8 ms·

Trust: the inside story of the rise and fall of Ethereum

59 points by kawera 10y ago

realPubkey 10y ago
Yes of course. Ethereum is dead. Bitcoin is dead. China banned bitcoin. Exactly once a week, a story like this pops up. Mostly written by someone who thinks that "blockchain is the new big-data of the cloud".
- rebuilder 10y ago
  I didn't get that from the article at all. The point that blockchains haven't done away with trust is an important one. That the argument that a post-fork blockchain would be less trustworthy than it was before the fork gets made so often tells me this article offers useful information. (The issue with forks isn't whether or not they do occur, but rather whether or not they can occur. A fork that can occur is a fork that just hasn't occurred yet.)
riprowan 10y ago
This article veers between erroneous sensationalism and strategic deception. I will attempt to debunk a few of the most important errors in this article. In short, the author takes the position that the promise of blockchains is immutability; and that by hardforking, Ethereum proves that "immutability" requires trust: > We aren’t actually trusting the blockchain technology; we are trusting the people that support the blockchain. We should start by observing that un-mutated Ethereum - Ethereum Classic - still exists. You can mine its blockchain and run contracts on its virtual machine. So whatever point there was to be made about the untrustworthiness of "immutability" seems false, since the "immutable chain" is still there chugging along. The only problem is that nobody actually wants immutability, once they really think through its permutations. --- I will posit that "immutability" is a red herring. While some people did promise immutability, this was a false promise made by some people. Other people have instead said for years that consensus blockchains like Bitcoin are not - and don't need to be - in fact shouldn't be - "immutable." I will further posit that this is in fact the majority view. In fact there is a perfectly clear reason why a blockchain might "mutate" and fail to honor the contract as it is written in code: the contract sufficiently harms the economic majority of miners and holders. And that is why such "mutability" is not bad, but in fact desirable. Otherwise, all that is needed is the invention of some sort of poison contract, and then the network would be unable to administer its own antidote. This is in fact what happened when someone mined some 90M Bitcoin in 2010 while everyone else was running code that considered these to be valid coins. Obviously, there was a fork, and the perpetrator's 90M Bitcoin were taken out of the ledger. And a good thing, too: if "the code was really the law" then those would still be 90M valid Bitcoin and the whole project likely would have been dead some time ago as the malactor would own something like 90% of the money supply. > The code was supposed to be the law. If you didn’t see the weakness in the software, that was your problem Ironically, because this is in fact a true statement, the author's point is exactly wrong. The code is the law - not just The DAO's code, but also Ethereum's code, on which The DAO depends. Ethereum code is not only also "law", but in this sense, it's the "highest law in the land" with respect to contracts executed on its virtual machine. It should be patently obvious that Ethereum's code permits forks, "soft" and "hard." It should therefore be patently obvious that any promise of "unstoppable contracts" is simply overpromise. The Ethereum global VM came to consensus that The DAO was not just a failed contract (buggy Ethereum contracts happen all the time) but a failed contract so toxic as to be a threat to consensus. So, by following one chain, a group of users may declare its will that The DAO contract be "held invalid." By following another chain, a different group may declare its will that the DAO contract be held "valid." Each group actually got its will. --- Consensus blockchains like Ethereum and Bitcoin are not "immutable" and never were, in the sense that all it takes is someone to mine a fork, and the chain "mutates." This is the "permissionless innovation" aspect of blockchains: anyone can create a fork - though it takes a lot of hashpower to protect a fork from hashpower attack. But on the other hand, consensus blockchains are immutable in the sense that nobody can compel you to follow a "mutated" chain and you are always free to continue to mine on the original chain. Moreover you can hold coins on either - or both - chains. This is the non-compulsory nature of blockchains: nobody is forced to hold coins on anyone's fork - though it takes a lot of money to protect the value of a forked coin. Since anyone can create a fork, but it takes a lot of hashpower and coin holdings to sustain a fork, the system on the whole is highly resistant to - but fortunately not completely immune from - hardforks. Even "contentious" hardforks. Like the DAO rollback. The beauty is that hardforks provide automatic market choice. One day there's only one Ethereum, and the DAO attacker who holds a not-insubstantial percentage of the entire money supply. Then there's a fork, and everyone who held Ethereum now holds coins on two chains - Ethereum