10 ms·

Red Lang goes blockchain

188 points by userSumo 9y ago

ziikutv 9y ago
I am excited. Wish they wrote more details on how to participate in ICOs as some - like me - never have.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Step 1: don't live in the US. (I'm a bit jealous.)
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - rebelidealist 9y ago
    Just use an VPN if you want to participate
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
blattimwind 9y ago
This reads like an Aprils Fools joke.
- lepinekong2 9y ago
  No it's Christmas Gift :)
sidi 9y ago
Curious - How is Red sustained, who currently supports it? Or what does the roadmap look like for this to be a five-year sustainable project? Edit: They seem to address this down in the blog post, with the creation of a RCT token. What is the incentive for a potential backer to buy this token?
- UncleEntity 9y ago
  > What is the incentive for a potential backer to buy this token? I would imagine to support the developers. They also claim it might be used as gas on the blockchain in the future so if you want to run a dapp you will need it.
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  > "How is Red sustained, who currently supports it?" IIRC there's a Chinese company that pays the lead developer to work on it.
- greggirwin 9y ago
  @ZenoArrow is correct. Nenad Rakocevic supported himself, with modest donations and other work, until he could raise the initial investment money. He and another full time developer have been working on it for a few years, using those resources. This is the next phase, with one goal being to grow the core team, but also encourage community involvement by being able to reward people. One incentive for backers is if they want a say in how things are prioritized.
arthurcolle 9y ago
Its like a traditional ICO, but the code is already written. Interesting approach
- T-A 9y ago
  Not really: > We are at the design stage, the first alpha (prototype) is planned for end of Q1 2018.
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
God! Enough! At this point any announcement with "blockchain" should turn any informed person off of the whole project. Checking out Red was on my roadmap and now it's firmly not.
- rebolek 9y ago
  You certainly should check Red anyway. It is still the same language as yesterday, before any "blockchain" announcement. No buzzword can change the great design.
  - admax88q 9y ago
    It's not though. This announcement shows the direction that those in charge of Red plan to take it. If you think that's a stupid direction, then that should influence your decision to invest any time in learning or building upon that language.
    - 9214 9y ago
      Can you clarify how you see that direction?
      - dmitriid 9y ago
        This: https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100 https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-...
  - geofft 9y ago
    I wish I knew how to fight this idea that a project is its code, and not its community and values and expected future. GNOME 2 is certainly not the same GNOME 2 as it was 10 years ago, despite the code not having gone everywhere. Something like MATE might be, but its difference from GNOME 2 lies precisely in its existence as a community with values separate from the GNOME community and values.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
lepinekong2 9y ago
Fantastic news !!!
sxcurry 9y ago
Still waiting for Red Lobster blockchain
- rev_null 9y ago
  I'd buy into that Initial Crab Offering.
- droidist2 9y ago
  They have the best bitscuits
bart42_0 9y ago
PyChain, JSchain, Javachain, RChain, BlaChain and of course the mother is : Chain
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
eggy 9y ago
I like Red, and I have been following it. I dabbled with Rebol back in my Amiga days, but not much. Red is a nice batteries-included, small, Lispy-forth language in my perception. I am sticking with my Lisps (SBCL, Racket, Emacs Lisp, Shen, and Wasp Lisp) for now, and my beloved J [2], but I love the size of the whole Red/Red System environment. I think it is going to take off. I know Naned, the man behind Red, was CEO of Fullstack Technologies, and it was based in Beijing after an initial $500k VC funding round from Chinese VCs [1]. Curiously, I predict a bunch of conspiracy theory people to relate Red = Communism, Blockchain/ICO/Coins = Socialized currency, and a decentralized internet running DAPPs to dilute the USA's currernt juice in the internet all with a connection back to China, but I am ecstatic about a distributed internet that cannot be censored like it is in China, or in less obvious ways in the US. I missed the Bitcoin buy-in when it was selling at $200-something, but I always knew in my readings that the blockchain is its secret sauce. Aside from the energy expenditure, I like the concept. How can it, or can it become energy efficient, but still stay difficult to mine to work out both ways? Seems like it will not be possible. You cannot make it easy for everyone, and hard enough to have value... [1] http://www.red-lang.org/2015/01/dream-big-work-hard-and-make-it-happen.html [2] jsoftware.com
