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No. You're being snarky and leaving out the main point of crypto: trust and coordination. Ethereum is the first shared computer that you can execute code with s

No. You're being snarky and leaving out the main point of crypto: trust and coordination. Ethereum is the first shared computer that you can execute code with someone who's openly hostile towards you and guarantee that the code will execute and perform what it was written to do. Think of it more like the patent system. A patent is just a publicly available description of your invention. You could write it up yourself and publish it to a website for $5 / mo, so why would you pay the >$10k it costs to work with a lawyer and file a patent? It's not the description of the invention itself you're paying for, but the rights you get that make it worth it to file a patent. In Ethereum, the "lawyers" and "patent examiners" are the other nodes in the network and the miners which enforce that the smart contract code ran as it was suppose to and can't be undone.

paulpauper 5y ago
what if the miners are hostile to you and censor the transaction.
- Laforet 5y ago
  In that case you are screwed. The odds of every single validator turning against an individual is slim, however Ethereum is not above the act of rewriting history to undo certain transactions. They already did it once with the DAO hack and the market barely moved an eyelid when the supposedily permissonless and irrevocable world computer moves to protect those who are too big to fail.
  - aemreunal 5y ago
    It really doesn't seem slim to me. This article [0] (which was previously discussed on HN [1]) found that "just 0.1 percent of miners (about 50 operations) are responsible for half of all mining output". So it seems like a very real threat to me. I rarely hear anyone pro-crypto talk about this implicit assumption they make about the mining being "sufficiently distributed & diverse". [0]: https://www.techspot.com/news/91937-bitcoin-largely-controlled-small-group-investors-miners-study.html https://www.techspot.com/news/91937-bitcoin-largely-controll... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29008910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29008910
    - emerged 5y ago
      What’s so bad about a bunch of shady companies in China having the capacity to completely take over a massive global financial system?
- always2slow 5y ago
  Then other miners who aren't will do it for the money. But really it's the pools who would decide and as long as they don't control 51% of the network hashrate they can't dictate. Also the miners can just take their ball and go home, and they already have see: Ethereum Classic
- vvillena 5y ago
  51% of miners need to be censoring you. If not, the transaction will eventually get in.
  - paulpauper 5y ago
    which is just 2 of them
    - vvillena 5y ago
      Please respect the HN guidelines: this response makes clear that you were not asking a question, but fishing for debate. Let's be better.
      - newswasboring 5y ago
        Allow me to be better. Top 3 mining pools control >51% of the hashrate today[1]. I can see 3 teams aligning to do whatever they want. I understand the standard argument is those pools actually represent thousands of individual miners, but the miners only have control over mining, not the selection of transactions (please correct me if I am wrong). edit: [1] https://etherchain.org/miner https://etherchain.org/miner
        vvillena 5y ago
        You are right. Whoever controls the pool controls what goes into the mined blocks, so there's a chance they could cooperate to forbid certain types of transactions. Mining empty blocks in Ethereum is something that happens from time to time too, but usually, mining pools want to include as many transactions as possible in their blocks, as this increases profits. So yeah, it can happen in theory. However, the move to PoS will probably change this, as a valid block containing a "banned" transaction can't be easily disputed even by a majority, as long as the block is correct. The only way to try to fight it is to burn lots of ETH, meaning any pool that engages in such behavior becomes weaker.
        5y ago
mwattsun 5y ago
I'm not being snarky. I'm trying to understand the fundamentals because I'm all for the other aspects you describe but I'm wondering if it could be done with a more efficient computing system. Ethereum is not the final answer just like the 68000 was not the final computing chip (as beautiful as it was)
- omarfarooq 5y ago
  How does the Raspberry Pi comparison factor in to your quest of understanding the fundamentals? How is that metric relevant to the fundamentals? I mean, if that's a fundamental point to be made, shouldn't you be able to purchase a machine stronger than a Raspberry Pi and take over the Ethereum marketcap? Maybe you can charge less for gas and win marketshare that way. After all, people are paying for the Raspberry Pi processing power... right?
  - arka2147483647 5y ago
    Not the parent, and not knowledgeable about Etherium. But does't such limitations fundamentally question the global ambitions of Etherium? Could you really run a global digital economy with such limitations? To me it seems an apt analogy about the capacity of Etherium, assuming it is correct?
    - omarfarooq 5y ago
      It's all sorts of incorrect, incomplete and misleading. It also invokes the corollary that this virtual computer weaker than a Raspberry Pi is the most efficient computer processor on a realized dollar basis: what other computing system with less processing power than a Raspberry Pi is settling $10 billion dollars of finance per day?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - newswasboring 5y ago
        It is settling 10 Billion dollars per day... barely. I don't think anyone can dispute that Ethereum network is buckling under the pressure (represented by rising gas prices). I am not sure if OP was trying to be snarky, but they do have a point. This system is not scaling well and the problem is how slow EVM is. It is valid to criticize that and I think this has even the insiders worried.
VectorLock 5y ago
>execute code with someone who's openly hostile towards you and guarantee that the code will execute and perform what it was written to do Its too bad people can't _write_ code safely with these adversaries without getting constantly rekt.
mschuster91 5y ago
> In Ethereum, the "lawyers" and "patent examiners" are the other nodes in the network and the miners which enforce that the smart contract code ran as it was suppose to and can't be undone. You will run into problems though (and Ethereum has had way more than a fair share of these) if people fuck up their code so that others can exploit the code with behavior that was not supposed to happen. In the real world, you and the counterparty would meet with your lawyers at a courthouse and have a good chance of winning if your claim is solid. In the cryptocoin world, there are no such entities by design, and every error you make cannot ever be recovered.
- newswasboring 5y ago
  To people in the know, is anyone working on algorithmic consensus for dispute resolution? (I understand the blockchain itself is a dispute resolution where each miner can disagree on the chain etc. but I think you know what I mean). I am not even sure how it looks like but there are people smarter than me in the world.
  - Sargos 5y ago
    What are you asking for sounds like a lot like Kleros (https://kleros.io/ https://kleros.io/) which is a decentralized and scalable justice system providing for all kinds of dispute resolution and arbitration.
yahn00 5y ago
Unfortunately nothing about the people backing crypto fosters trust, and the long development times for features that remain vapor make the coordination side seem sus. It’s humans trying to pass off yet another unfalsifiable (to the masses who lack resources to vet its logic) system of distribution of information, and avoid accounting for “bugs” that don’t effect them. Why is that? Because that’s all humans are capable of. We don’t literally repeat history but we have often repeated rewriting flawed social constructs with new flawed social constructs. Just because the math fits neatly in a book does not mean it’s fits neatly into human agency.
aliswe 5y ago
where's the snark?

