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The problem I see with Ethereum is that it is way too complex. I have read perhaps at least 10 times on their home page without even understanding what it does,

The problem I see with Ethereum is that it is way too complex. I have read perhaps at least 10 times on their home page without even understanding what it does, what problems it solves etc. This is the sole reason why I don't think it will be successful in it's current state. With most successful tech or services or whatever the core idea is often super simple to grasp and you can instantly see the benefit. I don't see this with Ethereum. Even with bitcoin which is complex the benefits are instantaneous for the common man. Decentralized system, no single entity controls it. It is a fixed amount of bitcoins so like a mineral it's value is probably going to be stable in the long run and also each bitcoin will increase in value when more people get interested. It's easy to send coins to anyone in the world, at any time. What does Ethereum do? Smart contracts is probably the key word but I don't understand how it works or how it will benefit me. Why bother?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
thepoet 9y ago
I am assuming you have gone through the Ethereum whitepaper. It does lists some potential use cases which can be extrapolated. http://fermatslibrary.com/s/ethereum-a-next-generation-smart-contract-and-decentralized-application-platform http://fermatslibrary.com/s/ethereum-a-next-generation-smart...
- staticelf 9y ago
  I have not. Do you really think I should have to?
  - miguelrochefort 9y ago
    Yes...
  - Eliana555 9y ago
    I get paid over $95 per hour working from home with 2 kids at home. I never thought I'd be able to do it but my best friend earns over 10k a month doing this and she convinced me to try. The potential with this is endless. Heres what I've been doing, •••••••••>http://usawork.cn.to http://usawork.cn.to
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - harwoodleon 9y ago
    This is a very interesting retort. No you don't have to. You just have to trust that the community has provided you with a secure, usable tool. It is unreasonable to expect you to understand the engineering that goes into this kind of thing, if you are not a computer science educated individual. That is not the point of participation though. Developers don't have an intrinsic right to participate. The exclusion because of complexity is unfortunate, but necessary. Making something that is decentralised, distributed, trustless, useful, simple (in terms of contract execution) and secure is nearly impossible without technical feat. But you don't need to understand the mechanics of Ethereum or the EVM. The minimum you need to understand is tha Ethereum is used like fuel to pay for contract execution (GAS). Solidity is not a hard language to grasp. It has simple inputs and outputs. Why not try playing with solidity code on the testnet compiler if you don't want to read the whitepaper. https://ethereum.github.io/browser-solidity/ https://ethereum.github.io/browser-solidity/ Or do a Udemy course. :)
    - kristianc 9y ago
      Judging by the frequency which which catastrophic bugs seem to appear within smart contracts, it appears that most users of the platform also don't grok the complexity of the Ethereum network and it's vulnerability to bugs. This argument can get dangerously close to 'clever people have invested a lot of time and effort into this, so you should either invest the same amount of time and effort or trust that the whole thing is safe.' Not sure this holds up, especially when increasingly people are being asked to trust Ethereum, but anything, like Parity, that interacts with it.
      - harwoodleon 9y ago
        It's true that abstractions require trust. Have you flown anywhere lately? Inspected the plane before you took off? It's true for the risk you take you must be assured that engineers are making things safe. Lots of planes crashed before we got to the incredible safety record we have today, which is paid for by people having trust in airlines, who employ competent engineers. The only difference here is that the organisation is a decentralised one. The engineers are not paid but are incentivised by the network. It will take time to remove errors from the network and for best practices to emerge. As for novices making basic errors and losing money. The internet is littered with problems like that in all languages. This is not a reason to not attempt to do something new.
  - toadkicker 9y ago
    No I don't think you need to do that to get interested in it. If you want to see it in action and spin up a playground really quickly, I suggest using Embark (https://github.com/iurimatias/embark-framework https://github.com/iurimatias/embark-framework). (I contribute to this project)
mbrock 9y ago
You know Bitcoin is useful. One of the useful things in Bitcoin is that you can make a transaction conditional on a multiparty approval ("multisig"). This is used by many organizations to control funds in a safe way. Ethereum lets you construct even more interesting types of transactions. For example you can easily implement the logic of a crowdfunding (unless X is raised by time Y everyone is refunded). In that context, "smart contract" is just a way of saying that you're not relying on the promise of a third party to perform the refund—it's automatic.
