Topic: Ethereum: 2nd gen cryptocurrency with contract programming, "dagger" hashing - page 7. (Read 84312 times)
January 22, 2014, 07:54:34 PM
January 22, 2014, 07:16:21 PM
Hey all, Vitalik Buterin, founder here.
Second, and more importantly, while I do understand the sentiment that cryptocurrency algorithms should be neutral and privilege no specific parties I would like to contest the claim that the concept of neutrality in the context of issuance is both (1) possible and (2) desirable. When you're putting BTC into the Ethereum fundraiser, you're financially empowering and incentivizing an organization that has produced substantial real results already, and is pledged to developing the Ethereum protocol. When you're putting BTC into a proof of burn, through the deflation effect you're effectively donating your money to large BTC early adopters.
Second, and more importantly, while I do understand the sentiment that cryptocurrency algorithms should be neutral and privilege no specific parties I would like to contest the claim that the concept of neutrality in the context of issuance is both (1) possible and (2) desirable. When you're putting BTC into the Ethereum fundraiser, you're financially empowering and incentivizing an organization that has produced substantial real results already, and is pledged to developing the Ethereum protocol. When you're putting BTC into a proof of burn, through the deflation effect you're effectively donating your money to large BTC early adopters.
It is true that the side-effect of ProofofBurn is to increase the value of BTC, but on the scale on which ProofofBurn occurs the change in BTC value is nearly marginal: for example 1000-10000 bitcoins out of 12,000,000+ in circulation represents a .000083% - .00083% increase in value per coin. I think rather the point behind it is as a barrier from easy entry, and while it is true that someone may burn a very large sum, unlike with fund-raisers there is no guarantee on the return of that money and thus generally serves as a barrier from monopolistic capitalization.
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With regard to the "founders get some for free" factor, what people need to understand is that every currency, including BTC, QRK, MSC and Ripple, so far has privileged its founders in some fashion. The only difference is that in some cases the privilege is more subtle than in others. With Bitcoin, Satoshi got his 0.25X by mining it for a year when nobody else had heard about Bitcoin yet. With MSC, JR got his by running a fundraiser relatively quietly on Bitcointalk and then targeting media attention only after it was over. We are not seeking any avantage through obscurity; we will be targeting the limelight from before the first day that the fundraiser launches.
The comparison to Satoshi is unfair, since the obscurity was at least mostly unintentional and though he may have held certain notions as to the Bitcoins future value, there was no real way to know that there would be such value (main-stream adaptation) to Bitcoin and not some other protocol.
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Now, to clarify some facts:
* The founders will not be getting any BTC from the pool. We may get some not particularly high wages to live on, but our financial interest in the project is heavily concentrated in the value of our premine share.
* The founders are not getting 25%. The founders are getting 12.5% after one year when those funds actually become accessible, and the percentage will rapidly dwindle due to supply expansion, becoming 6.25% after 5 years. I'm sure that there exist five people today who together own 6.25% of all bitcoins, and Satoshi alone likely has that much. In Mastercoin, three people have 25%.
* The founders will not be getting any BTC from the pool. We may get some not particularly high wages to live on, but our financial interest in the project is heavily concentrated in the value of our premine share.
* The founders are not getting 25%. The founders are getting 12.5% after one year when those funds actually become accessible, and the percentage will rapidly dwindle due to supply expansion, becoming 6.25% after 5 years. I'm sure that there exist five people today who together own 6.25% of all bitcoins, and Satoshi alone likely has that much. In Mastercoin, three people have 25%.
According to the numbers specified on your website - founders get .25x of x fundraised funds, and the foundation gets .25x of fundraised funds. Which would make the premine supply 1.5X and thus gives .5xXor 33% premine to the founders - plus the equivalent of all fund raised funds in btc.
Suppose the developers participate in the fund raiser, they donate some P % of X total btc. They therefore get P + .5P in funds, and all of their BTC back from the foundation. It makes exploitation very clearly possible.
