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Ethereum Homestead release

106 points by ConsenSys 11y ago

detaro 11y ago
link should be: https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/02/29/homestead-release/ https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/02/29/homestead-release/
- dang 11y ago
  Thanks. Changed from https://blog.ethereum.org https://blog.ethereum.org.
kibwen 11y ago
The release announcement mentions that the Go and C++ clients are compatible, but the Rust client (Parity) has also just added support for the new version of the protocol: https://twitter.com/gavofyork/status/703624799944310784 https://twitter.com/gavofyork/status/703624799944310784 I'm happy to see that Ethereum encourages multiple implementations, I'm curious how they managed to achieve this given that Bitcoin seems to have had so much trouble doing the same.
- orblivion 11y ago
  I'm not speaking as someone familiar, so someone who is should superecede me. But, I understand that it was a goal from day one not to fall into the same trap Bitcoin is in with their reference implementation. They did it by developing a spec, and having three official clients developed at the same time in three different languages.
  - eco 11y ago
    Vitalik has actually said he now feels having three clients (written in go, c++, and python) was a mistake as it took up a lot of development energy in the early days. Parity is actually not one of those three but was only recently created by Gavin Wood after he recently left EthDev. Gavin Wood was one of the principal authors of the C++ client. He shared some of his thoughts on using Rust for the new client here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/44y9vv/announcing_parity_the_worlds_fastest_and_lightest/cztx74l?context=1 https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/44y9vv/announcing...
  - adrianmacneil 11y ago
    Pretty much sums it up. The majority of Bitcoin developers have always had the mindset that alternative consensus implementations will never be able to match, bug-for-bug, the reference implementation (and there is no official spec other than the reference implementation). Ethereum was developed with the mindset that having multiple implementations will help catch bugs in the official spec (yellow paper) before they are released.
  - kibwen 11y ago
    Even still, AIUI the problem with Bitcoin is that a buggy implementation is capable of accidentally hard-forking the blockchain (as demonstrated by https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-network-shaken-by-blockchain-fork-1363144448 https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-network-shaken-... ). The existence of a protocol specification document alone wouldn't have prevented that. My question is whether Ethereum actually has some clever mechanism to ameliorate this threat, or whether it's just hoping that the existence of multiple implementations means that no one client ever gains more than 50% market share (and hence any hard-fork that results from an incompatible implementation wouldn't require a central authority to step in to determine which was the "true" chain).
  - mike_hearn 11y ago
    Bitcoin's problem is not that it has a single reference implementation. It can be forked, at least in a technical sense. Bitcoin's problem is that a tiny number of people managed to convince key players that they are irreplaceable "experts", despite having repeatedly proven that they aren't experts at all (go check out the Bitcoin forums today to see the wailing of users due to the giant tx backlog). This isn't something Ethereum has any solution for. If Vitalik stepped back and after a few years some random developers had managed to manipulate the Ethereum community into doing something stupid, having 3 implementations instead of 1 wouldn't save them.
- kang 11y ago
  https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-reference#not-a-specification https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-reference#not-a-specificati... Case in point is the March 2013 bitcoin fork. Ethereum is not as battle tested yet.
kasbah 11y ago
If I wanted to create some kind of kudos/points economy for my local hackspace would Ethereum be a good choice or should I rather look into creating an altcoin? I am not interested in hooking it up to the global networks just providing a way for people to earn points for running workshops, cleaning and doing maintenance that they can spend as time on the laser cutter or 3D printer or similar (which we currently charge for).
- jarsin 11y ago
  Yes using ethereum would be great for that. See issuing your own cryptocurrency tutorial https://ethereum.org/token https://ethereum.org/token Then you can turn your hackspace into a DAO https://ethereum.org/dao https://ethereum.org/dao
  - kasbah 11y ago
    I haven't read the full thing. But a DAO is still connected to the global Ethereum network and leverages it? Does it have to be?
    - miscellaneous 11y ago
      Well if you don't want to be connected to the Ethereum blockchain then you probably should just use a webserver. The advantage of using a blockchain like Ethereum is that it is very secure and very reliable compared to a webserver - also it is perhaps less work maintaining a DAO than a webserver. So if you want to issue tokens for your hackspace, it would be nice if they existed on a public blockchain so that users could trade then and see their balance at any time - no need to worry about server uptime or vulnerabilities.
    - jarsin 11y ago
      A DAO is a smart contract on the blockchain. Note that Microsoft and Redhat make it possible to run a private ethereum chain in the cloud if you really wanted to. But as the other commenter pointed out I don't see the point in that for your use case.
- 11y ago
empath75 11y ago
Just out of curiosity, how profitable is mining ethereum, and can you do it with a GPU or is it mostly ASICs? I have a brand new gtx980 ti on the way for the oculus, and was curious if I could run it to help pay for it.
- polymetric 11y ago
  It's GPU memory intensive, so no ASICS yet, and an ETH ASIC would just be a general purpose computer. It's fairly profitable to mine, assuming your electricity cost is reasonable.
david-given 11y ago
Does anyone have any information about Ethereum costing? That is, on an average machine, how long does it take to mine a block, and how much processing/storage do we get with that block? Do we need to mine a complete block before we can get any work done? My concern is that if I want to build an app with a simple message bus and a small amount of transactional state, each client might need to mine for a prohibitive amount of time before it can actually start participating in the network.
- barnabee 11y ago
  I am not sure regarding the block times, but for connecting clients for the purpose of running a simple app, you may be interested in the light client protocol, which according to the link below only requires processing of ~1kb of network data every 2 mins. https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Light-client-protocol https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Light-client-protocol

