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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Ethereum

74 points by wslyvh 6y ago

wslyvh 6y ago
Over the past few years, I’ve been helping and on-boarding new team members and developers into the blockchain space. This helped me to collect blogs, links, materials, and resources and see which worked well for everyone’s learning journey. It’s time to share that with a broader audience. The guide provides a starting point for developers who’re keen to learn more about blockchain and development on top of Ethereum.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 6y ago
  Thanks so much for putting this together!
  - wslyvh 6y ago
    My pleasure. Hope you find it useful
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
edhelas 6y ago
Is blockchain still a thing ?
- RexetBlell 6y ago
  Yes, and it’s growing fast. Look into DeFi https://defipulse.com/ https://defipulse.com/
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    I'm all-in on dogecoin, myself. Buy today! We're going to the moon!
    - RexetBlell 6y ago
      I wasn’t talking about the price growing. I was talking the usage growing.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    Defi appears to be the latest hype vehicle, but all it seems to actually provide is multilayered gambling and yet more finance-LARPing. Good luck I guess.
    - CryptoPunk 6y ago
      It's permissionless access to financial markets that are guaranteed to remain running, and to operate according to the rules encoded in their smart contract, indefinitely. Its properties make it enormously valuable for applications involving large numbers of people coordinating amongst each other. Ethereum's DeFi has seen collateral increase from $750 million on April 1st to $2 billion today, so people are seeing utility in it.
- drchopchop 6y ago
  It's still incredible to me how pro-blockchain HN is, as evidenced by all the downvoting in this thread. The only use case at this point is decentralized gambling / drug purchasing / Augur / etc, and the technology itself is useless in a variety of different ways (scaling, transaction cost, energy consumption, fraud protection, reversibility, and so on). A similar technology in a different space would be ripped apart here.
  - apazzolini 6y ago
    > how pro-blockchain HN is We must be reading different sites.
  - RexetBlell 6y ago
    Scaling and transaction cost have been solved using ZK-rollups. Transactions cost less than a cent and take less than a second. 2000 transactions per second throughput. A lot has changed in the last 2 years.
- louwrentius 6y ago
  Nobody has ever been able to explain to me why it has any value for our society. https://louwrentius.com/cryptocurrencies-are-detrimental-to-society.html https://louwrentius.com/cryptocurrencies-are-detrimental-to-...
  - bitxbitxbitcoin 6y ago
    Reading through your post, I want to point out that all your insightful reasons why cryptocurrency should be shut down are actually acknowledged problems that have been worked on by many in the space leading to solutions that address different pain points you've brought up. Examples include stablecoins (this name is meant to be as ironic as you think it is), private blockchains (here's a hint, nobody is using these to buy drugs or demand ransom), blockchains protected by something other than "energy wasting" Proof of Work. I do have a few points for you to consider that might help you see the value of all this experimentation for society: - Imagine someone living in a country such as Cuba or Venezuela or Iran that wants to buy things online (no, not heroin) and why they might find the existence of something like Bitcoin or Ethereum useful. - You call for it all to be shut down, but how exactly would that be accomplished? (Most) cryptocurrencies are open source software and in a fringe scenario where experimentation here only serves to improve the anti-fraud precautions surrounding traditional currencies, isn't that still of some value to our society? Some might argue that these supposed benefits don't outweigh the existing harm and therefore there isn't net value to society and there I'd just say we need to agree to disagree. Have I perhaps changed your mind that cryptocurrencies don't have any value for our global society?
  - wslyvh 6y ago
    Blockchain is not just crypto currencies. It was just the first use-case. I'd recommend to check out some of the links from the 1st section: Blockchain foundations, on why we need decentralized technologies, such as blockchain. Our current internet is broken and blockchain could potentially help to make a change.
- Nursie 6y ago
  It's still twitching, but I think ten years on the cries of "It's early days yet, just wait and see!" have grown old. Nothing world-changing has been delivered after the biggest hype-cycle in modern history...
- xenospn 6y ago
  It will be as long as people can use it as a buzzword to raise money. As soon as the last hype investor has lost their last check, it will disappear.
anoraca 6y ago