and Ethereum Classic, and can signal to the market by holding coins on one chain and selling them on the other - or hedge by holding coins on both chains. Do we really want true "immutability?" In the case of Ethereum, the market of Ethereum users was offered a choice of either "mutated Ethereum" and "non-mutated Ethereum." Since the split, the market has fairly consistently valued "mutated Ethereum" over "non-mutated Ethereum" roughly 10:1 - and as the article points out, even "non mutated" Ethereum Classic found itself facing a hardfork. Uh oh. Forks are good, because they allow markets to place bets on which outcomes they prefer. It's also good that it's really, really hard to create economically-viable fork. Getting back to the first paragraph of the article: > on that day, after much deliberation and hand-wringing, in the aftermath of a multimillion-dollar swindle from his automated, algorithm-driven, supposedly foolproof corporation, Vitalik Buterin, then 22 years old, announced the ‘hard fork’ of the cryptocurrency Ethereum. Vitalik is a respected developer. I think there's a valid argument to be made that certain high-profile devs carry more influence than is their due - but no developer controls any consensus blockchain - not Ethereum, not Bitcoin. Ethereum, like all consensus blockchains, is "controlled" by its ecosystem of miners and users. "Devs propose, the market disposes." And we have seen - the market preferred the forked Ethereum. > By making that announcement, Buterin shattered certain tightly held assumptions about the future of trust and the nature of many vital institutions that make modern life possible. I hope by now we see that the only thing that Ethereum shattered is the overpromise and undesirability of "immutability." --- I hold in each hand a cryptocurrency. In the left hand, I offer a truly immutable cryptocurrency. The economic fundamentals of this currency cannot be changed by the will of man even if things start going wrong with the initial assumptions upon which the money was based. In the right hand, I offer a self-improving consensus blockchain-based cryptocurrency. This currency cannot be easily forked, but when it does, two things will be true: the market must value the change quite badly to stimulate a fork, and you will be permitted to hold coins on either side of the fork as you see fit. Take your pick. [edits: a lot of stuff - I got onto a bit of a long topic and realized it needed some editing. It still does.]
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  > anyone can create a fork - though it takes hashpower to protect a fork from hashpower attack. Minor aside, unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum doesn't use hashpower (proof of work) as its voting currency, it uses proof of stake. So in order to convince the network of a lie, you need to be willing to put up monetary bets against the truth, and then pay them. This is very unlike Bitcoin, where you buy your mining rig, and then own it. If you pay to fork Ethereum, your real money is at stake. And the financial incentive for people with even more money than you is to call your bluff and put up a bigger bet against your lie and get the cash and get your lie taken off the books. Although they have the price structure set up so that calling a bluff is much cheaper than lying. So really even someone with a tenth of your budget can afford to call your bluff.
  - DennisP 10y ago
    That's a pretty good description of Ethereum's proof of stake but it won't be in production for a year or so; for now it's still on proof of work.
mistermumble 10y ago
The article is sensationalist, especially with regard to the "fall" part of the "rise and fall of Ethereum". The reality is that Ethereum as a platform has gained strength, credibility and market traction over the last six months. There have been 3 hard forks and 1 soft fork, partly in response to the system being under almost continuous attack (mostly denial of service). The effective response by Vitalik and company has increased trust, not decreased it. As the saying goes: "What does not kill you, makes you stronger." More and more developers building applications on top of this platform. The MelonPort token sale ICO (on the Ethereum platform) sold out in 2.5 minutes yesterday. It's not just independent Ramen-fueled startups, but "enterprise Ethereum" has become a thing. JP Morgan, Santander, Microsoft, Redhat, Cisco, Accenture, etc -- for better or worse -- are joining the Ethereum bandwagon. I think it is still way early to call a winner in the blockchain platform wars. There are dozens of well-funded competitors trying to gain dominance over established platforms like the Bitcoin technology stack and the Ethereum platform -- including IBM-led Hyperledger Fabric and the bluechip banking consortium led by R3CEV. But if there is one dog at the top of the blockchain platform heap right now, it is Ethereum. See: http://www.coindesk.com/jp-morgan-santander-said-join-enterprise-ethereum-blockchain-group/ http://www.coindesk.com/jp-morgan-santander-said-join-enterp... https://media.consensys.net/the-birth-of-enterprise-ethereum-in-2017-ebe7f7abed92 https://media.consensys.net/the-birth-of-enterprise-ethereum... https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5u6uhb/melonport_ico_is_filled_in_25_minutes_many_thanks/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5u6uhb/melonport_...