106 points by ConsenSys 11y ago

link should be: https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/02/29/homestead-release/ https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/02/29/homestead-release/

dang 11y ago
Thanks. Changed from https://blog.ethereum.org https://blog.ethereum.org.

kibwen 11y ago

The release announcement mentions that the Go and C++ clients are compatible, but the Rust client (Parity) has also just added support for the new version of the protocol: https://twitter.com/gavofyork/status/703624799944310784 https://twitter.com/gavofyork/status/703624799944310784 I'm happy to see that Ethereum encourages multiple implementations, I'm curious how they managed to achieve this given that Bitcoin seems to have had so much trouble doing the same.

orblivion 11y ago
I'm not speaking as someone familiar, so someone who is should superecede me. But, I understand that it was a goal from day one not to fall into the same trap Bitcoin is in with their reference implementation. They did it by developing a spec, and having three official clients developed at the same time in three different languages.
- eco 11y ago
  Vitalik has actually said he now feels having three clients (written in go, c++, and python) was a mistake as it took up a lot of development energy in the early days. Parity is actually not one of those three but was only recently created by Gavin Wood after he recently left EthDev. Gavin Wood was one of the principal authors of the C++ client. He shared some of his thoughts on using Rust for the new client here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/44y9vv/announcing_parity_the_worlds_fastest_and_lightest/cztx74l?context=1 https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/44y9vv/announcing...
- adrianmacneil 11y ago
  Pretty much sums it up. The majority of Bitcoin developers have always had the mindset that alternative consensus implementations will never be able to match, bug-for-bug, the reference implementation (and there is no official spec other than the reference implementation). Ethereum was developed with the mindset that having multiple implementations will help catch bugs in the official spec (yellow paper) before they are released.
- kibwen 11y ago
  Even still, AIUI the problem with Bitcoin is that a buggy implementation is capable of accidentally hard-forking the blockchain (as demonstrated by https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-network-shaken-by-blockchain-fork-1363144448 https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-network-shaken-... ). The existence of a protocol specification document alone wouldn't have prevented that. My question is whether Ethereum actually has some clever mechanism to ameliorate this threat, or whether it's just hoping that the existence of multiple implementations means that no one client ever gains more than 50% market share (and hence any hard-fork that results from an incompatible implementation wouldn't require a central authority to step in to determine which was the "true" chain).
- mike_hearn 11y ago
  Bitcoin's problem is not that it has a single reference implementation. It can be forked, at least in a technical sense. Bitcoin's problem is that a tiny number of people managed to convince key players that they are irreplaceable "experts", despite having repeatedly proven that they aren't experts at all (go check out the Bitcoin forums today to see the wailing of users due to the giant tx backlog). This isn't something Ethereum has any solution for. If Vitalik stepped back and after a few years some random developers had managed to manipulate the Ethereum community into doing something stupid, having 3 implementations instead of 1 wouldn't save them.
kang 11y ago
https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-reference#not-a-specification https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-reference#not-a-specificati... Case in point is the March 2013 bitcoin fork. Ethereum is not as battle tested yet.

kasbah 11y ago

If I wanted to create some kind of kudos/points economy for my local hackspace would Ethereum be a good choice or should I rather look into creating an altcoin? I am not interested in hooking it up to the global networks just providing a way for people to earn points for running workshops, cleaning and doing maintenance that they can spend as time on the laser cutter or 3D printer or similar (which we currently charge for).

jarsin 11y ago
Yes using ethereum would be great for that. See issuing your own cryptocurrency tutorial https://ethereum.org/token https://ethereum.org/token Then you can turn your hackspace into a DAO https://ethereum.org/dao https://ethereum.org/dao
- kasbah 11y ago
  I haven't read the full thing. But a DAO is still connected to the global Ethereum network and leverages it? Does it have to be?
  - miscellaneous 11y ago
    Well if you don't want to be connected to the Ethereum blockchain then you probably should just use a webserver. The advantage of using a blockchain like Ethereum is that it is very secure and very reliable compared to a webserver - also it is perhaps less work maintaining a DAO than a webserver. So if you want to issue tokens for your hackspace, it would be nice if they existed on a public blockchain so that users could trade then and see their balance at any time - no need to worry about server uptime or vulnerabilities.
  - jarsin 11y ago
    A DAO is a smart contract on the blockchain. Note that Microsoft and Redhat make it possible to run a private ethereum chain in the cloud if you really wanted to. But as the other commenter pointed out I don't see the point in that for your use case.
11y ago

empath75 11y ago

Just out of curiosity, how profitable is mining ethereum, and can you do it with a GPU or is it mostly ASICs? I have a brand new gtx980 ti on the way for the oculus, and was curious if I could run it to help pay for it.

polymetric 11y ago
It's GPU memory intensive, so no ASICS yet, and an ETH ASIC would just be a general purpose computer. It's fairly profitable to mine, assuming your electricity cost is reasonable.

david-given 11y ago

Does anyone have any information about Ethereum costing? That is, on an average machine, how long does it take to mine a block, and how much processing/storage do we get with that block? Do we need to mine a complete block before we can get any work done? My concern is that if I want to build an app with a simple message bus and a small amount of transactional state, each client might need to mine for a prohibitive amount of time before it can actually start participating in the network.

barnabee 11y ago
I am not sure regarding the block times, but for connecting clients for the purpose of running a simple app, you may be interested in the light client protocol, which according to the link below only requires processing of ~1kb of network data every 2 mins. https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Light-client-protocol https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Light-client-protocol