8 ms·

Ethereum, Bitcoin’s most ambitious successor

129 points by Libertatea 13y ago

torbjorn 13y ago
Any idea on when investment and mining in Ethereum will begin?
JetSpiegel 13y ago
Wait, doesn't Bitcoin already have a scripting language baked in? And it is disabled on most clients to avoid trolling and DoS attacks. EDIT: It is addressed on the white paper: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-Paper https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-Pa...
- wcummings 13y ago
  Simple, templated Scripts are allowed in Bitcoin, but most of the functionality is disabled for security reasons. It is also not Turing-complete
  - nullc 13y ago
    > Simple, templated Scripts are allowed in Bitcoin This is a common misconception. Stock nodes won't relay transactions with weird scripts by default, but they're perfectly valid in the blockchain and verified by all nodes once someone configured to mine them has mined them. > It is also not Turing-complete Nor, pedantically, is what etherum proposes. Nothing time and space limited is. What consensus systems like Bitcoin (and alt coins) do, however, is not executing programs in so much as that they are verifying an execution transcript that someone else performed (which is why all nodes compute the same values). Verification of an transcript of even arbitrary program execution is in P— you don't technically need turing completeness to express it. Though some forms of transcript expression may be more efficient. What Bitcoin does has the advantage of making the computationally work simply statically decidable— it's proportional to script size— and this relation means that— within reason— there is only one limited resource transactions have to worry about consuming, which makes the appropriate fee model obvious.
- higherpurpose 13y ago
  It will probably have almost as many security issues as Javascript has on the Internet today, but even so, it will probably be worth it, if it enables a ton of good things that weren't possible before either with cryptocurrencies or on the current Internet.
  - nullc 13y ago
    Cryptocurrency contracts inherit the remote code challenges that Javascript experiences but also a whole set of additional really gnarly challenges because the systems must reach exactly identical states in all cases or the network will irreparably fork. It would be like if the entire web split into mutually incompatible partitions the first time someone crafted some JS code which behaved differently in IE and Firefox.
    - msgilligan 13y ago
      Fortunately, neither Bitcoin or Ethereum has a DOM.
- nullc 13y ago
  > And it is disabled on most clients This is not correct. It's a part of the consensus system rules and cannot be just enabled and disabled on a node by node basis. It must be preformed precisely and identically on all systems. What is the case is that nodes don't relay transactions with unusual scripts to prevent DOS attacks, but once they're in a block they're fine.
  - JetSpiegel 13y ago
    This is what I meant, but I didn't knew the particulars.
malanj 13y ago
The idea of turing complete crytocontracts is super exciting, but I understand why Satoshi didn't add a turing complete language in Bitcoin. Turing complete contracts add a whole new level of complexity (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem). I guess many (most?) could be solved by limiting computation time - it it's still a scary world. If one just considers how many significant issues the much more basic Bitcoin protocol has managed to hide (e.g. transaction malleability). If implementing a "basic" protocol is that hard - the idea of a turing complete protocol is formidable!
- a-priori 13y ago
  In Ethereum, you need to fund a contract in order for it to perform computations, and the amount that gets charged to a contract depends on the amount of work it does. So if someone were to write an infinite loop, for example, eventually the contract would run out of money and die. The halting problem is not a practical issue with Ethereum, because the system doesn't care, in advance, whether or not a contract will halt. It will just run it to find out.
  - anfedorov 13y ago
    How does this work as the network scales? If I understand it correctly, every node needs to execute every contract. This means that for some large enough number of nodes, it must either cost more for the network to perform the computation than any constant cost of execution, or the cost of contracts must vary by the size of the network executing them. Could someone more knowledgeable about the project explain more?
    - nullc 13y ago
      They propose fixed mandatory fees. https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-Paper#fees https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-Pa... Nodes can't be compensated for this— only the single miner who chose to burden the chain with the contract. Everyone else has to go along for the ride (or skip verifying it and hope that the anonymous miner wasn't lying). This is one of the reasons Bitcoin has very purposefully eschewed contracts which are computationally expensive to execute. You can almost always perform a computationally expensive contract externally to the system and bind it with a hashlock or multisig, in any case. The inability of the a consensus system to perform IO to outside world usually demands those techniques in any case.
lukasm 13y ago
"The project’s team, which is almost entirely male, includes experts in finance, " I don't understand how is that relevant. Why is press so sexiest these days? Are they trying to toehold to anything even remotely political to get the views?
- singold 13y ago
  I understand that it probably isn't relevant, but I don't think it is sexist. It doesn't say that an almost entirely male team is good nor bad for the project. For me is like they have said, a team mostly based on <random city>
