5 ms·
Ethereum seems like a decentralized consensus-driven trustless COMPUTER that anyone can use -- it's not just a database. Anyone can pay to start and run a proc
by RoboTeddy 12y ago
Ethereum seems like a decentralized consensus-driven trustless COMPUTER that anyone can use -- it's not just a database.
Anyone can pay to start and run a process ("contract" in ethereum-speak) that runs arbitrary (albeit sandboxed) code. Like you mentioned, processes can store data. Processes can also send and receive messages ("transactions" in ethereum-speak) with users and with other processes.
- natrius 12y agoYeah, I guess calling it a database makes it sound like a cloud MySQL service. But to be clear, it's not an EC2 analogue either. If there were demand for a distributed EC2, we could build one way better than Ethereum. Ethereum is necessarily slow because consensus must be reached on the data. You wouldn't run an arbitrary program on Ethereum. You run programs on Ethereum to define the state transitions in a database the whole world can access and trust. If you're building a marketplace, for instance, then you're defining what it means when a customer buys something. Every customer and merchant who uses your system has proof of how their interactions will work, and it's impossible for anyone to try to cheat. The database and its state transitions are what matters.