My guide to Ethereum: don't get involved in shady, unregulated industries unless you're aware of the possible consequences are are willing to accept them gracefully
- RexetBlell 6y ago
  What are the consequences that you’re talking about?
  - albntomat0 6y ago
    Rampant swings in price, fueled by exchanges getting hacked/falling apart, weird ICOs, or the sketchiness of tether.
    - RexetBlell 6y ago
      There were no ICOs in the last 2 years. The community moved on from that. Decentralized non custodial exchange usage is growing, like https://loopring.org/ https://loopring.org/ that’s based on zero knowledge proofs cryptography and allows 2000 trades per second, and the people who built it can’t steal your money even if they wanted to. There are also decentralized options to protect you from volatility https://opyn.co/ https://opyn.co/ or https://www.hegic.co/ https://www.hegic.co/ There are many alternatives to Tether, for example USDc or a decentralized stable coin like DAI.
      - spottybanana 6y ago
        There are still ICO's, they are just rebranded usually to something else like IEOs or STOs.
      - Nursie 6y ago
        No ICOs? None at all? Since mid 2018? Having trouble believing that, especially as I can see evidence of hundreds of the damn things after a simple search - https://ico.tokens-economy.com/statistics/country.html?country=2019&year=2019 https://ico.tokens-economy.com/statistics/country.html?count... Sure, many of those won't be using ethereum, but they still happened. And that's before you dive into the IEOs and STOs, which appear to be more of the same.
lowmemcpu 6y ago
I see these "Hitchhiker's Guide" a lot, but other than a reference to the book "hitchikers guide to the galaxy", is there a better definition here? How should I picture "Hitchhiker" - in the book, isn't the main character an unintentional observer/participant? So is this a beginner? Or perhaps a hitchhiker is a hardened, obstinate person who enjoys the frontier and moving around a lot? I don't know; it never made sense to me.
- parksy 6y ago
  In the books, there is an electronic guide to the combined knowledge and wisdom of all the various species that inhabit the universe. The guide is itself called "the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy." I have always interpreted such titles to be a reference to this in-universe guide rather then to the novel or its characters. We could split hairs over the fact the in-universe guide is more analogous to Wikipedia in scope and scale than a more condensed tutorial or primer, or whether the reference is obscure enough that it confuses, alienates, or distracts readers who aren't part of the intersection of Hackernews Readers and Hitchikers Guide fans. It never really bothered me but I was a huge fan of the series when I was younger. Edit to add: as I am a technical writer on the side, it's a timely reminder to avoid any analogies or cultural references that require knowledge others in my target audience might not share. So, interesting point!
  - dmurray 6y ago
    Before those books, there was a non-fiction book called The Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe [0]. It was a reference for travellers in Europe on a budget, something similar to the niche the Lonely Planet books fill today. It was a big tome, updated regularly with new editions from 1971 through the mid-90s, and well enough known that Douglas Adams' readers would have got the joke. My parents had a copy. That's the original inspiration for the in-universe Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and perhaps the better point of comparison for other guides that are named after it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitch-hiker's_Guide_to_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitch-hiker's_Guide_to_Europe
    - 6y ago
ForHackernews 6y ago
The world's most expensive tech demo / self-assembling pyramid scheme continues apace. Has anyone found a non-criminal use case for blockchain yet? Preferably one that isn't better addressed by a single Postgres instance?
- RexetBlell 6y ago
  Yes, here’s a use case - an open, decentralized, neutral, borderless and censorship resistant prediction market like Augur.
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    Why does anyone want that? Aren't you describing the supposed proposed assassination market? https://reason.com/2018/07/27/markets-in-assassination-everybody-panic/ https://reason.com/2018/07/27/markets-in-assassination-every...
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - RexetBlell 6y ago
      Why do people instantly jump to the extreme negative? Any technology can be used for to do bad things. The community is aware of this possibility and have taken precautions. Also any financial market can also be viewed as an assassination market. You can short a stock and assassinate the CEO and profit, but people don’t actually do that in practice. Also, Augur v1 (V2 is coming out this month) has existed for about 2 years and there were no assassination markets on it. The community would resolve them as “invalid”, so it’a not possible to guarantee profit unlike in the regular stock market.
