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This article is a bit misleading for those who may think it’s saying most people are now coding with esoteric languages like Move or Clarity … the Ethereum Virt

by EGreg 4y ago

This article is a bit misleading for those who may think it’s saying most people are now coding with esoteric languages like Move or Clarity … the Ethereum Virtual Machine is an open standard and Solidity is a language and that is what is used by the vast majority of smart contract developers, even if they deploy to Polygon. It is a bit like saying most web developers and hosting companies aren’t using PHP because they are using PHP-FPM. Most HTML developers wrote gaudy sites <blink> and <marquee> tags. But the Web went on to create trillions in wealth for the world because it was based around an open protocol, HTTP. Most PHP developers wrote insecure garbage code, but back then businesses wanted to just have a site that works. It had some utility. But Web 2.0 went on to create even more utility for the world, even though its network effects increasingly created monopolies. Ethereum really democratized the ability to launch a token. So that’s what the vast majority of people did. Eventually there will be real applications worldwide, and what’s more, they will be produced by factories (like UniSwap) so they’ll just be a very reliable way to distribute open source software. People don’t appreciate that smart contracts can do a LOT more than that! https://intercoin.org/applications https://intercoin.org/applications are examples of open source smart contracts designed to service communities, and you don’t need a token to use them. There is no ponzi, only utility. Just use them in your community — or not. However, the last 3 years during the bull market speculators found Intercoin very uninteresting, because by contrast a tulip mania could make a lot more returns, than selling actual products to communities.

sublinear 4y ago
Publishing of information, distribution of information, self service, and facilitation of services were very long standing problems before the web. The web solved them cheaply and easily and it did it by design, not by coincidence. It didn't need artificial hype because it was obvious what it was good for. What do cryptocurrencies do again?
- EGreg 4y ago
  I didn’t even say cryptocurrencies. I said smart contracts. There are myriad applications but in essence what Web3 smart contracts do is secure some sort of community activity on the blockchain to make sure everyone knows the deal and no one can cheat. It only becomes important once the community grows enough to start securing something valuable. Like for example a marketplace that connects online students and teachers may be holding $20M in credits and you are trusting every employee to not misappropriate these credits. With Web3, the marketplace is just a Web2 interface that sets up the transactions, but at the end each user signs them with their own private keys, so the marketplace site has no liability nor presents a risk to the participants. Its commissions, like all other business logic, is immutable on the blockchain. Elections - you can make sure that no one can just go in the database and change all the votes, as they can with Stackoverflow moderator elections for example. Contests Escrow payments Auctions Recurring subscriptions You can combine them, for example you can make videoconferencing slots on your calendar which people around the world can book, to do office hours with you or take your course. People would bid on the slots and you’d take the top 10 people. Crypto takes care of all this and around the world. It is like if you asked “what does the Web do, since we have newspapers, magazines, radio, TV”? The answer is that it standardized communication on an open protocol called HTTP. So it allowed anyone to publish information for anyone else in the world to access. Smart contracts also represent a rebellion against having to trust institutions and governments. Now we have an alternative. The Web 1.0 democratized access to information, Web 2.0 allowed people to communicate and collaborate (but sadly didn’t democratize it) and Web 3.0 is radically open source and allows people to exchange value and participate in programs that don’t require trusting middlemen. The more complex the application, the more you as a network win by trusting the blockchain and smart contracts alone. Start by clicking the link above if you want to get more examples of applications. Cryptocurrency by itself is just a first generation toy like space invaders or personal home pages. The space will evolve, and you can bury your head in the sand or you can spend 3 mins to click a link. Here are some more applications that increase donor and investor confidence and break down global barriers: https://community.intercoin.app/t/fund-for-refugees/ https://community.intercoin.app/t/fund-for-refugees/ https://community.intercoin.app/t/how-intercoin-helps-to-raise-money-for-your-project/2697 https://community.intercoin.app/t/how-intercoin-helps-to-rai...
  - creeble 4y ago
    Please read up on the oracle problem. All of the examples you list require external trust outside the blockchain, making its use moot. (Perhaps recurring subscriptions could be done without external trust, but I don’t think it helps the domain much.)
    - EGreg 4y ago
      No, you are totally wrong, and they don’t all require external trust, any more than sending emails requires last mile mail delivery. Yes, some things require physical items to be shipped but increasingly the value has been completely digitized. What makes you think I haven’t researched the oracle problem and hundreds of other things related to this space? Vitalik writes about tons of things in crypto, and so do I. I have been building solutions for years. They are FREE. If you don’t like them, don’t use them. If you don’t have time to even read a summary digest of what they do, please don’t patronize others. I don’t have time to read about how GPT transformers work in detail, and you won’t find me condescendingly telling people to please read up on the AI alignment problem. And certainly not knee-jerk dismissing and downvoting EVERYTHING related to AI without even spending a minute reading answers to mu own questions !
      - creeble 4y ago
        Please explain how, e.g., escrow does not require trust outside the blockchain.
    - photon12 4y ago
      100% of users have to trust the code used to generate random numbers for private keys they care about isn't backdoored. Only a subset of users will be able to do this successfully. There is no safety net or recourse for people who will lose their money to backdoored refurbished hardware wallets. Because poor people won't be able to afford newer wallets and will be scammed. There is no good solution to this problem that is actually usable by all classes of people who need financial services. I recently left a company that pivoted hard to building blockchain infrastructure because I couldn't find any way I could ever recommend my friends or family interact with the services the company was building. A lot of people are holding out for technical vaporware to solve these problems. I can't hold out anymore.
- basch 4y ago
  They are public distributed computing networks you can pay to use. Not completely dissimilar to some chimerafacimile of AWS and Seti at Home.
  - photon12 4y ago
    If you like making every use of the computer a taxable capital gain or loss, you can "use" the computer for some definition of "use."
    - basch 4y ago
      You can write a program. You can publish the program. Other people can pay to use your program. It is distributed application hosting.
- entelechy0 4y ago
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by EGreg 4y ago