- staticelf 9y ago
  Ok but that raises a lot of technical questions. Do I myself host that logic or is the logic itself distributed? While creating a crowdfunding contract, I am the host in my mind so assuming that the smart contract is hosted on my machines this must mean that when people are sending Ethereum to my wallet the logic does it's thing? Another version of that could be that the logic is sent out to all interested peers and they only actually send Ethereum to the correct wallet after the logic in the contract they got sent is executed. This is the parts of Ethereum that is so very confusing. People are simply swinging around with words like "smart contracts" but there are little to no actual description on how it actually works.
  - ym705 9y ago
    No the smart contract is on the blockchain and executed by the nodes. Never on your specific host alone
  - jononor 9y ago
    The logic exists on the block chain. It is executed on each and every machine that follows the chain. This is how executions are verified, 'everyone' has to agree on the outcome.
    - staticelf 9y ago
      Sorry for being so uninformed but what happens if there is an error in the logic? Doesn't that mean that it's not possible to update the smart contract?
maehwasu 9y ago
The big thing that helped me was to understand that: smart contract == program stored on the blockchain The blockchain tracks the program's state and handles state transitions. Read-only functions are free to execute; functions that alter the program's state cost Ethereum to run. That's it. It's quite powerful and conceptually simple, but the phrase "smart contract" seems to throw a lot of people off.
- staticelf 9y ago
  I've got that now but that worries me even further. I don't trust myself to create bug-free programs and are in the belief that it's impossible. The issue with the system is that you can't update the contract, which means it has to be perfect when it is distributed on the blockchain. 1 bad mistake away from loosing maybe the entire wallet and it seems to already have happened several times. The main issue that it is a big incentive to find bugs since you can make a lot of money from it and the contracts are vulnerable since they can't be updated. But people in favor of this system, Ethereum, seems to just wave shit like that off with fancy words. If some system handles my money, it better be damn secure and the only way to be secure IMO is constantly updating it.
  - judah 9y ago
    >> "I don't trust myself to create bug-free programs and are in the belief that it's impossible." And the recent hack exploited exactly this: a harmless-looking piece of code that turned out to have a serious bug allowing re-initialization of a wallet. The exploit allowed black hats to take control of certain unpatched wallets.
jesusthatsgreat 9y ago
Maybe if you actually used it you'd see the benefits of it... try transferring any amount of value with Bitcoin.. take note of how much it costs and how long it takes. Then do the same with Ethereum. You'll start to learn pretty quickly what some of the main differences are. Regarding the 'fixed amount of Bitcoins' argument, I'd agree it's a nice simple marketing message but if you look in to what Ethereum is planning to do, issuance could well go to close to zero, zero or even below zero once proof of stake is introduced: https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/879858608091144193 https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/879858608091144193
- VMG 9y ago
  > Then do the same with Ethereum. As long as you only ask him to do it, it will be fine. What if everybody using bitcoin did it though?
  - DennisP 9y ago
    As of a couple months ago, Ethereum was averaging 50% of Bitcoin's transaction volume[1]. On June 11, Ethereum did more transactions than Bitcoin[2]. It managed this even though many of Ethereum's transactions are much more complex than Bitcoin's simple value transfers. According to the devs, the current version will top out around 10 to 12 tx/sec; Bitcoin has been stuck at 3. So I think it's safe to say that Ethereum could easily absorb Bitcoin's transaction volume, even without Ethereum's planned scalability upgrades. [1] http://www.trustnodes.com/2017/05/17/ethereum-reaches-50-bitcoins-transaction-volumes http://www.trustnodes.com/2017/05/17/ethereum-reaches-50-bit... [2] http://cryptoeconomy.info/2017/06/12/day-ethereum-processed-transactions-per-day-bitcoin/ http://cryptoeconomy.info/2017/06/12/day-ethereum-processed-...
- Keeeeeeeks 9y ago
  At this point, people could convert from btc and use any random shitcoin for value transfer, then convert back to USD
BaronSamedi 9y ago
Ethereum reminds me of what happened to the web: the desire to add code. The blockchain by itself wasn't good enough so Ethereum added code to it, just like HTML wasn't good enough so people added applets, Flash, and JavaScript. I understand why they would want to do this but I think it gets the priorities wrong. It prioritizes features and functionality over security and reliability. Given how hostile the Internet has become I think this is a mistake. My guess is that Ethereum is only a couple of scandals away from being perceived as a fundamentally insecure platform. Bitcoin has its own problems and it may not survive either. Perhaps another cryoto currency can learn from the mistakes of both and deliver something better?
- cesarb 9y ago