And since 33% of initial premine + The entire amount of btc is already a such a sum that can only be explained as Greed - I don't see on what grounds you can convince anyone that you aren't going to exploit the system further.
If ethereum came to even 10% of BTC market cap, just 2-4% should be more than plenty for all developmental and foundational purposes.
January 22, 2014, 07:03:12 PM
Ethereum Thoughts and Questions
Rassah, I agree with you that the people behind ethereum are the reason I have spent a few days looking at this very hard. I will be at the Miami conference, and I will consider investing if my questions have reasonable answers. Illegal contracts are particularly concerning to me.
NECESSITY OF A NEW BLOCKCHAIN
The whitepaper states that colored coins inherit the same limitations as the bitcoin protocol. Metacoins do not, but they cannot be truly secure without having a copy of the blockchain. How big of a problem is this? Hasn't the Electrum model worked for Bitcoin? Is there a big issue with just querying a bunch of supernodes to see if they all give the same result? Is it necessary to have absolute security with every contract, or only very high value transactions? Is it correct that metacoin clients won't need the first 14gb of the blockchain?
BITCOIN BLOCKCHAIN SIZE
Bitcoin Magazine's analysis showed that since storage capacity and internet bandwidth follow Moore's law, the blockchain size will not be a problem to store on phones. How many years from now should we predict that the blockchain size will become irrelevant? If the blockchain size were irrelevant, would that remove the need for ethereum? How much demand is there for blockchain contracts at this time, and how fast should we expect demand to accelerate?
ETHEREUM BLOCKCHAIN
How fast should we estimate the ethereum blockchain size will grow? What will be the effects of ethereum blockchain size growth several orders of magnitude greater than Bitcoin? Will this lead to more mining centralisation?
TURING COMPLETENESS
Is it reasonable to think the client can be sandboxed? What will be the effects of these, since the protocol is Turing complete: viruses, malware, adware, keyloggers, scam contracts, wallet stealers
ILLEGAL CONTRACTS
What will be the effects of illegal contracts? An assassination market, for example? Will the Silk Road be able to run on ethereum? Will a database of child porn be able to be stored? If there is child porn stored on the blockchain that is easily accessible, will it be legal to store the blockchain in any country? What will be the effects of running all the clients over Tor by default? Can a 60s block time with huge blocks work over Tor?
SATOSHI'S ARGUMENTS
In 2010, satoshi succesfully argued against including Namecoin into bitcoin, suggesting merge-mining instead.
"Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.
Bitcoin and BitDNS can be used separately. Users shouldn't have to download all of both to use one or the other. BitDNS users may not want to download everything the next several unrelated networks decide to pile in either.
The networks need to have separate fates. BitDNS users might be completely liberal about adding any large data features since relatively few domain registrars are needed, while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices." -- Satoshi
You can view the rest of his arguments in the thread here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.0;all
DEVELOPER COMMENTS
I have not seen any core bitcoin developers comment on ethereum. Is there somewhere besides the reddit and the thread on bitcointalk about it?
I am not very technical, so sorry if some of my questions are invalid or stated incorrectly. I also posted this on reddit.com/r/ethereum since it seems like Vitalik responds there more often.
Illegal contracts and illegal activities will require political intervention because society itself defines those limits. This implies some kind of voting system is required.Rassah, I agree with you that the people behind ethereum are the reason I have spent a few days looking at this very hard. I will be at the Miami conference, and I will consider investing if my questions have reasonable answers. Illegal contracts are particularly concerning to me.
NECESSITY OF A NEW BLOCKCHAIN
The whitepaper states that colored coins inherit the same limitations as the bitcoin protocol. Metacoins do not, but they cannot be truly secure without having a copy of the blockchain. How big of a problem is this? Hasn't the Electrum model worked for Bitcoin? Is there a big issue with just querying a bunch of supernodes to see if they all give the same result? Is it necessary to have absolute security with every contract, or only very high value transactions? Is it correct that metacoin clients won't need the first 14gb of the blockchain?
