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When you read this sort of document, keep a few things in mind that don't normally come across well from non technical authors. There is no such thing as "block

by 0xA21F 12y ago

When you read this sort of document, keep a few things in mind that don't normally come across well from non technical authors. There is no such thing as "blockchain technology", that is, you can't separate the block chain from Bitcoin without making it hopelessly vulnerable to attack. The functionality and security of the system relies on the premise that miners are only mining due to the financial reward. If you don't a reward you don't have miners, you have a highly inefficient way of storing transactional data. As such, concepts that claim to take Bitcoin and turn it into Uber, Craigslist, eBay, messaging, twitter, video distribution, file storage are all complete nonsense spewed out by an author with little or no concept of the functioning of the network. If anybody is claiming to take "block chain technology" and cram it into another system to make it decentralised, you ought to be showing them the door. > Ripple disputes that they are affected, stating “All is fine and well with the Ripple protocol. What Ripple/Stellar (same thing, different name) is a system which absolutely can not come to consensus under normal operational conditions. To solve this they have made the system entirely centralised, which isn't a problem for them but is for anybody who believes it to be decentralised. When you read things about Ripple know that there's two flavours: "Ripple", which is the original concept, and OpenCoin's "Ripple", which has a different technical underpinning. A lot of the early praise you'll see for Ripple was for the pre-OpenCoin version, which wasn't so heavily flawed as the one known today is. I don't quite get why it's even mentioned in the parent article, it doesn't even have a block chain to begin with.

0xA21F 12y ago
> the potentially extraordinary Ethereum project, built to "decentralize the web" with its blockchain, which recently raised $15 million (in bitcoin, of course) by pre-selling its cryptocurrency prior to next year’s launch I've still not met anybody who can tell me what Ethereum is without using the words "turing complete" (which it's not due the halting problem, just like Bitcoin). Most of the information you can get from secondary sources seems to just mirror Bitcoin (you can do this awesome thing, but you'll need an oracle to do it..).
- drcode 12y ago
  Your point is fair. The idea with ethereum is that oracles will be able to have a much finer granularity; whether this allows for more useful apps still remains to be proven by us in the ethereum community. (Also, there are plenty of folks like myself working on oracle-free apps, but since these are based on unproven economic models at this point, it would be negligent for us to promote them widely before we have evidence that such designs work in practice, on the live ethereum blockchain)
- fryguy 12y ago
  It allows for arbitrary rules. For instance, you could make some currency that has the concept of grain and wood, and then you could make a transaction that converts one of each into roads. I'm not sure why that would be useful, but it's something that could be done, that couldn't be done in bitcoin.
- DennisP 12y ago
  From a user's perspective: Bitcoin's client lets you pay people. Ethereum's client has a bunch of apps that let you do all sorts of financial activities: gamble, invest, loan, borrow, crowdfund, insure, etc. Anyone can write an app and put it on the network without bothering to maintain a server. "Decentralizing the web" comes from bringing in other p2p protocols for messaging and storage. Eg., if you can use cryptocurrency contracts to pay for verified storage, you can make sure files stay available without using servers. Oracles could be useful for contracts that depend on external data but aren't the only solution.
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nunyabuizness 12y ago
> To solve this, they have made the system entirely centralized True for Stellar, untrue for Ripple. It's a stopgap while they work things out and reimplement the consensus algorithm; as the article said, distributed systems are hard. And I'd rather they try to replace mining with something not horribly energy-inefficient than assume that PoW is the only way to achieve consensus. And yes, their ledgers are blockchains, they work in identical fashion, with consensus replacing mining.

by 0xA21F 12y ago

0xA21F 12y ago

> the potentially extraordinary Ethereum project, built to "decentralize the web" with its blockchain, which recently raised $15 million (in bitcoin, of course) by pre-selling its cryptocurrency prior to next year’s launch I've still not met anybody who can tell me what Ethereum is without using the words "turing complete" (which it's not due the halting problem, just like Bitcoin). Most of the information you can get from secondary sources seems to just mirror Bitcoin (you can do this awesome thing, but you'll need an oracle to do it..).

drcode 12y ago
Your point is fair. The idea with ethereum is that oracles will be able to have a much finer granularity; whether this allows for more useful apps still remains to be proven by us in the ethereum community. (Also, there are plenty of folks like myself working on oracle-free apps, but since these are based on unproven economic models at this point, it would be negligent for us to promote them widely before we have evidence that such designs work in practice, on the live ethereum blockchain)
fryguy 12y ago
It allows for arbitrary rules. For instance, you could make some currency that has the concept of grain and wood, and then you could make a transaction that converts one of each into roads. I'm not sure why that would be useful, but it's something that could be done, that couldn't be done in bitcoin.
DennisP 12y ago
From a user's perspective: Bitcoin's client lets you pay people. Ethereum's client has a bunch of apps that let you do all sorts of financial activities: gamble, invest, loan, borrow, crowdfund, insure, etc. Anyone can write an app and put it on the network without bothering to maintain a server. "Decentralizing the web" comes from bringing in other p2p protocols for messaging and storage. Eg., if you can use cryptocurrency contracts to pay for verified storage, you can make sure files stay available without using servers. Oracles could be useful for contracts that depend on external data but aren't the only solution.

deleted 12y ago

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nunyabuizness 12y ago

> To solve this, they have made the system entirely centralized True for Stellar, untrue for Ripple. It's a stopgap while they work things out and reimplement the consensus algorithm; as the article said, distributed systems are hard. And I'd rather they try to replace mining with something not horribly energy-inefficient than assume that PoW is the only way to achieve consensus. And yes, their ledgers are blockchains, they work in identical fashion, with consensus replacing mining.