9 ms·

Final Steps

149 points by Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago

tombh 11y ago
Just to chime in with the obligatory: sounds-interesting-but-for-the-love-of-turing-it's-infuriatingly-hard-to-find-a-basic-description-of-what-it-actually-is.
- codezero 11y ago
  Ditto, after reading several of the about pages, I'm still not sure what Ether is, or how it's used, or who the target audience is. Something in there about a decentralized platform for running apps, but I don't want to guess too deeply about what this means. Is it a cloud hosting platform that runs on Ether? Is the platform going to be used primarily for mining Ether? I'm not even sure, if anyone has a short description that will explain what this is, I'd love to read it!
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    After much moronic searching, these two tutorials seem to somewhat demystify the idea: https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/1634/tutorial-1-your-first-contract/ https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/1634/tutorial-1-your-f... https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/1635/tutorial-2-rainbow-coin https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/1635/tutorial-2-rainbo...
  - chipsy 11y ago
    Ether is a "computational currency." You earn it by running computations on your computer. You spend it by purchasing processing power on other people's computers. The computation is software defined, so that customized "distributed apps" are possible. This is my outsiders understanding. I think there are potentially a lot of things that could be gotten wrong here - from the specific implementation and security measures to the economic plan. But it's one of several such experiments with using the blockchain, so I'm looking forward to see what they can do - that said I have no expectations for financial gain.
    - drcode 11y ago
      Some important properties of ethereum: 1. A program written in ethereum can execute code at a predetermined point in the future, and there is as close to 100% certainty as possible that the code will execute as written (i.e. as long as a single ethereum user remains in the world at that date everybody's code is guaranteed to run exactly as written, even if it involves moving money between accounts.) 2. All computer programs are "open source" not just before a program is launched but also WHILE THE PROGRAM IS RUNNING- Nobody can run any code without having full transparency. 3. Users accounts are provably always in a state of complete anonymity (unless of course they do something to purposely reveal their identity) and can use all programs on the platform in this fully anonymous state. 4. Program authors are forced to explicitly document ahead of time all situations in which their program code might be modified in the future, making it much harder to have the "screw your user after they've committed to your platform" business model that's so popular among startups these days. Those are just some of the properties of ethereum that come to mind.
      - convulsive 11y ago
        >4. Program authors are forced to explicitly document ahead of time all situations in which their program code might be modified in the future Can you point me to a resource that explains this in more detail? I think I've gotten the gist of how Ethereum works, and have gone through a tutorial of Solidity, but I'm unclear how versioning will work in Ethereum (even though I do have some guesses for how it could be implemented). How would I deploy a new version of my contract? Would I have to implement a mechanism for basically hot loading new code?
        drcode 11y ago
        Yeah, that's pretty much it: By default, contracts can't be updated, but you can create a network of multiple contracts to allow some of your code to update. Myself, I think this is "cheating" and destroys the value proposition of ethereum... a better approach (and what I hope to do) is to keep my main contract(s) alive for all eternity and just add new features with "accessory contracts" but it's easy to fail with this if the original contract has problems.
  - TheGrimDerp1 11y ago
    I've been following the subreddit for over a year and I still haven't figured it out...
  - joeykrug 11y ago
    One example of an app you'd want to run on ethereum is something like a prediction market (PM). A PM is a pretty general financial market and can be used to speculate on things from "Who will become the US President in 2016?" to "Will Russia invade Estonia by 2020?" to "Will American Pharoah win the Triple Crown?" Ethereum is useful for this because it allows for distributed custody of funds. No one controls the funds stored in these contracts, so there's no one to run away with and steal all the money, and, since it's run on Ethereum, there's no middleman taking 5-10% fees. In fact, for the first time, we can have a truly global prediction market, and _anyone_ can create markets on it to boot! This is just one app possible on ethereum, and it's one I'm building - www.augur.net if you're interested. Ethereum's basically a platform that allows you to create "smart contracts" (aka programs) that are practically guaranteed to execute the way you write them. And multiple people can interact with the programs and it'll still be executed the same way. This is a bit abstract, but the main huge advantage this allows is: you can finally send money to some program, and the program will do exactly what it says it will, and no one else can modify the results or even touch your money. Bitcoin allows you to send