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Topic: wtf is ethereum? (Read 3003 times)

full member
Activity: 215
Merit: 101
December 08, 2014, 01:58:45 PM
#30
I am not sure what it is. I think you might be able to synthesize it using ethanol and buteric acid.
legendary
Activity: 1638
Merit: 1022
December 07, 2014, 07:16:19 PM
#29
It does seem like a technical minefield. Best of luck to him!
hero member
Activity: 727
Merit: 500
Minimum Effort/Maximum effect
December 07, 2014, 09:45:35 AM
#28
Oh man, this is going to be a lot of fun.
Etherium will probably be pretty powerful, a Turing complete Scrypt can get some amazing things done, but just wait till the bugs start showing up, or hackers begin picking at the Blockchain, injecting values into those blocks to cause havok.

It's serious business when you censor viruses and trojans or malicous programs living on the Blockchain. This thing is starting to look like a strand of DNA with all it's infused codes and integrated viruses and programs. wow.
donator
Activity: 1616
Merit: 1003
December 07, 2014, 09:31:18 AM
#27
I simply wonder wether the ability and sincerity of Vitalik outweighs his naiveté ?

You need to be young and naive to attempt these pie-in-the-sky projects. With a little luck on your side you might just succeed. I'd be very impressed if a 20 year old can pull this off.
legendary
Activity: 1330
Merit: 1001
December 07, 2014, 08:19:02 AM
#26
For example Etheruem allows to write crowd contracts. No we won't be able to do with sidechainins in bitcoin.
legendary
Activity: 1220
Merit: 1015
e-ducat.fr
December 07, 2014, 08:08:41 AM
#25
I could not agree more with Melbustus and Gavin's posts about Ethereum.
I simply wonder wether the ability and sincerity of Vitalik outweighs his naiveté ?
Then again my reservation about Ethereum is not about feasibility but about the centralizing effect of Turing-completeness.

If transactions can be designed with infinite (or very long) loops to perform DoS attacks, miners will have to turn to some anti-malware solution like the ones marketed by MacAffe, Norton , etc.
The solution can be worse that the problem with some miners colluding to filter out some transactions on the grounds that they can be "bad" for the network perfomance. The notion of consensus starts to become fuzzy.
legendary
Activity: 1638
Merit: 1022
December 07, 2014, 05:31:11 AM
#24
I just realised the link to Gavin's blog answers a lot of my previous questions for me (posted by Melbustus).

I think I have no more questions for now! Thank you everyone.
legendary
Activity: 1638
Merit: 1022
December 07, 2014, 05:18:33 AM
#23
biggest presale selfbuy minersscam in crypto history.
If it ever materialises ...

Right now it's hype based on powerpoint presentations.
Later it will be: too complex to run stable or be safe from exploits ... if it ever is released

My personal best guess: 1 decade developement to even get it to run a stable beta if not given up on it sooner

Seems a little dismissive in comparison to the other responses in here.

I just watched this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbEtivJIfIU

And am impressed by some things.

It does seem like incentivized decentralisation should be applied to more applications than just currency.

What I would like to see is how easy it is to do this but just by using the bitcoin blockchain rather than making a whole new chain.

Is this what side-chaining is?

Is there a thread on BCT debating ethereum? I am definitely convinced on the ability and sincerity of Vitalik, my reservations about Ethereum are whether or not the technical challenges can all be met.

Decentralised apps may be the future, if they can't work on the bitcoin chain (apart from bitcoin's currency itself) then something like Ethereum becomes inevitable no? (Should it be technically feasible).

Thanks for the thoughts guys!
sr. member
Activity: 252
Merit: 250
December 07, 2014, 02:46:14 AM
#22
biggest presale selfbuy minersscam in crypto history.
If it ever materialises ...

Right now it's hype based on powerpoint presentations.
Later it will be: too complex to run stable or be safe from exploits ... if it ever is released

My personal best guess: 1 decade developement to even get it to run a stable beta if not given up on it sooner
legendary
Activity: 1988
Merit: 1012
Beyond Imagination
December 07, 2014, 12:42:28 AM
#21
It is liquid and too complex to be understood  Grin

legendary
Activity: 1638
Merit: 1022
December 06, 2014, 11:28:28 AM
#20
Whenever someone mentions the unit of currency in ethereum I think of this:

legendary
Activity: 3066
Merit: 1145
The revolution will be monetized!
December 06, 2014, 11:28:23 AM
#19
I still have no real idea what Ethereum is. I have really looked at it. Doesnt really make sense to me.
Around here that's called a "buy signal", lol.  Cheesy
legendary
Activity: 1638
Merit: 1022
December 06, 2014, 11:23:05 AM
#18
It sounds quite amazing, but it's going to take year I imagine before this thing can get its shit together. It must be the mother of all technical challenges to do all this in a decentralised manner. Simple systems FTW. Emergent complexity ftMFw.
jr. member
Activity: 59
Merit: 10
December 06, 2014, 11:04:36 AM
#17
Melbustus answers is the best so far.

For a concrete example: you can code a crowd funding contract into etheruem.  This contract lives in the ehtereum's block chain and handles pledges and releasing the funds to the final party or returning them to the pledgees if the contract is not fully funded by a certain date.   You can't program that into Bitcoin's blockchain.

 Turing complete meaning you have loops, if/then, functions, etc.. AND storage to use to build your application, like you would in say a ruby web app with a database.  You would want to keep them simple though, each  transaction and your storage size determines the amount of ether it costs for that contract.
legendary
Activity: 1778
Merit: 1042
#Free market
December 06, 2014, 10:53:48 AM
#16
I've done a lot of rookie research and can't seem to understand what it is.

I've heard that it's turing complete, the html to bitcoin's http, an extra layer, NOT an alt etc.

Is it just 'BML?' (bitcoin markup language?)

How does it use and relate to the blockchain to do whatever it's doing that bitcoin isn't?

What does it all mean??

Ethereum is the name of an awesome concept that its inventor failed to materialize.

Failed , do you mean "scam" ? Because I don't think they have scammed anyone...
legendary
Activity: 2198
Merit: 1049
December 06, 2014, 10:51:44 AM
#15
I've done a lot of rookie research and can't seem to understand what it is.

I've heard that it's turing complete, the html to bitcoin's http, an extra layer, NOT an alt etc.

Is it just 'BML?' (bitcoin markup language?)

How does it use and relate to the blockchain to do whatever it's doing that bitcoin isn't?

What does it all mean??

Ethereum is the name of an awesome concept that its inventor failed to materialize.
sr. member
Activity: 406
Merit: 250
AltoCenter.com
December 06, 2014, 10:50:30 AM
#14
At some point, I heard about ethereum was going to be the next big thing. But what happened?
legendary
Activity: 1638
Merit: 1022
December 06, 2014, 10:47:35 AM
#13
Thank you Melbustus.
newbie
Activity: 28
Merit: 0
December 06, 2014, 09:56:34 AM
#12
I still have no real idea what Ethereum is. I have really looked at it. Doesnt really make sense to me.
legendary
Activity: 1722
Merit: 1003
December 06, 2014, 02:17:54 AM
#11
This question will never really be ansvered in an easy to understand way. Same with Ripple. They get repect though...


Sounds like Ripple and Steller are kinda broken at the core consensus level: https://www.stellar.org/blog/safety_liveness_and_fault_tolerance_consensus_choice/

I'm guessing they'll be made more and more explicitly centralized as time goes by.
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