      - notahacker 6y ago
        If people tout anonymity and 'censorship resistance' as a market's main advantage over other markets, it's hardly surprising that people focus on the use cases - hypothetical and otherwise - which wouldn't be possible on prediction market platforms where the platform operator knows their customer and rules out certain types of trade. If your USP is the ability to do 'bad things' to manipulate outcomes [manipulating the 'reporting' is probably a likelier outcome than assassination, admittedly] with little chance of your trades being discovered or reversed then people are going to focus on that.
Tepix 6y ago
Ethereum seems to be taking a lot of time to release their "2.0" version that provides scalability and doesn't require using huge amounts of energy - something that is pretty much inexcusable in this age of global warming. In the meantime other contenders seem to have more momentum. Case in point: CryptoKitties is leaving Ethereum because it lacked capacity and had high transaction fees.
- RexetBlell 6y ago
  Ethereum is scalable already. Layer 2 solutions like https://zksync.io/ https://zksync.io/ and https://loopring.org/#/ https://loopring.org/#/ are already live and allow 2000 transactions per second. This is based on ZK-rollups and provides the same level of security as the base layer. This technology can be used for trades or transfers. Another exciting technology that is coming this year is optimistic rollups, which will provide the same level of scalability for arbitrary smart contracts.
  - joosters 6y ago
    From the zkSync website: "WARNING: zkSync v1.0 is in alpha. Blockchains and zero-knowledge proofs are still experimental technologies with rapidly evolving attack vectors. zkSync relies on cutting-edge cryptography that has never been used in production before. While Matter Labs is rigorously following scientific and engineering best practices with regard to security, we can not provide 100% fault-free guarantee. Use zkSync at your own risk and do not put more money into it than you can afford to lose." That doesn't sound like 'scalable already', it sounds more like be prepared to lose your money. Further, on the ZK-Rollups website, we have: "The initial set up of ZK-Rollups promotes a centralized scheme The security scheme assumes a level of unverifiable trust The initial setup of ZK-Rollups is assumed to be a trusted state, when this trust cannot be proven. A small group of developers will be subject matter experts on the initial trusted state. This undermines decentralization and opens the risk of social engineering hacking attacks by convincing a developer to manipulate code or provide vulnerability information." This is not reliable scalable technology. It's centralised so it takes all the supposed advantages of blockchains away, at which point you are better off just using a single trusted database, instead of thousands of machines duplicating the same work.
aazaa 6y ago
> Blockchain has emerged from the once shadowy world of cryptocurrency to become the most in-demand skill in 2020, according to LinkedIn. The promise of blockchain is huge. And large companies are continuing to hire and expand their blockchain teams, incl. Facebook, Amazon, Microsft, EY, Deloitte, IBM, and Oracle, to name a few. So, it should be well worth the effort to become familiar with how blockchain works, what its perceived benefits are, and as a developer starting building on top of them. This is the problem with "Blockchain" in one paragraph. Notice how there's no statement of a problem? Notice how it leads with hype and technology? Notice how it tries to FOMO you into action? The Bitcoin block chain has been tried in many different situations. So far there is very little show beyond electronic cash. Not inventory control, not voting, not land registration. The one other application that might be considered mostly viable is timestamping. Bitcoin is a timestamping server, after all. The good news is that the problems electronic cash solves are getting worse every year. Privacy. Deplatforming. Weaponization of the dollar and other local currencies. The bad news is that Bitcoin is also good at running itself, which means there isn't a lot of room for startups in the traditional sense. There may be room for sponsored non-profits such as Blockstream and Lightning Labs. There the funder model seems to be "improve Bitcoin and the value of your holdings will increase."
- gas9S9zw3P9c 6y ago
  The article lost me at "According to LinkedIn" :) I think this perfectly captures how Blockchain is something you put on your LinkedIn profile purely for signaling to recruiters and non-technical PR and marketing people that use LinkedIn, which is full of spam and pyramid schemes.
- wslyvh 6y ago
  Maybe I should've quoted the entire line, that it's in search of problems. According to LinkedIn. But I don't agree with that. Check out some of the links from the 1st section: Blockchain foundations on why we need decentralized technologies, such as blockchain. Our current internet is broken.

