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Not an ICO in the traditional sense perhaps. There's plenty of useful stuff being built upon Ethereum. The platform itself is also still in development and imp

Not an ICO in the traditional sense perhaps. There's plenty of useful stuff being built upon Ethereum. The platform itself is also still in development and improving with every update. People need to give projects more than 5 minutes to succeed. Not that I disagree however plenty of money will be lost on useless projects. But that's just the nature of the game (excluding any obvious scams). Plenty (nearly all) of venture capital money is wasted as well.

eugeniub 9y ago
4+ years since Ethereum was proposed is a lifetime in internet years.
- charlesdm 9y ago
  Proposed != ready to be used in a production environment. Ethereum itself isn't even finished yet, how do you expect all the software running on it to be finished? Elon Musk has proposed proper mass production of Tesla cars years ago..
root_axis 9y ago
> There's plenty of useful stuff being built upon Ethereum. Can you give an example please? So far, the only useful function I've seen for any blockchain token is its use as a stand-in for fiat money (e.g. blackmarket commerce), and bitcoin already has that covered. The usual go-to for Ethereum are smart-contracts, but I've never heard of a useful one, or even an idea for a useful one (that doesn't ignore realities that make it useless in practice).
- charlesdm 9y ago
  Land registry systems, voting systems, asset transfer and settlement systems, tokenisation of (certain) assets (e.g. music IP, royalty flows), etc etc Essentially anything where trust and/or potential corruption might be an issue.
  - root_axis 9y ago
    I've heard all these suggestions before and never had a practical example detailed to me. > Land registry systems This won't work. In most places a centralized system works fine, but in places where corruption is an issue the blockchain system is still useless because corrupt officials will just disregard whatever the blockchain says or use coercion to force you to give up the private keys. There are also many other impracticalities that preclude its use such as situation where keys are lost or stolen. What happens when the owner of the keys dies and the keys cannot be found? What happens when the state needs to force transfer of ownership from an unwilling party to another based on a judgement of the courts? Ultimately, the government is the final arbiter on any question of land ownership rights and any system that does not give the government overriding control of land ownership registrations is untenable. Of course, if the government has overriding control of the system, a blockchain is pointless. > voting systems This does not solve any problems that aren't already solved using a centralized system that employs cryptographic signatures. If we can trust a message signed by a citizen's private key, then all we need is a signed message with their vote; adding in a blockchain serves only to introduce needless complexity and resource waste. > asset transfer and settlement systems This is a solved problem. Asset transfer works fine today and actually functions better in a centralized system where the institutions can safeguard assets from unacceptable failure scenarios such as having hundreds of millions of dollars irrevocably wiped out or stolen. > tokenisation of (certain) assets (e.g. music IP, royalty flows), Pointless. Copyright violators will just ignore the blockchain and if you have to petition the government to enforce a copyright claim that lives on the blockchain then there's no benefit to using one since this already happens now with a centralized database of copyright claims. "Tokenization" of things like music IP is especially absurd considering the intractable layers of ambiguity in determining which aspects of a complex artistic work fall under the copyright. There isn't even a meaningful way to map ownership of a specific piece of art to a copyright holder's private key since artistic expression is not measured in discrete streams of bytes which can appear digitally distinct while looking or sounding practically identical. Blockchains just don't solve any of these problems.

eugeniub 9y ago

4+ years since Ethereum was proposed is a lifetime in internet years.

charlesdm 9y ago
Proposed != ready to be used in a production environment. Ethereum itself isn't even finished yet, how do you expect all the software running on it to be finished? Elon Musk has proposed proper mass production of Tesla cars years ago..

root_axis 9y ago

> There's plenty of useful stuff being built upon Ethereum. Can you give an example please? So far, the only useful function I've seen for any blockchain token is its use as a stand-in for fiat money (e.g. blackmarket commerce), and bitcoin already has that covered. The usual go-to for Ethereum are smart-contracts, but I've never heard of a useful one, or even an idea for a useful one (that doesn't ignore realities that make it useless in practice).

charlesdm 9y ago
Land registry systems, voting systems, asset transfer and settlement systems, tokenisation of (certain) assets (e.g. music IP, royalty flows), etc etc Essentially anything where trust and/or potential corruption might be an issue.
- root_axis 9y ago
  I've heard all these suggestions before and never had a practical example detailed to me. > Land registry systems This won't work. In most places a centralized system works fine, but in places where corruption is an issue the blockchain system is still useless because corrupt officials will just disregard whatever the blockchain says or use coercion to force you to give up the private keys. There are also many other impracticalities that preclude its use such as situation where keys are lost or stolen. What happens when the owner of the keys dies and the keys cannot be found? What happens when the state needs to force transfer of ownership from an unwilling party to another based on a judgement of the courts? Ultimately, the government is the final arbiter on any question of land ownership rights and any system that does not give the government overriding control of land ownership registrations is untenable. Of course, if the government has overriding control of the system, a blockchain is pointless. > voting systems This does not solve any problems that aren't already solved using a centralized system that employs cryptographic signatures. If we can trust a message signed by a citizen's private key, then all we need is a signed message with their vote; adding in a blockchain serves only to introduce needless complexity and resource waste. > asset transfer and settlement systems This is a solved problem. Asset transfer works fine today and actually functions better in a centralized system where the institutions can safeguard assets from unacceptable failure scenarios such as having hundreds of millions of dollars irrevocably wiped out or stolen. > tokenisation of (certain) assets (e.g. music IP, royalty flows), Pointless. Copyright violators will just ignore the blockchain and if you have to petition the government to enforce a copyright claim that lives on the blockchain then there's no benefit to using one since this already happens now with a centralized database of copyright claims. "Tokenization" of things like music IP is especially absurd considering the intractable layers of ambiguity in determining which aspects of a complex artistic work fall under the copyright. There isn't even a meaningful way to map ownership of a specific piece of art to a copyright holder's private key since artistic expression is not measured in discrete streams of bytes which can appear digitally distinct while looking or sounding practically identical. Blockchains just don't solve any of these problems.