  - aw3c2 13y ago
    Location is not usually discriminatory though, pointing out someone's gender usually is.
  - bigdubs 13y ago
    "A team mostly based in <xyz>" actually does add information that explores part of a story. If the team was based in San Fransisco, it would be part of the established silicon valley culture, versus if it was based in an emerging tech hub, then the story would be that they are part of an emerging tech hub. Very little can be written in journalism that isn't relevant in some way.
  - lukasm 13y ago
    I hope so, but location is relevant e.g. Bitcoin is not a currency for IRS, so San Francisco has different implications than London.
  - SerpentJoe 13y ago
    If the team were all female, it would be the headline.
    - pessimizer 13y ago
      In that light, it might be better if we always mention when a team is all-male, if just for parity.
eudox 13y ago
>“Anything that is completely computer-operated is a potentially oppressive system.” Anything that is completely people-operated is a certainly oppressive system.
- vbuterin 13y ago
  Copying from a post I made on Reddit: Lately I have become much more comfortable with the idea of computer-controlled systems for one simple reason: our world is already computer controlled. The computer in question is the universe with its laws of physics and humans provide the inputs to this great multisig by manipulating their body parts. At the "base layer", no semblance of compassion really exists: the person who wins is the one who can wield the most violence. This is true even in anarchies; when it comes down to it, it's the guy with the guns who has the final say. And yet humans have managed to take this base layer and build all sorts of other structures on top. The world of programmatic smart contracts is exactly the same; it's just a set of cryptographic "laws of physics" that you can build stuff on, except it's designed to be both much more efficient and at the same time voluntarist at the core - unlike in the "real world", it's much harder to successfully steal a private key than it is to create and use one.
  - FD3SA 13y ago
    Very well said. In addition, due to our evolutionary origins, humans tend to be inherently far more prone to malevolent behavior. Human history demonstrates the severity of this tendency quite dramatically. A an impartial system of rules may not be understanding of specific emotional contexts, but it is by definition fair. This is because it will always behave in the same manner given the same inputs. Given the judicial reality of most present (and past) societies, I would trust my fate to a carefully designed legal algorithm over a human jury every time.
aspidistra 13y ago
> arrangements are being made to incorporate a nonprofit for Ethereum in the legal free-for-all of Switzerland Swiss Law might be a bit idiosyncratic but I would hardly call it a "legal free-for-all".
- ZirconCode 13y ago
  When the country of law is disputed between two parties, very often Swiss law is chosen as a fair alternative. I believe this is what is meant.
  - a-priori 13y ago
    "Fair" and "free-for-all" are rarely, in practice, the same thing. They are often opposites.
- vbuterin 13y ago
  Ethereum founder here. The general four categories of options that we had are: (i) a traditional banking/tax haven (Isle of Man, Panama, etc) (ii) Switzerland (iii) Iceland (iv) Singapore / some other "Asian tiger" The reason we discarded (i), aside from reputational concerns, is that such jurisdictions tend to be unstable; they are nice to you right up until the US government wants them to stop being nice to you, at which point they flop over in ten seconds. (iii), while nice for other crypto-startups, is bad here because there is unfortunately a hostile legal environment for cryptocurrency. The choice between (ii) and (iv) is arbitrary; both categories of jurisdictions have a good legal environment for these kinds of projects, and both have a reputation for being reliable and consistent. We chose Switzerland because (1) the government is more accessible, so there is no need to wait six months to talk to regulators, (2) we are working with OpenTransactions, who had an established understanding of the local legal environment and have been able to provide massive help to us, and (3) because it's linguistically and culturally easier for us to deal with Swiss regulators than Chinese regulators. So it's not at all a free-for-all; it's a solid legal environment with an established reputation for stability that meets our objectives. If we wanted/needed a true free-for-all, we would be working with Panama.
ekianjo 13y ago
Related video of a presentation of Ethereum at one of the recent HN Kansai: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jjzzplJ3sS0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jjzz...
deleted 13y ago
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deleted 13y ago
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DennisP 13y ago
The Ethereum team just released a more technical paper: http://gavwood.com/Paper.pdf http://gavwood.com/Paper.pdf
mikekij 13y ago
The use of the word "successor" in the article title implies that Bitcoin is dead. It's a shame how many people (and news outlets) equate the failure of MtGox with the failure of bitcoin.
- derefr 13y ago
  Bitcoin the hype-machine is dead; it's now "just another cryptocurrency." The successor to Bitcoin would be a successor hype-machine.
- massappeal 13y ago
  I dont think the subjugation of bitcoin to the past-tense is exclusively due to Mt Gox; the recent IRS ruling in the US of bitcoin as property also downgraded bitcoin's status significantly, at least in the US

129 points by Libertatea 13y ago

Any idea on when investment and mining in Ethereum will begin?

