

pfisch wrote: post #34
chickenfries wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many advantages to early cars, are you kidding me? They don’t eat hay and shit for one. Is there anything that your argument wouldn’t work for? Do you truly have to wait a decade before making any judgements about the hype around a technology? When will we be able to say if smart contracts have been overhyped?

They eat coal/gasoline which is probably more expensive. Also they worked on almost no terrain at all compared to horses and constantly broke down. The only reason they would even make sense to pursue would be because of how successful the train was. Similar to how this bitcoin stuff makes more sense when you look at the success of the internet/paypal/amazon.

You know you can research this stuff right? Gasoline was a waste product in the refining of crude oil (specifically, into Kerosene [itself a replacement for whale oil] they were making anyways). It used to be considered garbage. [1] It really only became valuable once they realized they could power cars with it. They used to dump it in rivers, making them catch fire. [2]

In what - concrete - way is bitcoin related to the success of Amazon or the internet? Please be specific and don't hand-wave if you're going to make such bold claims.

[1] https://knowledgenuts.com/2014/02/24/gasoline-used-to-be-con...

[2] http://www.attendly.com/rockefellers-unconventional-approach...

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#48

Post by arcticbull »

dpc_pw wrote: post #10
arcticbull wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or neither Bitcoin nor Blockchain. The thing is, inflation is actually what keeps the entire economy moving. Deflationary currencies actively dissuade investment and lending. What would a loan even look like denominated in a deflationary currency? Lenders are incentivized not to give you the one, as their cash reserves appreciate risk-free. Oh, and also, why trust this random ad-hoc group of self-appointed economists…

Blah, blah, blah. Take your inflationary currency if you really like it so much, no one really cares, and no one ever forced anyone to use deflationary currency (unlike fiat ones), which tells you where the the truth is.

I don't hold it, I invest it in productive things, like I said. I sell those productive assets when I need to buy something substantial, and I use the US Dollar as a medium of exchange and unit of account. You know, a currency. I don't hold it for long enough for 3% annual inflation to make a meaningful dent in my net worth.

It's also trivially false that nobody ever forced a deflationary currency on people, the US dollar used to backed by gold. If your argument is the US dollar is/was forced on people, then the argument is moot.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#49

Post by arcticbull »

zmitton wrote: post #9
arcticbull wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or neither Bitcoin nor Blockchain. The thing is, inflation is actually what keeps the entire economy moving. Deflationary currencies actively dissuade investment and lending. What would a loan even look like denominated in a deflationary currency? Lenders are incentivized not to give you the one, as their cash reserves appreciate risk-free. Oh, and also, why trust this random ad-hoc group of self-appointed economists…

Your economics are all wrong. Ever heard of the Cantillon Effect? https://www.aier.org/article/sound-money-project/cantillon-e...

Your article seems to be making a distinction between the Cantillon effects and Money Neutrality.

"In principle, it could be argued that Cantillon Effects focus on the short-term effect of changes in money supply, but that money neutrality is a long term characteristic of money. Short-run effects in resource allocation are typically not denied, usually due to the fact that they alter “sticky” prices, such as wages." It then goes on to argue that Money Neutrality shouldn't be taken as a given.

I don't think the article states money neutrality is fallacious, though, and I couldn't find any substantiating claims within it. I suppose the argument I am making is for money neutrality. That yes, the initial recipients of capital are temporarily advantaged being able to purchase assets are pre-inflation prices. However, over time, this does balance out. The market makes it so. I'm not sure, maybe I'm missing something? I'd love to read more on this if you think I am.

That said Bitcoin has a worse Gini ratio than any banana republic, worse wealth distribution and all sorts of other economic factors, and an unbounded cost to transact that as a fixed fee unfairly burdens the poor -- that just make it worse all around than the existing USD based financial system.

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#50

Post by TheDong »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #29
nosuchthing wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term “Smart contracts” (Ethereum/EOS/hyperledger) is often used with wild claims for supply chains and cross border business deals, but why would any real business want to use a public blockchain? Smart contracts can’t even do anything interesting without a trusted source of data input. The threat model and legal questions of smart contracts are another huge deterrent for most businesses. Latency, throughput, sec…

> why would any real business want to use a public blockchain? I think it is only important for a business when public trust is important. For example, a news agency could publish its articles in a public blockchain so the original article and any updates to that article would forever be auditable from that blockchain.

Why a blockchain?

ipfs [0] already provides persistent immutable links.

Creating a torrent with a feed for updates [1] would also provide distributed storage and hashing of the content with the ability to publish updates.

Or they could create a git repo and encourage others to mirror the git repo, such that they couldn't rebase away history without those mirrors noticing.

Or, and here's a radical idea, they could physically print and deliver papers to people, which means any updates would have to be included as noted amendments in future delivered papers.

However, why would any business want to do this? News sites these days are built on complex dynamic content and ads, which is antithetical to distributing the content in any such ways. If you can download just the text of the article, they're losing ad views. If you download the ads too, it now changes each time a new person purchases an ad on their ad network.

This is blockchain trying to dream up a problem for publishers which those publishers don't think they have. If they did have that problem, a git repo would be the most mature and simple way to implement it, not "blockchain" which includes nothing as mature as git under its umbrella.

[0]: https://ipfs.io/#uses

[1]: http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0039.html

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