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  I am also bullish on Ethereum. A few points to notice: - the price is pretty stable relative to early Bitcoin. - Vitalik and the other devs are still building out economic/game theory models. And Ethereum has successfully made a hard fork. That suggests the organization has some leeway to skate where the puck is going, so to speak. - it's very early days in terms of building out the "standard library". Lots of people working on this, collectively and privately. It's a little like the railroad tracks have been laid but they are still building the trains, not to mention stations. - Ethereum has the benefit of being overshadowed by Bitcoin, which insulates it a bit from speculators and scammers. This is only a temporary effect, but I think obscurity helps Ethereum grow smart and slow right now. - the forums are all about things being built with Ethereum. Bitcoin has a chicken and egg problem, where retailers need to get on board for consumers to care. But nerds can sit down and make something useful on Ethereum today. I would put one check on this endorsement, though. Ethereum is uniquely useful in situations where you can't trust anyone. It shines in that environment. Mostly though, we do trust the people around us. I think once the Ethereum community starts releasing big trustless e-institutions, it will be clear that most of them could run just fine with Venmo, WebRTC, and a little JavaScript. So I think Ethereum will always have a more back-office feel, and I don't quite see it being on The Today Show any time soon. But Vitalik Buterin is very smart and I wouldn't bet against him.
arisAlexis 10y ago
for sure Etherum's hard fork was not and will not be the most important thing that happened in my or our lifetimes as said in the blog post
- aarpmcgee 10y ago
  The article says "philosophically interesting" – unless I am missing something, that's a very different thing than what you're claiming the article says.
milansuk 10y ago
Big part of releasing new technology is timing. And Ethereum came too soon. Ethreum is big, but people just don't know it and I'm very curious what "news" will send ether up.
drcode 10y ago
In related news, a company built on top of ethereum performed a crowdsale earlier today that ended after 2.5 minutes when their 2 million dollar funding goal was successfully reached. (There is some initial disagreement about how to measure the time appropriately, it may have been several minutes longer) https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5u6uhb/melonport_ico_is_filled_in_25_minutes_many_thanks/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5u6uhb/melonport_...
- vkou 10y ago
  ... And it's quite probably illegal in the US, given SEC rules with respect to privately held companies with large number of owners. Relatedly, from the Reddit thread: > ICOs have nothing to do with ethereum. They can raise by any cryptocurrency existing or that will exist in the future. So far, they've mostly been used for scams, although I'm sure some legitimate projects will also be funded. Is there a meaningful response to this? This is a serious question - how can I tell the difference between an ICO scam, and one that isn't? Are there any examples of sustainable businesses arising from ICOs, or are all of them pump-and-dump schemes? If I get defrauded by a company putting out an ICO, will anyone go to jail?
Animats 10y ago
The only reason there was a hard fork was because it was Buterin's company that got ripped off. If it had been anybody else, they would have lost the money. As for "The DAO", the biggest question on their forum is "How do I get out?"[1] Apparently the DAO is dead, but they seem to have kept the money. [1] https://forum.daohub.org/ https://forum.daohub.org/
- drcode 10y ago
  You are spreading misinformation: It's true some employees at the ethereum foundation had personal money invested in the DAO. Vitalik himself had a small amount invested as well. However, the Ethereum Foundation was not involved with the DAO. > If it had been anybody else, they would have lost the money This is idle speculation, and I personally don't think that's true. > Apparently the DAO is dead, but they seem to have kept the money. I don't know who you mean by "They" but neither the creators of the DAO, nor the Ethereum foundation has kept any money that was lost in this unfortunate incident. If you're going to accuse people of things please provide citations with evidence.
  - Animats 10y ago
    It looks like there's about $10 million unclaimed in DAO tokens.[1] Soon it will no longer be possible to redeem them, because the infrastructure is disappearing. Getting them back is really complicated. [1] https://medium.com/curator-multisig-phf-official-channel/dao-token-holders-come-claim-your-money-b428f186572a#.vepjho804 https://medium.com/curator-multisig-phf-official-channel/dao...
    - drcode 10y ago
      I definitely agree that's unfortunate, but no specific entity is holding those funds, they are locked into the contract.
      - Klinky 10y ago
        Post "contracts don't matter" fork, suddenly contracts matter again. Interesting how that works.