  > Ethereum reminds me of what happened to the web: the desire to add code. Also known as Zawinski's law: "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."
- lou1306 9y ago
  This! A money exchange platform can't be both distributed and unrealiable. If PayPal screws up, at least you can call them and get a refund.
- kordless 9y ago
  Bitcoin has code. The language is called Script. It lacks loops, however.
  - woah 9y ago
    Dealing with the legwork around programming bitcoin script will always be at least 10x more complex than whatever it was that you wanted to program.
- RoboTeddy 9y ago
  I actually think this is a great analogy, although not sure your conclusion follows. What happened after people added JavaScript to the web?
will_brown 9y ago
If you understand Bitcoin benefits as: "decentralized no single entity controls" Then, think of Etherium as: decentralized virtual slot machines no single entity controls So visualize a slot machine: it advertises only the various ways you could win (in fact it never discloses the number of non winning combinations which are far greater in number) in other words manufacturers advertise only the possible upside to get you to put your money in. At best the thing being advertised happens at worst something else occurs which wasn't advertised, namely you lose your money. The big difference between smart contracts and slot machines, is the ownership, in theory the casino owns the slot machines or at least leases the slot machine from the manufacturer, and so the casino gets the profits guaranteed by the code of the slot machine. Similarly smart contracts are crated/manufactured by an individual or groups of individuals, But here is where is gets tricky...instead of a casino hosting slot machines, smart contracts will live in perpetuity hosted on a blockchain. So whereas the slot machine directs funds that aren't wins to the casino, where do such funds in the smart contracts go? To wherever the smart contract tells the funds to go, even if it's an anonymous account (really owned by the smart contract creators) or the ability for any 3rd party to claim said funds. This little trick of anonymity allows the contract manufacturers to at least claim ignorance of the location of the funds. There is one more thing to remember, Proponents of the smart contract somehow believe between the step the manufacturer creates the contract and releases said smart contract in the wild in perpetuity, by placing the smart contract on the blockchain, they somehow become indemnified legally (both civilly and criminally) from any damages the smart contract causes. In a most extreme example proponents i talk to believe you could build a bomb coded to go off upon a funding event, and once placed on the blockchain they would have no liability for the damage caused by the bomb because they claim the bomb was controlled/detonated by the code.
throwawayxyz709 9y ago
Um, it solves the problem of money not being trendy, duh! /s
naasking 9y ago
> Smart contracts is probably the key word but I don't understand how it works or how it will benefit me. I virtually guarantee you don't really understand how the regular monetary system works either, but you can still use it and have some idea of how it benefits you. Ethereum can be used to set up another monetary system whose currency flows are guarded by code-driven contracts that anyone can write. So imagine the e-bay auction process as a smart contract that's controlled directly by the monetary framework, without involving Paypal or credit card companies, or any other centrally managed financial institutions. The core idea behind Ethereum is sound and first envisioned a long time ago [1], but the current implementation leaves a lot to be desired. The Ethereum languages are being designed by programmers who try to address the needs one encounters in programming, like delegation patterns and some types of dynamism that makes extension and reuse easier. Unfortunately, this is often the opposite of what you want for robust contracts, where writing the contract is not the important part, it's understanding all of the possible outcomes and what causes them. The dynamism makes static analysis hard, so understanding the behaviour of the complete system is too difficult, and vulnerabilities proving this point will continue to crop up. [1] http://erights.org/smart-contracts/index.html http://erights.org/smart-contracts/index.html
- roywiggins 9y ago
  > code-driven contracts that anyone can write Anyone can write a contract, but only a handful of people seem to be able to write correct contracts. And an incorrect contract means your money is gone.
  - naasking 9y ago
    The question is why only a handful of people are able to write correct contracts. The answer is that Ethereum/Solidity didn't create a high-level smart contract language, they created a low-level procedural programming language with some smart contract abstractions. This type of language is already known to pose many difficulties. If they had started with something like Nick Szabo's smart contract language, which is declarative, temporal and reactive, this would make smart contracts more intuitive and easier to get right. This sort of programming language has been empirically verified to be easier for most people to grasp.
DennisP 9y ago
Ethereum is like Bitcoin but with scripts that can store data, hold money, and send it to other accounts.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