- 9214 9y ago
  s/Naned/Nenad I recently got interested in J too by the way, how do you use this language and Lisps in your work?
  - tluyben2 9y ago
    The APLs and especially, for me, j and k, are really interesting languagues. For one, I agree with Whitney, the creator of k, that you should not have to scroll to read your software. I think making sure at least every function points fits on a phone screen is a large boon for readability and maintainability. It is not the fact that it fits there, it is more so that if it does, you can work on that implementation mentally focused: without jumping pages or even files. I know a lot of people find j,k and even Forth unreadable, but that is really just practice. When I got used to it, I found, for instance, c# a lot more annoying to read. It is somewhat (this is a bit over the top, but you get the idea) the difference between reading Godel his original whitepaper (in German ofcourse) and Godel, Escher Bach explaining that whitepaper. Both are good reads, but the original paper, when you have the background context, is easier to read and debug that that enormous volume. I hope to find more time to explore these avenues. For now, k and forth mixtures are my favorite to mess around with; I created a little language to do live coding on my phone for Xamarin and the forth/k mix I use is actually the first thing that is not annoying to work with on a phone screen. Because most happens in your brain and what you type is a few hieroglyphs, the development is interactive, you can walk around doing it. I hope to clean it up enough to release it (I am old, I do not like this releasing of half baked stuff usually, unless it is game related): it saves me a lot hell doing edit/compile/wait/test cycles. For playing around, check out oK : it is a k implementation in JS, it is slow but works everywhere and has some cool features for making graphics and little games.
jabgrabdthrow 9y ago
I just bet myself 5:95 odds (lose means donate directly to the org - they just missed out on 12.5k) that there would be only rent-seeking or “voting” in the “token use cases”. These guys don’t know what they don’t know. Also, HA HA HA. I used to feel bad for the victims but now I think they deserve it.
- dang 9y ago
  Please don't post snarky dismissals to HN, even if something else is wrong or bad. That's no reason to make this place worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
jchw 9y ago
I was pretty sure it was going to be a joke, but like the Long Blockchain Company announcement[1], it's pretty apparent that its real. Good god. [1]: http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/21/investing/long-island-iced-tea-bitcoin-blockchain/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/21/investing/long-island-iced-t...
phantom_oracle 9y ago
edit I know we're all experiencing blockchain fatigue, but for once, I actually know what the tokens will be used for (beyond the usual snake-oil that other ICOs sell). For reference: Some of the target usages for the token holders, will include: - voting rights: influence the Red roadmap, vote for features and issue tickets. - tipping: useful chat posts, code contributions, learning materials providers, etc. - intra-community cryptoeconomics (or rather tokenomics): selling/buying services from other community members (coding tasks, consulting, learning help, bug fixing, decentralized gaming, etc.) - paid Dapps, or in-app purchases. In addition to that, the foundation will hold a significant amount of RCT, which will be used for rewarding: - code contributions - Red-related online learning or presenting materials (blog, documentations, etc.) - promotional actions (presenting Red at a conference) - any other actions that will help spread Red and make the community grow up. I'm not sure I personally agree with turning the org into a "dapp", unless language-design remains with the core designers of the language and doesn't become influenced by decentralized decisions. edit: It looks like "voting rights" may actually impact this There is always an issue with OSS projects struggling for funding. Regardless of how flawed the idea may be, at least they are trying to find a model to sustain themselves. It certainly trumps the model of depending on big-tech-company-X giving you handouts for your SSL library.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  People who buy into the ICO can influence the roadmap? Isn't that design by committee? (Generally considered a bad idea.)
