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> In the case of Ethereum, digital scarcity secured by a blockchain enables a turing complete state machine that the world can use. Does this sentence actually

> In the case of Ethereum, digital scarcity secured by a blockchain enables a turing complete state machine that the world can use. Does this sentence actually mean anything? > In the most basic terms, this will remove clearing houses for transactions of assets. In the long term this will lead to novel types of assets, and make ownership extremely liquid. What does this mean in concrete terms? > Imagine using your phone to buy shares in a recording artist you just discovered, and selling those shares when they win a grammy. Imagine building a stream of passive income based on the shares you've earned in projects you've worked on throughout your life. Who wants this?

seibelj 6y ago
You just keep acting like the “caveman lawyer” from Saturday Night Live and refusing to learn or acknowledge anything. You are being obnoxious and just continuing the HN trope of “blockchain is totally worthless despite it being worth hundreds of billions - the whole world is wrong not me!”
- louwrentius 6y ago
  An ad-hominem, thank you. Do you know anything about human psychology, by the way?
- UShouldBWorking 6y ago
  Very well put. It's hard to not feel conspiratorial seeing this level of ignorance here. Blockchain solves the problem of transferring value without an intemediary, what's so hard to understand for these people?
pavlov 6y ago
> ”Does this sentence actually mean anything?” In more traditional software engineering language, it means “you can run stored procedures on an incredibly slow and limited distributed database.” Also those stored procedures are immutable, written in a language with more holes than Swiss cheese, and you have to use a scammy cryptocurrency to pay for the privilege of running these unsafe programs. The adherents call this “web 3.0” in some kind of ironic joke because it’s nothing like the web.
- louwrentius 6y ago
  Hmm, this reads like something I do understand, thank you.
  - deeeeplearning 6y ago
    You clearly aren't interested in learning anything, just on "dunking" on cryptocurrencies.
    - louwrentius 6y ago
      Hmm, where would you get that idea from? https://louwrentius.com/cryptocurrencies-are-detrimental-to-society.html https://louwrentius.com/cryptocurrencies-are-detrimental-to-...
      - deeeeplearning 6y ago
        So your response is to post your blogpost dunking on Crypto and reinforcing my point?
- The_Colonel 6y ago
  > Also those stored procedures are immutable, written in a language with more holes than Swiss cheese... You're probably referencing this fuck up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization) The huge advantage of smart contracts is that they are supposed to be trustless - you don't need to necessarily trust your business partners because contract is set in stone ... code and will be executed exactly as agreed beforehand. In reality, you move your trust in your understanding of the code. But then when 18 000+ (probably highly technical) people investing $50 million don't spot the bug in the code, then it calls the whole "trustless" concept into question.
  - joosters 6y ago
    You don't have to go back that far in time, 'hacks' and bugs in 'smart' contracts happen almost every day. Here's a recent $7M loss: https://cointelegraph.com/news/yield-generating-stablecoin-project-origin-dollar-exploited-for-7m https://cointelegraph.com/news/yield-generating-stablecoin-p... and here's a $89M loss less than a week ago: https://decrypt.co/49657/oracle-exploit-sees-100-million-liquidated-on-compound https://decrypt.co/49657/oracle-exploit-sees-100-million-liq... It's not even the first time that the 'Compound' smart contract has been 'hacked', but that doesn't stop fools from putting more money into it again. All these fuck ups are called 'hacks', but actually the code is working exactly as intended, it's just that there are so many ways to write smart contracts incorrectly that it's more than likely they all have hidden bugs, just waiting to be exploited.
parksy 6y ago
Turing completeness in layman's terms means you can write programs on it. Traditionally a computer that most people are familiar with is a single machine, like PC or the device we can hold in our hands. Etherium is a swarm of millions of computers that anyone can add to the swarm. When people claim Ethereum is turing complete, it means that anyone can launch a program into it, and the "swarm" runs the program. But which node's output is the truth? Without some mechanism in place, a bad actor could claim to have computed an output that serves them greedily. Ethereum has baked in protocols so that the distributed result of millions of nodes running a program reaches a stasticial consensus. Being turing complete means that any computable program can run on Ethereum. So you can imagine writing a program that, say, runs an auction, or performs escrow for contractors, or whatever. You could run doom on it, albeit at an extremely low framerate because you need the swarm to validate each frame. I hope this explanation helps. Edit: I swear autocomplete is becoming more forceful over time.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > When people claim Ethereum is turing complete, it means that anyone can launch a program into it, and the "swarm" runs the program. (...) Ethereum has baked in protocols so that the distributed result of millions of nodes running a program reaches a stasticial consensus. Usually the reason to run something on more than one computing unit is to achieve additive gains - like getting results faster, or processing more data in the same amount of time. This however sounds like a million computers computing the exact same thing. Why would one want to do that? It's a serious question - I'm having trouble imagining a generic use case.
  - dev_throw 6y ago
    This is to achieve consensus - the N nodes running the smart contract will ideally replace the central authorities that we implicitly trust. This enables trustless transactions, which gets rid of a lot of business red tape and unlocks productivity.
    - SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago

seibelj 6y ago

You just keep acting like the “caveman lawyer” from Saturday Night Live and refusing to learn or acknowledge anything. You are being obnoxious and just continuing the HN trope of “blockchain is totally worthless despite it being worth hundreds of billions - the whole world is wrong not me!”