BITCOIN BLOCKCHAIN SIZE
Bitcoin Magazine's analysis showed that since storage capacity and internet bandwidth follow Moore's law, the blockchain size will not be a problem to store on phones. How many years from now should we predict that the blockchain size will become irrelevant? If the blockchain size were irrelevant, would that remove the need for ethereum? How much demand is there for blockchain contracts at this time, and how fast should we expect demand to accelerate?
ETHEREUM BLOCKCHAIN
How fast should we estimate the ethereum blockchain size will grow? What will be the effects of ethereum blockchain size growth several orders of magnitude greater than Bitcoin? Will this lead to more mining centralisation?
TURING COMPLETENESS
Is it reasonable to think the client can be sandboxed? What will be the effects of these, since the protocol is Turing complete: viruses, malware, adware, keyloggers, scam contracts, wallet stealers
ILLEGAL CONTRACTS
What will be the effects of illegal contracts? An assassination market, for example? Will the Silk Road be able to run on ethereum? Will a database of child porn be able to be stored? If there is child porn stored on the blockchain that is easily accessible, will it be legal to store the blockchain in any country? What will be the effects of running all the clients over Tor by default? Can a 60s block time with huge blocks work over Tor?
SATOSHI'S ARGUMENTS
In 2010, satoshi succesfully argued against including Namecoin into bitcoin, suggesting merge-mining instead.
"Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.
Bitcoin and BitDNS can be used separately. Users shouldn't have to download all of both to use one or the other. BitDNS users may not want to download everything the next several unrelated networks decide to pile in either.
The networks need to have separate fates. BitDNS users might be completely liberal about adding any large data features since relatively few domain registrars are needed, while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices." -- Satoshi
You can view the rest of his arguments in the thread here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.0;all
DEVELOPER COMMENTS
I have not seen any core bitcoin developers comment on ethereum. Is there somewhere besides the reddit and the thread on bitcointalk about it?
I am not very technical, so sorry if some of my questions are invalid or stated incorrectly. I also posted this on reddit.com/r/ethereum since it seems like Vitalik responds there more often.
The fact that Satoshi was reluctant to build something relatively straightforward like namecoin/bitdns into bitcoin likely means Ethereum will face some very challenging scaling obstacles in the short term because Ethereum is trying to potentially run all protocols at the same time. I hope I'm wrong but Satoshi is very wise.
January 22, 2014, 07:00:53 PM
To me, POW is such a waste of resources, we are spending millions on resources to mine BTC, it doesn't seem like the direction we should continue heading as the world struggles with limited resources. The amount of power wasted mining BTC is absolutely atrocious. Regarding your concerns with POS, read up on Transparent Forging. POW is completely susceptible to corporate control, look at the mining pools, you are close to 51% with Ghash.io alone. Meanwhile I'm forging Nxt right now on my RasPi.
Yes, that is the point, we don't like centralization at Nxt.
January 22, 2014, 06:55:42 PM
Pretty messed up seeing people discussing Ethereum on here from the point of view of "coin and profit," instead of "platform and possibilities." I guess it's mostly the same newbies that still see Bitcoin as just a coin/commodity to invest in, and not a financial platform to develop on top of. Personally, I would invest 20BTC in things like BitMessage and OpenTransactions, despite their "coins" themselves not having any value, just because the possibilities they offer as platforms are enormous! I will be investing in this as well. Not because of the possible return on the coins (though I suspect that will still be substantial), and not even because of the initially proposed technology (which, as someone pointed out, is similar to some other coins out there), but because of the team involved. Ask any top VC out there. They don't invest in ideas, they invest in people. It's also why Bitcoin will always be top coin, despite other altcoins constantly coming out with little fixes here and there. The quality, and quantity, of people working on it is way superior to any other alternatives.
To ignore coin and profit is to deny reality. Communism is a failed experiment. We laud your generosity to invest on possibilities and your wherewithal to invest 20 Btc on visionary projects. Thank you. However, your noble actions are somewhat diluted by your criticism of others. Do I see Bill Gates moaning about how others are so short sighted? No, I see him going out there putting up a good fight because he is wealthy. If Ethereum finds few investors, we will not be wondering why. We know the economic foundations were not calibrated to reward early investors. That is a fact. Discussing it does not make one greedy, immoral or otherwise. It is an open admission of financial reality. I wish Ethereum all success. January 22, 2014, 06:45:04 PM
To me, POW is such a waste of resources, we are spending millions on resources to mine BTC, it doesn't seem like the direction we should continue heading as the world struggles with limited resources. The amount of power wasted mining BTC is absolutely atrocious. Regarding your concerns with POS, read up on Transparent Forging. POW is completely susceptible to corporate control, look at the mining pools, you are close to 51% with Ghash.io alone. Meanwhile I'm forging Nxt right now on my RasPi.
January 22, 2014, 06:14:10 PM
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Meanwhile I'm forging Nxt right now on my RasPi.
This is really cool. It will be very good for mining on always on, solid state gateway devices and routers.
Yes, we have an army of RasPi's and Cubietrucks securing our network. Here is the first look at our high-end forging rig.
http://www.nxtcoins.nl/first-look-nxt-high-end-forging-rig/
January 22, 2014, 06:10:45 PM
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Meanwhile I'm forging Nxt right now on my RasPi.
This is really cool. It will be very good for mining on always on, solid state gateway devices and routers.
January 22, 2014, 06:07:33 PM
Both PoS and PoW are useful in different cases, PoW for resource allocation in a network where mining rewards useful work and resource contributions, PoS for allocating dividends and voting with proxy for investment funds and other applications for pooling resources.
Since Ethereum is a computing platform, and not a distributed corp, that would suggest that Ethereum would benefit more from PoW's contribution of useful work and mining resources, as opposed to PoS's earnings, dividents, and voting from speculative holders. Thanks for further clarification.
Yes, executing the contracts will involve processing power, storage, and bandwidth, suggesting PoW mining.
Other things built on top of Ethereum might use PoS for distribution and voting.
January 22, 2014, 06:07:04 PM
Pretty messed up seeing people discussing Ethereum on here from the point of view of "coin and profit," instead of "platform and possibilities." I guess it's mostly the same newbies that still see Bitcoin as just a coin/commodity to invest in, and not a financial platform to develop on top of. Personally, I would invest 20BTC in things like BitMessage and OpenTransactions, despite their "coins" themselves not having any value, just because the possibilities they offer as platforms are enormous! I will be investing in this as well. Not because of the possible return on the coins (though I suspect that will still be substantial), and not even because of the initially proposed technology (which, as someone pointed out, is similar to some other coins out there), but because of the team involved. Ask any top VC out there. They don't invest in ideas, they invest in people. It's also why Bitcoin will always be top coin, despite other altcoins constantly coming out with little fixes here and there. The quality, and quantity, of people working on it is way superior to any other alternatives.
As for PoS, I really hope Ethereum doesn't take that route. PoW "decentralizes" the act of securing the currency from the currency itself. With PoW, I have a choice to either invest in the currency itself by buying it directly, OR invest in securing the currency by using it to buy mining hardware. There is also absolutely nothing to prevent a new miner from entering and competing with others, regardless of how many coins others hold. As a wealthy coin holder, I can't prevent a PoW miner from coming in and continuing to enforce rules on how I can spend my coins. The most I can do is spend some of my coins to buy some hardware and join him.
PoW I think you meant POS, on the other hand, incentivises, and in fact directs, the flow of money to one or few people, since you invest in "mining" by holding the coins themselves, and continue to increase your wealth by having those same coins collect even more coins. Threat of 51% in PoW is quickly resolved by having miners switch pools and redistribute themselves. Threat of a 51% in PoS can't be fixed by having mining wealth redistributed. Worst case end-game scenario in PoS is wealthy PoS miners continuing to accumulate wealth until they get a majority of the stake, while allowing users to become more and more dependent on their PoS coins, then the wealthy few pool their resources together, create a single, completely controling PoS stake, and change the coin to do whatever they want, including causing it to inflate. If you think PoS owners will be incentivized not to inflate away their wealth, think again. Central Banks around the world are PoS systems, and they do just that, printing more and more to buy up more and more assets, while letting those they sell their inflating money to pay for the inflation.
As for PoS, I really hope Ethereum doesn't take that route. PoW "decentralizes" the act of securing the currency from the currency itself. With PoW, I have a choice to either invest in the currency itself by buying it directly, OR invest in securing the currency by using it to buy mining hardware. There is also absolutely nothing to prevent a new miner from entering and competing with others, regardless of how many coins others hold. As a wealthy coin holder, I can't prevent a PoW miner from coming in and continuing to enforce rules on how I can spend my coins. The most I can do is spend some of my coins to buy some hardware and join him.
To me, POW is such a waste of resources, we are spending millions on resources to mine BTC, it doesn't seem like the direction we should continue heading as the world struggles with limited resources. The amount of power wasted mining BTC is absolutely atrocious. Regarding your concerns with POS, read up on Transparent Forging. POW is completely susceptible to corporate control, look at the mining pools, you are close to 51% with Ghash.io alone. Meanwhile I'm forging Nxt right now on my RasPi.
January 22, 2014, 05:56:29 PM
Both PoS and PoW are useful in different cases, PoW for resource allocation in a network where mining rewards useful work and resource contributions, PoS for allocating dividends and voting with proxy for investment funds and other applications for pooling resources.
Since Ethereum is a computing platform, and not a distributed corp, that would suggest that Ethereum would benefit more from PoW's contribution of useful work and mining resources, as opposed to PoS's earnings, dividents, and voting from speculative holders. Thanks for further clarification.
January 22, 2014, 05:48:04 PM
For those who asked, instructions on how to build the windows client are here:
http://dr-pra.tumblr.com/post/73526554416/build-and-run-the-ethereum-go-client-on-windows
Thanks Dr Pra!!!
http://dr-pra.tumblr.com/post/73526554416/build-and-run-the-ethereum-go-client-on-windows
Thanks Dr Pra!!!
Any one have a how to build on Linux (Ubuntu) guide?
January 22, 2014, 04:39:04 PM
Subscribing...any actual chance of getting few bocks with intel i3 superbook for CPU mining?
January 22, 2014, 04:13:15 PM
Pretty messed up seeing people discussing Ethereum on here from the point of view of "coin and profit," instead of "platform and possibilities." I guess it's mostly the same newbies that still see Bitcoin as just a coin/commodity to invest in, and not a financial platform to develop on top of. Personally, I would invest 20BTC in things like BitMessage and OpenTransactions, despite their "coins" themselves not having any value, just because the possibilities they offer as platforms are enormous! I will be investing in this as well. Not because of the possible return on the coins (though I suspect that will still be substantial), and not even because of the initially proposed technology (which, as someone pointed out, is similar to some other coins out there), but because of the team involved. Ask any top VC out there. They don't invest in ideas, they invest in people. It's also why Bitcoin will always be top coin, despite other altcoins constantly coming out with little fixes here and there. The quality, and quantity, of people working on it is way superior to any other alternatives.
+1
I look at the idea, the people working on it,what has been produced so far, and the level of interest by the community. So far, my hot list is Ethereum, Mastercoin, Invictus, and XCP. Despite my personal issue with the pre-sale, I also have respect for NXT and the community which has evolved around it, and would recommend it as an investment to others.
Quote
As for PoS, I really hope Ethereum doesn't take that route. PoW "decentralizes" the act of securing the currency from the currency itself. With PoW, I have a choice to either invest in the currency itself by buying it directly, OR invest in securing the currency by using it to buy mining hardware. There is also absolutely nothing to prevent a new miner from entering and competing with others, regardless of how many coins others hold. As a wealthy coin holder, I can't prevent a PoW miner from coming in and continuing to enforce rules on how I can spend my coins. The most I can do is spend some of my coins to buy some hardware and join him.