paulpauper 5y ago

what if the miners are hostile to you and censor the transaction.

Laforet 5y ago
In that case you are screwed. The odds of every single validator turning against an individual is slim, however Ethereum is not above the act of rewriting history to undo certain transactions. They already did it once with the DAO hack and the market barely moved an eyelid when the supposedily permissonless and irrevocable world computer moves to protect those who are too big to fail.
- aemreunal 5y ago
  It really doesn't seem slim to me. This article [0] (which was previously discussed on HN [1]) found that "just 0.1 percent of miners (about 50 operations) are responsible for half of all mining output". So it seems like a very real threat to me. I rarely hear anyone pro-crypto talk about this implicit assumption they make about the mining being "sufficiently distributed & diverse". [0]: https://www.techspot.com/news/91937-bitcoin-largely-controlled-small-group-investors-miners-study.html https://www.techspot.com/news/91937-bitcoin-largely-controll... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29008910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29008910
  - emerged 5y ago
    What’s so bad about a bunch of shady companies in China having the capacity to completely take over a massive global financial system?
always2slow 5y ago
Then other miners who aren't will do it for the money. But really it's the pools who would decide and as long as they don't control 51% of the network hashrate they can't dictate. Also the miners can just take their ball and go home, and they already have see: Ethereum Classic
vvillena 5y ago
51% of miners need to be censoring you. If not, the transaction will eventually get in.
- paulpauper 5y ago
  which is just 2 of them
  - vvillena 5y ago
    Please respect the HN guidelines: this response makes clear that you were not asking a question, but fishing for debate. Let's be better.
    - newswasboring 5y ago
      Allow me to be better. Top 3 mining pools control >51% of the hashrate today[1]. I can see 3 teams aligning to do whatever they want. I understand the standard argument is those pools actually represent thousands of individual miners, but the miners only have control over mining, not the selection of transactions (please correct me if I am wrong). edit: [1] https://etherchain.org/miner https://etherchain.org/miner
      - vvillena 5y ago
        You are right. Whoever controls the pool controls what goes into the mined blocks, so there's a chance they could cooperate to forbid certain types of transactions. Mining empty blocks in Ethereum is something that happens from time to time too, but usually, mining pools want to include as many transactions as possible in their blocks, as this increases profits. So yeah, it can happen in theory. However, the move to PoS will probably change this, as a valid block containing a "banned" transaction can't be easily disputed even by a majority, as long as the block is correct. The only way to try to fight it is to burn lots of ETH, meaning any pool that engages in such behavior becomes weaker.
        5y ago