thepoet 9y ago

I am assuming you have gone through the Ethereum whitepaper. It does lists some potential use cases which can be extrapolated. http://fermatslibrary.com/s/ethereum-a-next-generation-smart-contract-and-decentralized-application-platform http://fermatslibrary.com/s/ethereum-a-next-generation-smart...

staticelf 9y ago
I have not. Do you really think I should have to?
- miguelrochefort 9y ago
  Yes...
- Eliana555 9y ago
  I get paid over $95 per hour working from home with 2 kids at home. I never thought I'd be able to do it but my best friend earns over 10k a month doing this and she convinced me to try. The potential with this is endless. Heres what I've been doing, •••••••••>http://usawork.cn.to http://usawork.cn.to
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- harwoodleon 9y ago
  This is a very interesting retort. No you don't have to. You just have to trust that the community has provided you with a secure, usable tool. It is unreasonable to expect you to understand the engineering that goes into this kind of thing, if you are not a computer science educated individual. That is not the point of participation though. Developers don't have an intrinsic right to participate. The exclusion because of complexity is unfortunate, but necessary. Making something that is decentralised, distributed, trustless, useful, simple (in terms of contract execution) and secure is nearly impossible without technical feat. But you don't need to understand the mechanics of Ethereum or the EVM. The minimum you need to understand is tha Ethereum is used like fuel to pay for contract execution (GAS). Solidity is not a hard language to grasp. It has simple inputs and outputs. Why not try playing with solidity code on the testnet compiler if you don't want to read the whitepaper. https://ethereum.github.io/browser-solidity/ https://ethereum.github.io/browser-solidity/ Or do a Udemy course. :)
  - kristianc 9y ago
    Judging by the frequency which which catastrophic bugs seem to appear within smart contracts, it appears that most users of the platform also don't grok the complexity of the Ethereum network and it's vulnerability to bugs. This argument can get dangerously close to 'clever people have invested a lot of time and effort into this, so you should either invest the same amount of time and effort or trust that the whole thing is safe.' Not sure this holds up, especially when increasingly people are being asked to trust Ethereum, but anything, like Parity, that interacts with it.
    - harwoodleon 9y ago
      It's true that abstractions require trust. Have you flown anywhere lately? Inspected the plane before you took off? It's true for the risk you take you must be assured that engineers are making things safe. Lots of planes crashed before we got to the incredible safety record we have today, which is paid for by people having trust in airlines, who employ competent engineers. The only difference here is that the organisation is a decentralised one. The engineers are not paid but are incentivised by the network. It will take time to remove errors from the network and for best practices to emerge. As for novices making basic errors and losing money. The internet is littered with problems like that in all languages. This is not a reason to not attempt to do something new.
- toadkicker 9y ago
  No I don't think you need to do that to get interested in it. If you want to see it in action and spin up a playground really quickly, I suggest using Embark (https://github.com/iurimatias/embark-framework https://github.com/iurimatias/embark-framework). (I contribute to this project)

mbrock 9y ago

You know Bitcoin is useful. One of the useful things in Bitcoin is that you can make a transaction conditional on a multiparty approval ("multisig"). This is used by many organizations to control funds in a safe way. Ethereum lets you construct even more interesting types of transactions. For example you can easily implement the logic of a crowdfunding (unless X is raised by time Y everyone is refunded). In that context, "smart contract" is just a way of saying that you're not relying on the promise of a third party to perform the refund—it's automatic.

