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I completely agree with the author. I've been reading a lot about the EVM, and while there's some interesting technology involved, it feels unlikely to be able

I completely agree with the author. I've been reading a lot about the EVM, and while there's some interesting technology involved, it feels unlikely to be able to support any worthwhile applications outside of blockchain finance or moving $ around the world[0] (since the code can really only directly reference the blockchain itself). It's a bit like playing with a programming language in a sandbox that has (1) has no I/O functions[1], and (2) has enormous costs associated with even the most basic of computations. Ok, it's not like that; it is exactly that. Sure, you could build a crypto toy and convince some suckers to transfer some of their wealth to you, but calling it an app platform or the next evolution of the web is definitely a stretch. I sincerely wish that wasn't the case (I'd love to find an exception), but that's what I've come to conclude. [0] Don't get me wrong, there's tremendous value in being able to move money around the world without the blessing of governments and central banks! [1] Any interaction with entities outside the blockchain require oracles, and at that point, you might as well throw away the other benefits of being on a blockchain.

p2p_astroturf 5y ago
tell us something we didnt already know. you can solve the speed problem by using solana or literally any of the other 100 coins that claim to be fast, or eth2 in six months i am not even a person who is a fan of blockchains (since they are mostly poorly designed, unfounded, etc)
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  > you can solve the speed problem by using solana or literally any of the other 100 coins that claim to be fast, or eth2 in six months I've been seeing this claim for years now. It's gotten quite old.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    Which claim? The meme that transaction throughput is inherently low in crypto is falsified via solana (as mentioned) or avalanche. Bitcoin will likely always be low TPS. Ethereum 2 maybe will eventually ship.
    - hanniabu 5y ago
      If you're gonna sacrifice decentralization, security, and uptime then you might as well use a server. No self respecting developer will use solana.
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    Algorand also uses Proof of Stake, is much faster than ETH, and supports smart contracts. MSM won't write about it for the same reasons they won't write about a large AWS outage but they _will_ write about a Facebook outage. It's not a conspiracy; it's just not interesting to laypeople yet. The shitshow of art NFTs make for good press.
fnoof 5y ago
I suspect that blockchains won’t need to reference external data to be useful. If the data on chain becomes valuable enough, an ecosystem of open source, auditable programs operating on it seems powerful to me. And yeah tx fees are facemeltingly expensive right now, but scalability tech is making gradual progress.
Tenoke 5y ago
>(1) has no I/O functions There are I/O functions - oracles like Chainlink which put real-world data on the Blockchain. Those can also be further decentralized or at minimum used only for services where you have to trust a centralized entity without having to exit the Blockchain just for that. Those already enable me to e.g. quickly bet on TSLA via synths with money I have in crypto without cashing out and going through a broker. >(2) has enormous costs associated with even the most basic of computations. On one of the chains (Ethereum) but there's plenty of other popular chains with much lower costs.
_gf4m 5y ago
ETH's current scalability problems are beyond terrible, but there are alternatives. You can use chains like Polygon or Avalanche that are EVM, so you get all of the capabilities of Ethereum, but without insane gas fees. There are non-EVM solutions as well like Solana, which has substantially higher throughput while transactions cost a fraction of a cent. Try out other chains than ETH before ruling out web3 imo. There's a lot of engineering and incredible products outside of the main ethereum ecosystem which is being masked due to ETH's scalability problems. There are also standalone computation solutions that are under development such as Truebit, which if successful, could allow for smart contracts to execute complex calculations off-chain, avoiding both the increased gas fees due to complexity, and bypassing the gas limit altogether.
- hanniabu 5y ago
  > ETH's current scalability problems are beyond terrible, but there are alternatives The only alternative is ethereum L2s. Avalanche, solana, etc are centralized VC chains that do not have the foundation needed to be the infrastructure of tomorrow.
  - shiohime 5y ago
    I keep hearing this argument but I really don't buy it, sorry. I think that over time these other chains are also going to naturally decentralize, at least in the case of Solana the primary barrier of entry is hardware. I think that actually having a product that works today is more important than a platform that hasn't been scalable since inception. Maybe ETH 2.0 will release sometime and all the ongoing scalability efforts actually do work, but until then I think it's absurd to write off other chains that are vastly outperforming it. Edit - It's really, really easy to see that a transaction on Ethereum is not even remotely worth the gas it charges today. I remember hearing ETH people trashing BTC transaction prices in 2017, but yeah I'm sorry, this is so beyond absurd I cannot support or recommend anyone use ETH as a layer 1 until it is actually a scalable chain. Not in theory, but actually works. Wasn't sharding and layering discussed in 2017? How much longer until it's actually usable? Gas price for minting a JPG the other day for me would have been $300. This isn't worth it in any world unless you are sitting on a fat stack of ETH you bought under $200. But then you should just sell it instead of actually using it. Don't you see the problem? Why do you think there's so many articles talking about how terrible Web3 is? It couldn't possibly be that people's first impression of the tech is on a financially impractical chain. I like working in Solidity and think the EVM is great, and there's a lot of cool projects in the Ethereum ecosystem. But ETH is an unusable L1 for the vast majority of people until they solve scalability. No amount of decentralization dreams are worth it. Hell, you could even just use Ethereum classic if you wanted. It does everything ETH does because it's just ETH except they didn't have a centralized Ethereum foundation mutate the chain history because someone stole a bunch of money from them and only costs like $50 the last time I checked. If you care so much about decentralization shouldn't you like the chain that didn't have it's history changed by a centralized organization? If you really want the most decentralized network possible, Bitcoin is it. I haven't looked into the taproot update too much yet, but maybe it'll be actually supported before ETH scales at this rate.
darkFunction 5y ago
> (1) has no I/O functions Input: User identity, money. Output: Digital services, site subscriptions, digital assets, in-game items, NFT's representing real world assets held by trusted companies (wine, event tickets, tokenized securities). None of this requires oracles and exists today. Your mistake is thinking that just because the base layer is decentralised that we're somehow not allowed to connect to companies we choose to trust, just like we all already do. Then it becomes interesting because there's a programmable market for these assets/services that didn't previously exist because the underlying value was not represented in an exchangable form. The outputs are also inputs. Ethereum is the trustless, standardised substrate on which trusting parties can interact. HackerNews will continue to fail to see the utility of this system for years to come until it's mature and undeniable. It will be an interesting case study into how experts missed the potential of emergent technology in the same way we look back on yesterday's commentators not realising the disruption of Amazon or the internet. As to your second point, it's unlikely the end user will ever want to transact on layer 1. Layer 2 technology is making steady progress. See l2beat.com for examples.
- apatters 5y ago
  Let's say everyone on the planet is Ethereum enabled tomorrow. What is the business case for the winery to use it in your example? I get that Ethereum or any other crypto can be another payment option for their customers. Beyond that what use does a winery have for a programmable substrate underlying its transactions with customers or suppliers? I'm not saying there is none but if you're going to rip on HN users, frankly it's hard to parse what this language even means.
  - bsnsmsksjs 5y ago
    I’ll bite. A winery could sell ownership of wine stored or wine yet to be made. The purchaser, if sold via an NFT, could resell that ownership with no interaction with the winery until claiming the wine at a later date. This means both parties no longer need any relationship between the initial sale and claiming the eventual goods. The winery will simply be able to wait for someone to return with proof of ownership at a later date. If the winery gave out certificates or built some app it would need to verify and maintain that. With an NFT there is very little work on their end. Ultimately this turns these type of products into highly liquid assets. This will greatly increase their value to a potential customer and the initial purchase price. Which will make the winery more money for the wine it sells. This can effectively be done with anything that can be claimed at a later date after initial purchase.