74 points by wslyvh 6y ago

Over the past few years, I’ve been helping and on-boarding new team members and developers into the blockchain space. This helped me to collect blogs, links, materials, and resources and see which worked well for everyone’s learning journey. It’s time to share that with a broader audience. The guide provides a starting point for developers who’re keen to learn more about blockchain and development on top of Ethereum.

bitxbitxbitcoin 6y ago
Thanks so much for putting this together!
- wslyvh 6y ago
  My pleasure. Hope you find it useful

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

edhelas 6y ago

Is blockchain still a thing ?

RexetBlell 6y ago
Yes, and it’s growing fast. Look into DeFi https://defipulse.com/ https://defipulse.com/
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  I'm all-in on dogecoin, myself. Buy today! We're going to the moon!
  - RexetBlell 6y ago
    I wasn’t talking about the price growing. I was talking the usage growing.
- Nursie 6y ago
  Defi appears to be the latest hype vehicle, but all it seems to actually provide is multilayered gambling and yet more finance-LARPing. Good luck I guess.
  - CryptoPunk 6y ago
    It's permissionless access to financial markets that are guaranteed to remain running, and to operate according to the rules encoded in their smart contract, indefinitely. Its properties make it enormously valuable for applications involving large numbers of people coordinating amongst each other. Ethereum's DeFi has seen collateral increase from $750 million on April 1st to $2 billion today, so people are seeing utility in it.
drchopchop 6y ago
It's still incredible to me how pro-blockchain HN is, as evidenced by all the downvoting in this thread. The only use case at this point is decentralized gambling / drug purchasing / Augur / etc, and the technology itself is useless in a variety of different ways (scaling, transaction cost, energy consumption, fraud protection, reversibility, and so on). A similar technology in a different space would be ripped apart here.
- apazzolini 6y ago
  > how pro-blockchain HN is We must be reading different sites.
- RexetBlell 6y ago
  Scaling and transaction cost have been solved using ZK-rollups. Transactions cost less than a cent and take less than a second. 2000 transactions per second throughput. A lot has changed in the last 2 years.
louwrentius 6y ago
Nobody has ever been able to explain to me why it has any value for our society. https://louwrentius.com/cryptocurrencies-are-detrimental-to-society.html https://louwrentius.com/cryptocurrencies-are-detrimental-to-...
- bitxbitxbitcoin 6y ago
  Reading through your post, I want to point out that all your insightful reasons why cryptocurrency should be shut down are actually acknowledged problems that have been worked on by many in the space leading to solutions that address different pain points you've brought up. Examples include stablecoins (this name is meant to be as ironic as you think it is), private blockchains (here's a hint, nobody is using these to buy drugs or demand ransom), blockchains protected by something other than "energy wasting" Proof of Work. I do have a few points for you to consider that might help you see the value of all this experimentation for society: - Imagine someone living in a country such as Cuba or Venezuela or Iran that wants to buy things online (no, not heroin) and why they might find the existence of something like Bitcoin or Ethereum useful. - You call for it all to be shut down, but how exactly would that be accomplished? (Most) cryptocurrencies are open source software and in a fringe scenario where experimentation here only serves to improve the anti-fraud precautions surrounding traditional currencies, isn't that still of some value to our society? Some might argue that these supposed benefits don't outweigh the existing harm and therefore there isn't net value to society and there I'd just say we need to agree to disagree. Have I perhaps changed your mind that cryptocurrencies don't have any value for our global society?
- wslyvh 6y ago
  Blockchain is not just crypto currencies. It was just the first use-case. I'd recommend to check out some of the links from the 1st section: Blockchain foundations, on why we need decentralized technologies, such as blockchain. Our current internet is broken and blockchain could potentially help to make a change.
Nursie 6y ago
It's still twitching, but I think ten years on the cries of "It's early days yet, just wait and see!" have grown old. Nothing world-changing has been delivered after the biggest hype-cycle in modern history...
xenospn 6y ago
It will be as long as people can use it as a buzzword to raise money. As soon as the last hype investor has lost their last check, it will disappear.