sublinear 4y ago

Publishing of information, distribution of information, self service, and facilitation of services were very long standing problems before the web. The web solved them cheaply and easily and it did it by design, not by coincidence. It didn't need artificial hype because it was obvious what it was good for. What do cryptocurrencies do again?

EGreg 4y ago
I didn’t even say cryptocurrencies. I said smart contracts. There are myriad applications but in essence what Web3 smart contracts do is secure some sort of community activity on the blockchain to make sure everyone knows the deal and no one can cheat. It only becomes important once the community grows enough to start securing something valuable. Like for example a marketplace that connects online students and teachers may be holding $20M in credits and you are trusting every employee to not misappropriate these credits. With Web3, the marketplace is just a Web2 interface that sets up the transactions, but at the end each user signs them with their own private keys, so the marketplace site has no liability nor presents a risk to the participants. Its commissions, like all other business logic, is immutable on the blockchain. Elections - you can make sure that no one can just go in the database and change all the votes, as they can with Stackoverflow moderator elections for example. Contests Escrow payments Auctions Recurring subscriptions You can combine them, for example you can make videoconferencing slots on your calendar which people around the world can book, to do office hours with you or take your course. People would bid on the slots and you’d take the top 10 people. Crypto takes care of all this and around the world. It is like if you asked “what does the Web do, since we have newspapers, magazines, radio, TV”? The answer is that it standardized communication on an open protocol called HTTP. So it allowed anyone to publish information for anyone else in the world to access. Smart contracts also represent a rebellion against having to trust institutions and governments. Now we have an alternative. The Web 1.0 democratized access to information, Web 2.0 allowed people to communicate and collaborate (but sadly didn’t democratize it) and Web 3.0 is radically open source and allows people to exchange value and participate in programs that don’t require trusting middlemen. The more complex the application, the more you as a network win by trusting the blockchain and smart contracts alone. Start by clicking the link above if you want to get more examples of applications. Cryptocurrency by itself is just a first generation toy like space invaders or personal home pages. The space will evolve, and you can bury your head in the sand or you can spend 3 mins to click a link. Here are some more applications that increase donor and investor confidence and break down global barriers: https://community.intercoin.app/t/fund-for-refugees/ https://community.intercoin.app/t/fund-for-refugees/ https://community.intercoin.app/t/how-intercoin-helps-to-raise-money-for-your-project/2697 https://community.intercoin.app/t/how-intercoin-helps-to-rai...
- creeble 4y ago
  Please read up on the oracle problem. All of the examples you list require external trust outside the blockchain, making its use moot. (Perhaps recurring subscriptions could be done without external trust, but I don’t think it helps the domain much.)
  - EGreg 4y ago
    No, you are totally wrong, and they don’t all require external trust, any more than sending emails requires last mile mail delivery. Yes, some things require physical items to be shipped but increasingly the value has been completely digitized. What makes you think I haven’t researched the oracle problem and hundreds of other things related to this space? Vitalik writes about tons of things in crypto, and so do I. I have been building solutions for years. They are FREE. If you don’t like them, don’t use them. If you don’t have time to even read a summary digest of what they do, please don’t patronize others. I don’t have time to read about how GPT transformers work in detail, and you won’t find me condescendingly telling people to please read up on the AI alignment problem. And certainly not knee-jerk dismissing and downvoting EVERYTHING related to AI without even spending a minute reading answers to mu own questions !
    - creeble 4y ago
      Please explain how, e.g., escrow does not require trust outside the blockchain.
  - photon12 4y ago
    100% of users have to trust the code used to generate random numbers for private keys they care about isn't backdoored. Only a subset of users will be able to do this successfully. There is no safety net or recourse for people who will lose their money to backdoored refurbished hardware wallets. Because poor people won't be able to afford newer wallets and will be scammed. There is no good solution to this problem that is actually usable by all classes of people who need financial services. I recently left a company that pivoted hard to building blockchain infrastructure because I couldn't find any way I could ever recommend my friends or family interact with the services the company was building. A lot of people are holding out for technical vaporware to solve these problems. I can't hold out anymore.
basch 4y ago
They are public distributed computing networks you can pay to use. Not completely dissimilar to some chimerafacimile of AWS and Seti at Home.
- photon12 4y ago
  If you like making every use of the computer a taxable capital gain or loss, you can "use" the computer for some definition of "use."
  - basch 4y ago
    You can write a program. You can publish the program. Other people can pay to use your program. It is distributed application hosting.
entelechy0 4y ago
[dead]