money around, Ethereum allows you to enter into complex contracts with money, and those contracts are always enforceable. To take this into the real world, imagine you want to make a bitcoin prediction market. Since you can't run the complicated buy/sell machinery of a prediction market directly on bitcoin, you're forced to take deposits from users, match their orders, and then do payouts accordingly after the event occurs. You can run away with the funds at any time, and there's nothing stopping you. Sure, you could elect to use multisignature wallets or cold storage, but that didn't stop MtGox from happening. Heck, even InTrade, the largest prior prediction market had millions of dollars of funds embezzled by their later CEO. Now with Ethereum, we can send funds to a contract, they're stored there. You can buy and sell and all orders go through the contract. At the end payouts are done by the code in the contract, and no one can take the funds held in the contract.
- itistoday2 11y ago
  Decentralized computing secured by a blockchain! :D->-<
- Bognar 11y ago
  I've still yet to find a "basic" description, but their whitepaper is actually quite useful in describing what it is and possible uses: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper
- joeyspn 11y ago
  A gentle introduction to Ethereum... http://guide.ethereum.org/ethereum.html http://guide.ethereum.org/ethereum.html
- arnorhs 11y ago
  yeah, and the "about" section doesn't really answer the question very well: What is ether? Ether is a necessary element -- a fuel -- for operating the distributed application software platform we are building: Ethereum. Without the requirement of payment of ether for every computational step and storage operation within the system, infinite loops or excessive storage demands could bog down Ethereum and effectively destroy it.
- baby 11y ago
  check the audit LeastAuthority did on them: https://github.com/LeastAuthority/ethereum-analyses https://github.com/LeastAuthority/ethereum-analyses
- jameshart 11y ago
  This seems like a good overview: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper
- natrius 11y ago
  Ethereum is a global transaction computer that provides a platform for decentralized applications, like Augur (http://augur.net http://augur.net). Today's systems have a centralized source of truth: corporate databases. There was no other way to build applications that involve multiple users interacting with each other, so companies built those systems and profited from providing a solution. With Ethereum, we can write simple programs that run on thousands of computers and come to a consensus on the result. Nasdaq doesn't need to tell us the result of a trade or who owns what. We can build equivalent systems that no one controls. The result is a transfer of profits from middlemen to the rest of humanity. Finance is easy to think about in a decentralized manner since it's all information that computers control. But these systems can apply to real world interactions as well by building reputation systems on top of this global computer. If you don't abide by the rules of the decentralized system you're participating in, your reputation score will go down and people will stop interacting with you. In this manner, Ethereum can be used to replace every marketplace startup. Uber and Airbnb are so successful because they benefit from strong network effects. Decentralized applications also benefit from strong network effects: every new decentralized Uber application will use the data from the ones that already exist to bootstrap themselves. The user base will never splinter like it does when new centralized competitors attempt to enter the market. Ethereum gives mankind the ability to coordinate interactions between ourselves more powerfully than ever before. Social systems that once seemed too unwieldy or too anarchic to work out might now be feasible, and they could make us wealthier and more free.
  - tajen 11y ago
    No offense, but there has to be a simpler way to explain this. It sounds like you are passionate, and after seeing the video it looks like a good idea, but it also sounds like a parody of startup culture. References to "humanity" and "mankind" don't help, even if you've used them appropriately. Your comment is useful and exact after understanding the topic, but the message isn't easy to explain. And the source of this complexity is probably that the two startups you mention haven't yet crafted a message which would be simple enough to repeat. On a side note, I've resigned from my previous startup a month after they've changed the values to "blah blah blah advance humanity blah blah".
- Hexayurt 11y ago
  Hi. I'm Vinay Gupta, the release coordinator for Ethereum. I'll tell you exactly what Ethereum is: a blockchain for storing code. Bitcoin stores transactions, Ethereum stores programs. Those programs have persistent state on the blockchain and are capable of moving value around the system, hence you can build games, financial instruments and so on. These things are called "smart contracts" for historical reasons - nobody would call them that if they were invented now! How's that? Clearer?
  - carterehsmith 11y ago
    >> How's that? Clearer? Not at all. We have been storing programs, building games etc for some 40 or 50 or 70 years now, without Ethereum. So, how does Ethereum does it better/cheaper than the existing solutions, is what people above are asking.
    - drcode 11y ago