anoraca 6y ago

My guide to Ethereum: don't get involved in shady, unregulated industries unless you're aware of the possible consequences are are willing to accept them gracefully

RexetBlell 6y ago
What are the consequences that you’re talking about?
- albntomat0 6y ago
  Rampant swings in price, fueled by exchanges getting hacked/falling apart, weird ICOs, or the sketchiness of tether.
  - RexetBlell 6y ago
    There were no ICOs in the last 2 years. The community moved on from that. Decentralized non custodial exchange usage is growing, like https://loopring.org/ https://loopring.org/ that’s based on zero knowledge proofs cryptography and allows 2000 trades per second, and the people who built it can’t steal your money even if they wanted to. There are also decentralized options to protect you from volatility https://opyn.co/ https://opyn.co/ or https://www.hegic.co/ https://www.hegic.co/ There are many alternatives to Tether, for example USDc or a decentralized stable coin like DAI.
    - spottybanana 6y ago
      There are still ICO's, they are just rebranded usually to something else like IEOs or STOs.
    - Nursie 6y ago
      No ICOs? None at all? Since mid 2018? Having trouble believing that, especially as I can see evidence of hundreds of the damn things after a simple search - https://ico.tokens-economy.com/statistics/country.html?country=2019&year=2019 https://ico.tokens-economy.com/statistics/country.html?count... Sure, many of those won't be using ethereum, but they still happened. And that's before you dive into the IEOs and STOs, which appear to be more of the same.

lowmemcpu 6y ago

I see these "Hitchhiker's Guide" a lot, but other than a reference to the book "hitchikers guide to the galaxy", is there a better definition here? How should I picture "Hitchhiker" - in the book, isn't the main character an unintentional observer/participant? So is this a beginner? Or perhaps a hitchhiker is a hardened, obstinate person who enjoys the frontier and moving around a lot? I don't know; it never made sense to me.

parksy 6y ago
In the books, there is an electronic guide to the combined knowledge and wisdom of all the various species that inhabit the universe. The guide is itself called "the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy." I have always interpreted such titles to be a reference to this in-universe guide rather then to the novel or its characters. We could split hairs over the fact the in-universe guide is more analogous to Wikipedia in scope and scale than a more condensed tutorial or primer, or whether the reference is obscure enough that it confuses, alienates, or distracts readers who aren't part of the intersection of Hackernews Readers and Hitchikers Guide fans. It never really bothered me but I was a huge fan of the series when I was younger. Edit to add: as I am a technical writer on the side, it's a timely reminder to avoid any analogies or cultural references that require knowledge others in my target audience might not share. So, interesting point!
- dmurray 6y ago
  Before those books, there was a non-fiction book called The Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe [0]. It was a reference for travellers in Europe on a budget, something similar to the niche the Lonely Planet books fill today. It was a big tome, updated regularly with new editions from 1971 through the mid-90s, and well enough known that Douglas Adams' readers would have got the joke. My parents had a copy. That's the original inspiration for the in-universe Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and perhaps the better point of comparison for other guides that are named after it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitch-hiker's_Guide_to_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitch-hiker's_Guide_to_Europe
  - 6y ago

ForHackernews 6y ago

The world's most expensive tech demo / self-assembling pyramid scheme continues apace. Has anyone found a non-criminal use case for blockchain yet? Preferably one that isn't better addressed by a single Postgres instance?

RexetBlell 6y ago
Yes, here’s a use case - an open, decentralized, neutral, borderless and censorship resistant prediction market like Augur.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  Why does anyone want that? Aren't you describing the supposed proposed assassination market? https://reason.com/2018/07/27/markets-in-assassination-everybody-panic/ https://reason.com/2018/07/27/markets-in-assassination-every...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - RexetBlell 6y ago
    Why do people instantly jump to the extreme negative? Any technology can be used for to do bad things. The community is aware of this possibility and have taken precautions. Also any financial market can also be viewed as an assassination market. You can short a stock and assassinate the CEO and profit, but people don’t actually do that in practice. Also, Augur v1 (V2 is coming out this month) has existed for about 2 years and there were no assassination markets on it. The community would resolve them as “invalid”, so it’a not possible to guarantee profit unlike in the regular stock market.
    - notahacker 6y ago
      If people tout anonymity and 'censorship resistance' as a market's main advantage over other markets, it's hardly surprising that people focus on the use cases - hypothetical and otherwise - which wouldn't be possible on prediction market platforms where the platform operator knows their customer and rules out certain types of trade. If your USP is the ability to do 'bad things' to manipulate outcomes [manipulating the 'reporting' is probably a likelier outcome than assassination, admittedly] with little chance of your trades being discovered or reversed then people are going to focus on that.