Wait, doesn't Bitcoin already have a scripting language baked in? And it is disabled on most clients to avoid trolling and DoS attacks. EDIT: It is addressed on the white paper: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-Paper https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-Pa...

wcummings 13y ago
Simple, templated Scripts are allowed in Bitcoin, but most of the functionality is disabled for security reasons. It is also not Turing-complete
- nullc 13y ago
  > Simple, templated Scripts are allowed in Bitcoin This is a common misconception. Stock nodes won't relay transactions with weird scripts by default, but they're perfectly valid in the blockchain and verified by all nodes once someone configured to mine them has mined them. > It is also not Turing-complete Nor, pedantically, is what etherum proposes. Nothing time and space limited is. What consensus systems like Bitcoin (and alt coins) do, however, is not executing programs in so much as that they are verifying an execution transcript that someone else performed (which is why all nodes compute the same values). Verification of an transcript of even arbitrary program execution is in P— you don't technically need turing completeness to express it. Though some forms of transcript expression may be more efficient. What Bitcoin does has the advantage of making the computationally work simply statically decidable— it's proportional to script size— and this relation means that— within reason— there is only one limited resource transactions have to worry about consuming, which makes the appropriate fee model obvious.
higherpurpose 13y ago
It will probably have almost as many security issues as Javascript has on the Internet today, but even so, it will probably be worth it, if it enables a ton of good things that weren't possible before either with cryptocurrencies or on the current Internet.
- nullc 13y ago
  Cryptocurrency contracts inherit the remote code challenges that Javascript experiences but also a whole set of additional really gnarly challenges because the systems must reach exactly identical states in all cases or the network will irreparably fork. It would be like if the entire web split into mutually incompatible partitions the first time someone crafted some JS code which behaved differently in IE and Firefox.
  - msgilligan 13y ago
    Fortunately, neither Bitcoin or Ethereum has a DOM.
nullc 13y ago
> And it is disabled on most clients This is not correct. It's a part of the consensus system rules and cannot be just enabled and disabled on a node by node basis. It must be preformed precisely and identically on all systems. What is the case is that nodes don't relay transactions with unusual scripts to prevent DOS attacks, but once they're in a block they're fine.
- JetSpiegel 13y ago
  This is what I meant, but I didn't knew the particulars.

malanj 13y ago

The idea of turing complete crytocontracts is super exciting, but I understand why Satoshi didn't add a turing complete language in Bitcoin. Turing complete contracts add a whole new level of complexity (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem). I guess many (most?) could be solved by limiting computation time - it it's still a scary world. If one just considers how many significant issues the much more basic Bitcoin protocol has managed to hide (e.g. transaction malleability). If implementing a "basic" protocol is that hard - the idea of a turing complete protocol is formidable!

a-priori 13y ago
In Ethereum, you need to fund a contract in order for it to perform computations, and the amount that gets charged to a contract depends on the amount of work it does. So if someone were to write an infinite loop, for example, eventually the contract would run out of money and die. The halting problem is not a practical issue with Ethereum, because the system doesn't care, in advance, whether or not a contract will halt. It will just run it to find out.
- anfedorov 13y ago
  How does this work as the network scales? If I understand it correctly, every node needs to execute every contract. This means that for some large enough number of nodes, it must either cost more for the network to perform the computation than any constant cost of execution, or the cost of contracts must vary by the size of the network executing them. Could someone more knowledgeable about the project explain more?
  - nullc 13y ago
    They propose fixed mandatory fees. https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-Paper#fees https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-Pa... Nodes can't be compensated for this— only the single miner who chose to burden the chain with the contract. Everyone else has to go along for the ride (or skip verifying it and hope that the anonymous miner wasn't lying). This is one of the reasons Bitcoin has very purposefully eschewed contracts which are computationally expensive to execute. You can almost always perform a computationally expensive contract externally to the system and bind it with a hashlock or multisig, in any case. The inability of the a consensus system to perform IO to outside world usually demands those techniques in any case.

lukasm 13y ago

"The project’s team, which is almost entirely male, includes experts in finance, " I don't understand how is that relevant. Why is press so sexiest these days? Are they trying to toehold to anything even remotely political to get the views?