      Right, the problem with Vinay's explanation is that it requires people to have deep understanding of blockchains already. I'd recommend to anyone who wants to understand ethereum to first perform some Bitcoin transactions, to get an intuitive feel for the appeal of blockchains. But the big difference is that programs in ethereum run on the "protocol level" not the hardware level. This means that correct execution of all programs is a necessary step before two ethereum nodes can talk to each other, this gives very high guarantees of correct and transparent execution beyond what other systems allow.
      - fleitz 11y ago
        There's not really that much to understand about block chains... It's a globally shared immutable linked list... Umm... I'm pretty sure programs still execute on hardware...
        drcode 11y ago
        In ethereum, there is no reason a single contract (i.e. "program") ever needs to exist on a single computer for the lifetime of its execution, parts of it could run on different computers, and will actually run on many computers at once. That's what I mean by running "as a protocol" and not on hardware... it's a higher level of abstraction.
- woah 11y ago
  This post was not written for you. It is for people who already know what ethereum is and possibly backed it or are running the testnet. You can't expect every article on any technical topic to contain a full explanation of the underlying tech. Your comment is like saying "this react.js tutorial sounds intriguing, but please for the love of god can they tell what this JavaScript thing is?".
  - detaro 11y ago
    What makes you think that he didn't look further than this post? Really pointless comment, especially after others a) have echoed the sentiment and b) have provided answers.
- Animats 11y ago
  It's like Bitcoin, but a lot more complicated with lots of new features. Last year, there was Paycoin, which was like Bitcoin, but a lot more complicated. It tanked. It seems to have been a scam.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  Etherum allows you to treat digital entities as if they are physical. I.e. it creates scarcity in an otherwise abundant digital universe. It generalizes the principles behind bitcoin and allow you to use this scarcity for a lot of different purposes. As for examples: Digital Pokemón Cards. Basically the ability to create digital collectors items. E-books that could gain value. You could sell ebooks at a premium and allow people to re-sell them. Because the history of their ownership is recorded you could even see them gaining value if they had been owned by a celebrity. Private but public healthcare records. For research and usage. Store the health-records publicly as personas but allow individuals people to link it with their identity. This would help with research in completely new ways. Voting made public but anonymous Make it hard to manipulate voting results by making the anonymized results available for everyone. Artificial Intelligence Using the protocol to create automated consensus models. Companies without owners Build a company with a political purpose without any owner.
  - gioele 11y ago
    > Etherum allows you to treat digital entities as if they are physical. I.e. it creates scarcity in an otherwise abundant digital universe. I always hoped I could see a post-scarcity physical world in my lifetime. Now you are telling me that there are people trying to present me with a pre-scarcity digital world? No, thank you. :)
    - ThomPete 11y ago
      Heh you are actually touching onto something quite interesting and fundamental. Things that have value are often valuable exactly because they are not abundant but scarce. The scarcer the more valuable. Post-scarcity is about creating enough fundamentals (ex. food) to everyone, but it's not about removing the value of scarcity for some food that might be extra hard to produce. Many things only works if they are scarce that does not mean we shouldn't try to achieve post scarcity.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Quite. Inspired by an earlier HN post: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/27d5xr/please_forward_to_marketing_how_to_present_your/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/27d5xr/please_...
jMyles 11y ago
Blockchain tech is finally getting interesting. Of the part of the population that is reasonable well informed about the workings of bitcoin, there is a huge sub population that, for one reason or another, regards it as less than a full viable implementation to accomplish the goals set forth in the whitepaper. I am among these. Although the bitcoin whitepaper represents a compelling call to action and a mathematical head opener, the state of bitcoin today makes it clear that, like many first tries, this one didn't succeed. However, announcements like this one provide a very powerful reminder that, taken generally, blockchain technology, as a movement, may yet have the evolutionary gravity that we imagined.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  How do you say Bitcoin didn't succeed? The currency currently has a market cap of about $4,300,000,000 USD, processes transactions equivalent to $300,000,000 USD daily and can be used globally by anyone. It's been running completely decentralized for 6 years without compromise. It has probably succeeded far beyond most expectations for it.
  - mizzao 11y ago
    If only we could harness the computational power wasted on Bitcoin mining as heat, for useful distributed computing.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - pera 11y ago
      I don't understand this recurrent point: computer power is "wasted" almost everywhere. At least Bitcoin use this power to build a decentralized currency.
