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The headlines are a bad look for Ethereum, but this is actually a really good thing for the protocol overall I believe. It's a very important stress test for t
by goodoldboys 9y ago
The headlines are a bad look for Ethereum, but this is actually a really good thing for the protocol overall I believe.
It's a very important stress test for the network on something less risky than pure financial transactions, for example.
Also it's educating a lot of people across the entire spectrum of individuals (in terms of cryptocurrency awareness).
For example, I'm a software developer with a high level knowledge of crypto, but I'm now running an eth node locally in order to be able to breed cats more reliably. I've learned a lot more about Ethereum in the past few days, which is cool.
On the other end of the spectrum is my wife, who now has a cursory understanding of the blockchain concept thanks to the fact that there's a polished front-end on top of it as well as the fact that we're generating Ether regularly by breeding cats (she's less enamored by the Cat aspect and moreso by the dividend opportunities). I imagine plenty of spouses/friends/colleagues/etc would be interested in the cute cat aspect, however.
It may appear totally ridiculous (and parts of it absolutely are), but it's a really great thing for cryptocurrency overall, imo.
- krrrh 9y agoI agree that it’s generating interest amongst non-nerds, but I don’t see how this can be positive for the core idea of Ethereum: a single blockchain that many apps are run on simultaneously. The effective fees for all users have gone up massively because of a relatively small number of people playing a very simple game. Many other applications are being effectively ddos’ed if they can’t produce enough value per transaction to justify the fees. Cryptokitties had to increase the transaction fee to birth a cat from just under a $1 to $6-7 [1], imagine how much it would cost to run any of the long-promised distributed apps like a car-sharing service. [1] https://twitter.com/cryptokitties/status/937794977848897536 https://twitter.com/cryptokitties/status/937794977848897536
- Cyberdog 9y agoThe market has decided that kitten Giga Pets is more interesting and valuable than Etheriuber, at least for the time being. This possibility was always present, and now it has come to fruition. I don't see the problem.
- justinjlynn 9y agoIndeed. Welcome to capitalism.
- DennisP 9y agoThe scaling limits of today's Ethereum aren't exactly news. There's a lot of work going into improving matters drastically over the next year or two, and some low-hanging fruit that could help in the short term: http://www.trustnodes.com/2017/12/05/protocol-improvements-increase-gas-limit-may-ready-weeks-says-ethereum-developer http://www.trustnodes.com/2017/12/05/protocol-improvements-i...
- krrrh 9y agoNo, it's not news, but seeing a few thousand virtual cats affect the network and effectively drive transaction costs up 7x in real time really brings it home. It's one thing to have to worry about your competitors gaining traction, and quite a another to have to worry about the modest success of every random toy app that uses the same stack threatening to blow up your cost model.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mentat 9y agoWould you consider doing a writeup on what was involved in your local eth node for breeding?
- kirillzubovsky 9y agoHow do you get the breeding to partake on your local node?