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The downsides of Ethereum is discouraging me a bit from developing on their platform. Then again they are the biggest smart contract crypto currency, but maybe

The downsides of Ethereum is discouraging me a bit from developing on their platform. Then again they are the biggest smart contract crypto currency, but maybe it could be worth to build things with another one even so. Could you recommend some with good technical foundations that are ready for use today and with enough documentation that it’s possible to understand? I know Ark plan to but as far as I am aware they have not yet implemented smart contracts. NEO on the other hand I know supports smart contracts today and some different languages. Don’t know what actually building something with NEO is like though. Any one have experience with NEO? Any other crypto currencies with smart contracts?

Taek 9y ago
People don't like to hear this, but blockchain tech isn't ready for a general app platform. Bitcoin could easily be extended to have an EVM if it was a good idea, but there are lots of unsolved problems, gotchas, and overheads that make it a poor choice. I don't think that's the perpetual state of things, but I do think that every 'dapp' platform out there today is bad foundation, and largely that's because it's too early to be making general platforms. The approach that a couple of currencies have taken (including the one I lead) is to make a separate blockchain entirely dedicated to their app. And I think that's a far better choice than anything out there, though it comes with the glaring downside of needing to build and run your own blockchain, which is a very difficult thing to do. Most of the apps we are seeing today don't make any sense anyway. Very much smacks of the dotcom bubble, where people who suspected that the Internet would change the world were absolutely correct, but then the companies and ideas they put their money behind were missing the mark by miles. We've got the same issue today. Most successful ICOs are going to fail very hard, due to known impossibilities, known poor uses of the technology, etc. It's just a general fever that has a lot of new entrants in the space innovating in the wrong direction. It will get better. Dapp platforms will appear that make sense, have good foundations, and are easy to setup and use. But it's not around the corner, it's probably 3-5 years away.
- thisisit 9y ago
  > People don't like to hear this, but blockchain tech isn't ready for a general app platform. This cannot be stressed enough. But, I disagree that building your own blockchain is the answer in comparison to using EVM. The amount of blockchains and services people might end up needing will be huge. So, it seems the correct usage for blockchain is still far out.
  - phoenix9 9y ago
    What about steemit.com? The more scalable eos.io platform isn't finished but they are very close. Do you consider dpos not to be blockchain tech?
- tessierashpool 9y ago
  I agree with this overall, but have serious reservations here: Bitcoin could easily be extended to have an EVM are you talking about Script, or some other approach I don’t know about? I think it’s pretty optimistic to put the word “easily” anywhere near a proposed use of Script.
  - earlz 9y ago
    I don't know about "easily", but that's pretty much exactly what Qtum did. It's a UTXO blockchain with EVM and other smart contracts on top. It required about 6 solid months to figure out how to make it work and the output of that is something called "The Account Abstraction Layer" to basically decouple smart contracts from the underlying blockchain protocol
- kerkeslager 9y ago
  > Most of the apps we are seeing today don't make any sense anyway. Very much smacks of the dotcom bubble, where people who suspected that the Internet would change the world were absolutely correct, but then the companies and ideas they put their money behind were missing the mark by miles. This is the crux of the problem. The cryptocurrencies with the highest valuations right now are ones with serious technical and social flaws--people are investing in cryptocurrencies based on hype rather than merit. Ethereum is the most egregious example: the idea that a JavaScript-like language is what you'd want to write your security-intensive code in is mind-boggling-ly stupid, and after the community showed themselves to be willing to perform a 51% attack on their own blockchain to fix a problem with the DAO, it's not even decentralized any more. So technically you have all the downsides of writing secure software in JavaScript, and socially you have all the problems of centralization AND all the problems of decentralization. The security flaw this thread is about would be a critical vulnerability to any competent security developer, but it's really minor compared to the more fundamental flaws. But even in competently-developed cryptocurrencies, the problems are still there because people don't understand or value decentralization, which is literally the entire reason Blockchain is worthwhile. The number of people who buy cryptocurrencies and then leave their coins sitting on an exchange is incredible. You're literally donating money to the world's biggest bug bounties when you do that.
  - dorgo 9y ago
