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Ethereum is a platform for decentralised applications, it has far more pratical use than a simple blockchain like Bitcoin, but far more risks as well. Give it a

Ethereum is a platform for decentralised applications, it has far more pratical use than a simple blockchain like Bitcoin, but far more risks as well. Give it a chance, it's just starting, there is a lot more development to do, don't throw it away the first bad thing that happens. Can you imagine if the early internet architects thought this way? "Oh this computer in the network got hacked, lets give up on this whole internet thing, it's a fundamentally bad idea". There will be ups and downs. IMO, right now Ethereum is the best chance we got at a truly decentralised web.

duaneb 10y ago
I'm struggling to think of an application I'd prefer to be on Ethereum over Bitcoin. There is simply too much trust involved in distributed turing complete programs for the idea to be practical in the short term—what kind of fool would bet on a bug-free contract with their money?
- heliumcraft 10y ago
  It's not about the money, it certainly is with Bitcoin, but Ethereum goes beyond that. There are tons of possible applications (decentralized DNS, decentralized forums, marketplaces, etc..) that do not involve money in the same way a DAO does. As Vitalik put it: "An important point about this project is that we see ethereum as being a platform first. If you approach it from the perspective of ether being a coin, with all the smart contract stuff being just bells and whistles on top to make the coin more valuable, you are going to have a hard time understanding this community; it's really all about the applications first and foremost, and ether is there simply as a token to facilitate payment of transaction fees and incentivize mining."
  - wcummings 10y ago
    "ether is there simply as a token to facilitate payment of transaction fees and incentivize mining" Translation: Ether is there simply for our pre-mine profits :)
    - heliumcraft 10y ago
      By pre-mine you mean crowdfunded to fund development ofc... If there is a way to do something like Ethereum or Maidsafe WITHOUT the freaking money I would LOVE to hear about it. It would be nice if we could work on this type of technology without all the toxicity of get-rich-fast trolls and the silly tribalism.
      - wcummings 10y ago
        >If there is a way to do something like Ethereum or Maidsafe WITHOUT the freaking money I would LOVE to hear about it. Bitcoin started with a bunch of people running some hobbyist cryptographer's buggy cpp to generate worthless tokens. You don't need millions of dollars to build free software.
  - duaneb 10y ago
    Ok, I wouldn't attach anything of value to such a rigid contract system—money is far from the only pitfall here. There is simply no benefit to me over existing arbitration. At least with DNS I can contact my provider if someone steals my domains.
    - heliumcraft 10y ago
      In terms of control the contract can as centralized or as decentralized as you code it to be, with the difference that it runs on a truly decentralized platform. It does goes both ways as well, if you can contact your provider to get your stolen domains back, then your local dictator can also take them away from you because of something you said.
      - duaneb 10y ago
        > then your local dictator can also take them away from you because of something you said. Thankfully, I don't (yet) live in a dystopian society where I can trust machines more than my neighbor (or leader).
        heliumcraft 10y ago
        "yet" being the keyword
    - aianus 10y ago
      Who do you contact when that someone is the DoJ? ;)
timmytokyo 10y ago
The idea of smart contracts is a good one. The design of this particular implementation (Ethereum) is a bad one, mostly for the reasons identified in the original post. The complexity -- and more importantly the undecidability -- of the contract language ensures that ethereum will never take off as a working solution. People will never be able to trust that a DAO-like attack isn't lurking just under the surface of their contracts.
- heliumcraft 10y ago
  Well that's the same with any software and service isn't.. If I put my company precious data on AWS, there is a chance it will get hacked, it's a matter of taking precautions and trade offs. We need to think of better tools & practices to secure contracts. It's still all new, there will be issues, there will be improvements. The end goal is worth it IMO. My main Interest in Ethereum (and Maidsafe) like most developers in the community is not so much money but the dream of having a truly decentralised web one day. Impossible? maybe, but I'm willing to try.
  - nickparker 10y ago
    As I understand it: It's true of any platform, but Etherium is at a far higher risk of getting hacked because the language is Turing complete. There could conceivably be a smart contract blockchain with a simplified language that was still capable of most of Etherium's good sides with the safety net of static verification tools.
    - heliumcraft 10y ago
      ALL general purpose programming languages (C++, Java, etc..) are Turing Complete and this is an essential feature for creating decentralised applications (or any software really).
      - PeCaN 10y ago
        Um, no, that's just factually incorrect. You can do very, very many useful things without Turing completeness. You cannot be fully general, but there's active research on how far you can get. Restricted subsets of query languages like SQL and Datalog are perhaps the most common (though more or all SQL implementations are Turing complete) and indeed quite useful. I can easily imagine a system built on a non-Turing complete logical query language that defines data and rules for presentation. You could get pretty far with that. You can't create _any_ application, but calling Turing completeness “essential … for decentralized applications” is incorrect. It's essential for a _subset_ of applications that require Turing completeness. I've been saying ETH is broken for a while. Its computational ability means contracts _cannot_ be formally verified. This is why I didn't buy into the DAO, and sure enough there's a bug in the DAO (ironically recursion related).
nickbauman 10y ago
I upvoted you because I like your spirit. I'm very wary of cryptocurrencies in general because I think they're trying to solve a problem based on a flawed understanding of money.
dkarapetyan 10y ago
I think you believe a little too much. There are far better alternatives out there. The first thing that comes to mind for a truly decentralized web is IPFS. As for comparisons to the internet you're giving Ethereum too much credit and not enough credit to the original architects of the internet. Those folks were geniuses and academics, not web 2.0 up and comers. There is a world of difference between the two. One kind can do rigorous and scientific thinking and the other one can't and instead cobbles together a VM for a turing complete language to perform arbitrary computations in an untrusted, bug ridden, informally specified environment. As Alan Kay once said > The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs. -- Alan Kay. Ethereum is of the web kind. It's amateurish.

