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The underlying technology here is far superior to that of bitcoin (for those who don't know, ethereum is a blockchain with a turing-complete programming languag

The underlying technology here is far superior to that of bitcoin (for those who don't know, ethereum is a blockchain with a turing-complete programming language built on top of it and enables decentralized code execution) and the development ecosystem is much more vibrant and promising. We haven't seen the last of this.

merlincorey 10y ago
> The underlying technology here is far superior to that of bitcoin Opinion > ethereum is a blockchain with a turing-complete programming language built on top of it and enables decentralized code execution Fact -- but double edged sword (my opinion, of course). I have personally been skeptical of ETH for years as their team have been promising the moon for a variety of use cases. For me, the biggest blow to ETH is the revelation that "the code is NOT law". This is in contrast to the line they were pushing for years that the code IS law. Then someone found a bug in the first major DAO and the code was quickly changed. So much for that. If you think that is gonna be the last issue along these lines, I've got a bridge to sell you, too.
- splintercell 10y ago
  > For me, the biggest blow to ETH is the revelation that "the code is NOT law". Considering Ethereum Classic has all the features of ETH and it follows whatever your distorted definition of 'code is law' means, the fact that ETC is at it's all time low (compared to its price in ETH)). The question remains if ETH violated 'Code is Law', then how come market doesn't care. Clearly the biggest blow to ETH is NOT the DAO fork. If ETH is not above bitcoin, then among all the reasons I can list, its decision to hard fork is not one of it (because if that is the case then ETC would have been the market leader).
  - merlincorey 10y ago
    > Considering Ethereum Classic has all the features of ETH and it follows whatever your distorted definition of 'code is law' means, the fact that ETC is at it's all time low (compared to its price in ETH)). The question remains if ETH violated 'Code is Law', then how come market doesn't care. I'm not sure how my view is distorted - it might be naive, I concede. My view is basically the person who found a flaw in TheDAO code deserved to be rewarded for it, even if it was not the intent of TheDAO, because I was sold (perhaps improperly) on the code being the arbiter, not people or politics.
    - splintercell 10y ago
      I am calling your view of 'code is law' as a distorted view because it isn't that the other side doesn't think that code is law, it's just what do we consider 'the law' to be. In my world view, if you and I wrote a contract, and in the contract, there is a typo which says that I will pay you $5 gazillion for an iPhone, then that doesn't mean that the courts must enforce it. Clearly, it doesn't follow the 'intent' of the parties. Now, what if the other side truly signed the contract because they thought that their iPhone was being bought for 5 gazillion dollars, well this is why we don't "JUST" communicate via the contract. We communicate and perform negotiations via other human channels and the legal contract is a formalized expression of our communication. Same thing goes with smart contracts. I don't intend to use Smart Contracts because the missing 11th commandment said: "Thou shalt obey the Legal/Smart Contracts to the word". I want to use Smart Contracts because they would be an extension of legal contracts taken to the decentralized + technology domain. Literally, nobody put their money in the DAO because they thought that if a person puts in $1000 in the DAO then he should be able to take out $10 million if he is clever enough. It wasn't a bounty contract. If that was known beforehand, then there is no way it would have accrued $150 million worth of ethers. > My view is basically the person who found a flaw in TheDAO code deserved to be rewarded for it, even if it was not the intent of TheDAO, because I was sold (perhaps improperly) on the code being the arbiter, not people or politics. Lemme put it this way, had the hard fork not happened, but nearly 90% of the Ethereum holders quit Ethereum after that, (which meant that the hacker's bounty would have been decimated, would you still say that Ethereum is never going to succeed because they didn't honor the hacker's bounty?