    In my opinion, decentralization is not the point of crypto-tech. Maybe it's some minor feature, but not the selling proposition. The major feature is the formalisation of the concept of consensus. Forks are a manifestation of this feature. "a 51% attack on their own blockchain" is a major feature of crypto-tech. In the last century we would call this a revolution. In this century issues like this can be resolved enterily in software. It's an opt-in economy and in some years an opt-in society. The only reason you think the cash in your portemonai is worth something is that everybody else things the same. As soon as everybody stops believing it, the paper in your wallet can still be used to make fire. Same goes for authorities. Judges, policemen, presidents are what they are because everybody believes it. We have already an informal consensus of who is a policeman and who is not. Most of the time it resolves to whether somebody wears the uniform. Crypto tech promises to make this verifiably. No need for uniforms.
earlz 9y ago
Disclaimer: co-founder of Qtum Qtum sounds like the thing you could be looking for. To TL;DR; it, Qtum is a smart contract platform on an independent blockchain that supports PoS (not DPoS, true PoS) and designed to support multiple smart contract VMs. Right now it only supports the EVM and thus can only run Solidity smart contracts, but later this year we'll release a new VM based on the x86 architecture so that it will be possible to use mainstream languages like C++, Rust, Go, etc... Anyway, ending the whole description bit, we built it because of similar thoughts as you. Tired of seeing the only suitable smart contract platform (Ethereum) be treated like some philosophical research project, rather than a platform that businesses and people stake hundreds of millions of dollars on. Everything we design is intended to be practical to not just use, but also implement. We pride ourselves in never missing any deadlines we set for ourselves, and in never having some pipe dream project that won't be ready to use for 5 years.
justaguyhere 9y ago
Are there any other platforms that one can learn, that are perhaps not as well known as Eth, but also don't have Eth's problems?
- Erlich_Bachman 9y ago
  Waves platform, NEM, NEO, many others. Replacing (or at least partially re-capturing a part of) Ethereum's success is one of the next big things that many projects are trying to do. It became clear that some form of smart contracts are considered very valuable by the market, at least ICOs - and it's clear that a platform that will win in this regard will become Huuge. There are also clear disadvantages that Ethereum has, so this is an obvious vacuum that many projects are trying to fill.
  - justaguyhere 9y ago
    Thanks for responding. Are you doing projects with any of them? Which would you suggest for a beginner?
    - CryptoPunk 9y ago
      A lot of the commenters here don't understand the cryptocurrency market and are vastly overstating Ethereum's flaws. The truth is that the EVM is perfectly secure and the problems with Solidity are due to the fact that any new smart contract development environment was bound to have problems at the initial stages. Solidity is being rapidly improved and there are several other programming languages under development for the EVM as well. As for market significance, Ethereum is the only smart contract platform that's relevant. There are now over a million MetaMask installations that can interact with any Ethereum Dapp, and millions of MEW wallets that can hold ERC20 tokens. Ethereum-based tokens saw their share of the total token market cap grow from 73% to 92% from July 2017 to January 2018. The platform has 30X more developers working on it than the next most active one. That means that almost all of the decentralized exchanges and other value-adding applications are compatible with the ERC20 standard, creating a positive feedback loop of encouraging new projects to build on Ethereum. Ethereum is more likely than not going to be the platform for smart contract development.
Bombthecat 9y ago
EOS might be of interest or lisk.
dreit1 9y ago
NEO is still very raw, and it takes a lot of work to get involved, however it’s a tight nit developer community and some serious opportunities to get involved and shape the project. Source: I am active in the developer community and have a company building on NEO
- bringtheaction 9y ago
  I’ve been interested in NEO but not sure where to begin. Do you have any links you could recommend? Also tell a bit more about your company and what you are building if you’d like.
  - dreit1 9y ago
    https://github.com/CityOfZion/awesome-neo https://github.com/CityOfZion/awesome-neo lots of resources here, also recommend mentioning the discord here https://discord.gg/R8v48YA https://discord.gg/R8v48YA This is where the primary technical discussion happens, and where all the devs hang out. Our company is here, mobile wallets are our first product :) https://o3.network https://o3.network
    - bringtheaction 9y ago
      Thanks. I checked out your site and it mentions open source and commitment to the community but I can’t find the repo for your iOS wallet on https://github.com/O3Labs https://github.com/O3Labs
      - dreit1 9y ago
        Ah yeah, its in the CoZ github org. https://github.com/CityOfZion/OzoneWalletIOS https://github.com/CityOfZion/OzoneWalletIOS https://github.com/CityOfZion/neo-swift https://github.com/CityOfZion/neo-swift

Taek 9y ago

People don't like to hear this, but blockchain tech isn't ready for a general app platform. Bitcoin could easily be extended to have an EVM if it was a good idea, but there are lots of unsolved problems, gotchas, and overheads that make it a poor choice. I don't think that's the perpetual state of things, but I do think that every 'dapp' platform out there today is bad foundation, and largely that's because it's too early to be making general platforms. The approach that a couple of currencies have taken (including the one I lead) is to make a separate blockchain entirely dedicated to their app. And I think that's a far better choice than anything out there, though it comes with the glaring downside of needing to build and run your own blockchain, which is a very difficult thing to do. Most of the apps we are seeing today don't make any sense anyway. Very much smacks of the dotcom bubble, where people who suspected that the Internet would change the world were absolutely correct, but then the companies and ideas they put their money behind were missing the mark by miles. We've got the same issue today. Most successful ICOs are going to fail very hard, due to known impossibilities, known poor uses of the technology, etc. It's just a general fever that has a lot of new entrants in the space innovating in the wrong direction. It will get better. Dapp platforms will appear that make sense, have good foundations, and are easy to setup and use. But it's not around the corner, it's probably 3-5 years away.

thisisit 9y ago
> People don't like to hear this, but blockchain tech isn't ready for a general app platform. This cannot be stressed enough. But, I disagree that building your own blockchain is the answer in comparison to using EVM. The amount of blockchains and services people might end up needing will be huge. So, it seems the correct usage for blockchain is still far out.
- phoenix9 9y ago
  What about steemit.com? The more scalable eos.io platform isn't finished but they are very close. Do you consider dpos not to be blockchain tech?
tessierashpool 9y ago
I agree with this overall, but have serious reservations here: Bitcoin could easily be extended to have an EVM are you talking about Script, or some other approach I don’t know about? I think it’s pretty optimistic to put the word “easily” anywhere near a proposed use of Script.
- earlz 9y ago
  I don't know about "easily", but that's pretty much exactly what Qtum did. It's a UTXO blockchain with EVM and other smart contracts on top. It required about 6 solid months to figure out how to make it work and the output of that is something called "The Account Abstraction Layer" to basically decouple smart contracts from the underlying blockchain protocol
kerkeslager 9y ago
> Most of the apps we are seeing today don't make any sense anyway. Very much smacks of the dotcom bubble, where people who suspected that the Internet would change the world were absolutely correct, but then the companies and ideas they put their money behind were missing the mark by miles. This is the crux of the problem. The cryptocurrencies with the highest valuations right now are ones with serious technical and social flaws--people are investing in cryptocurrencies based on hype rather than merit. Ethereum is the most egregious example: the idea that a JavaScript-like language is what you'd want to write your security-intensive code in is mind-boggling-ly stupid, and after the community showed themselves to be willing to perform a 51% attack on their own blockchain to fix a problem with the DAO, it's not even decentralized any more. So technically you have all the downsides of writing secure software in JavaScript, and socially you have all the problems of centralization AND all the problems of decentralization. The security flaw this thread is about would be a critical vulnerability to any competent security developer, but it's really minor compared to the more fundamental flaws. But even in competently-developed cryptocurrencies, the problems are still there because people don't understand or value decentralization, which is literally the entire reason Blockchain is worthwhile. The number of people who buy cryptocurrencies and then leave their coins sitting on an exchange is incredible. You're literally donating money to the world's biggest bug bounties when you do that.
- dorgo 9y ago
  In my opinion, decentralization is not the point of crypto-tech. Maybe it's some minor feature, but not the selling proposition. The major feature is the formalisation of the concept of consensus. Forks are a manifestation of this feature. "a 51% attack on their own blockchain" is a major feature of crypto-tech. In the last century we would call this a revolution. In this century issues like this can be resolved enterily in software. It's an opt-in economy and in some years an opt-in society. The only reason you think the cash in your portemonai is worth something is that everybody else things the same. As soon as everybody stops believing it, the paper in your wallet can still be used to make fire. Same goes for authorities. Judges, policemen, presidents are what they are because everybody believes it. We have already an informal consensus of who is a policeman and who is not. Most of the time it resolves to whether somebody wears the uniform. Crypto tech promises to make this verifiably. No need for uniforms.