duaneb 10y ago

I'm struggling to think of an application I'd prefer to be on Ethereum over Bitcoin. There is simply too much trust involved in distributed turing complete programs for the idea to be practical in the short term—what kind of fool would bet on a bug-free contract with their money?

heliumcraft 10y ago
It's not about the money, it certainly is with Bitcoin, but Ethereum goes beyond that. There are tons of possible applications (decentralized DNS, decentralized forums, marketplaces, etc..) that do not involve money in the same way a DAO does. As Vitalik put it: "An important point about this project is that we see ethereum as being a platform first. If you approach it from the perspective of ether being a coin, with all the smart contract stuff being just bells and whistles on top to make the coin more valuable, you are going to have a hard time understanding this community; it's really all about the applications first and foremost, and ether is there simply as a token to facilitate payment of transaction fees and incentivize mining."
- wcummings 10y ago
  "ether is there simply as a token to facilitate payment of transaction fees and incentivize mining" Translation: Ether is there simply for our pre-mine profits :)
  - heliumcraft 10y ago
    By pre-mine you mean crowdfunded to fund development ofc... If there is a way to do something like Ethereum or Maidsafe WITHOUT the freaking money I would LOVE to hear about it. It would be nice if we could work on this type of technology without all the toxicity of get-rich-fast trolls and the silly tribalism.
    - wcummings 10y ago
      >If there is a way to do something like Ethereum or Maidsafe WITHOUT the freaking money I would LOVE to hear about it. Bitcoin started with a bunch of people running some hobbyist cryptographer's buggy cpp to generate worthless tokens. You don't need millions of dollars to build free software.
- duaneb 10y ago
  Ok, I wouldn't attach anything of value to such a rigid contract system—money is far from the only pitfall here. There is simply no benefit to me over existing arbitration. At least with DNS I can contact my provider if someone steals my domains.
  - heliumcraft 10y ago
    In terms of control the contract can as centralized or as decentralized as you code it to be, with the difference that it runs on a truly decentralized platform. It does goes both ways as well, if you can contact your provider to get your stolen domains back, then your local dictator can also take them away from you because of something you said.
    - duaneb 10y ago
      > then your local dictator can also take them away from you because of something you said. Thankfully, I don't (yet) live in a dystopian society where I can trust machines more than my neighbor (or leader).
      - heliumcraft 10y ago
        "yet" being the keyword
  - aianus 10y ago
    Who do you contact when that someone is the DoJ? ;)

timmytokyo 10y ago

The idea of smart contracts is a good one. The design of this particular implementation (Ethereum) is a bad one, mostly for the reasons identified in the original post. The complexity -- and more importantly the undecidability -- of the contract language ensures that ethereum will never take off as a working solution. People will never be able to trust that a DAO-like attack isn't lurking just under the surface of their contracts.

heliumcraft 10y ago
Well that's the same with any software and service isn't.. If I put my company precious data on AWS, there is a chance it will get hacked, it's a matter of taking precautions and trade offs. We need to think of better tools & practices to secure contracts. It's still all new, there will be issues, there will be improvements. The end goal is worth it IMO. My main Interest in Ethereum (and Maidsafe) like most developers in the community is not so much money but the dream of having a truly decentralised web one day. Impossible? maybe, but I'm willing to try.
- nickparker 10y ago
  As I understand it: It's true of any platform, but Etherium is at a far higher risk of getting hacked because the language is Turing complete. There could conceivably be a smart contract blockchain with a simplified language that was still capable of most of Etherium's good sides with the safety net of static verification tools.
  - heliumcraft 10y ago
    ALL general purpose programming languages (C++, Java, etc..) are Turing Complete and this is an essential feature for creating decentralised applications (or any software really).
    - PeCaN 10y ago
      Um, no, that's just factually incorrect. You can do very, very many useful things without Turing completeness. You cannot be fully general, but there's active research on how far you can get. Restricted subsets of query languages like SQL and Datalog are perhaps the most common (though more or all SQL implementations are Turing complete) and indeed quite useful. I can easily imagine a system built on a non-Turing complete logical query language that defines data and rules for presentation. You could get pretty far with that. You can't create _any_ application, but calling Turing completeness “essential … for decentralized applications” is incorrect. It's essential for a _subset_ of applications that require Turing completeness. I've been saying ETH is broken for a while. Its computational ability means contracts _cannot_ be formally verified. This is why I didn't buy into the DAO, and sure enough there's a bug in the DAO (ironically recursion related).

nickbauman 10y ago

I upvoted you because I like your spirit. I'm very wary of cryptocurrencies in general because I think they're trying to solve a problem based on a flawed understanding of money.

dkarapetyan 10y ago

I think you believe a little too much. There are far better alternatives out there. The first thing that comes to mind for a truly decentralized web is IPFS. As for comparisons to the internet you're giving Ethereum too much credit and not enough credit to the original architects of the internet. Those folks were geniuses and academics, not web 2.0 up and comers. There is a world of difference between the two. One kind can do rigorous and scientific thinking and the other one can't and instead cobbles together a VM for a turing complete language to perform arbitrary computations in an untrusted, bug ridden, informally specified environment. As Alan Kay once said > The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs. -- Alan Kay. Ethereum is of the web kind. It's amateurish.