singold 13y ago
I understand that it probably isn't relevant, but I don't think it is sexist. It doesn't say that an almost entirely male team is good nor bad for the project. For me is like they have said, a team mostly based on <random city>
- aw3c2 13y ago
  Location is not usually discriminatory though, pointing out someone's gender usually is.
- bigdubs 13y ago
  "A team mostly based in <xyz>" actually does add information that explores part of a story. If the team was based in San Fransisco, it would be part of the established silicon valley culture, versus if it was based in an emerging tech hub, then the story would be that they are part of an emerging tech hub. Very little can be written in journalism that isn't relevant in some way.
- lukasm 13y ago
  I hope so, but location is relevant e.g. Bitcoin is not a currency for IRS, so San Francisco has different implications than London.
- SerpentJoe 13y ago
  If the team were all female, it would be the headline.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    In that light, it might be better if we always mention when a team is all-male, if just for parity.

eudox 13y ago

>“Anything that is completely computer-operated is a potentially oppressive system.” Anything that is completely people-operated is a certainly oppressive system.

vbuterin 13y ago
Copying from a post I made on Reddit: Lately I have become much more comfortable with the idea of computer-controlled systems for one simple reason: our world is already computer controlled. The computer in question is the universe with its laws of physics and humans provide the inputs to this great multisig by manipulating their body parts. At the "base layer", no semblance of compassion really exists: the person who wins is the one who can wield the most violence. This is true even in anarchies; when it comes down to it, it's the guy with the guns who has the final say. And yet humans have managed to take this base layer and build all sorts of other structures on top. The world of programmatic smart contracts is exactly the same; it's just a set of cryptographic "laws of physics" that you can build stuff on, except it's designed to be both much more efficient and at the same time voluntarist at the core - unlike in the "real world", it's much harder to successfully steal a private key than it is to create and use one.
- FD3SA 13y ago
  Very well said. In addition, due to our evolutionary origins, humans tend to be inherently far more prone to malevolent behavior. Human history demonstrates the severity of this tendency quite dramatically. A an impartial system of rules may not be understanding of specific emotional contexts, but it is by definition fair. This is because it will always behave in the same manner given the same inputs. Given the judicial reality of most present (and past) societies, I would trust my fate to a carefully designed legal algorithm over a human jury every time.

aspidistra 13y ago

> arrangements are being made to incorporate a nonprofit for Ethereum in the legal free-for-all of Switzerland Swiss Law might be a bit idiosyncratic but I would hardly call it a "legal free-for-all".

ZirconCode 13y ago
When the country of law is disputed between two parties, very often Swiss law is chosen as a fair alternative. I believe this is what is meant.
- a-priori 13y ago
  "Fair" and "free-for-all" are rarely, in practice, the same thing. They are often opposites.
vbuterin 13y ago
Ethereum founder here. The general four categories of options that we had are: (i) a traditional banking/tax haven (Isle of Man, Panama, etc) (ii) Switzerland (iii) Iceland (iv) Singapore / some other "Asian tiger" The reason we discarded (i), aside from reputational concerns, is that such jurisdictions tend to be unstable; they are nice to you right up until the US government wants them to stop being nice to you, at which point they flop over in ten seconds. (iii), while nice for other crypto-startups, is bad here because there is unfortunately a hostile legal environment for cryptocurrency. The choice between (ii) and (iv) is arbitrary; both categories of jurisdictions have a good legal environment for these kinds of projects, and both have a reputation for being reliable and consistent. We chose Switzerland because (1) the government is more accessible, so there is no need to wait six months to talk to regulators, (2) we are working with OpenTransactions, who had an established understanding of the local legal environment and have been able to provide massive help to us, and (3) because it's linguistically and culturally easier for us to deal with Swiss regulators than Chinese regulators. So it's not at all a free-for-all; it's a solid legal environment with an established reputation for stability that meets our objectives. If we wanted/needed a true free-for-all, we would be working with Panama.

ekianjo 13y ago

Related video of a presentation of Ethereum at one of the recent HN Kansai: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jjzzplJ3sS0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jjzz...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

DennisP 13y ago

The Ethereum team just released a more technical paper: http://gavwood.com/Paper.pdf http://gavwood.com/Paper.pdf

mikekij 13y ago

The use of the word "successor" in the article title implies that Bitcoin is dead. It's a shame how many people (and news outlets) equate the failure of MtGox with the failure of bitcoin.

derefr 13y ago
Bitcoin the hype-machine is dead; it's now "just another cryptocurrency." The successor to Bitcoin would be a successor hype-machine.
massappeal 13y ago
I dont think the subjugation of bitcoin to the past-tense is exclusively due to Mt Gox; the recent IRS ruling in the US of bitcoin as property also downgraded bitcoin's status significantly, at least in the US