  - adamnemecek 9y ago
    I imagine it will be useful only for prioritization.
    - greggirwin 9y ago
      Correct, though we can't predict the future. If somebody throws huge amounts of money at Red they could influence the language. Then it's up to the team and community to decide if it's worth including, or risking a fork. It's open source after all.
tadasv 9y ago
Not sure what to think of this. Smells like FOMO. I looked at their roadmap and they're planning to support so many different architectures. Adding EVM support seems like adding more complexity to the project just because blockchain. I think something like this is needed for programming on blockchain, but I'd prefer to see a dedicated project instead.
- vram22 9y ago
  >I looked at their roadmap and they're planning to support so many different architectures. Yes, I noticed and was concerned about that too - that they may be taking on too much work. Otherwise I like their goals (apart from this latest news).
- jesperlang 9y ago
  also, documentation seems to have be an after thought. I want to like Red, but the documentation has been so scattered, unorganized and limited, I felt more slowed than I needed to be. Will still keep an eye on Red though, hoping it will improve on that level
  - greggirwin 9y ago
    It's not an afterthought, but it takes a lot of time and work. The project priorities are driven by the people paying for the work, and it hasn't been a priority for them. We hope the new projects will allow us to improve the situation. In the meantime, telling us what docs are most lacking, or most needed, helps.
- greggirwin 9y ago
  If you follow Red, you know that avoiding complexity is a primary goal. Each new back end may add some complexity, but it doesn't change the underlying model of how Red is implemented. And I think it will be kind of what you say you want. It is a dedicated project, with the current goal of raising money so a team can focus on that. Think of it as your dedicated project using Red to build the blockchain programming tool. It wouldn't have to be all Red, that's just the best approach in this case.
nickpsecurity 9y ago
“but after studying many other ICO, I am convinced now that this is not just a short-lived fad, but a real new model to fund projects, and especially open-source projects related to blockchains.” There’s been quite a few of us suggesting people jump into blockchain just to get funding for more important stuff (e.g. language-level tooling or libraries) they’ll produce as part of the coin offering they sell to investors. Plus, with the focus on correctness, it’s easier than ever to get the private sector to invest in high-assurance tooling. Problem is they keep trying to clean-slate everything when there's piles of work to build on with better benefits in the long term. And this work is hard even when doing simple things if you want end result to be widely usable. So, you better have a good justification for trying to redo decades worth of hard work on your own with some VC funding. Anyone wanting a shortcut should build your language on top of capabilities of the SPARK Ada language [1] with this book [2]. Your smart contracts get all the benefits it currently offers plus whatever extra you build plus whatever they build with the influx of money for Pro edition. Recent projects already add some pointer [3] and floating-point [4] safety to what they already mostly automate with that tooling. This is also a mature tool whose development and commercial use goes back decades [5]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARK_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARK_(programming_language) [2] https://www.amazon.com/Building-High-Integrity-Applications-SPARK/dp/1107040736 https://www.amazon.com/Building-High-Integrity-Applications-... [3] https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.07047 https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.07047 [4] http://lists.forge.open-do.org/pipermail/spark2014-discuss/2017-November/001446.html http://lists.forge.open-do.org/pipermail/spark2014-discuss/2... [5] http://www.spark-2014.org/uploads/itp_2014_r610.pdf http://www.spark-2014.org/uploads/itp_2014_r610.pdf
- greggirwin 9y ago
  Thanks for the info @nickpsecurity!
AlexCoventry 9y ago
> We have produced a whitepaper earlier this year in October (co-authored by Tamas Herman and myself), to describe with more details and context what we are building. We will release it publicly in a few days. Why not release them simultaneously?
- onetom 9y ago
  > Nenad Rakocevic @dockimbel 00:35 > @OneArb I need to update the whitepaper with latest data, so it should be available maybe tomorrow, or in a couple of days. — https://gitter.im/red/blockchain?at=5a4128da0163b02810796948 https://gitter.im/red/blockchain?at=5a4128da0163b02810796948