      - scott_karana 11y ago
        > computer power is "wasted" almost everywhere. At least Bitcoin use this power to build a decentralized currency. Pinning a GPU or ASIC at 100% undeniably draws more power than an everyday user idling around Facebook on their Macbook Air (~21W MAXED, so likely 7W) Whether it's worth it is the question. A back-of-the-envelope calculation gives me $12Mn USD per day as the approximate global cost of electricity given the current global hashrate of 375Mn GH/s, for 0.05¢/kWh, assuming everyone is using reasonably modern, efficient (?) ASICs like a Spondoolies SP35 Yukon at 5.5TH/s for 3850W. If that's for a $300Mn USD daily market, that's not particularly efficient. Nor particularly inefficient either, admittedly. Democratic, for sure ;) EDIT: initially forgot to include some time units, thanks jsprogrammer!
aakilfernandes 11y ago
Good luck guys! I'm incredibly excited. This feels like a modern day Apollo launch.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  I'm sorry, but no.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    One could also interpret it as an indictment. If a blockchain technology is really as exciting as Apollo 11, then that must reflect poorly on us.
    - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
      You make a very good point. :)
  - natrius 11y ago
    I think Ethereum (or something like it) will have a greater effect on many more lives than the Apollo missions did. If successful, it will reshape society by giving every individual reduced economic transaction costs that once required the economies of scale of a megacorporation to achieve. Take the humble grocery store. The grocery store is a byproduct of economies of scale. Producers sell to grocery stores because it's easier to sell to them in bulk than to find each individual end customer to sell to. Customers buy from grocery stores because it's easier to get everything they want in one store than trying to find each producer to buy from. Ethereum makes it trivial to connect producers and consumers. It could make the grocery store obsolete. Using an Instacart-style interface, customers could shop from every producer on the planet and have their purchases appear on their doorstep. No intermediary is necessary for this: consumers will pay producers directly, and pay the delivery people and storage centers along the paths from their goods to their homes. Software will do this for them. Competing in this market is as easy as putting your goods up for sale and building up your reputation—not with a brand marketing campaign, but by selling your goods and services for lower prices until enough people rate them highly enough for you to demand higher prices. More competition and fewer middlemen will lead to lower prices and better products. Trade will be so easy that more trade will happen, and since every trade makes both sides more wealthy, mankind will be more wealthy. This is why I'm excited about Ethereum. It's easy to dismiss if you don't understand what can be built with it. I encourage you to learn more about what it is and imagine new things that can be built with it.
moistgorilla 11y ago
Hey, just a heads up. On your landing page the text in your Hero didn't render properly. I'm using Firefox version 39.0 on Windows 7
groby_b 11y ago
So, it seems to be "computational currency". Is it too much to ask that something that'd like to be a currency manages to have proper SSL certs? (Both Chrome and FF reject the issuer certificate)
- 1_player 11y ago
  Looks OK from here, Archlinux+Chrome. Either you need to update your OS, or there's a MITM in your connection (can't rule that out, can you? That's what SSL has been designed for.)
treelovinhippie 11y ago
The Genesis block could very well mark a turning point in human history. The beginning of the complete decentralization of the global human society. The global insurance industry replaced with autonomous smart contracts able to provide 10x value, at 10x cheaper cost than any current provider. Escrow services instantly replaced in the same fashion. Global marketplaces more nimble, efficient and cheaper than Uber, Airbnb, eBay and KickStarter (to the point where they will be forced to decentralize themselves to remain competitive). Distributed, autonomous hosting, DNS and CDN services that vastly outperform giants like AWS, ICANN and Cloudflare. And that's just the low hanging fruit. It will be many years before it reaches critical mass and invisibly seeps into mainstream ubiquity. But just as Bitcoin and the Internet cannot be shutdown, the Ethereum Genesis block will be an irreversible Singularity.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - treelovinhippie 11y ago
    All I'd need is a ghostwriter, a joint and a whisky. We'll write a series of future chronicles that become self-fulfilling prophecies :)
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
kristianp 11y ago
Why must these Bitcoin alternatives be so hard to install? Why do I have to manually generate my own Genesis Block? Even for testing.
- drcode 11y ago
  The whole point of ethereum is to keep trust in a third party to an absolute minimum. Wait a month or two and much easier options will appear (created by startups happy to act as the trusted third party)
Udownvotemeudie 11y ago
How does the company behind it make money? Do they have 20% of ether supply or something?
- drcode 11y ago
  They earned some money from people in a presale, they hold some modest ether, and everyone at the company can expect lucrative consulting contracts.

