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Show HN: The Million Dollar Homepage as an Ethereum Smart Contract and DApp

thousandetherhomepage.com

71–80 of 126 posts

Re: Show HN: The Million Dollar Homepage as an Ethereum Smart Contract and DApp

#71

Whoever bought the ad for syscoin.org didn't use an absolute URL and the link goes to https://thousandetherhomepage.com/syscoin.org .

A follow-up question: can you insert javascript:{ stuff } as the URL your ad links to? I'm actually curious if you could make "dangerous ads" where a stray click from a logged in account would trigger a transaction.

Good point, I added a check specifically for this.

Re: Show HN: The Million Dollar Homepage as an Ethereum Smart Contract and DApp

#72

Whoever bought the ad for syscoin.org didn't use an absolute URL and the link goes to https://thousandetherhomepage.com/syscoin.org .

Do this mean that typo is not editable as it's in the blockchain?

If you own an ad, you can "publish" to change the link or image url any time you want. All it costs is the transaction fees.

Re: Show HN: The Million Dollar Homepage as an Ethereum Smart Contract and DApp

#73
post #67

A naïve question for someone who doesn't really understand Ethereum: Why are smart contracts needed here ? Would it not be possible to send specific structures in a blockchain with the icon and the url, and just using a now old-style thing like Bitcoin ? What do nodes need to agree on ?

You could do this with Bitcoin too. You would just send Bitcoin to an address, with an OP_RETURN with the coordinates and a hash of the pixel values you put there. Only the first one would "win". The Ethereum contract does have the feature that you effectively get your money back if you're not first - a transaction that tries to take already-taken pixels is invalid. You could implement this today on Bitcoin with HTLCs and zk-SNARKs, but there might be a simpler solution that I'm not immediately thinking of.

Re: Show HN: The Million Dollar Homepage as an Ethereum Smart Contract and DApp

#77

Can someone quickly explain how file storage / bandwidth off the blockchain works? Who pays the gas to deliver it to end users?

You pay for gas when you send a transaction (i.e. buy an ad or publish an ad). For displaying, if you browse with Mist or MetaMask, you're pulling the data from the blockchain. When you don't, we show you the ads statically by using a Ethereum gateway. Either way, reading doesn't cost gas, just bandwidth to keep the blockchain in sync.

Thanks. How is the Ethereum blockchain suppose to support hosting this data forever if nodes don’t get paid for it?

Re: Show HN: The Million Dollar Homepage as an Ethereum Smart Contract and DApp

#78
post #67

A naïve question for someone who doesn't really understand Ethereum: Why are smart contracts needed here ? Would it not be possible to send specific structures in a blockchain with the icon and the url, and just using a now old-style thing like Bitcoin ? What do nodes need to agree on ?

It's a different experience.

Ethereum brings a whole development toolchain and ecosystem through the Web3 API which wallets implement, allowing for DApps. Take a look at this GIF, for example: https://gfycat.com/BleakSimilarGermanspaniel

A lot of it could be emulated with Bitcoin through a combination of signed off-chain and on-chain state, but you'd have to convince yours really hard to say it's equivalent.

Re: Show HN: The Million Dollar Homepage as an Ethereum Smart Contract and DApp

#79

Don't know much about blockchain so excuse me for the question. Say someone uploaded a copyrighted image, who (if anyone) would a dmca notice go to? If you got one what could or would you do? Does safe harbor apply in this scenario if you can only tag as nsfw with the option to view instead of block completely?

If you uploaded the bytes of a copyrighted image to the Ethereum blockchain, then the notice would go to... I guess every peer who downloads and reshares the blockchain.

But also it could go to any gateways which promote and display content from the blockchain, like our thousandetherhomepage frontend. It would be our responsibility to stop violating the terms to the best of our ability, and the NSFW flag is that.

Re: Show HN: The Million Dollar Homepage as an Ethereum Smart Contract and DApp

#80

OK, so I basically know next to nothing about cryptocurrencies. I do know, however, that Bitcoin is undergoing a cooling of sorts on account of the block difficulty getting higher and higher. As a result, transactions now take forever to verify and fees are going up. At some point, unless drastic steps are taken, this will presumably result in a "heat death of the universe" scenario. (I guess the software is constant…

> I do know, however, that Bitcoin is undergoing a cooling of sorts on account of the block difficulty getting higher and higher. As a result, transactions now take forever to verify and fees are going up. Completely untrue. Difficulty is proportional to the hash rate. Transaction time varies as a result of multiple factors. Some reading and historical difficulty/confirmation time data: https://blockchain.info/charts…

Parent is certainly wrong about the details, but absolutely right about the challenges that cryptographic currencies face. Scaling is a huge issue that is very much an open question.

If you're interested in scaling approaches, Vitalik Buterin has written a lot about this issue in a very thoughtful manner, both as it applies to Bitcoin and Ethereum.

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