  - AlexCoventry 9y ago
    Thank you.
zzzcpan 9y ago
Not sure why people are so skeptical. I'm hoping for ICO to become a successful model for open source projects. Maybe more projects will be able to sustain themselves with ICOs, Patreon, donations.
pixie_ 9y ago
What has been the most successful use of smart contracts so far?
- Cyberdog 9y ago
  That hasn't ended in theft (so far)? CryptoKitties, probably. https://www.cryptokitties.co/ https://www.cryptokitties.co/
nivesh2 9y ago
Anyone found their whitepaper for ICO? Looks pretty interesting to me.
- 9214 9y ago
  As said in the article, it will be released in a couple of days.
rurban 9y ago
Priorities. He realized that buzzwords are more important than multithreading.
zerostar07 9y ago
I changed my last name to Blockchain yesterday.
CryptoPunk 9y ago
Exciting stuff. Just a heads up that NEO is being marketed as a decentralized platform but its roadmap describes a platform run by Trusted Third Parties, which have to be approved by NEO after proving their identity and proving they have a legal entity backing them. The NEO team also promotes itself as compliant with regulations (probably to stay on the good side of the authorities in China where it is based). If they want to go down this route, that's their prerogative, but it's downright misleading to describe it as decentralized or even as in the same space as cryptocurrency. It's more like a traditional Fintech company, with greater separation of concerns between users and trusted third parties (e.g. updates to the database are cryptographically validated, with each user controlling their own private keys to authorize updates to their respective account), to provide more transparency and security than closed database models. I would add Ripple, Stellar and EOS to this class of pseudo-cryptocurrency platforms, that while arguably offering interesting innovations on the centralized server-client architecture, are exploiting the hype around decentralization to raise funds and users for platforms that are not decentralized. Its centralized consensus model means NEO can afford to place very high resource loads on its nodes (or really, servers), and use traditional programming languages that are not optimized for the decentralized world. This ability to use Java, C# and Python to write programs for it is actually one of its features that is marketed on its website.
- dreit1 9y ago
  There is nothing misleading about it at all. A delegated system is decentralized, whether it is decentralized enough for you is your decision, but it is misleading to claim otherwise. Disclosure: NEO fan
  - CryptoPunk 9y ago
    A set of trusted third parties that are pre-approved by a central authority, and are operating in a platform designed to comply with rules created by a central authority (the government), is not decentralized, in any context, let alone in the cryptocurrency context, where the original Bitcoin whitepaper describes a radical consensus algorithm designed specifically to make trusted third parties unnecessary. You could call it federated, but not decentralized.
john_moscow 9y ago
Oh boy. It would suck ass to see those guys busted by SEC for offering unregistered securities. The voting rights will definitely make it a security from SEC's standpoint, so the only question is whether they will be considered too small of a fish to bother. The irony with the ICO market is that it's safe for total scams with untraceable founders and it's safe for big players like FileCoin that voluntarily comply with the securities laws. But if you're a well-meaning techie with no legal team, you may be easily breaking dozens of security-related regulations without even realizing it.
- Hendrikto 9y ago
  The SEC has absolutely no say in this whatsoever, as the Red Foundation is being set up in France.
cordite 9y ago
I was actually looking at Red in consideration for my next year's personal projects. I'd consider it further if I felt it was more complete. Perhaps this is a cursory evaluation, but it feels like the emphasis is to use what's built in as much as possible. Given a lack of json (yes, there is an implementation out there, but not built in), and still pending linux GUI support, it still feels too unfinished for me to invest my time into.
- Hendrikto 9y ago
  The lack of Linux GUI support is a dealbreaker for me.
- greggirwin 9y ago
  Neither of those features have been a priority, but both will eventually be built in. We'll wait for you. :^)
flembat 9y ago
I was hoping the Red project would announce something interesting at the end of the year; but not something as interesting as this.
- greggirwin 9y ago
  We live in interesting times.
AlexCoventry 9y ago
Do they have a plan for staying on the windy side of the SEC, or should US residents stay away?

