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One issue with Ethereum is that smart contracts are expensive and must run on every node. These days a VPS with 2GB RAM costs $4 so Ethereum would not be compet

by vamur 11y ago

One issue with Ethereum is that smart contracts are expensive and must run on every node. These days a VPS with 2GB RAM costs $4 so Ethereum would not be competitive even in short term. Another issue is the blockchain size which is already 8GB and growing faster than the Bitcoin blockchain.

drcode 11y ago
Ethereum smart contracts have abilities far beyond a VPS, particularly around security, reliability, and trustlessness guarantees- Whether you think those abilities have value and justify a new platform is a separate question, but the argument that "this is like a VPS" is a misunderstanding of what ethereum is offering with its technology. The large blockchain size, on the other hand, is a legitimate problem with ethereum (as with all blockchain systems.) Hopefully the devs will be able to solve this problem- They are hard at work on a potential solution as we speak.
- vamur 11y ago
  Ethereum has been out for 7 months already and so far there have been no useful or popular dapps. This would mean that for most applications trustlessness is not very useful. And for those apps where it would be generally useful, such as exchanges, betting. etc, the expensive nature of gas would mean that operating on Ethereum would be cost prohibitive and they would lose to their centralized competitors. And how is Ethereum is more secure than a properly setup VPS?
  - drcode 11y ago
    > Ethereum has been out for 7 months already and so far there have been no useful or popular dapps. I think that's a valid criticism- I, too, am a bit disappointed that there are few contracts yet with obvious utility. However, as someone deep in the community and talking to lots of people, it seems there's going to be tons of interesting dapps deployed in the next 6 months. Hopefully there will be a "killer dapp" among them. > And how is Ethereum is more secure than a properly setup VPS? If I store money on your VPS-based app, how can I be assured you can't steal it from me? If I use a feature on your VPS, how can I be sure you won't disable it tomorrow? Ethereum can provide these sorts of guarantees.
jbpetersen 11y ago
Good examples of why it's not ready for significant use in production. They should have network sharding in sometime this year or next which will effectively leave contracts running on only as many nodes as they pay for. Tackling blockchain size issues will probably need some separate cleverness with distributed storage, though there are good precedents for implementing that.

by vamur 11y ago

drcode 11y ago

Ethereum smart contracts have abilities far beyond a VPS, particularly around security, reliability, and trustlessness guarantees- Whether you think those abilities have value and justify a new platform is a separate question, but the argument that "this is like a VPS" is a misunderstanding of what ethereum is offering with its technology. The large blockchain size, on the other hand, is a legitimate problem with ethereum (as with all blockchain systems.) Hopefully the devs will be able to solve this problem- They are hard at work on a potential solution as we speak.

vamur 11y ago
Ethereum has been out for 7 months already and so far there have been no useful or popular dapps. This would mean that for most applications trustlessness is not very useful. And for those apps where it would be generally useful, such as exchanges, betting. etc, the expensive nature of gas would mean that operating on Ethereum would be cost prohibitive and they would lose to their centralized competitors. And how is Ethereum is more secure than a properly setup VPS?
- drcode 11y ago
  > Ethereum has been out for 7 months already and so far there have been no useful or popular dapps. I think that's a valid criticism- I, too, am a bit disappointed that there are few contracts yet with obvious utility. However, as someone deep in the community and talking to lots of people, it seems there's going to be tons of interesting dapps deployed in the next 6 months. Hopefully there will be a "killer dapp" among them. > And how is Ethereum is more secure than a properly setup VPS? If I store money on your VPS-based app, how can I be assured you can't steal it from me? If I use a feature on your VPS, how can I be sure you won't disable it tomorrow? Ethereum can provide these sorts of guarantees.

jbpetersen 11y ago

Good examples of why it's not ready for significant use in production. They should have network sharding in sometime this year or next which will effectively leave contracts running on only as many nodes as they pay for. Tackling blockchain size issues will probably need some separate cleverness with distributed storage, though there are good precedents for implementing that.