5 ms·

What does Ethereum have to do with surfing a decentralized Web? Or like what is it bringing to the party? I would imagine most of this is just IPFS, right? Aren

What does Ethereum have to do with surfing a decentralized Web? Or like what is it bringing to the party? I would imagine most of this is just IPFS, right? Aren't there other like non cryptocurrency based distributed dns systems? I'm just confused how cryptocurrency popped up, or what am I just totally fucking missing?

tingletech 7y ago
humm, I thought IPFS was always joined at the hip with some crypto stuff startup for some reason (unlike dat or named-data) [edit: not that you have to use the crypto stuff with IPFS, but the same folks creating it also have had some sort of crypto currency use case]
- Nursie 7y ago
  "Filecoin". IIRC they raised an embarasingly large amount of money during their ICO.
damon_c 7y ago
It's using ENS (Ethereum Name Service) to locate the contents stored on IPFS. This is done through Ethereum smart contracts. Here's some documentation on all this: https://docs.ens.domains/contract-api-reference/publicresolver#get-content-hash https://docs.ens.domains/contract-api-reference/publicresolv...
- Proven 7y ago
  Namecoin didn't have all those scandalous ICOs and managed to do the same with .bit years before Ethereum. And it did that without smart contract bloat.
vbuterin 7y ago
You can't have decentralized DNS without some form of shared state, where the shared state must resolve the problem of "if I use key X to change the owner to Y, but then later on someone hacks my key and sends a message to change the owner to Z, how does the world know that Y came first?". This is equivalent to the double spending problem, and so a solution to this problem implies blockchains or some other architecture that can support a cryptocurrency.
benjamincburns 7y ago
A lot of the other responses here are too complicated and specific. Here's my attempt to put it into easier-to-digest terms: In a traditional web stack you have a backend and a frontend. The frontend is the stuff the browser runs, and, simplifying a bit, the backend is everything else. Ethereum smart contracts basically let you replace your backend logic and database with code that runs on the Ethereum blockchain network. Depending on your application can decide to run only a few parts of your backend on Ethereum, or the entire backend. It's very slow when compared to traditional backends like nodejs, etc, but it has the benefits of censorship resistance and excellent availability. Better still, you don't need to run or maintain servers to support it if you don't want to (although there are benefits to doing so). In this case, they're using Ethereum's replacement for DNS, ENS.

tingletech 7y ago

humm, I thought IPFS was always joined at the hip with some crypto stuff startup for some reason (unlike dat or named-data) [edit: not that you have to use the crypto stuff with IPFS, but the same folks creating it also have had some sort of crypto currency use case]

Nursie 7y ago
"Filecoin". IIRC they raised an embarasingly large amount of money during their ICO.

damon_c 7y ago

It's using ENS (Ethereum Name Service) to locate the contents stored on IPFS. This is done through Ethereum smart contracts. Here's some documentation on all this: https://docs.ens.domains/contract-api-reference/publicresolver#get-content-hash https://docs.ens.domains/contract-api-reference/publicresolv...

Proven 7y ago
Namecoin didn't have all those scandalous ICOs and managed to do the same with .bit years before Ethereum. And it did that without smart contract bloat.

vbuterin 7y ago

You can't have decentralized DNS without some form of shared state, where the shared state must resolve the problem of "if I use key X to change the owner to Y, but then later on someone hacks my key and sends a message to change the owner to Z, how does the world know that Y came first?". This is equivalent to the double spending problem, and so a solution to this problem implies blockchains or some other architecture that can support a cryptocurrency.

benjamincburns 7y ago

A lot of the other responses here are too complicated and specific. Here's my attempt to put it into easier-to-digest terms: In a traditional web stack you have a backend and a frontend. The frontend is the stuff the browser runs, and, simplifying a bit, the backend is everything else. Ethereum smart contracts basically let you replace your backend logic and database with code that runs on the Ethereum blockchain network. Depending on your application can decide to run only a few parts of your backend on Ethereum, or the entire backend. It's very slow when compared to traditional backends like nodejs, etc, but it has the benefits of censorship resistance and excellent availability. Better still, you don't need to run or maintain servers to support it if you don't want to (although there are benefits to doing so). In this case, they're using Ethereum's replacement for DNS, ENS.