188 points by userSumo 9y ago

ziikutv 9y ago

I am excited. Wish they wrote more details on how to participate in ICOs as some - like me - never have.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
Step 1: don't live in the US. (I'm a bit jealous.)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- rebelidealist 9y ago
  Just use an VPN if you want to participate

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

blattimwind 9y ago

This reads like an Aprils Fools joke.

lepinekong2 9y ago
No it's Christmas Gift :)

sidi 9y ago

Curious - How is Red sustained, who currently supports it? Or what does the roadmap look like for this to be a five-year sustainable project? Edit: They seem to address this down in the blog post, with the creation of a RCT token. What is the incentive for a potential backer to buy this token?

UncleEntity 9y ago
> What is the incentive for a potential backer to buy this token? I would imagine to support the developers. They also claim it might be used as gas on the blockchain in the future so if you want to run a dapp you will need it.
ZenoArrow 9y ago
> "How is Red sustained, who currently supports it?" IIRC there's a Chinese company that pays the lead developer to work on it.
greggirwin 9y ago
@ZenoArrow is correct. Nenad Rakocevic supported himself, with modest donations and other work, until he could raise the initial investment money. He and another full time developer have been working on it for a few years, using those resources. This is the next phase, with one goal being to grow the core team, but also encourage community involvement by being able to reward people. One incentive for backers is if they want a say in how things are prioritized.

arthurcolle 9y ago

Its like a traditional ICO, but the code is already written. Interesting approach

T-A 9y ago
Not really: > We are at the design stage, the first alpha (prototype) is planned for end of Q1 2018.

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago

God! Enough! At this point any announcement with "blockchain" should turn any informed person off of the whole project. Checking out Red was on my roadmap and now it's firmly not.

rebolek 9y ago
You certainly should check Red anyway. It is still the same language as yesterday, before any "blockchain" announcement. No buzzword can change the great design.
- admax88q 9y ago
  It's not though. This announcement shows the direction that those in charge of Red plan to take it. If you think that's a stupid direction, then that should influence your decision to invest any time in learning or building upon that language.
  - 9214 9y ago
    Can you clarify how you see that direction?
    - dmitriid 9y ago
      This: https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100 https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-...
- geofft 9y ago
  I wish I knew how to fight this idea that a project is its code, and not its community and values and expected future. GNOME 2 is certainly not the same GNOME 2 as it was 10 years ago, despite the code not having gone everywhere. Something like MATE might be, but its difference from GNOME 2 lies precisely in its existence as a community with values separate from the GNOME community and values.
sillysaurus3 9y ago

lepinekong2 9y ago

Fantastic news !!!

sxcurry 9y ago

Still waiting for Red Lobster blockchain

rev_null 9y ago
I'd buy into that Initial Crab Offering.
droidist2 9y ago
They have the best bitscuits

bart42_0 9y ago

PyChain, JSchain, Javachain, RChain, BlaChain and of course the mother is : Chain

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

eggy 9y ago

I like Red, and I have been following it. I dabbled with Rebol back in my Amiga days, but not much. Red is a nice batteries-included, small, Lispy-forth language in my perception. I am sticking with my Lisps (SBCL, Racket, Emacs Lisp, Shen, and Wasp Lisp) for now, and my beloved J [2], but I love the size of the whole Red/Red System environment. I think it is going to take off. I know Naned, the man behind Red, was CEO of Fullstack Technologies, and it was based in Beijing after an initial $500k VC funding round from Chinese VCs [1]. Curiously, I predict a bunch of conspiracy theory people to relate Red = Communism, Blockchain/ICO/Coins = Socialized currency, and a decentralized internet running DAPPs to dilute the USA's currernt juice in the internet all with a connection back to China, but I am ecstatic about a distributed internet that cannot be censored like it is in China, or in less obvious ways in the US. I missed the Bitcoin buy-in when it was selling at $200-something, but I always knew in my readings that the blockchain is its secret sauce. Aside from the energy expenditure, I like the concept. How can it, or can it become energy efficient, but still stay difficult to mine to work out both ways? Seems like it will not be possible. You cannot make it easy for everyone, and hard enough to have value... [1] http://www.red-lang.org/2015/01/dream-big-work-hard-and-make-it-happen.html [2] jsoftware.com