p2p_astroturf 5y ago

tell us something we didnt already know. you can solve the speed problem by using solana or literally any of the other 100 coins that claim to be fast, or eth2 in six months i am not even a person who is a fan of blockchains (since they are mostly poorly designed, unfounded, etc)

jonny_eh 5y ago
> you can solve the speed problem by using solana or literally any of the other 100 coins that claim to be fast, or eth2 in six months I've been seeing this claim for years now. It's gotten quite old.
- gfodor 5y ago
  Which claim? The meme that transaction throughput is inherently low in crypto is falsified via solana (as mentioned) or avalanche. Bitcoin will likely always be low TPS. Ethereum 2 maybe will eventually ship.
  - hanniabu 5y ago
    If you're gonna sacrifice decentralization, security, and uptime then you might as well use a server. No self respecting developer will use solana.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  Algorand also uses Proof of Stake, is much faster than ETH, and supports smart contracts. MSM won't write about it for the same reasons they won't write about a large AWS outage but they _will_ write about a Facebook outage. It's not a conspiracy; it's just not interesting to laypeople yet. The shitshow of art NFTs make for good press.

fnoof 5y ago

I suspect that blockchains won’t need to reference external data to be useful. If the data on chain becomes valuable enough, an ecosystem of open source, auditable programs operating on it seems powerful to me. And yeah tx fees are facemeltingly expensive right now, but scalability tech is making gradual progress.

Tenoke 5y ago

>(1) has no I/O functions There are I/O functions - oracles like Chainlink which put real-world data on the Blockchain. Those can also be further decentralized or at minimum used only for services where you have to trust a centralized entity without having to exit the Blockchain just for that. Those already enable me to e.g. quickly bet on TSLA via synths with money I have in crypto without cashing out and going through a broker. >(2) has enormous costs associated with even the most basic of computations. On one of the chains (Ethereum) but there's plenty of other popular chains with much lower costs.

