4 ms·

The design of Bitcoin is inherently flawed at the moment (at least for payments), and due to its decentralised structure, a change can't easily be forced. I th

The design of Bitcoin is inherently flawed at the moment (at least for payments), and due to its decentralised structure, a change can't easily be forced. I think Bitcoin was a great experiment since it brought us the blockchain, but with the exception of being a store of value (i.e. digital gold, and thus not having to worry too much about high transaction fees) I don't see it going anywhere. But since gold is worth about $8.2tn globally, that might be sufficient. Ethereum on the other hand.. by the looks of it that does seem to have a bright future. It improves upon and fixes many of the flaws Bitcoin has.

tfha 9y ago
It improves upon and fixes a few of the Bitcoin flaws while introducing a whole hoard of other flaws in itself. For example, most 'full nodes' on the Ethereum blockchain have never actually verified the whole chain, they've instead started life by downloading a trusted snapshot from a miner. The scalability properties of Ethereum are dozens of times worse from a raw resource usage perspective, with each transaction on the Ethereum network taking more space to store, more clock cycles to process + verify, and with the whole system being much harder to parallelize. Ethereum made a lot of long term sacrifices to achieve their short term advantages, and it's already falling apart around the edges. One or two more iterations of hardforks + block size increases (gas limit increases) and your average desktop computer won't be able to keep up with the chain anymore, let alone catch up if starting from scratch. And that's just one of the many ameture compromises.
- charlesdm 9y ago
  Not saying you're wrong, but a few thoughts: 1. Do you really want the average desktop computer to sync and verify the entire Blockchain? These things have gotten so huge, even for Bitcoin it's not really reasonable anymore to store the entire chain on a desktop computer. I think the answer here is no, but I could be wrong. 2. It probably goes against the decentralized idea behind blockchain, but I believe it is good that Ethereum has a clear leader. Someone who can actually (sort of) dictate the path -- at least until the project has gotten to where it wants / needs to go. Bitcoin would be in a better place if the founder were around. 3. Bitcoin is already falling apart. Once you have to make a transaction, the pain (generally) starts.. 4. One of the downsides of Ethereum is the size of the blockchain, but see 1. I think at least for Ethereum the potential is still there for it to be good, once they fix their issues. This (to me) seems doable, but if you have things to share on why not, please do! With Bitcoin, you know what the issues are, they are massive and have been around for a while, and they're only getting worse / not getting fixed because people can't reach a consensus. I believe it would be easier to reach consensus if there was a leader. Most of these things however don't matter if we just see it as a store of value.

tfha 9y ago

It improves upon and fixes a few of the Bitcoin flaws while introducing a whole hoard of other flaws in itself. For example, most 'full nodes' on the Ethereum blockchain have never actually verified the whole chain, they've instead started life by downloading a trusted snapshot from a miner. The scalability properties of Ethereum are dozens of times worse from a raw resource usage perspective, with each transaction on the Ethereum network taking more space to store, more clock cycles to process + verify, and with the whole system being much harder to parallelize. Ethereum made a lot of long term sacrifices to achieve their short term advantages, and it's already falling apart around the edges. One or two more iterations of hardforks + block size increases (gas limit increases) and your average desktop computer won't be able to keep up with the chain anymore, let alone catch up if starting from scratch. And that's just one of the many ameture compromises.

charlesdm 9y ago
Not saying you're wrong, but a few thoughts: 1. Do you really want the average desktop computer to sync and verify the entire Blockchain? These things have gotten so huge, even for Bitcoin it's not really reasonable anymore to store the entire chain on a desktop computer. I think the answer here is no, but I could be wrong. 2. It probably goes against the decentralized idea behind blockchain, but I believe it is good that Ethereum has a clear leader. Someone who can actually (sort of) dictate the path -- at least until the project has gotten to where it wants / needs to go. Bitcoin would be in a better place if the founder were around. 3. Bitcoin is already falling apart. Once you have to make a transaction, the pain (generally) starts.. 4. One of the downsides of Ethereum is the size of the blockchain, but see 1. I think at least for Ethereum the potential is still there for it to be good, once they fix their issues. This (to me) seems doable, but if you have things to share on why not, please do! With Bitcoin, you know what the issues are, they are massive and have been around for a while, and they're only getting worse / not getting fixed because people can't reach a consensus. I believe it would be easier to reach consensus if there was a leader. Most of these things however don't matter if we just see it as a store of value.