149 points by Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago

tombh 11y ago

Just to chime in with the obligatory: sounds-interesting-but-for-the-love-of-turing-it's-infuriatingly-hard-to-find-a-basic-description-of-what-it-actually-is.

codezero 11y ago
Ditto, after reading several of the about pages, I'm still not sure what Ether is, or how it's used, or who the target audience is. Something in there about a decentralized platform for running apps, but I don't want to guess too deeply about what this means. Is it a cloud hosting platform that runs on Ether? Is the platform going to be used primarily for mining Ether? I'm not even sure, if anyone has a short description that will explain what this is, I'd love to read it!
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  After much moronic searching, these two tutorials seem to somewhat demystify the idea: https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/1634/tutorial-1-your-first-contract/ https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/1634/tutorial-1-your-f... https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/1635/tutorial-2-rainbow-coin https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/1635/tutorial-2-rainbo...
- chipsy 11y ago
  Ether is a "computational currency." You earn it by running computations on your computer. You spend it by purchasing processing power on other people's computers. The computation is software defined, so that customized "distributed apps" are possible. This is my outsiders understanding. I think there are potentially a lot of things that could be gotten wrong here - from the specific implementation and security measures to the economic plan. But it's one of several such experiments with using the blockchain, so I'm looking forward to see what they can do - that said I have no expectations for financial gain.
  - drcode 11y ago
    Some important properties of ethereum: 1. A program written in ethereum can execute code at a predetermined point in the future, and there is as close to 100% certainty as possible that the code will execute as written (i.e. as long as a single ethereum user remains in the world at that date everybody's code is guaranteed to run exactly as written, even if it involves moving money between accounts.) 2. All computer programs are "open source" not just before a program is launched but also WHILE THE PROGRAM IS RUNNING- Nobody can run any code without having full transparency. 3. Users accounts are provably always in a state of complete anonymity (unless of course they do something to purposely reveal their identity) and can use all programs on the platform in this fully anonymous state. 4. Program authors are forced to explicitly document ahead of time all situations in which their program code might be modified in the future, making it much harder to have the "screw your user after they've committed to your platform" business model that's so popular among startups these days. Those are just some of the properties of ethereum that come to mind.
    - convulsive 11y ago
      >4. Program authors are forced to explicitly document ahead of time all situations in which their program code might be modified in the future Can you point me to a resource that explains this in more detail? I think I've gotten the gist of how Ethereum works, and have gone through a tutorial of Solidity, but I'm unclear how versioning will work in Ethereum (even though I do have some guesses for how it could be implemented). How would I deploy a new version of my contract? Would I have to implement a mechanism for basically hot loading new code?
      - drcode 11y ago
        Yeah, that's pretty much it: By default, contracts can't be updated, but you can create a network of multiple contracts to allow some of your code to update. Myself, I think this is "cheating" and destroys the value proposition of ethereum... a better approach (and what I hope to do) is to keep my main contract(s) alive for all eternity and just add new features with "accessory contracts" but it's easy to fail with this if the original contract has problems.
- TheGrimDerp1 11y ago
  I've been following the subreddit for over a year and I still haven't figured it out...
- joeykrug 11y ago
  One example of an app you'd want to run on ethereum is something like a prediction market (PM). A PM is a pretty general financial market and can be used to speculate on things from "Who will become the US President in 2016?" to "Will Russia invade Estonia by 2020?" to "Will American Pharoah win the Triple Crown?" Ethereum is useful for this because it allows for distributed custody of funds. No one controls the funds stored in these contracts, so there's no one to run away with and steal all the money, and, since it's run on Ethereum, there's no middleman taking 5-10% fees. In fact, for the first time, we can have a truly global prediction market, and _anyone_ can create markets on it to boot! This is just one app possible on ethereum, and it's one I'm building - www.augur.net if you're interested. Ethereum's basically a platform that allows you to create "smart contracts" (aka programs) that are practically guaranteed to execute the way you write them. And multiple people can interact with the programs and it'll still be executed the same way. This is a bit abstract, but the main huge advantage this allows is: you can finally send money to some program, and the program will do exactly what it says it will, and no one else can modify the results or even touch your money. Bitcoin allows you to send money around, Ethereum allows you to enter into complex contracts with money, and those contracts are always enforceable. To take this into the real world, imagine you want to make a bitcoin prediction market. Since you can't run the complicated buy/sell machinery of a prediction market directly on bitcoin, you're forced to take deposits from users, match their orders, and then do payouts accordingly after the event occurs. You can run away with the funds at any time, and there's nothing stopping you. Sure, you could elect to use multisignature wallets or cold storage, but that didn't stop MtGox from happening. Heck, even InTrade, the largest prior prediction market had millions of dollars of funds embezzled by their later CEO. Now with Ethereum, we can send funds to a contract, they're stored there. You can buy and sell and all orders go through the contract. At the end payouts are done by the code in the contract, and no one can take the funds held in the contract.
itistoday2 11y ago
Decentralized computing secured by a blockchain! :D->-<
Bognar 11y ago
I've still yet to find a "basic" description, but their whitepaper is actually quite useful in describing what it is and possible uses: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper
joeyspn 11y ago
A gentle introduction to Ethereum... http://guide.ethereum.org/ethereum.html http://guide.ethereum.org/ethereum.html
arnorhs 11y ago
yeah, and the "about" section doesn't really answer the question very well: What is ether? Ether is a necessary element -- a fuel -- for operating the distributed application software platform we are building: Ethereum. Without the requirement of payment of ether for every computational step and storage operation within the system, infinite loops or excessive storage demands could bog down Ethereum and effectively destroy it.
baby 11y ago
check the audit LeastAuthority did on them: https://github.com/LeastAuthority/ethereum-analyses https://github.com/LeastAuthority/ethereum-analyses
jameshart 11y ago
