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What's up with the weird pretentious verbage in that webpage? "Beacon Chain"? "Mainnet"? "The Docking"? Are they just exaggerated PR verbs, or am I just too old

What's up with the weird pretentious verbage in that webpage? "Beacon Chain"? "Mainnet"? "The Docking"? Are they just exaggerated PR verbs, or am I just too old for this?

ehsankia 5y ago
Hell, the fancy sci-fi illustration and UX design give much more of a "tech startup" feel than a serious monetary alternative.
- reasonabl_human 5y ago
  Ethereum wasn’t designed to be a money alternative.. it’s a distributed virtual machine that incentivizes computational contribution with token economics… the token Eth is only valuable in the pursuit of performing work via the Ethereum Virtual Machine on the Mainnet, not as a currency (at least, not any more than beanie babies could once have been a currency due to demand / fungibility) very much a global tech startup!
mattwilsonn888 5y ago
You don't have to be old to be ignorant. "Mainnet," and "Chain," have non-arbitrary, universal meaning in the distributed ledger space. 'Beacon' is not arbitrary either as it fits the function it names. I'm not going to sit here and defend Ethereum - but to answer you question: most of that verbage has meaning independent of Ethereum's PR.
- MisterSandman 5y ago
  Fair enough, thanks!
  - mattwilsonn888 5y ago
    Rare grace on the internet! Bless.
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
I know can you believe software companies are using words like Windows (they belong on a house!), mouse (it’s a rodent!) and keyboard (it’s on a piano!).
vmception 5y ago
> Are they just exaggerated PR verbs, or am I just too old for this? False dilemma. They are proper nouns. Beacon chain is simply the name of the network launched a bit over a year ago. It is likely intended to be named as an aspirational thing to move toward. Mainnet is the network launched 7 years ago. Usually distinct from "test networks", testnet, and seen far beyond ethereum into all cryptocurrency networks, and inherited from the idea of test, development, staging and production environments seen in the best practices of all web projects in the broader tech sector. This is an article about them merging. What is "weird pretentious verbiage" about that? If there was anything odd it would be "the docking" and that article immediately says that was a former name, making it a moot point.
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
"Mainnet" is a well established technical term, universal across the blockchain space. The chain names (e.g. "Beacon") are basically version codenames - think of them like the "Buster" in "Debian Buster". "The Merge" is the (arbitrary) name they gave to a specific future event, because people like to be able to easily refer to things they're talking about. I assume the previous name was discarded due to political correctness.
- andybak 5y ago
  > I assume the previous name was discarded due to political correctness. Curious but it's hard to Google this. What was it?
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
    The previous term, docking - I'm sure either Wikipedia or Urban Dictionary will explain in detail, but it can be a reference to a sex act.

What's up with the weird pretentious verbage in that webpage? "Beacon Chain"? "Mainnet"? "The Docking"? Are they just exaggerated PR verbs, or am I just too old for this?

ehsankia 5y ago

Hell, the fancy sci-fi illustration and UX design give much more of a "tech startup" feel than a serious monetary alternative.

reasonabl_human 5y ago
Ethereum wasn’t designed to be a money alternative.. it’s a distributed virtual machine that incentivizes computational contribution with token economics… the token Eth is only valuable in the pursuit of performing work via the Ethereum Virtual Machine on the Mainnet, not as a currency (at least, not any more than beanie babies could once have been a currency due to demand / fungibility) very much a global tech startup!

mattwilsonn888 5y ago

You don't have to be old to be ignorant. "Mainnet," and "Chain," have non-arbitrary, universal meaning in the distributed ledger space. 'Beacon' is not arbitrary either as it fits the function it names. I'm not going to sit here and defend Ethereum - but to answer you question: most of that verbage has meaning independent of Ethereum's PR.

MisterSandman 5y ago
Fair enough, thanks!
- mattwilsonn888 5y ago
  Rare grace on the internet! Bless.

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago

I know can you believe software companies are using words like Windows (they belong on a house!), mouse (it’s a rodent!) and keyboard (it’s on a piano!).

vmception 5y ago

> Are they just exaggerated PR verbs, or am I just too old for this? False dilemma. They are proper nouns. Beacon chain is simply the name of the network launched a bit over a year ago. It is likely intended to be named as an aspirational thing to move toward. Mainnet is the network launched 7 years ago. Usually distinct from "test networks", testnet, and seen far beyond ethereum into all cryptocurrency networks, and inherited from the idea of test, development, staging and production environments seen in the best practices of all web projects in the broader tech sector. This is an article about them merging. What is "weird pretentious verbiage" about that? If there was anything odd it would be "the docking" and that article immediately says that was a former name, making it a moot point.

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago

"Mainnet" is a well established technical term, universal across the blockchain space. The chain names (e.g. "Beacon") are basically version codenames - think of them like the "Buster" in "Debian Buster". "The Merge" is the (arbitrary) name they gave to a specific future event, because people like to be able to easily refer to things they're talking about. I assume the previous name was discarded due to political correctness.

andybak 5y ago
> I assume the previous name was discarded due to political correctness. Curious but it's hard to Google this. What was it?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  The previous term, docking - I'm sure either Wikipedia or Urban Dictionary will explain in detail, but it can be a reference to a sex act.