id122015 10y ago
I started to read about Ethereum and installed the Wallet but I dont understand why the blockchain size increases so big and how fast ? It downloaded 500MB on my SSD and I stopped it, I've read that it has to download about 15GB. Thats too much for me. Do the other projects download such big blockchains also ? I mean 15GB for each project ?
- drcode 10y ago
  Yes, this is an issue with ethereum. However: 1. Geth/Mist now supports a "light client" mode that requires much less storage and maintains most of the strong crypto guarantees. 2. Most of the size problem is due to the complexity in efficiently optimizing the serialized data, this will improve in the near future. 3. Ethereum is on the forefront of research into scalable blockchain technology, which has the potential to resolve this problem.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- heliumcraft 10y ago
  If you use a light client the actual size is around 30 MB and takes ~30 seconds. If by "each project" you mean ethereum projects, then no since they share the same chain.
- tromp 10y ago
  Popular cryptocurrencies process many thousands of transactions per hour, and many wallets choose to retain a large fraction of that data. In which case a few years of operations easily yields dozens of GB of storage. In theory though, through the magic of Merkle trees, a superlight client could get away with needing only a few KB of storage, accounting for the paths through the Merkle tree that witness its spendable outputs. A discussion about such a setup for Bitcoin can be found for instance at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88208.msg1896213#msg1896213 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88208.msg1896213#msg... I don't know of any crypto-currencies that have implemented these UTXO commitments that would allow for such wallets though...
Pent 10y ago
Ethereum lost all my trust when they hardforked over a contract mistake. They are never getting that back. I'd recommend rebranding the project to focus on the community-driven aspect. They are no better than our current legal framework.
- heliumcraft 10y ago
  smart contacts are just code, they are not 'legal documents', not everyone (most?) subscribes to the whole 'code is law' meme.
Jtsummers 10y ago
Has the primary language for writing Ethereum contracts been improved? Or is it still a poor language with respect to its type system and other features? I wasn't that interested in it, but the idea of programmable contracts was intriguing. The main issue is that they should be declarative/logical in nature, as that's what most contracts are, instead the primary language was imperative and had a weak type system (inexpressive). Has this situation improved or are all contracts written in it still destined to have many bugs due to the poor language design? EDIT: Had to look it up, forgot the name, it's Solidity.
- seagreen 10y ago
  Nope, they're still using Solidity. http://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/smart_contracts.html http://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/smart_contracts.html : > "Solidity, while being an interesting proof of concept, is dangerously under-contained and very difficult to analyze statically." Solidity docs are here: http://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/solidity-in-depth.html http://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/solidity-in-depth.... No referential transparency, no purity, no algebraic data types . . . it's scary stuff for writing contracts. It sounds like the core team has realized what a hole they're in and are taking it seriously, which is great. But I think a lot of the Etherium-related businesses still have no idea what a sandy foundation they're building on. It's going to be ugly.
  - Jtsummers 10y ago
    That's unfortunate. I don't see Ethereum as the future or being long-lived in its current form, but as a proof of concept it has value. Unfortunately, critical flaws in early projects can kill momentum and interest and delay progress for years. See the 1980s and the AI Winter. Overpromised, misunderstood, and underdelivered. This led to reductions in research funding and delays in developments (admittedly, faster and cheaper computers made a lot of those developments either easier or feasible, where the problems being solved may have been intractable in the 80s and 90s).
  - mistermumble 10y ago
    Solidity is the most widely adopted language, but there are other choices including Serpent (Python-like)and LLL (lisp-like). A few developers I know use Serpent because it is simple and stable (meaning it has not been changed or updated for a while, unlike Solidity which they say is continually being tweaked in a manner that can be aggravating). Interestingly, Vitalik's preferred language (say for prototyping Casper algorithms) is Python. He created Serpent and is now working on Viper, which sounds like a next-generation Serpent. Viper is being implemented in Python3. You can see the work in progress at: https://github.com/ethereum/viper https://github.com/ethereum/viper
singularity2001 10y ago
What does he even mean by "fall of Ethereum" https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/