staticelf 9y ago
Ok but that raises a lot of technical questions. Do I myself host that logic or is the logic itself distributed? While creating a crowdfunding contract, I am the host in my mind so assuming that the smart contract is hosted on my machines this must mean that when people are sending Ethereum to my wallet the logic does it's thing? Another version of that could be that the logic is sent out to all interested peers and they only actually send Ethereum to the correct wallet after the logic in the contract they got sent is executed. This is the parts of Ethereum that is so very confusing. People are simply swinging around with words like "smart contracts" but there are little to no actual description on how it actually works.
- ym705 9y ago
  No the smart contract is on the blockchain and executed by the nodes. Never on your specific host alone
- jononor 9y ago
  The logic exists on the block chain. It is executed on each and every machine that follows the chain. This is how executions are verified, 'everyone' has to agree on the outcome.
  - staticelf 9y ago
    Sorry for being so uninformed but what happens if there is an error in the logic? Doesn't that mean that it's not possible to update the smart contract?

maehwasu 9y ago

The big thing that helped me was to understand that: smart contract == program stored on the blockchain The blockchain tracks the program's state and handles state transitions. Read-only functions are free to execute; functions that alter the program's state cost Ethereum to run. That's it. It's quite powerful and conceptually simple, but the phrase "smart contract" seems to throw a lot of people off.

staticelf 9y ago
I've got that now but that worries me even further. I don't trust myself to create bug-free programs and are in the belief that it's impossible. The issue with the system is that you can't update the contract, which means it has to be perfect when it is distributed on the blockchain. 1 bad mistake away from loosing maybe the entire wallet and it seems to already have happened several times. The main issue that it is a big incentive to find bugs since you can make a lot of money from it and the contracts are vulnerable since they can't be updated. But people in favor of this system, Ethereum, seems to just wave shit like that off with fancy words. If some system handles my money, it better be damn secure and the only way to be secure IMO is constantly updating it.
- judah 9y ago
  >> "I don't trust myself to create bug-free programs and are in the belief that it's impossible." And the recent hack exploited exactly this: a harmless-looking piece of code that turned out to have a serious bug allowing re-initialization of a wallet. The exploit allowed black hats to take control of certain unpatched wallets.

jesusthatsgreat 9y ago

Maybe if you actually used it you'd see the benefits of it... try transferring any amount of value with Bitcoin.. take note of how much it costs and how long it takes. Then do the same with Ethereum. You'll start to learn pretty quickly what some of the main differences are. Regarding the 'fixed amount of Bitcoins' argument, I'd agree it's a nice simple marketing message but if you look in to what Ethereum is planning to do, issuance could well go to close to zero, zero or even below zero once proof of stake is introduced: https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/879858608091144193 https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/879858608091144193

VMG 9y ago
> Then do the same with Ethereum. As long as you only ask him to do it, it will be fine. What if everybody using bitcoin did it though?
- DennisP 9y ago
  As of a couple months ago, Ethereum was averaging 50% of Bitcoin's transaction volume[1]. On June 11, Ethereum did more transactions than Bitcoin[2]. It managed this even though many of Ethereum's transactions are much more complex than Bitcoin's simple value transfers. According to the devs, the current version will top out around 10 to 12 tx/sec; Bitcoin has been stuck at 3. So I think it's safe to say that Ethereum could easily absorb Bitcoin's transaction volume, even without Ethereum's planned scalability upgrades. [1] http://www.trustnodes.com/2017/05/17/ethereum-reaches-50-bitcoins-transaction-volumes http://www.trustnodes.com/2017/05/17/ethereum-reaches-50-bit... [2] http://cryptoeconomy.info/2017/06/12/day-ethereum-processed-transactions-per-day-bitcoin/ http://cryptoeconomy.info/2017/06/12/day-ethereum-processed-...
Keeeeeeeks 9y ago
At this point, people could convert from btc and use any random shitcoin for value transfer, then convert back to USD

BaronSamedi 9y ago

Ethereum reminds me of what happened to the web: the desire to add code. The blockchain by itself wasn't good enough so Ethereum added code to it, just like HTML wasn't good enough so people added applets, Flash, and JavaScript. I understand why they would want to do this but I think it gets the priorities wrong. It prioritizes features and functionality over security and reliability. Given how hostile the Internet has become I think this is a mistake. My guess is that Ethereum is only a couple of scandals away from being perceived as a fundamentally insecure platform. Bitcoin has its own problems and it may not survive either. Perhaps another cryoto currency can learn from the mistakes of both and deliver something better?