PoW, on the other hand, incentivises, and in fact directs, the flow of money to one or few people, since you invest in "mining" by holding the coins themselves, and continue to increase your wealth by having those same coins collect even more coins. Threat of 51% in PoW is quickly resolved by having miners switch pools and redistribute themselves. Threat of a 51% in PoS can't be fixed by having mining wealth redistributed. Worst case end-game scenario in PoS is wealthy PoS miners continuing to accumulate wealth until they get a majority of the stake, while allowing users to become more and more dependent on their PoS coins, then the wealthy few pool their resources together, create a single, completely controling PoS stake, and change the coin to do whatever they want, including causing it to inflate. If you think PoS owners will be incentivized not to inflate away their wealth, think again. Central Banks around the world are PoS systems, and they do just that, printing more and more to buy up more and more assets, while letting those they sell their inflating money to pay for the inflation.
+0
Both PoS and PoW are useful in different cases, PoW for resource allocation in a network where mining rewards useful work and resource contributions, PoS for allocating dividends and voting with proxy for investment funds and other applications for pooling resources.
January 22, 2014, 04:08:37 PM
I will be investing in this as well. Not because of the possible return on the coins (though I suspect that will still be substantial), and not even because of the initially proposed technology (which, as someone pointed out, is similar to some other coins out there), but because of the team involved.
+1
January 22, 2014, 04:00:55 PM
Ethereum Thoughts and Questions
Rassah, I agree with you that the people behind ethereum are the reason I have spent a few days looking at this very hard. I will be at the Miami conference, and I will consider investing if my questions have reasonable answers. Illegal contracts are particularly concerning to me.
NECESSITY OF A NEW BLOCKCHAIN
The whitepaper states that colored coins inherit the same limitations as the bitcoin protocol. Metacoins do not, but they cannot be truly secure without having a copy of the blockchain. How big of a problem is this? Hasn't the Electrum model worked for Bitcoin? Is there a big issue with just querying a bunch of supernodes to see if they all give the same result? Is it necessary to have absolute security with every contract, or only very high value transactions? Is it correct that metacoin clients won't need the first 14gb of the blockchain?
BITCOIN BLOCKCHAIN SIZE
Bitcoin Magazine's analysis showed that since storage capacity and internet bandwidth follow Moore's law, the blockchain size will not be a problem to store on phones. How many years from now should we predict that the blockchain size will become irrelevant? If the blockchain size were irrelevant, would that remove the need for ethereum? How much demand is there for blockchain contracts at this time, and how fast should we expect demand to accelerate?
ETHEREUM BLOCKCHAIN
How fast should we estimate the ethereum blockchain size will grow? What will be the effects of ethereum blockchain size growth several orders of magnitude greater than Bitcoin? Will this lead to more mining centralisation?
TURING COMPLETENESS
Is it reasonable to think the client can be sandboxed? What will be the effects of these, since the protocol is Turing complete: viruses, malware, adware, keyloggers, scam contracts, wallet stealers
ILLEGAL CONTRACTS
What will be the effects of illegal contracts? An assassination market, for example? Will the Silk Road be able to run on ethereum? Will a database of child porn be able to be stored? If there is child porn stored on the blockchain that is easily accessible, will it be legal to store the blockchain in any country? What will be the effects of running all the clients over Tor by default? Can a 60s block time with huge blocks work over Tor?
SATOSHI'S ARGUMENTS
In 2010, satoshi succesfully argued against including Namecoin into bitcoin, suggesting merge-mining instead.
"Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.
Bitcoin and BitDNS can be used separately. Users shouldn't have to download all of both to use one or the other. BitDNS users may not want to download everything the next several unrelated networks decide to pile in either.
The networks need to have separate fates. BitDNS users might be completely liberal about adding any large data features since relatively few domain registrars are needed, while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices." -- Satoshi
You can view the rest of his arguments in the thread here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.0;all
DEVELOPER COMMENTS
I have not seen any core bitcoin developers comment on ethereum. Is there somewhere besides the reddit and the thread on bitcointalk about it?
I am not very technical, so sorry if some of my questions are invalid or stated incorrectly. I also posted this on reddit.com/r/ethereum since it seems like Vitalik responds there more often.
Rassah, I agree with you that the people behind ethereum are the reason I have spent a few days looking at this very hard. I will be at the Miami conference, and I will consider investing if my questions have reasonable answers. Illegal contracts are particularly concerning to me.
NECESSITY OF A NEW BLOCKCHAIN
The whitepaper states that colored coins inherit the same limitations as the bitcoin protocol. Metacoins do not, but they cannot be truly secure without having a copy of the blockchain. How big of a problem is this? Hasn't the Electrum model worked for Bitcoin? Is there a big issue with just querying a bunch of supernodes to see if they all give the same result? Is it necessary to have absolute security with every contract, or only very high value transactions? Is it correct that metacoin clients won't need the first 14gb of the blockchain?
BITCOIN BLOCKCHAIN SIZE
Bitcoin Magazine's analysis showed that since storage capacity and internet bandwidth follow Moore's law, the blockchain size will not be a problem to store on phones. How many years from now should we predict that the blockchain size will become irrelevant? If the blockchain size were irrelevant, would that remove the need for ethereum? How much demand is there for blockchain contracts at this time, and how fast should we expect demand to accelerate?
ETHEREUM BLOCKCHAIN
How fast should we estimate the ethereum blockchain size will grow? What will be the effects of ethereum blockchain size growth several orders of magnitude greater than Bitcoin? Will this lead to more mining centralisation?
TURING COMPLETENESS
Is it reasonable to think the client can be sandboxed? What will be the effects of these, since the protocol is Turing complete: viruses, malware, adware, keyloggers, scam contracts, wallet stealers
ILLEGAL CONTRACTS
What will be the effects of illegal contracts? An assassination market, for example? Will the Silk Road be able to run on ethereum? Will a database of child porn be able to be stored? If there is child porn stored on the blockchain that is easily accessible, will it be legal to store the blockchain in any country? What will be the effects of running all the clients over Tor by default? Can a 60s block time with huge blocks work over Tor?
SATOSHI'S ARGUMENTS
In 2010, satoshi succesfully argued against including Namecoin into bitcoin, suggesting merge-mining instead.
"Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.
Bitcoin and BitDNS can be used separately. Users shouldn't have to download all of both to use one or the other. BitDNS users may not want to download everything the next several unrelated networks decide to pile in either.
The networks need to have separate fates. BitDNS users might be completely liberal about adding any large data features since relatively few domain registrars are needed, while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices." -- Satoshi
You can view the rest of his arguments in the thread here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.0;all
DEVELOPER COMMENTS
I have not seen any core bitcoin developers comment on ethereum. Is there somewhere besides the reddit and the thread on bitcointalk about it?
I am not very technical, so sorry if some of my questions are invalid or stated incorrectly. I also posted this on reddit.com/r/ethereum since it seems like Vitalik responds there more often.
January 22, 2014, 03:29:22 PM
Pretty messed up seeing people discussing Ethereum on here from the point of view of "coin and profit," instead of "platform and possibilities." I guess it's mostly the same newbies that still see Bitcoin as just a coin/commodity to invest in, and not a financial platform to develop on top of. Personally, I would invest 20BTC in things like BitMessage and OpenTransactions, despite their "coins" themselves not having any value, just because the possibilities they offer as platforms are enormous! I will be investing in this as well. Not because of the possible return on the coins (though I suspect that will still be substantial), and not even because of the initially proposed technology (which, as someone pointed out, is similar to some other coins out there), but because of the team involved. Ask any top VC out there. They don't invest in ideas, they invest in people. It's also why Bitcoin will always be top coin, despite other altcoins constantly coming out with little fixes here and there. The quality, and quantity, of people working on it is way superior to any other alternatives.
