3 ms·

Average laptops are many times more powerful than a Raspberry Pi, and distributed computing with proof-of-work means nodes can contribute as much power as they

Average laptops are many times more powerful than a Raspberry Pi, and distributed computing with proof-of-work means nodes can contribute as much power as they have/want; no arbitrary design limits are needed. Also the comparison was instructions-per-second between Ethereum's network and a raw CPU. Of course this trade-off in speed comes at the gain of decentralization and other features, however it remains to be seen whether that has really provided any net benefit overall.

smoldesu 5y ago
Yeah, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. You're correct in that we have yet to see if there are any tangible benefits from a "social computer" as it were, and comparing Ethereum to any computer is like comparing a tree to an apple. They're fundamentally different things that exist to solve fundamentally different problems. The "interesting" part of it comes from how we can benefit from small-scale, distributed computing in the long run. The fields history isn't very promising (NFTs had a lot of potential from a logistics standpoint; all we got were lousy thousand-dollar apes), but if people are able to align their incentives properly then I can still see a way forward for smart contracts. The issue is that there is an infinitesimally small chance that we will be able to agree on what it should be used for, and it's likely to languish in the same stupidity/scam hell that other crypto projects have fallen into. We'll either make a revolutionary step forward in trustless computing, or receive a rather expensive lesson about how cool technology does not a desirable product make.