      - tyre 10y ago
        The parent is saying that the entire point of Ethereum was to remove fuzzy human-world debates around things like "intent". If it doesn't, then what is the point? That they are decentralized? Who cares, and why? I don't disagree that Ethereum should have forked, but that is a human response. If we can take human responses to these contracts, then they aren't any different than normal paper contracts.
        10y ago
  - rebuilder 10y ago
    ETC doesn't follow the code is law edict, they just haven't broken it yet. (AFAIK). The point is, the code is not law, and no solution seems to exist that would make it possible to say it is. This stands for all cryptocurrencies.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  I'm personally waiting on an ETH successor with non-Turing-complete, verifiable code. There's no reason that smart contracts require Turing completeness (no real world program requires it, for that matter), and software theorem proving will be required for me to take smart contracts seriously. We need to be able to prove things about the contract execution for it to be safe to trust "code as contract". Im not as upset about the hardfork as many people, though. Social constructs should be changable by politics, not indelible and absolute. That's not what they were selling, but all the same, what they were selling was dystopian nonsense where humans are chained to machines, not their masters. It's a feature not bug of social constructs to be changeable through politics. What matters is the political process to do so.
  - merlincorey 10y ago
    I think this is a great response, especially because I agree with the first part, and the second part gave me more to think about. > I'm personally waiting on an ETH successor with non-Turing-complete, verifiable code. Absolutely! My premise is that with turing completeness comes more chances for shooting in the foot. > Im not as upset about the hardfork as many people, though. Social constructs should be changable by politics, not indelible and absolute. That's not what they were selling, but all the same, what they were selling was dystopian nonsense where humans are chained to machines, not their masters. It's a feature not bug of social constructs to be changeable through politics. What matters is the political process to do so. This is great insight. I think for me, personally, the problem I have is that it seems like there isn't much politics involved at all... a completely centralized and small group made a decision and the great majority of users followed right along (as we would expect them to). This is not quite how it is (or was anyway) sold to people as a concept.
    - computerwizard 10y ago
      Checkout Byteball. I think it has a strong future and the technology is novel. https://Byteball.org https://Byteball.org
      - 10y ago
- ferologics 10y ago
  what's your definition of law?
Xophmeister 10y ago
Both BTC and ETH have been (generally) climbing lately; ETH especially. However, I feel (and I should be clear that this is all my own, anecdotal opinion) like -- even if it is superior -- BTC was "first to market" in a popularist sense and thus probably a better long-term bet. ETH is Betamax to BTC's VHS.
- adeptus 10y ago
  >ETH is Betamax to BTC's VHS. More like the Netflix to BTC's VHS I personally equate it to DOS vs Android. The potential for ETH is massive... granted security concerns, scalability, POS are equally massive hurdles to overcome.