earlz 9y ago

Disclaimer: co-founder of Qtum Qtum sounds like the thing you could be looking for. To TL;DR; it, Qtum is a smart contract platform on an independent blockchain that supports PoS (not DPoS, true PoS) and designed to support multiple smart contract VMs. Right now it only supports the EVM and thus can only run Solidity smart contracts, but later this year we'll release a new VM based on the x86 architecture so that it will be possible to use mainstream languages like C++, Rust, Go, etc... Anyway, ending the whole description bit, we built it because of similar thoughts as you. Tired of seeing the only suitable smart contract platform (Ethereum) be treated like some philosophical research project, rather than a platform that businesses and people stake hundreds of millions of dollars on. Everything we design is intended to be practical to not just use, but also implement. We pride ourselves in never missing any deadlines we set for ourselves, and in never having some pipe dream project that won't be ready to use for 5 years.

justaguyhere 9y ago

Are there any other platforms that one can learn, that are perhaps not as well known as Eth, but also don't have Eth's problems?

Erlich_Bachman 9y ago
Waves platform, NEM, NEO, many others. Replacing (or at least partially re-capturing a part of) Ethereum's success is one of the next big things that many projects are trying to do. It became clear that some form of smart contracts are considered very valuable by the market, at least ICOs - and it's clear that a platform that will win in this regard will become Huuge. There are also clear disadvantages that Ethereum has, so this is an obvious vacuum that many projects are trying to fill.
- justaguyhere 9y ago
  Thanks for responding. Are you doing projects with any of them? Which would you suggest for a beginner?
  - CryptoPunk 9y ago
    A lot of the commenters here don't understand the cryptocurrency market and are vastly overstating Ethereum's flaws. The truth is that the EVM is perfectly secure and the problems with Solidity are due to the fact that any new smart contract development environment was bound to have problems at the initial stages. Solidity is being rapidly improved and there are several other programming languages under development for the EVM as well. As for market significance, Ethereum is the only smart contract platform that's relevant. There are now over a million MetaMask installations that can interact with any Ethereum Dapp, and millions of MEW wallets that can hold ERC20 tokens. Ethereum-based tokens saw their share of the total token market cap grow from 73% to 92% from July 2017 to January 2018. The platform has 30X more developers working on it than the next most active one. That means that almost all of the decentralized exchanges and other value-adding applications are compatible with the ERC20 standard, creating a positive feedback loop of encouraging new projects to build on Ethereum. Ethereum is more likely than not going to be the platform for smart contract development.

Bombthecat 9y ago

EOS might be of interest or lisk.

dreit1 9y ago

NEO is still very raw, and it takes a lot of work to get involved, however it’s a tight nit developer community and some serious opportunities to get involved and shape the project. Source: I am active in the developer community and have a company building on NEO

bringtheaction 9y ago
I’ve been interested in NEO but not sure where to begin. Do you have any links you could recommend? Also tell a bit more about your company and what you are building if you’d like.
- dreit1 9y ago
  https://github.com/CityOfZion/awesome-neo https://github.com/CityOfZion/awesome-neo lots of resources here, also recommend mentioning the discord here https://discord.gg/R8v48YA https://discord.gg/R8v48YA This is where the primary technical discussion happens, and where all the devs hang out. Our company is here, mobile wallets are our first product :) https://o3.network https://o3.network
  - bringtheaction 9y ago
    Thanks. I checked out your site and it mentions open source and commitment to the community but I can’t find the repo for your iOS wallet on https://github.com/O3Labs https://github.com/O3Labs
    - dreit1 9y ago
      Ah yeah, its in the CoZ github org. https://github.com/CityOfZion/OzoneWalletIOS https://github.com/CityOfZion/OzoneWalletIOS https://github.com/CityOfZion/neo-swift https://github.com/CityOfZion/neo-swift