Ethereum is a next-generation cryptocurrency platform • Hacker News Board

Re: Ethereum is a next-generation cryptocurrency platform

#61

Post by Jayschwa » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 7:46 PM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #32

Rhapso wrote: post #5

Honestly, I have yet to see a "meta-coin" that seemed viable. While ideas like creating virtual stocks and property ownership in a block chain are cool they all hinge on actually trusting the person backing those currencies/coins. The meta-programming layer here is nice it gives better transaction control, it does not let us do anything new.

Well a cryptocurrency which actually allowed you to pay for distributed computing, that did useful computations - would be a very interesting thing. "Miners" would have to buy generic hardware that did generic calculations, which actually would have "intrinsic" value since they wouldn't be busy-work to keep things secure, they'd be executing useful computation for a client.

> Well a cryptocurrency which actually allowed you to pay for distributed computing, that did useful computations

This is a bit like saying, "I wish the computations in TLS/SSL did something useful besides securing the connection". The security IS useful!

Re: Ethereum is a next-generation cryptocurrency platform

#62

Post by rdn » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 7:48 PM UTC

ogreyonder wrote: post #51

aaron-lebo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's been further discussion of Dagger. http://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/1vh94e/dagger_upda... Not just in this link but in another that I cannot find, the devs seem to be leaning towards a bybrid PoW/PoS system like Peercoin. Edit: Quote was, "We will switch our PoW from Dagger to a hybrid PoW/PoS system to be developed via a bountied competition conducted by our university partners and open to the gener…

A hybrid system sounds reasonable, but I'm more interested in how they think that Dagger is ASIC-proof. I can't tell without a real description of the algorithm, but what is presented doesn't seem hard to parallelize.

Someone pointed that out to them, https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2014/01/17/ethereum-dagger-pow...

And now they've stated,

"We have made a preliminary decision that we likely will fund a contest, similar to that used to develop AES and SHA3, to determine the best ASIC-proof (ie. going beyond just "memory hard" as a heuristic) mining algorithm" http://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/1vh94e/dagger_upda...

Re: Ethereum is a next-generation cryptocurrency platform

#63

Post by simonebrunozzi » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 8:16 PM UTC

cliveowen wrote: post #11

GavinB wrote: post #9

If the devs are reading--the quotes scroll too quickly to comfortably read, especially with no way to control them or go back. Otherwise this is a gorgeously designed site.

Also, I would do away with clichés like "the only limit is your imagination" et similia as well as all the techno-babble. Keep it simple, don't overdo it.

Agree.

Re: Ethereum is a next-generation cryptocurrency platform

#64

Post by SkyMarshal » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 8:33 PM UTC

ansible wrote: post #2

I like that it is mildly inflationary over the long term, as opposed to deflationary.

Same, though it's not actually inflationary either, but equilibritory [1].

Unlike managed currencies that target a constant rate of inflation (2%-3% in the case of USD), Ethereum creates currency at a constant rate forever. But as the size of the monetary base grows relative to the constant rate of issuance, the inflation rate tends to 0%.

Eventually, when the monetary base hits a certain size, the rate of ethers lost to bitrot, hardware failures, carelessness, deaths, etc. comes to equal the rate of issuance, the monetary base stops increasing, and inflation rate hits 0%.

Both a simple (and in hindsight probably obvious) solution to the problem of lost currency over time, and a nice compromise between inflationary and deflationary currency models.

[1]:http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/equilibratory

Re: Ethereum is a next-generation cryptocurrency platform

#65

Post by gwern » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 9:43 PM UTC

JulianMorrison wrote: post #12

No, no a thousand times no... you are building weird machines[1] into the design of the money system. [1] https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/105516-Br...

Is it really a 'weird machine' in the pejorative sense when the weird machine is the entire point of the altcoin?

Re: Ethereum is a next-generation cryptocurrency platform

#66

Post by gwern » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 9:45 PM UTC

weatherlight wrote: post #31

viach wrote: post #19

such innovate (C)

Turning complete you say? Hark the birth of currency viruses.

Only if they can break the sandboxing. (Which is unpleasantly probable, given how many sandboxes like Java applets have been broken in the past...)

Re: Ethereum is a next-generation cryptocurrency platform

#67

Post by Rhapso » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 10:30 PM UTC

Jayschwa wrote: post #61

XorNot wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well a cryptocurrency which actually allowed you to pay for distributed computing, that did useful computations - would be a very interesting thing. "Miners" would have to buy generic hardware that did generic calculations, which actually would have "intrinsic" value since they wouldn't be busy-work to keep things secure, they'd be executing useful computation for a client.

> Well a cryptocurrency which actually allowed you to pay for distributed computing, that did useful computations This is a bit like saying, "I wish the computations in TLS/SSL did something useful besides securing the connection". The security IS useful!

Interesting that you pick that, it would be more meaningful if TLS/SSL was not vulnerable to man in the middle and certificate spoofing (respectively). The security is useful, but is it sufficient? Sure searching for hash collisions provides a use, but would it not be interesting to devise a way to provide proof of work for a problem that had more useful results. A good example would be solving satisfiability problems posed in previous blocks, it is easy to calculate the difficulty of the problem and the solving solution is not much better then trying random solutions and hoping and the results is instantly verifiable. It would let people encode meaningful problems to be used as proof of work.

Re: Ethereum is a next-generation cryptocurrency platform

#68

Post by SkyMarshal » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 11:25 PM UTC

tromp wrote: post #57

ogreyonder wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://wiki.ethereum.org/index.php/Dagger#Algorithm_specific... : You sound knowledgeable, so perhaps you could clean up their algorithm for me? There are a number of problems with their description that make it hard for me to evaluate. Having tried designing a memory-hard algorithm, I'd like to see what their key insight was, but there are a number of problems with their article. They use confusing operators, the wr…

Cuckoo Cycle at https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo seems like a better proof-of-work system and comes with a full implementation. It has the following features: 1) proofs take the form of a length 42 cycle in the Cuckoo graph, so that verification only requires computing 42 hashes. 2) the graph size (number of nodes) can scale from 1x2^10 to 7x2^29 with 4 bytes needed per node, so memory use scales from 4KB to 14GB. Use…

You should suggest that if you haven't already, unless you're saving it for the bounty.