merlincorey 10y ago

> The underlying technology here is far superior to that of bitcoin Opinion > ethereum is a blockchain with a turing-complete programming language built on top of it and enables decentralized code execution Fact -- but double edged sword (my opinion, of course). I have personally been skeptical of ETH for years as their team have been promising the moon for a variety of use cases. For me, the biggest blow to ETH is the revelation that "the code is NOT law". This is in contrast to the line they were pushing for years that the code IS law. Then someone found a bug in the first major DAO and the code was quickly changed. So much for that. If you think that is gonna be the last issue along these lines, I've got a bridge to sell you, too.

splintercell 10y ago
> For me, the biggest blow to ETH is the revelation that "the code is NOT law". Considering Ethereum Classic has all the features of ETH and it follows whatever your distorted definition of 'code is law' means, the fact that ETC is at it's all time low (compared to its price in ETH)). The question remains if ETH violated 'Code is Law', then how come market doesn't care. Clearly the biggest blow to ETH is NOT the DAO fork. If ETH is not above bitcoin, then among all the reasons I can list, its decision to hard fork is not one of it (because if that is the case then ETC would have been the market leader).
- merlincorey 10y ago
  > Considering Ethereum Classic has all the features of ETH and it follows whatever your distorted definition of 'code is law' means, the fact that ETC is at it's all time low (compared to its price in ETH)). The question remains if ETH violated 'Code is Law', then how come market doesn't care. I'm not sure how my view is distorted - it might be naive, I concede. My view is basically the person who found a flaw in TheDAO code deserved to be rewarded for it, even if it was not the intent of TheDAO, because I was sold (perhaps improperly) on the code being the arbiter, not people or politics.
  - splintercell 10y ago
    I am calling your view of 'code is law' as a distorted view because it isn't that the other side doesn't think that code is law, it's just what do we consider 'the law' to be. In my world view, if you and I wrote a contract, and in the contract, there is a typo which says that I will pay you $5 gazillion for an iPhone, then that doesn't mean that the courts must enforce it. Clearly, it doesn't follow the 'intent' of the parties. Now, what if the other side truly signed the contract because they thought that their iPhone was being bought for 5 gazillion dollars, well this is why we don't "JUST" communicate via the contract. We communicate and perform negotiations via other human channels and the legal contract is a formalized expression of our communication. Same thing goes with smart contracts. I don't intend to use Smart Contracts because the missing 11th commandment said: "Thou shalt obey the Legal/Smart Contracts to the word". I want to use Smart Contracts because they would be an extension of legal contracts taken to the decentralized + technology domain. Literally, nobody put their money in the DAO because they thought that if a person puts in $1000 in the DAO then he should be able to take out $10 million if he is clever enough. It wasn't a bounty contract. If that was known beforehand, then there is no way it would have accrued $150 million worth of ethers. > My view is basically the person who found a flaw in TheDAO code deserved to be rewarded for it, even if it was not the intent of TheDAO, because I was sold (perhaps improperly) on the code being the arbiter, not people or politics. Lemme put it this way, had the hard fork not happened, but nearly 90% of the Ethereum holders quit Ethereum after that, (which meant that the hacker's bounty would have been decimated, would you still say that Ethereum is never going to succeed because they didn't honor the hacker's bounty?
    - tyre 10y ago
      The parent is saying that the entire point of Ethereum was to remove fuzzy human-world debates around things like "intent". If it doesn't, then what is the point? That they are decentralized? Who cares, and why? I don't disagree that Ethereum should have forked, but that is a human response. If we can take human responses to these contracts, then they aren't any different than normal paper contracts.
      - 10y ago
- rebuilder 10y ago
  ETC doesn't follow the code is law edict, they just haven't broken it yet. (AFAIK). The point is, the code is not law, and no solution seems to exist that would make it possible to say it is. This stands for all cryptocurrencies.
SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
I'm personally waiting on an ETH successor with non-Turing-complete, verifiable code. There's no reason that smart contracts require Turing completeness (no real world program requires it, for that matter), and software theorem proving will be required for me to take smart contracts seriously. We need to be able to prove things about the contract execution for it to be safe to trust "code as contract". Im not as upset about the hardfork as many people, though. Social constructs should be changable by politics, not indelible and absolute. That's not what they were selling, but all the same, what they were selling was dystopian nonsense where humans are chained to machines, not their masters. It's a feature not bug of social constructs to be changeable through politics. What matters is the political process to do so.
- merlincorey 10y ago
  I think this is a great response, especially because I agree with the first part, and the second part gave me more to think about. > I'm personally waiting on an ETH successor with non-Turing-complete, verifiable code. Absolutely! My premise is that with turing completeness comes more chances for shooting in the foot. > Im not as upset about the hardfork as many people, though. Social constructs should be changable by politics, not indelible and absolute. That's not what they were selling, but all the same, what they were selling was dystopian nonsense where humans are chained to machines, not their masters. It's a feature not bug of social constructs to be changeable through politics. What matters is the political process to do so. This is great insight. I think for me, personally, the problem I have is that it seems like there isn't much politics involved at all... a completely centralized and small group made a decision and the great majority of users followed right along (as we would expect them to). This is not quite how it is (or was anyway) sold to people as a concept.
  - computerwizard 10y ago
    Checkout Byteball. I think it has a strong future and the technology is novel. https://Byteball.org https://Byteball.org
    - 10y ago
ferologics 10y ago
what's your definition of law?

Xophmeister 10y ago

Both BTC and ETH have been (generally) climbing lately; ETH especially. However, I feel (and I should be clear that this is all my own, anecdotal opinion) like -- even if it is superior -- BTC was "first to market" in a popularist sense and thus probably a better long-term bet. ETH is Betamax to BTC's VHS.

adeptus 10y ago
>ETH is Betamax to BTC's VHS. More like the Netflix to BTC's VHS I personally equate it to DOS vs Android. The potential for ETH is massive... granted security concerns, scalability, POS are equally massive hurdles to overcome.