59 points by kawera 10y ago

Yes of course. Ethereum is dead. Bitcoin is dead. China banned bitcoin. Exactly once a week, a story like this pops up. Mostly written by someone who thinks that "blockchain is the new big-data of the cloud".

rebuilder 10y ago
I didn't get that from the article at all. The point that blockchains haven't done away with trust is an important one. That the argument that a post-fork blockchain would be less trustworthy than it was before the fork gets made so often tells me this article offers useful information. (The issue with forks isn't whether or not they do occur, but rather whether or not they can occur. A fork that can occur is a fork that just hasn't occurred yet.)

riprowan 10y ago

This article veers between erroneous sensationalism and strategic deception. I will attempt to debunk a few of the most important errors in this article. In short, the author takes the position that the promise of blockchains is immutability; and that by hardforking, Ethereum proves that "immutability" requires trust: > We aren’t actually trusting the blockchain technology; we are trusting the people that support the blockchain. We should start by observing that un-mutated Ethereum - Ethereum Classic - still exists. You can mine its blockchain and run contracts on its virtual machine. So whatever point there was to be made about the untrustworthiness of "immutability" seems false, since the "immutable chain" is still there chugging along. The only problem is that nobody actually wants immutability, once they really think through its permutations. --- I will posit that "immutability" is a red herring. While some people did promise immutability, this was a false promise made by some people. Other people have instead said for years that consensus blockchains like Bitcoin are not - and don't need to be - in fact shouldn't be - "immutable." I will further posit that this is in fact the majority view. In fact there is a perfectly clear reason why a blockchain might "mutate" and fail to honor the contract as it is written in code: the contract sufficiently harms the economic majority of miners and holders. And that is why such "mutability" is not bad, but in fact desirable. Otherwise, all that is needed is the invention of some sort of poison contract, and then the network would be unable to administer its own antidote. This is in fact what happened when someone mined some 90M Bitcoin in 2010 while everyone else was running code that considered these to be valid coins. Obviously, there was a fork, and the perpetrator's 90M Bitcoin were taken out of the ledger. And a good thing, too: if "the code was really the law" then those would still be 90M valid Bitcoin and the whole project likely would have been dead some time ago as the malactor would own something like 90% of the money supply. > The code was supposed to be the law. If you didn’t see the weakness in the software, that was your problem Ironically, because this is in fact a true statement, the author's point is exactly wrong. The code is the law - not just The DAO's code, but also Ethereum's code, on which The DAO depends. Ethereum code is not only also "law", but in this sense, it's the "highest law in the land" with respect to contracts executed on its virtual machine. It should be patently obvious that Ethereum's code permits forks, "soft" and "hard." It should therefore be patently obvious that any promise of "unstoppable contracts" is simply overpromise. The Ethereum global VM came to consensus that The DAO was not just a failed contract (buggy Ethereum contracts happen all the time) but a failed contract so toxic as to be a threat to consensus. So, by following one chain, a group of users may declare its will that The DAO contract be "held invalid." By following another chain, a different group may declare its will that the DAO contract be held "valid." Each group actually got its will. --- Consensus blockchains like Ethereum and Bitcoin are not "immutable" and never were, in the sense that all it takes is someone to mine a fork, and the chain "mutates." This is the "permissionless innovation" aspect of blockchains: anyone can create a fork - though it takes a lot of hashpower to protect a fork from hashpower attack. But on the other hand, consensus blockchains are immutable in the sense that nobody can compel you to follow a "mutated" chain and you are always free to continue to mine on the original chain. Moreover you can hold coins on either - or both - chains. This is the non-compulsory nature of blockchains: nobody is forced to hold coins on anyone's fork - though it takes a lot of money to protect the value of a forked coin. Since anyone can create a fork, but it takes a lot of hashpower and coin holdings to sustain a fork, the system on the whole is highly resistant to - but fortunately not completely immune from - hardforks. Even "contentious" hardforks. Like the DAO rollback. The beauty is that hardforks provide automatic market choice. One day there's only one Ethereum, and the DAO attacker who holds a not-insubstantial percentage of the entire money supply. Then there's a fork, and everyone who held Ethereum now holds coins on two chains - Ethereum and Ethereum Classic, and can signal to the market by holding coins on one chain and selling them on the other - or hedge by holding coins on both chains. Do we really want true "immutability?" In the case of Ethereum, the market of Ethereum users was offered a choice of either "mutated Ethereum" and "non-mutated Ethereum." Since the split, the market has fairly consistently valued "mutated Ethereum" over "non-mutated Ethereum" roughly 10:1 - and as the article points out, even "non mutated" Ethereum Classic found itself facing a hardfork. Uh oh. Forks are good, because they allow markets to place bets on which outcomes they prefer. It's also good that it's really, really hard to create economically-viable fork. Getting back to the first paragraph of the article: > on that day, after much deliberation and hand-wringing, in the aftermath of a multimillion-dollar swindle from his automated, algorithm-driven, supposedly foolproof corporation, Vitalik Buterin, then 22 years old, announced the ‘hard fork’ of the cryptocurrency Ethereum. Vitalik is a respected developer. I think there's a valid argument to be made that certain high-profile devs carry more influence than is their due - but no developer controls any consensus blockchain - not Ethereum, not Bitcoin. Ethereum, like all consensus blockchains, is "controlled" by its ecosystem of miners and users. "Devs propose, the market disposes." And we have seen - the market preferred the forked Ethereum. > By making that announcement, Buterin shattered certain tightly held assumptions about the future of trust and the nature of many vital institutions that make modern life possible. I hope by now we see that the only thing that Ethereum shattered is the overpromise and undesirability of "immutability." --- I hold in each hand a cryptocurrency. In the left hand, I offer a truly immutable cryptocurrency. The economic fundamentals of this currency cannot be changed by the will of man even if things start going wrong with the initial assumptions upon which the money was based. In the right hand, I offer a self-improving consensus blockchain-based cryptocurrency. This currency cannot be easily forked, but when it does, two things will be true: the market must value the change quite badly to stimulate a fork, and you will be permitted to hold coins on either side of the fork as you see fit. Take your pick. [edits: a lot of stuff - I got onto a bit of a long topic and realized it needed some editing. It still does.]

