4 ms·

Out of curiosity, what "really bad engineering decisions" are those?

foepys 9y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14810008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14810008 This applies to "Solidity", the most commonly used language to write smart contracts for Ethereum. The VM itself is not so bad but also simpler.
- heliumcraft 9y ago
  Solidity != EVM & Ethereum.
elmar 9y ago
My view, of course, every decision as a trade-off, everything i say is controversial - The main ledger and smart contracts should be separated, everyone smart contract is public, why?? the smart contracts should be run on several specific sidechains. Why if I buy a crypto kittie everyone as to know and store the transaction for all eternity. Wait sharding is coming, yes but will reduce the security guarantees.
- heliumcraft 9y ago
  There are different solutions for that in the works, from sharding to plasma, etc.. and those have their own challenges & tradeoffs (namely in terms of security, etc..) However engineering decisions 'on genesis' was over 3-4 years ago and at that time doing a blockchain with smart contracts was already challenge on itself. It's not really fair to take the knowledge and lessons from the present day and claim those in the past without that knowledge made horrible decisions. It's a bit like blaming google for not starting angular 1 with the functionality of angular 4, or saying that John Resig should have created Babel and ES7 features instead of creating jQuery.
  - elmar 9y ago
    > However engineering decisions 'on genesis' was over 3-4 years ago and at that time doing a blockchain with smart contracts was already challenge on itself. It's not really fair Sorry when I heard about Ethereum plans 4 years ago, I tough it as a terribly bad idea then (I didn't invest because of this, I should have invested stupid me) in 2013 the increase size of blockchain was already an ongoing problem, I simply tought if a decentelized ledger is already problematic to store, let's put a lot of more information on it, it's madness..
- osteele 9y ago
  > The main ledger and smart contracts should be separated, everyone smart contract is public, why?? You might find Blockstack interesting. (I don’t have a connection. I’ve just started to explore this space, and have some of those same questions.) [1] https://blockstack.org/ https://blockstack.org/ [2] Jude, “What is the difference between blockstack and Ethereum?”, Blockstack forum, March ‘17. https://forum.blockstack.org/t/what-is-the-difference-between-blockstack-and-ethereum/781/3 https://forum.blockstack.org/t/what-is-the-difference-betwee... [3] Alid Castano, “What is the difference between Blockstack and Ethereum?”, Sept. 13 ‘17. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Blockstack-and-Ethereum https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Blockst... [4] Alid Castano, “Why I’m betting on Blockstack to save the decentralized internet”, Sept. 12 ‘17. https://medium.com/@alidcastano/why-im-betting-on-blockstack-to-save-the-decentralized-internet-56f65a11fec4 https://medium.com/@alidcastano/why-im-betting-on-blockstack...
  - elmar 9y ago
    > You might find Blockstack interesting. I didn't know this project I normally hate ICO's (including the original Ethereum ICO) from what I have read on the information you so kindly shared it looks like a much more sensible approach to the distributed permissionless application problem, let's see how it goes.
- JohnJamesRambo 9y ago
  The whole point of a blockchain is publicly accessible records of the transactions. Why not run your cryptokitties on a private server then? The performance and efficiency would destroy your blockchain version but no one can see what is happening so it can be verified by everyone as true.
DINKDINK 9y ago
Imperative programming languages in a global machine state

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14810008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14810008 This applies to "Solidity", the most commonly used language to write smart contracts for Ethereum. The VM itself is not so bad but also simpler.

heliumcraft 9y ago
Solidity != EVM & Ethereum.

elmar 9y ago

My view, of course, every decision as a trade-off, everything i say is controversial - The main ledger and smart contracts should be separated, everyone smart contract is public, why?? the smart contracts should be run on several specific sidechains. Why if I buy a crypto kittie everyone as to know and store the transaction for all eternity. Wait sharding is coming, yes but will reduce the security guarantees.

heliumcraft 9y ago
There are different solutions for that in the works, from sharding to plasma, etc.. and those have their own challenges & tradeoffs (namely in terms of security, etc..) However engineering decisions 'on genesis' was over 3-4 years ago and at that time doing a blockchain with smart contracts was already challenge on itself. It's not really fair to take the knowledge and lessons from the present day and claim those in the past without that knowledge made horrible decisions. It's a bit like blaming google for not starting angular 1 with the functionality of angular 4, or saying that John Resig should have created Babel and ES7 features instead of creating jQuery.
- elmar 9y ago
  > However engineering decisions 'on genesis' was over 3-4 years ago and at that time doing a blockchain with smart contracts was already challenge on itself. It's not really fair Sorry when I heard about Ethereum plans 4 years ago, I tough it as a terribly bad idea then (I didn't invest because of this, I should have invested stupid me) in 2013 the increase size of blockchain was already an ongoing problem, I simply tought if a decentelized ledger is already problematic to store, let's put a lot of more information on it, it's madness..
osteele 9y ago
> The main ledger and smart contracts should be separated, everyone smart contract is public, why?? You might find Blockstack interesting. (I don’t have a connection. I’ve just started to explore this space, and have some of those same questions.) [1] https://blockstack.org/ https://blockstack.org/ [2] Jude, “What is the difference between blockstack and Ethereum?”, Blockstack forum, March ‘17. https://forum.blockstack.org/t/what-is-the-difference-between-blockstack-and-ethereum/781/3 https://forum.blockstack.org/t/what-is-the-difference-betwee... [3] Alid Castano, “What is the difference between Blockstack and Ethereum?”, Sept. 13 ‘17. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Blockstack-and-Ethereum https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Blockst... [4] Alid Castano, “Why I’m betting on Blockstack to save the decentralized internet”, Sept. 12 ‘17. https://medium.com/@alidcastano/why-im-betting-on-blockstack-to-save-the-decentralized-internet-56f65a11fec4 https://medium.com/@alidcastano/why-im-betting-on-blockstack...
- elmar 9y ago
  > You might find Blockstack interesting. I didn't know this project I normally hate ICO's (including the original Ethereum ICO) from what I have read on the information you so kindly shared it looks like a much more sensible approach to the distributed permissionless application problem, let's see how it goes.
JohnJamesRambo 9y ago
The whole point of a blockchain is publicly accessible records of the transactions. Why not run your cryptokitties on a private server then? The performance and efficiency would destroy your blockchain version but no one can see what is happening so it can be verified by everyone as true.

DINKDINK 9y ago

Imperative programming languages in a global machine state