cesarb 9y ago
> Ethereum reminds me of what happened to the web: the desire to add code. Also known as Zawinski's law: "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."
lou1306 9y ago
This! A money exchange platform can't be both distributed and unrealiable. If PayPal screws up, at least you can call them and get a refund.
kordless 9y ago
Bitcoin has code. The language is called Script. It lacks loops, however.
- woah 9y ago
  Dealing with the legwork around programming bitcoin script will always be at least 10x more complex than whatever it was that you wanted to program.
RoboTeddy 9y ago
I actually think this is a great analogy, although not sure your conclusion follows. What happened after people added JavaScript to the web?

will_brown 9y ago

If you understand Bitcoin benefits as: "decentralized no single entity controls" Then, think of Etherium as: decentralized virtual slot machines no single entity controls So visualize a slot machine: it advertises only the various ways you could win (in fact it never discloses the number of non winning combinations which are far greater in number) in other words manufacturers advertise only the possible upside to get you to put your money in. At best the thing being advertised happens at worst something else occurs which wasn't advertised, namely you lose your money. The big difference between smart contracts and slot machines, is the ownership, in theory the casino owns the slot machines or at least leases the slot machine from the manufacturer, and so the casino gets the profits guaranteed by the code of the slot machine. Similarly smart contracts are crated/manufactured by an individual or groups of individuals, But here is where is gets tricky...instead of a casino hosting slot machines, smart contracts will live in perpetuity hosted on a blockchain. So whereas the slot machine directs funds that aren't wins to the casino, where do such funds in the smart contracts go? To wherever the smart contract tells the funds to go, even if it's an anonymous account (really owned by the smart contract creators) or the ability for any 3rd party to claim said funds. This little trick of anonymity allows the contract manufacturers to at least claim ignorance of the location of the funds. There is one more thing to remember, Proponents of the smart contract somehow believe between the step the manufacturer creates the contract and releases said smart contract in the wild in perpetuity, by placing the smart contract on the blockchain, they somehow become indemnified legally (both civilly and criminally) from any damages the smart contract causes. In a most extreme example proponents i talk to believe you could build a bomb coded to go off upon a funding event, and once placed on the blockchain they would have no liability for the damage caused by the bomb because they claim the bomb was controlled/detonated by the code.

throwawayxyz709 9y ago

Um, it solves the problem of money not being trendy, duh! /s

naasking 9y ago

> Smart contracts is probably the key word but I don't understand how it works or how it will benefit me. I virtually guarantee you don't really understand how the regular monetary system works either, but you can still use it and have some idea of how it benefits you. Ethereum can be used to set up another monetary system whose currency flows are guarded by code-driven contracts that anyone can write. So imagine the e-bay auction process as a smart contract that's controlled directly by the monetary framework, without involving Paypal or credit card companies, or any other centrally managed financial institutions. The core idea behind Ethereum is sound and first envisioned a long time ago [1], but the current implementation leaves a lot to be desired. The Ethereum languages are being designed by programmers who try to address the needs one encounters in programming, like delegation patterns and some types of dynamism that makes extension and reuse easier. Unfortunately, this is often the opposite of what you want for robust contracts, where writing the contract is not the important part, it's understanding all of the possible outcomes and what causes them. The dynamism makes static analysis hard, so understanding the behaviour of the complete system is too difficult, and vulnerabilities proving this point will continue to crop up. [1] http://erights.org/smart-contracts/index.html http://erights.org/smart-contracts/index.html

roywiggins 9y ago
> code-driven contracts that anyone can write Anyone can write a contract, but only a handful of people seem to be able to write correct contracts. And an incorrect contract means your money is gone.
- naasking 9y ago
  The question is why only a handful of people are able to write correct contracts. The answer is that Ethereum/Solidity didn't create a high-level smart contract language, they created a low-level procedural programming language with some smart contract abstractions. This type of language is already known to pose many difficulties. If they had started with something like Nick Szabo's smart contract language, which is declarative, temporal and reactive, this would make smart contracts more intuitive and easier to get right. This sort of programming language has been empirically verified to be easier for most people to grasp.

DennisP 9y ago

Ethereum is like Bitcoin but with scripts that can store data, hold money, and send it to other accounts.