louwrentius 6y ago
An ad-hominem, thank you. Do you know anything about human psychology, by the way?
UShouldBWorking 6y ago
Very well put. It's hard to not feel conspiratorial seeing this level of ignorance here. Blockchain solves the problem of transferring value without an intemediary, what's so hard to understand for these people?

pavlov 6y ago

> ”Does this sentence actually mean anything?” In more traditional software engineering language, it means “you can run stored procedures on an incredibly slow and limited distributed database.” Also those stored procedures are immutable, written in a language with more holes than Swiss cheese, and you have to use a scammy cryptocurrency to pay for the privilege of running these unsafe programs. The adherents call this “web 3.0” in some kind of ironic joke because it’s nothing like the web.

louwrentius 6y ago
Hmm, this reads like something I do understand, thank you.
- deeeeplearning 6y ago
  You clearly aren't interested in learning anything, just on "dunking" on cryptocurrencies.
  - louwrentius 6y ago
    Hmm, where would you get that idea from? https://louwrentius.com/cryptocurrencies-are-detrimental-to-society.html https://louwrentius.com/cryptocurrencies-are-detrimental-to-...
    - deeeeplearning 6y ago
      So your response is to post your blogpost dunking on Crypto and reinforcing my point?
The_Colonel 6y ago
> Also those stored procedures are immutable, written in a language with more holes than Swiss cheese... You're probably referencing this fuck up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization) The huge advantage of smart contracts is that they are supposed to be trustless - you don't need to necessarily trust your business partners because contract is set in stone ... code and will be executed exactly as agreed beforehand. In reality, you move your trust in your understanding of the code. But then when 18 000+ (probably highly technical) people investing $50 million don't spot the bug in the code, then it calls the whole "trustless" concept into question.
- joosters 6y ago
  You don't have to go back that far in time, 'hacks' and bugs in 'smart' contracts happen almost every day. Here's a recent $7M loss: https://cointelegraph.com/news/yield-generating-stablecoin-project-origin-dollar-exploited-for-7m https://cointelegraph.com/news/yield-generating-stablecoin-p... and here's a $89M loss less than a week ago: https://decrypt.co/49657/oracle-exploit-sees-100-million-liquidated-on-compound https://decrypt.co/49657/oracle-exploit-sees-100-million-liq... It's not even the first time that the 'Compound' smart contract has been 'hacked', but that doesn't stop fools from putting more money into it again. All these fuck ups are called 'hacks', but actually the code is working exactly as intended, it's just that there are so many ways to write smart contracts incorrectly that it's more than likely they all have hidden bugs, just waiting to be exploited.

parksy 6y ago

Turing completeness in layman's terms means you can write programs on it. Traditionally a computer that most people are familiar with is a single machine, like PC or the device we can hold in our hands. Etherium is a swarm of millions of computers that anyone can add to the swarm. When people claim Ethereum is turing complete, it means that anyone can launch a program into it, and the "swarm" runs the program. But which node's output is the truth? Without some mechanism in place, a bad actor could claim to have computed an output that serves them greedily. Ethereum has baked in protocols so that the distributed result of millions of nodes running a program reaches a stasticial consensus. Being turing complete means that any computable program can run on Ethereum. So you can imagine writing a program that, say, runs an auction, or performs escrow for contractors, or whatever. You could run doom on it, albeit at an extremely low framerate because you need the swarm to validate each frame. I hope this explanation helps. Edit: I swear autocomplete is becoming more forceful over time.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
> When people claim Ethereum is turing complete, it means that anyone can launch a program into it, and the "swarm" runs the program. (...) Ethereum has baked in protocols so that the distributed result of millions of nodes running a program reaches a stasticial consensus. Usually the reason to run something on more than one computing unit is to achieve additive gains - like getting results faster, or processing more data in the same amount of time. This however sounds like a million computers computing the exact same thing. Why would one want to do that? It's a serious question - I'm having trouble imagining a generic use case.
- dev_throw 6y ago
  This is to achieve consensus - the N nodes running the smart contract will ideally replace the central authorities that we implicitly trust. This enables trustless transactions, which gets rid of a lot of business red tape and unlocks productivity.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago