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> And your damning criticism of this device is that it doesn’t contain a hardware security module and shouldn’t be used to secure millions of dollars? From a b

> And your damning criticism of this device is that it doesn’t contain a hardware security module and shouldn’t be used to secure millions of dollars? From a bird's eye view, objectively the project appears to be marketing a generic low-powered SoC which at best runs some blockchain software. And the "millions of dollars" was your claim, so if you want to criticise someone for making it then the only one you have to criticise is yourself. > You’re tearing someone down for trying to support their open source software by selling hardware with it pre-flashed. It's actually the other way around. Someone is trying to sell uninteresting hardware at a premium by making unbelievablr hyperbolical claims about its capabilities, which sounds quite honestly like a blatant scam.

woah 7y ago
There's nothing hyperbolic about the claims- all of it is easily possible with some software on the device. They are very open about this, and the software is open source. You begrudge them trying to make a living by selling hardware with the software conveniently pre-flashed.
imake 7y ago
Hi this is imake from the Elk team. I'm happy to discuss any claims you feel are unbelievable. To reiterate what I mentioned in an earlier comment, our true value is in the full experience of developing blockchain applications for embedded devices, which we strongly believe is 10x better than solutions that exist today. We didn't share details on hardware specs, and part of the reason we haven't done so yet is because we don't want to frame the conversation into specs - we won't necessarily beat other boards in the market when it comes to specs, and it's not our intention to do so. Our intention is to make a plug-and-play Arduino-like device for embedded blockchain development. We want to an experience where you won't have to fuss over setting up a node, tuning its parameters to run well on a low embedded device, handle crashes, etc. That's part of the reason why we chose to build our own hardware, it's because nothing existed that would allow us to give the developer experience we have in mind: breadboard compatible, 3.3v and 5v tolerant, integrated emmc preloaded with our OS, plug-and-play as a regular micro controller board not a single board computer, an RGB LED for indicating status, and no irrelevant and unneeded ports (HDMI, Audio, Ethernet, camera, etc). We'll be adding more details and shedding more light into our development experience in upcoming blog posts. Please subscribe at https://elk.cc https://elk.cc to learn more. Happy to address any other concerns you might have.

woah 7y ago

There's nothing hyperbolic about the claims- all of it is easily possible with some software on the device. They are very open about this, and the software is open source. You begrudge them trying to make a living by selling hardware with the software conveniently pre-flashed.

imake 7y ago

Hi this is imake from the Elk team. I'm happy to discuss any claims you feel are unbelievable. To reiterate what I mentioned in an earlier comment, our true value is in the full experience of developing blockchain applications for embedded devices, which we strongly believe is 10x better than solutions that exist today. We didn't share details on hardware specs, and part of the reason we haven't done so yet is because we don't want to frame the conversation into specs - we won't necessarily beat other boards in the market when it comes to specs, and it's not our intention to do so. Our intention is to make a plug-and-play Arduino-like device for embedded blockchain development. We want to an experience where you won't have to fuss over setting up a node, tuning its parameters to run well on a low embedded device, handle crashes, etc. That's part of the reason why we chose to build our own hardware, it's because nothing existed that would allow us to give the developer experience we have in mind: breadboard compatible, 3.3v and 5v tolerant, integrated emmc preloaded with our OS, plug-and-play as a regular micro controller board not a single board computer, an RGB LED for indicating status, and no irrelevant and unneeded ports (HDMI, Audio, Ethernet, camera, etc). We'll be adding more details and shedding more light into our development experience in upcoming blog posts. Please subscribe at https://elk.cc https://elk.cc to learn more. Happy to address any other concerns you might have.