mwattsun 5y ago

I'm not being snarky. I'm trying to understand the fundamentals because I'm all for the other aspects you describe but I'm wondering if it could be done with a more efficient computing system. Ethereum is not the final answer just like the 68000 was not the final computing chip (as beautiful as it was)

omarfarooq 5y ago
How does the Raspberry Pi comparison factor in to your quest of understanding the fundamentals? How is that metric relevant to the fundamentals? I mean, if that's a fundamental point to be made, shouldn't you be able to purchase a machine stronger than a Raspberry Pi and take over the Ethereum marketcap? Maybe you can charge less for gas and win marketshare that way. After all, people are paying for the Raspberry Pi processing power... right?
- arka2147483647 5y ago
  Not the parent, and not knowledgeable about Etherium. But does't such limitations fundamentally question the global ambitions of Etherium? Could you really run a global digital economy with such limitations? To me it seems an apt analogy about the capacity of Etherium, assuming it is correct?
  - omarfarooq 5y ago
    It's all sorts of incorrect, incomplete and misleading. It also invokes the corollary that this virtual computer weaker than a Raspberry Pi is the most efficient computer processor on a realized dollar basis: what other computing system with less processing power than a Raspberry Pi is settling $10 billion dollars of finance per day?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - newswasboring 5y ago
      It is settling 10 Billion dollars per day... barely. I don't think anyone can dispute that Ethereum network is buckling under the pressure (represented by rising gas prices). I am not sure if OP was trying to be snarky, but they do have a point. This system is not scaling well and the problem is how slow EVM is. It is valid to criticize that and I think this has even the insiders worried.

VectorLock 5y ago

>execute code with someone who's openly hostile towards you and guarantee that the code will execute and perform what it was written to do Its too bad people can't _write_ code safely with these adversaries without getting constantly rekt.

mschuster91 5y ago

> In Ethereum, the "lawyers" and "patent examiners" are the other nodes in the network and the miners which enforce that the smart contract code ran as it was suppose to and can't be undone. You will run into problems though (and Ethereum has had way more than a fair share of these) if people fuck up their code so that others can exploit the code with behavior that was not supposed to happen. In the real world, you and the counterparty would meet with your lawyers at a courthouse and have a good chance of winning if your claim is solid. In the cryptocoin world, there are no such entities by design, and every error you make cannot ever be recovered.

newswasboring 5y ago
To people in the know, is anyone working on algorithmic consensus for dispute resolution? (I understand the blockchain itself is a dispute resolution where each miner can disagree on the chain etc. but I think you know what I mean). I am not even sure how it looks like but there are people smarter than me in the world.
- Sargos 5y ago
  What are you asking for sounds like a lot like Kleros (https://kleros.io/ https://kleros.io/) which is a decentralized and scalable justice system providing for all kinds of dispute resolution and arbitration.

yahn00 5y ago

Unfortunately nothing about the people backing crypto fosters trust, and the long development times for features that remain vapor make the coordination side seem sus. It’s humans trying to pass off yet another unfalsifiable (to the masses who lack resources to vet its logic) system of distribution of information, and avoid accounting for “bugs” that don’t effect them. Why is that? Because that’s all humans are capable of. We don’t literally repeat history but we have often repeated rewriting flawed social constructs with new flawed social constructs. Just because the math fits neatly in a book does not mean it’s fits neatly into human agency.

aliswe 5y ago

where's the snark?