This seems like a good overview: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper
natrius 11y ago
Ethereum is a global transaction computer that provides a platform for decentralized applications, like Augur (http://augur.net http://augur.net). Today's systems have a centralized source of truth: corporate databases. There was no other way to build applications that involve multiple users interacting with each other, so companies built those systems and profited from providing a solution. With Ethereum, we can write simple programs that run on thousands of computers and come to a consensus on the result. Nasdaq doesn't need to tell us the result of a trade or who owns what. We can build equivalent systems that no one controls. The result is a transfer of profits from middlemen to the rest of humanity. Finance is easy to think about in a decentralized manner since it's all information that computers control. But these systems can apply to real world interactions as well by building reputation systems on top of this global computer. If you don't abide by the rules of the decentralized system you're participating in, your reputation score will go down and people will stop interacting with you. In this manner, Ethereum can be used to replace every marketplace startup. Uber and Airbnb are so successful because they benefit from strong network effects. Decentralized applications also benefit from strong network effects: every new decentralized Uber application will use the data from the ones that already exist to bootstrap themselves. The user base will never splinter like it does when new centralized competitors attempt to enter the market. Ethereum gives mankind the ability to coordinate interactions between ourselves more powerfully than ever before. Social systems that once seemed too unwieldy or too anarchic to work out might now be feasible, and they could make us wealthier and more free.
- tajen 11y ago
  No offense, but there has to be a simpler way to explain this. It sounds like you are passionate, and after seeing the video it looks like a good idea, but it also sounds like a parody of startup culture. References to "humanity" and "mankind" don't help, even if you've used them appropriately. Your comment is useful and exact after understanding the topic, but the message isn't easy to explain. And the source of this complexity is probably that the two startups you mention haven't yet crafted a message which would be simple enough to repeat. On a side note, I've resigned from my previous startup a month after they've changed the values to "blah blah blah advance humanity blah blah".
Hexayurt 11y ago
Hi. I'm Vinay Gupta, the release coordinator for Ethereum. I'll tell you exactly what Ethereum is: a blockchain for storing code. Bitcoin stores transactions, Ethereum stores programs. Those programs have persistent state on the blockchain and are capable of moving value around the system, hence you can build games, financial instruments and so on. These things are called "smart contracts" for historical reasons - nobody would call them that if they were invented now! How's that? Clearer?
- carterehsmith 11y ago
  >> How's that? Clearer? Not at all. We have been storing programs, building games etc for some 40 or 50 or 70 years now, without Ethereum. So, how does Ethereum does it better/cheaper than the existing solutions, is what people above are asking.
  - drcode 11y ago
    Right, the problem with Vinay's explanation is that it requires people to have deep understanding of blockchains already. I'd recommend to anyone who wants to understand ethereum to first perform some Bitcoin transactions, to get an intuitive feel for the appeal of blockchains. But the big difference is that programs in ethereum run on the "protocol level" not the hardware level. This means that correct execution of all programs is a necessary step before two ethereum nodes can talk to each other, this gives very high guarantees of correct and transparent execution beyond what other systems allow.
    - fleitz 11y ago
      There's not really that much to understand about block chains... It's a globally shared immutable linked list... Umm... I'm pretty sure programs still execute on hardware...
      - drcode 11y ago
        In ethereum, there is no reason a single contract (i.e. "program") ever needs to exist on a single computer for the lifetime of its execution, parts of it could run on different computers, and will actually run on many computers at once. That's what I mean by running "as a protocol" and not on hardware... it's a higher level of abstraction.
woah 11y ago
This post was not written for you. It is for people who already know what ethereum is and possibly backed it or are running the testnet. You can't expect every article on any technical topic to contain a full explanation of the underlying tech. Your comment is like saying "this react.js tutorial sounds intriguing, but please for the love of god can they tell what this JavaScript thing is?".
- detaro 11y ago
  What makes you think that he didn't look further than this post? Really pointless comment, especially after others a) have echoed the sentiment and b) have provided answers.
Animats 11y ago
It's like Bitcoin, but a lot more complicated with lots of new features. Last year, there was Paycoin, which was like Bitcoin, but a lot more complicated. It tanked. It seems to have been a scam.
ThomPete 11y ago
Etherum allows you to treat digital entities as if they are physical. I.e. it creates scarcity in an otherwise abundant digital universe. It generalizes the principles behind bitcoin and allow you to use this scarcity for a lot of different purposes. As for examples: Digital Pokemón Cards. Basically the ability to create digital collectors items. E-books that could gain value. You could sell ebooks at a premium and allow people to re-sell them. Because the history of their ownership is recorded you could even see them gaining value if they had been owned by a celebrity. Private but public healthcare records. For research and usage. Store the health-records publicly as personas but allow individuals people to link it with their identity. This would help with research in completely new ways. Voting made public but anonymous Make it hard to manipulate voting results by making the anonymized results available for everyone. Artificial Intelligence Using the protocol to create automated consensus models. Companies without owners Build a company with a political purpose without any owner.
- gioele 11y ago
  > Etherum allows you to treat digital entities as if they are physical. I.e. it creates scarcity in an otherwise abundant digital universe. I always hoped I could see a post-scarcity physical world in my lifetime. Now you are telling me that there are people trying to present me with a pre-scarcity digital world? No, thank you. :)
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    Heh you are actually touching onto something quite interesting and fundamental. Things that have value are often valuable exactly because they are not abundant but scarce. The scarcer the more valuable. Post-scarcity is about creating enough fundamentals (ex. food) to everyone, but it's not about removing the value of scarcity for some food that might be extra hard to produce. Many things only works if they are scarce that does not mean we shouldn't try to achieve post scarcity.
dredmorbius 11y ago
Quite. Inspired by an earlier HN post: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/27d5xr/please_forward_to_marketing_how_to_present_your/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/27d5xr/please_...

jMyles 11y ago

Blockchain tech is finally getting interesting. Of the part of the population that is reasonable well informed about the workings of bitcoin, there is a huge sub population that, for one reason or another, regards it as less than a full viable implementation to accomplish the goals set forth in the whitepaper. I am among these. Although the bitcoin whitepaper represents a compelling call to action and a mathematical head opener, the state of bitcoin today makes it clear that, like many first tries, this one didn't succeed. However, announcements like this one provide a very powerful reminder that, taken generally, blockchain technology, as a movement, may yet have the evolutionary gravity that we imagined.

jsprogrammer 11y ago
How do you say Bitcoin didn't succeed? The currency currently has a market cap of about $4,300,000,000 USD, processes transactions equivalent to $300,000,000 USD daily and can be used globally by anyone. It's been running completely decentralized for 6 years without compromise. It has probably succeeded far beyond most expectations for it.
- mizzao 11y ago
  If only we could harness the computational power wasted on Bitcoin mining as heat, for useful distributed computing.
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  - pera 11y ago
    I don't understand this recurrent point: computer power is "wasted" almost everywhere. At least Bitcoin use this power to build a decentralized currency.
    - scott_karana 11y ago
      > computer power is "wasted" almost everywhere. At least Bitcoin use this power to build a decentralized currency. Pinning a GPU or ASIC at 100% undeniably draws more power than an everyday user idling around Facebook on their Macbook Air (~21W MAXED, so likely 7W) Whether it's worth it is the question. A back-of-the-envelope calculation gives me $12Mn USD per day as the approximate global cost of electricity given the current global hashrate of 375Mn GH/s, for 0.05¢/kWh, assuming everyone is using reasonably modern, efficient (?) ASICs like a Spondoolies SP35 Yukon at 5.5TH/s for 3850W. If that's for a $300Mn USD daily market, that's not particularly efficient. Nor particularly inefficient either, admittedly. Democratic, for sure ;) EDIT: initially forgot to include some time units, thanks jsprogrammer!

aakilfernandes 11y ago

Good luck guys! I'm incredibly excited. This feels like a modern day Apollo launch.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago
I'm sorry, but no.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  One could also interpret it as an indictment. If a blockchain technology is really as exciting as Apollo 11, then that must reflect poorly on us.
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    You make a very good point. :)
- natrius 11y ago
  I think Ethereum (or something like it) will have a greater effect on many more lives than the Apollo missions did. If successful, it will reshape society by giving every individual reduced economic transaction costs that once required the economies of scale of a megacorporation to achieve. Take the humble grocery store. The grocery store is a byproduct of economies of scale. Producers sell to grocery stores because it's easier to sell to them in bulk than to find each individual end customer to sell to. Customers buy from grocery stores because it's easier to get everything they want in one store than trying to find each producer to buy from. Ethereum makes it trivial to connect producers and consumers. It could make the grocery store obsolete. Using an Instacart-style interface, customers could shop from every producer on the planet and have their purchases appear on their doorstep. No intermediary is necessary for this: consumers will pay producers directly, and pay the delivery people and storage centers along the paths from their goods to their homes. Software will do this for them. Competing in this market is as easy as putting your goods up for sale and building up your reputation—not with a brand marketing campaign, but by selling your goods and services for lower prices until enough people rate them highly enough for you to demand higher prices. More competition and fewer middlemen will lead to lower prices and better products. Trade will be so easy that more trade will happen, and since every trade makes both sides more wealthy, mankind will be more wealthy. This is why I'm excited about Ethereum. It's easy to dismiss if you don't understand what can be built with it. I encourage you to learn more about what it is and imagine new things that can be built with it.

moistgorilla 11y ago

Hey, just a heads up. On your landing page the text in your Hero didn't render properly. I'm using Firefox version 39.0 on Windows 7

groby_b 11y ago

So, it seems to be "computational currency". Is it too much to ask that something that'd like to be a currency manages to have proper SSL certs? (Both Chrome and FF reject the issuer certificate)

1_player 11y ago
Looks OK from here, Archlinux+Chrome. Either you need to update your OS, or there's a MITM in your connection (can't rule that out, can you? That's what SSL has been designed for.)

treelovinhippie 11y ago

The Genesis block could very well mark a turning point in human history. The beginning of the complete decentralization of the global human society. The global insurance industry replaced with autonomous smart contracts able to provide 10x value, at 10x cheaper cost than any current provider. Escrow services instantly replaced in the same fashion. Global marketplaces more nimble, efficient and cheaper than Uber, Airbnb, eBay and KickStarter (to the point where they will be forced to decentralize themselves to remain competitive). Distributed, autonomous hosting, DNS and CDN services that vastly outperform giants like AWS, ICANN and Cloudflare. And that's just the low hanging fruit. It will be many years before it reaches critical mass and invisibly seeps into mainstream ubiquity. But just as Bitcoin and the Internet cannot be shutdown, the Ethereum Genesis block will be an irreversible Singularity.

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- treelovinhippie 11y ago
  All I'd need is a ghostwriter, a joint and a whisky. We'll write a series of future chronicles that become self-fulfilling prophecies :)

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kristianp 11y ago

Why must these Bitcoin alternatives be so hard to install? Why do I have to manually generate my own Genesis Block? Even for testing.

drcode 11y ago
The whole point of ethereum is to keep trust in a third party to an absolute minimum. Wait a month or two and much easier options will appear (created by startups happy to act as the trusted third party)

Udownvotemeudie 11y ago

How does the company behind it make money? Do they have 20% of ether supply or something?

drcode 11y ago
They earned some money from people in a presale, they hold some modest ether, and everyone at the company can expect lucrative consulting contracts.