Tepix 6y ago

Ethereum seems to be taking a lot of time to release their "2.0" version that provides scalability and doesn't require using huge amounts of energy - something that is pretty much inexcusable in this age of global warming. In the meantime other contenders seem to have more momentum. Case in point: CryptoKitties is leaving Ethereum because it lacked capacity and had high transaction fees.

RexetBlell 6y ago
Ethereum is scalable already. Layer 2 solutions like https://zksync.io/ https://zksync.io/ and https://loopring.org/#/ https://loopring.org/#/ are already live and allow 2000 transactions per second. This is based on ZK-rollups and provides the same level of security as the base layer. This technology can be used for trades or transfers. Another exciting technology that is coming this year is optimistic rollups, which will provide the same level of scalability for arbitrary smart contracts.
- joosters 6y ago
  From the zkSync website: "WARNING: zkSync v1.0 is in alpha. Blockchains and zero-knowledge proofs are still experimental technologies with rapidly evolving attack vectors. zkSync relies on cutting-edge cryptography that has never been used in production before. While Matter Labs is rigorously following scientific and engineering best practices with regard to security, we can not provide 100% fault-free guarantee. Use zkSync at your own risk and do not put more money into it than you can afford to lose." That doesn't sound like 'scalable already', it sounds more like be prepared to lose your money. Further, on the ZK-Rollups website, we have: "The initial set up of ZK-Rollups promotes a centralized scheme The security scheme assumes a level of unverifiable trust The initial setup of ZK-Rollups is assumed to be a trusted state, when this trust cannot be proven. A small group of developers will be subject matter experts on the initial trusted state. This undermines decentralization and opens the risk of social engineering hacking attacks by convincing a developer to manipulate code or provide vulnerability information." This is not reliable scalable technology. It's centralised so it takes all the supposed advantages of blockchains away, at which point you are better off just using a single trusted database, instead of thousands of machines duplicating the same work.

aazaa 6y ago

> Blockchain has emerged from the once shadowy world of cryptocurrency to become the most in-demand skill in 2020, according to LinkedIn. The promise of blockchain is huge. And large companies are continuing to hire and expand their blockchain teams, incl. Facebook, Amazon, Microsft, EY, Deloitte, IBM, and Oracle, to name a few. So, it should be well worth the effort to become familiar with how blockchain works, what its perceived benefits are, and as a developer starting building on top of them. This is the problem with "Blockchain" in one paragraph. Notice how there's no statement of a problem? Notice how it leads with hype and technology? Notice how it tries to FOMO you into action? The Bitcoin block chain has been tried in many different situations. So far there is very little show beyond electronic cash. Not inventory control, not voting, not land registration. The one other application that might be considered mostly viable is timestamping. Bitcoin is a timestamping server, after all. The good news is that the problems electronic cash solves are getting worse every year. Privacy. Deplatforming. Weaponization of the dollar and other local currencies. The bad news is that Bitcoin is also good at running itself, which means there isn't a lot of room for startups in the traditional sense. There may be room for sponsored non-profits such as Blockstream and Lightning Labs. There the funder model seems to be "improve Bitcoin and the value of your holdings will increase."

gas9S9zw3P9c 6y ago
The article lost me at "According to LinkedIn" :) I think this perfectly captures how Blockchain is something you put on your LinkedIn profile purely for signaling to recruiters and non-technical PR and marketing people that use LinkedIn, which is full of spam and pyramid schemes.
wslyvh 6y ago
Maybe I should've quoted the entire line, that it's in search of problems. According to LinkedIn. But I don't agree with that. Check out some of the links from the 1st section: Blockchain foundations on why we need decentralized technologies, such as blockchain. Our current internet is broken.