9214 9y ago
s/Naned/Nenad I recently got interested in J too by the way, how do you use this language and Lisps in your work?
- tluyben2 9y ago
  The APLs and especially, for me, j and k, are really interesting languagues. For one, I agree with Whitney, the creator of k, that you should not have to scroll to read your software. I think making sure at least every function points fits on a phone screen is a large boon for readability and maintainability. It is not the fact that it fits there, it is more so that if it does, you can work on that implementation mentally focused: without jumping pages or even files. I know a lot of people find j,k and even Forth unreadable, but that is really just practice. When I got used to it, I found, for instance, c# a lot more annoying to read. It is somewhat (this is a bit over the top, but you get the idea) the difference between reading Godel his original whitepaper (in German ofcourse) and Godel, Escher Bach explaining that whitepaper. Both are good reads, but the original paper, when you have the background context, is easier to read and debug that that enormous volume. I hope to find more time to explore these avenues. For now, k and forth mixtures are my favorite to mess around with; I created a little language to do live coding on my phone for Xamarin and the forth/k mix I use is actually the first thing that is not annoying to work with on a phone screen. Because most happens in your brain and what you type is a few hieroglyphs, the development is interactive, you can walk around doing it. I hope to clean it up enough to release it (I am old, I do not like this releasing of half baked stuff usually, unless it is game related): it saves me a lot hell doing edit/compile/wait/test cycles. For playing around, check out oK : it is a k implementation in JS, it is slow but works everywhere and has some cool features for making graphics and little games.

jabgrabdthrow 9y ago

I just bet myself 5:95 odds (lose means donate directly to the org - they just missed out on 12.5k) that there would be only rent-seeking or “voting” in the “token use cases”. These guys don’t know what they don’t know. Also, HA HA HA. I used to feel bad for the victims but now I think they deserve it.

dang 9y ago
Please don't post snarky dismissals to HN, even if something else is wrong or bad. That's no reason to make this place worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jchw 9y ago

I was pretty sure it was going to be a joke, but like the Long Blockchain Company announcement[1], it's pretty apparent that its real. Good god. [1]: http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/21/investing/long-island-iced-tea-bitcoin-blockchain/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/21/investing/long-island-iced-t...

phantom_oracle 9y ago

edit I know we're all experiencing blockchain fatigue, but for once, I actually know what the tokens will be used for (beyond the usual snake-oil that other ICOs sell). For reference: Some of the target usages for the token holders, will include: - voting rights: influence the Red roadmap, vote for features and issue tickets. - tipping: useful chat posts, code contributions, learning materials providers, etc. - intra-community cryptoeconomics (or rather tokenomics): selling/buying services from other community members (coding tasks, consulting, learning help, bug fixing, decentralized gaming, etc.) - paid Dapps, or in-app purchases. In addition to that, the foundation will hold a significant amount of RCT, which will be used for rewarding: - code contributions - Red-related online learning or presenting materials (blog, documentations, etc.) - promotional actions (presenting Red at a conference) - any other actions that will help spread Red and make the community grow up. I'm not sure I personally agree with turning the org into a "dapp", unless language-design remains with the core designers of the language and doesn't become influenced by decentralized decisions. edit: It looks like "voting rights" may actually impact this There is always an issue with OSS projects struggling for funding. Regardless of how flawed the idea may be, at least they are trying to find a model to sustain themselves. It certainly trumps the model of depending on big-tech-company-X giving you handouts for your SSL library.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
People who buy into the ICO can influence the roadmap? Isn't that design by committee? (Generally considered a bad idea.)
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  I imagine it will be useful only for prioritization.
  - greggirwin 9y ago
    Correct, though we can't predict the future. If somebody throws huge amounts of money at Red they could influence the language. Then it's up to the team and community to decide if it's worth including, or risking a fork. It's open source after all.

tadasv 9y ago

Not sure what to think of this. Smells like FOMO. I looked at their roadmap and they're planning to support so many different architectures. Adding EVM support seems like adding more complexity to the project just because blockchain. I think something like this is needed for programming on blockchain, but I'd prefer to see a dedicated project instead.

vram22 9y ago
>I looked at their roadmap and they're planning to support so many different architectures. Yes, I noticed and was concerned about that too - that they may be taking on too much work. Otherwise I like their goals (apart from this latest news).
jesperlang 9y ago
also, documentation seems to have be an after thought. I want to like Red, but the documentation has been so scattered, unorganized and limited, I felt more slowed than I needed to be. Will still keep an eye on Red though, hoping it will improve on that level
- greggirwin 9y ago
  It's not an afterthought, but it takes a lot of time and work. The project priorities are driven by the people paying for the work, and it hasn't been a priority for them. We hope the new projects will allow us to improve the situation. In the meantime, telling us what docs are most lacking, or most needed, helps.
greggirwin 9y ago
If you follow Red, you know that avoiding complexity is a primary goal. Each new back end may add some complexity, but it doesn't change the underlying model of how Red is implemented. And I think it will be kind of what you say you want. It is a dedicated project, with the current goal of raising money so a team can focus on that. Think of it as your dedicated project using Red to build the blockchain programming tool. It wouldn't have to be all Red, that's just the best approach in this case.

nickpsecurity 9y ago

“but after studying many other ICO, I am convinced now that this is not just a short-lived fad, but a real new model to fund projects, and especially open-source projects related to blockchains.” There’s been quite a few of us suggesting people jump into blockchain just to get funding for more important stuff (e.g. language-level tooling or libraries) they’ll produce as part of the coin offering they sell to investors. Plus, with the focus on correctness, it’s easier than ever to get the private sector to invest in high-assurance tooling. Problem is they keep trying to clean-slate everything when there's piles of work to build on with better benefits in the long term. And this work is hard even when doing simple things if you want end result to be widely usable. So, you better have a good justification for trying to redo decades worth of hard work on your own with some VC funding. Anyone wanting a shortcut should build your language on top of capabilities of the SPARK Ada language [1] with this book [2]. Your smart contracts get all the benefits it currently offers plus whatever extra you build plus whatever they build with the influx of money for Pro edition. Recent projects already add some pointer [3] and floating-point [4] safety to what they already mostly automate with that tooling. This is also a mature tool whose development and commercial use goes back decades [5]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARK_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARK_(programming_language) [2] https://www.amazon.com/Building-High-Integrity-Applications-SPARK/dp/1107040736 https://www.amazon.com/Building-High-Integrity-Applications-... [3] https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.07047 https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.07047 [4] http://lists.forge.open-do.org/pipermail/spark2014-discuss/2017-November/001446.html http://lists.forge.open-do.org/pipermail/spark2014-discuss/2... [5] http://www.spark-2014.org/uploads/itp_2014_r610.pdf http://www.spark-2014.org/uploads/itp_2014_r610.pdf

greggirwin 9y ago
Thanks for the info @nickpsecurity!

AlexCoventry 9y ago

> We have produced a whitepaper earlier this year in October (co-authored by Tamas Herman and myself), to describe with more details and context what we are building. We will release it publicly in a few days. Why not release them simultaneously?

onetom 9y ago
> Nenad Rakocevic @dockimbel 00:35 > @OneArb I need to update the whitepaper with latest data, so it should be available maybe tomorrow, or in a couple of days. — https://gitter.im/red/blockchain?at=5a4128da0163b02810796948 https://gitter.im/red/blockchain?at=5a4128da0163b02810796948
- AlexCoventry 9y ago
  Thank you.

zzzcpan 9y ago

Not sure why people are so skeptical. I'm hoping for ICO to become a successful model for open source projects. Maybe more projects will be able to sustain themselves with ICOs, Patreon, donations.

pixie_ 9y ago

What has been the most successful use of smart contracts so far?

Cyberdog 9y ago
That hasn't ended in theft (so far)? CryptoKitties, probably. https://www.cryptokitties.co/ https://www.cryptokitties.co/

nivesh2 9y ago

Anyone found their whitepaper for ICO? Looks pretty interesting to me.

9214 9y ago
As said in the article, it will be released in a couple of days.

rurban 9y ago

Priorities. He realized that buzzwords are more important than multithreading.

zerostar07 9y ago

I changed my last name to Blockchain yesterday.

CryptoPunk 9y ago

Exciting stuff. Just a heads up that NEO is being marketed as a decentralized platform but its roadmap describes a platform run by Trusted Third Parties, which have to be approved by NEO after proving their identity and proving they have a legal entity backing them. The NEO team also promotes itself as compliant with regulations (probably to stay on the good side of the authorities in China where it is based). If they want to go down this route, that's their prerogative, but it's downright misleading to describe it as decentralized or even as in the same space as cryptocurrency. It's more like a traditional Fintech company, with greater separation of concerns between users and trusted third parties (e.g. updates to the database are cryptographically validated, with each user controlling their own private keys to authorize updates to their respective account), to provide more transparency and security than closed database models. I would add Ripple, Stellar and EOS to this class of pseudo-cryptocurrency platforms, that while arguably offering interesting innovations on the centralized server-client architecture, are exploiting the hype around decentralization to raise funds and users for platforms that are not decentralized. Its centralized consensus model means NEO can afford to place very high resource loads on its nodes (or really, servers), and use traditional programming languages that are not optimized for the decentralized world. This ability to use Java, C# and Python to write programs for it is actually one of its features that is marketed on its website.

dreit1 9y ago
There is nothing misleading about it at all. A delegated system is decentralized, whether it is decentralized enough for you is your decision, but it is misleading to claim otherwise. Disclosure: NEO fan
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  A set of trusted third parties that are pre-approved by a central authority, and are operating in a platform designed to comply with rules created by a central authority (the government), is not decentralized, in any context, let alone in the cryptocurrency context, where the original Bitcoin whitepaper describes a radical consensus algorithm designed specifically to make trusted third parties unnecessary. You could call it federated, but not decentralized.

john_moscow 9y ago

Oh boy. It would suck ass to see those guys busted by SEC for offering unregistered securities. The voting rights will definitely make it a security from SEC's standpoint, so the only question is whether they will be considered too small of a fish to bother. The irony with the ICO market is that it's safe for total scams with untraceable founders and it's safe for big players like FileCoin that voluntarily comply with the securities laws. But if you're a well-meaning techie with no legal team, you may be easily breaking dozens of security-related regulations without even realizing it.

Hendrikto 9y ago
The SEC has absolutely no say in this whatsoever, as the Red Foundation is being set up in France.

cordite 9y ago

I was actually looking at Red in consideration for my next year's personal projects. I'd consider it further if I felt it was more complete. Perhaps this is a cursory evaluation, but it feels like the emphasis is to use what's built in as much as possible. Given a lack of json (yes, there is an implementation out there, but not built in), and still pending linux GUI support, it still feels too unfinished for me to invest my time into.

Hendrikto 9y ago
The lack of Linux GUI support is a dealbreaker for me.
greggirwin 9y ago
Neither of those features have been a priority, but both will eventually be built in. We'll wait for you. :^)

flembat 9y ago

I was hoping the Red project would announce something interesting at the end of the year; but not something as interesting as this.

greggirwin 9y ago
We live in interesting times.

AlexCoventry 9y ago

Do they have a plan for staying on the windy side of the SEC, or should US residents stay away?