_gf4m 5y ago

ETH's current scalability problems are beyond terrible, but there are alternatives. You can use chains like Polygon or Avalanche that are EVM, so you get all of the capabilities of Ethereum, but without insane gas fees. There are non-EVM solutions as well like Solana, which has substantially higher throughput while transactions cost a fraction of a cent. Try out other chains than ETH before ruling out web3 imo. There's a lot of engineering and incredible products outside of the main ethereum ecosystem which is being masked due to ETH's scalability problems. There are also standalone computation solutions that are under development such as Truebit, which if successful, could allow for smart contracts to execute complex calculations off-chain, avoiding both the increased gas fees due to complexity, and bypassing the gas limit altogether.

hanniabu 5y ago
> ETH's current scalability problems are beyond terrible, but there are alternatives The only alternative is ethereum L2s. Avalanche, solana, etc are centralized VC chains that do not have the foundation needed to be the infrastructure of tomorrow.
- shiohime 5y ago
  I keep hearing this argument but I really don't buy it, sorry. I think that over time these other chains are also going to naturally decentralize, at least in the case of Solana the primary barrier of entry is hardware. I think that actually having a product that works today is more important than a platform that hasn't been scalable since inception. Maybe ETH 2.0 will release sometime and all the ongoing scalability efforts actually do work, but until then I think it's absurd to write off other chains that are vastly outperforming it. Edit - It's really, really easy to see that a transaction on Ethereum is not even remotely worth the gas it charges today. I remember hearing ETH people trashing BTC transaction prices in 2017, but yeah I'm sorry, this is so beyond absurd I cannot support or recommend anyone use ETH as a layer 1 until it is actually a scalable chain. Not in theory, but actually works. Wasn't sharding and layering discussed in 2017? How much longer until it's actually usable? Gas price for minting a JPG the other day for me would have been $300. This isn't worth it in any world unless you are sitting on a fat stack of ETH you bought under $200. But then you should just sell it instead of actually using it. Don't you see the problem? Why do you think there's so many articles talking about how terrible Web3 is? It couldn't possibly be that people's first impression of the tech is on a financially impractical chain. I like working in Solidity and think the EVM is great, and there's a lot of cool projects in the Ethereum ecosystem. But ETH is an unusable L1 for the vast majority of people until they solve scalability. No amount of decentralization dreams are worth it. Hell, you could even just use Ethereum classic if you wanted. It does everything ETH does because it's just ETH except they didn't have a centralized Ethereum foundation mutate the chain history because someone stole a bunch of money from them and only costs like $50 the last time I checked. If you care so much about decentralization shouldn't you like the chain that didn't have it's history changed by a centralized organization? If you really want the most decentralized network possible, Bitcoin is it. I haven't looked into the taproot update too much yet, but maybe it'll be actually supported before ETH scales at this rate.

darkFunction 5y ago

> (1) has no I/O functions Input: User identity, money. Output: Digital services, site subscriptions, digital assets, in-game items, NFT's representing real world assets held by trusted companies (wine, event tickets, tokenized securities). None of this requires oracles and exists today. Your mistake is thinking that just because the base layer is decentralised that we're somehow not allowed to connect to companies we choose to trust, just like we all already do. Then it becomes interesting because there's a programmable market for these assets/services that didn't previously exist because the underlying value was not represented in an exchangable form. The outputs are also inputs. Ethereum is the trustless, standardised substrate on which trusting parties can interact. HackerNews will continue to fail to see the utility of this system for years to come until it's mature and undeniable. It will be an interesting case study into how experts missed the potential of emergent technology in the same way we look back on yesterday's commentators not realising the disruption of Amazon or the internet. As to your second point, it's unlikely the end user will ever want to transact on layer 1. Layer 2 technology is making steady progress. See l2beat.com for examples.

apatters 5y ago
Let's say everyone on the planet is Ethereum enabled tomorrow. What is the business case for the winery to use it in your example? I get that Ethereum or any other crypto can be another payment option for their customers. Beyond that what use does a winery have for a programmable substrate underlying its transactions with customers or suppliers? I'm not saying there is none but if you're going to rip on HN users, frankly it's hard to parse what this language even means.
- bsnsmsksjs 5y ago
  I’ll bite. A winery could sell ownership of wine stored or wine yet to be made. The purchaser, if sold via an NFT, could resell that ownership with no interaction with the winery until claiming the wine at a later date. This means both parties no longer need any relationship between the initial sale and claiming the eventual goods. The winery will simply be able to wait for someone to return with proof of ownership at a later date. If the winery gave out certificates or built some app it would need to verify and maintain that. With an NFT there is very little work on their end. Ultimately this turns these type of products into highly liquid assets. This will greatly increase their value to a potential customer and the initial purchase price. Which will make the winery more money for the wine it sells. This can effectively be done with anything that can be claimed at a later date after initial purchase.