erikpukinskis 10y ago
> anyone can create a fork - though it takes hashpower to protect a fork from hashpower attack. Minor aside, unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum doesn't use hashpower (proof of work) as its voting currency, it uses proof of stake. So in order to convince the network of a lie, you need to be willing to put up monetary bets against the truth, and then pay them. This is very unlike Bitcoin, where you buy your mining rig, and then own it. If you pay to fork Ethereum, your real money is at stake. And the financial incentive for people with even more money than you is to call your bluff and put up a bigger bet against your lie and get the cash and get your lie taken off the books. Although they have the price structure set up so that calling a bluff is much cheaper than lying. So really even someone with a tenth of your budget can afford to call your bluff.
- DennisP 10y ago
  That's a pretty good description of Ethereum's proof of stake but it won't be in production for a year or so; for now it's still on proof of work.

mistermumble 10y ago

The article is sensationalist, especially with regard to the "fall" part of the "rise and fall of Ethereum". The reality is that Ethereum as a platform has gained strength, credibility and market traction over the last six months. There have been 3 hard forks and 1 soft fork, partly in response to the system being under almost continuous attack (mostly denial of service). The effective response by Vitalik and company has increased trust, not decreased it. As the saying goes: "What does not kill you, makes you stronger." More and more developers building applications on top of this platform. The MelonPort token sale ICO (on the Ethereum platform) sold out in 2.5 minutes yesterday. It's not just independent Ramen-fueled startups, but "enterprise Ethereum" has become a thing. JP Morgan, Santander, Microsoft, Redhat, Cisco, Accenture, etc -- for better or worse -- are joining the Ethereum bandwagon. I think it is still way early to call a winner in the blockchain platform wars. There are dozens of well-funded competitors trying to gain dominance over established platforms like the Bitcoin technology stack and the Ethereum platform -- including IBM-led Hyperledger Fabric and the bluechip banking consortium led by R3CEV. But if there is one dog at the top of the blockchain platform heap right now, it is Ethereum. See: http://www.coindesk.com/jp-morgan-santander-said-join-enterprise-ethereum-blockchain-group/ http://www.coindesk.com/jp-morgan-santander-said-join-enterp... https://media.consensys.net/the-birth-of-enterprise-ethereum-in-2017-ebe7f7abed92 https://media.consensys.net/the-birth-of-enterprise-ethereum... https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5u6uhb/melonport_ico_is_filled_in_25_minutes_many_thanks/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5u6uhb/melonport_...

erikpukinskis 10y ago
I am also bullish on Ethereum. A few points to notice: - the price is pretty stable relative to early Bitcoin. - Vitalik and the other devs are still building out economic/game theory models. And Ethereum has successfully made a hard fork. That suggests the organization has some leeway to skate where the puck is going, so to speak. - it's very early days in terms of building out the "standard library". Lots of people working on this, collectively and privately. It's a little like the railroad tracks have been laid but they are still building the trains, not to mention stations. - Ethereum has the benefit of being overshadowed by Bitcoin, which insulates it a bit from speculators and scammers. This is only a temporary effect, but I think obscurity helps Ethereum grow smart and slow right now. - the forums are all about things being built with Ethereum. Bitcoin has a chicken and egg problem, where retailers need to get on board for consumers to care. But nerds can sit down and make something useful on Ethereum today. I would put one check on this endorsement, though. Ethereum is uniquely useful in situations where you can't trust anyone. It shines in that environment. Mostly though, we do trust the people around us. I think once the Ethereum community starts releasing big trustless e-institutions, it will be clear that most of them could run just fine with Venmo, WebRTC, and a little JavaScript. So I think Ethereum will always have a more back-office feel, and I don't quite see it being on The Today Show any time soon. But Vitalik Buterin is very smart and I wouldn't bet against him.

arisAlexis 10y ago

for sure Etherum's hard fork was not and will not be the most important thing that happened in my or our lifetimes as said in the blog post

aarpmcgee 10y ago
The article says "philosophically interesting" – unless I am missing something, that's a very different thing than what you're claiming the article says.

milansuk 10y ago

Big part of releasing new technology is timing. And Ethereum came too soon. Ethreum is big, but people just don't know it and I'm very curious what "news" will send ether up.

drcode 10y ago

In related news, a company built on top of ethereum performed a crowdsale earlier today that ended after 2.5 minutes when their 2 million dollar funding goal was successfully reached. (There is some initial disagreement about how to measure the time appropriately, it may have been several minutes longer) https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5u6uhb/melonport_ico_is_filled_in_25_minutes_many_thanks/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5u6uhb/melonport_...

vkou 10y ago
... And it's quite probably illegal in the US, given SEC rules with respect to privately held companies with large number of owners. Relatedly, from the Reddit thread: > ICOs have nothing to do with ethereum. They can raise by any cryptocurrency existing or that will exist in the future. So far, they've mostly been used for scams, although I'm sure some legitimate projects will also be funded. Is there a meaningful response to this? This is a serious question - how can I tell the difference between an ICO scam, and one that isn't? Are there any examples of sustainable businesses arising from ICOs, or are all of them pump-and-dump schemes? If I get defrauded by a company putting out an ICO, will anyone go to jail?

Animats 10y ago

The only reason there was a hard fork was because it was Buterin's company that got ripped off. If it had been anybody else, they would have lost the money. As for "The DAO", the biggest question on their forum is "How do I get out?"[1] Apparently the DAO is dead, but they seem to have kept the money. [1] https://forum.daohub.org/ https://forum.daohub.org/

drcode 10y ago
You are spreading misinformation: It's true some employees at the ethereum foundation had personal money invested in the DAO. Vitalik himself had a small amount invested as well. However, the Ethereum Foundation was not involved with the DAO. > If it had been anybody else, they would have lost the money This is idle speculation, and I personally don't think that's true. > Apparently the DAO is dead, but they seem to have kept the money. I don't know who you mean by "They" but neither the creators of the DAO, nor the Ethereum foundation has kept any money that was lost in this unfortunate incident. If you're going to accuse people of things please provide citations with evidence.
- Animats 10y ago
  It looks like there's about $10 million unclaimed in DAO tokens.[1] Soon it will no longer be possible to redeem them, because the infrastructure is disappearing. Getting them back is really complicated. [1] https://medium.com/curator-multisig-phf-official-channel/dao-token-holders-come-claim-your-money-b428f186572a#.vepjho804 https://medium.com/curator-multisig-phf-official-channel/dao...
  - drcode 10y ago
    I definitely agree that's unfortunate, but no specific entity is holding those funds, they are locked into the contract.
    - Klinky 10y ago
      Post "contracts don't matter" fork, suddenly contracts matter again. Interesting how that works.

id122015 10y ago

I started to read about Ethereum and installed the Wallet but I dont understand why the blockchain size increases so big and how fast ? It downloaded 500MB on my SSD and I stopped it, I've read that it has to download about 15GB. Thats too much for me. Do the other projects download such big blockchains also ? I mean 15GB for each project ?

drcode 10y ago
Yes, this is an issue with ethereum. However: 1. Geth/Mist now supports a "light client" mode that requires much less storage and maintains most of the strong crypto guarantees. 2. Most of the size problem is due to the complexity in efficiently optimizing the serialized data, this will improve in the near future. 3. Ethereum is on the forefront of research into scalable blockchain technology, which has the potential to resolve this problem.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
heliumcraft 10y ago
If you use a light client the actual size is around 30 MB and takes ~30 seconds. If by "each project" you mean ethereum projects, then no since they share the same chain.
tromp 10y ago
Popular cryptocurrencies process many thousands of transactions per hour, and many wallets choose to retain a large fraction of that data. In which case a few years of operations easily yields dozens of GB of storage. In theory though, through the magic of Merkle trees, a superlight client could get away with needing only a few KB of storage, accounting for the paths through the Merkle tree that witness its spendable outputs. A discussion about such a setup for Bitcoin can be found for instance at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88208.msg1896213#msg1896213 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88208.msg1896213#msg... I don't know of any crypto-currencies that have implemented these UTXO commitments that would allow for such wallets though...

Pent 10y ago

Ethereum lost all my trust when they hardforked over a contract mistake. They are never getting that back. I'd recommend rebranding the project to focus on the community-driven aspect. They are no better than our current legal framework.

heliumcraft 10y ago
smart contacts are just code, they are not 'legal documents', not everyone (most?) subscribes to the whole 'code is law' meme.

Jtsummers 10y ago

Has the primary language for writing Ethereum contracts been improved? Or is it still a poor language with respect to its type system and other features? I wasn't that interested in it, but the idea of programmable contracts was intriguing. The main issue is that they should be declarative/logical in nature, as that's what most contracts are, instead the primary language was imperative and had a weak type system (inexpressive). Has this situation improved or are all contracts written in it still destined to have many bugs due to the poor language design? EDIT: Had to look it up, forgot the name, it's Solidity.

seagreen 10y ago
Nope, they're still using Solidity. http://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/smart_contracts.html http://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/smart_contracts.html : > "Solidity, while being an interesting proof of concept, is dangerously under-contained and very difficult to analyze statically." Solidity docs are here: http://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/solidity-in-depth.html http://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/solidity-in-depth.... No referential transparency, no purity, no algebraic data types . . . it's scary stuff for writing contracts. It sounds like the core team has realized what a hole they're in and are taking it seriously, which is great. But I think a lot of the Etherium-related businesses still have no idea what a sandy foundation they're building on. It's going to be ugly.
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  That's unfortunate. I don't see Ethereum as the future or being long-lived in its current form, but as a proof of concept it has value. Unfortunately, critical flaws in early projects can kill momentum and interest and delay progress for years. See the 1980s and the AI Winter. Overpromised, misunderstood, and underdelivered. This led to reductions in research funding and delays in developments (admittedly, faster and cheaper computers made a lot of those developments either easier or feasible, where the problems being solved may have been intractable in the 80s and 90s).
- mistermumble 10y ago
  Solidity is the most widely adopted language, but there are other choices including Serpent (Python-like)and LLL (lisp-like). A few developers I know use Serpent because it is simple and stable (meaning it has not been changed or updated for a while, unlike Solidity which they say is continually being tweaked in a manner that can be aggravating). Interestingly, Vitalik's preferred language (say for prototyping Casper algorithms) is Python. He created Serpent and is now working on Viper, which sounds like a next-generation Serpent. Viper is being implemented in Python3. You can see the work in progress at: https://github.com/ethereum/viper https://github.com/ethereum/viper

singularity2001 10y ago

What does he even mean by "fall of Ethereum" https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/