As for PoS, I really hope Ethereum doesn't take that route. PoW "decentralizes" the act of securing the currency from the currency itself. With PoW, I have a choice to either invest in the currency itself by buying it directly, OR invest in securing the currency by using it to buy mining hardware. There is also absolutely nothing to prevent a new miner from entering and competing with others, regardless of how many coins others hold. As a wealthy coin holder, I can't prevent a PoW miner from coming in and continuing to enforce rules on how I can spend my coins. The most I can do is spend some of my coins to buy some hardware and join him.
PoW, on the other hand, incentivises, and in fact directs, the flow of money to one or few people, since you invest in "mining" by holding the coins themselves, and continue to increase your wealth by having those same coins collect even more coins. Threat of 51% in PoW is quickly resolved by having miners switch pools and redistribute themselves. Threat of a 51% in PoS can't be fixed by having mining wealth redistributed. Worst case end-game scenario in PoS is wealthy PoS miners continuing to accumulate wealth until they get a majority of the stake, while allowing users to become more and more dependent on their PoS coins, then the wealthy few pool their resources together, create a single, completely controling PoS stake, and change the coin to do whatever they want, including causing it to inflate. If you think PoS owners will be incentivized not to inflate away their wealth, think again. Central Banks around the world are PoS systems, and they do just that, printing more and more to buy up more and more assets, while letting those they sell their inflating money to pay for the inflation.
As for PoS, I really hope Ethereum doesn't take that route. PoW "decentralizes" the act of securing the currency from the currency itself. With PoW, I have a choice to either invest in the currency itself by buying it directly, OR invest in securing the currency by using it to buy mining hardware. There is also absolutely nothing to prevent a new miner from entering and competing with others, regardless of how many coins others hold. As a wealthy coin holder, I can't prevent a PoW miner from coming in and continuing to enforce rules on how I can spend my coins. The most I can do is spend some of my coins to buy some hardware and join him.
PoW, on the other hand, incentivises, and in fact directs, the flow of money to one or few people, since you invest in "mining" by holding the coins themselves, and continue to increase your wealth by having those same coins collect even more coins. Threat of 51% in PoW is quickly resolved by having miners switch pools and redistribute themselves. Threat of a 51% in PoS can't be fixed by having mining wealth redistributed. Worst case end-game scenario in PoS is wealthy PoS miners continuing to accumulate wealth until they get a majority of the stake, while allowing users to become more and more dependent on their PoS coins, then the wealthy few pool their resources together, create a single, completely controling PoS stake, and change the coin to do whatever they want, including causing it to inflate. If you think PoS owners will be incentivized not to inflate away their wealth, think again. Central Banks around the world are PoS systems, and they do just that, printing more and more to buy up more and more assets, while letting those they sell their inflating money to pay for the inflation.
January 22, 2014, 02:01:48 PM
It's okay, I'm used to people being rude to me on a daily basis, after all I'm married with two kids.
I feel your pain, brother
January 22, 2014, 01:56:13 PM
The countdown on the page reads NaN now. Is etherum out? Is it delayed?
Lol. Switch to Firefox or Chrome. Guess they didnt make their site IE compatible
January 22, 2014, 01:39:27 PM
Since Ethereum needs a re-write, how long with the launch be delayed? Can't be good for the Conference IPO announcement.
Nonsense, and I don't mean to be rude. But to say that something that's not yet deployed needs a rewrite simply doesn't make sense. Dagger is well understood and within the time it will take to get the main net going it will for sure receive many upgrades (some of them being organized as contests though the funding).
In short, fear not, Ethereum is coming and the early code on github demonstrates commitment not seen elsewhere.
It's okay, I'm used to people being rude to me on a daily basis, after all I'm married with two kids.
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