6 ms·

This is good writing, although it doesn't fulfill the promise at the beginning of explaining the blockchain. Very intrigued by Ethereum now.

by natch 11y ago

Hexayurt 11y ago
"by the end of this article, you’re going to understand blockchains well enough to decide what they mean to your life." I very deliberately didn't explain mining or blocks or consensus protocols because, really, that's technical gubbins that fits between "BEGIN TRANSACTION" and "COMMIT TRANSACTION" in an SQL database. Unless your technical concerns are between those two statements, you don't need to care about mining. That's where we've been going wrong explaining blockchains so far.
- natch 11y ago
  I already understand mining. I didn't need to learn about mining. It's just looking for hashes with successively larger numbers of zeros at the ends as the difficulty increases (or the other way around.. the difficulty increases as the zeros do). But I wanted to understand the blockchain, which I didn't, and still don't. Apparently it being distributed is important in some way, and there is some mechanism by which it gets updated with records of recent transactions (again nothing to do with mining) but I don't know the details, and would like to. The promise was not fulfilled. But otherwise, great article. BTW I have no database background but do know what a transaction is.
asdfgP 11y ago
Good writing indeed. And for a technical audience, I also like to use the following (if oversimplified) description of Ethereum (quoting from [1]): "... In a way, Ethereum is like a cloud infrastructure that is extremely open. You can run any code you like in this cloud, as long as you follow some rules. Firstly, the code you run in Ethereum has to be essentially open source: you can only run your code if you publish it, unmodified. Secondly, even your database contents are public. (Privacy is still possible with client-side encryption, though client-side encryption will not work if the server also needs to read the data. In that case, preserving full privacy is still possible, though it may require sophisticated cryptography). The openness goes further: the underlying cloud infrastructure has no single owner. Rather, Ethereum is a fully distributed system, enabled by the block chain technology. Why would anybody need this much openness? There are certain applications that truly require this level of trust and auditability. The Bitcoin currency is one example. Bitcoin already uses the same underlying block chain technology as Ethereum (in fact, Bitcoin pioneered it). It is unlikely that Bitcoin could have succeeded otherwise. Indeed, who would trust a startup that essentially prints and sells their own money, and whose founders are not known?" [1] https://ristoalas.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/what-is-ethereum/ https://ristoalas.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/what-is-ethereum/

This is good writing, although it doesn't fulfill the promise at the beginning of explaining the blockchain. Very intrigued by Ethereum now.

by natch 11y ago

This is good writing, although it doesn't fulfill the promise at the beginning of explaining the blockchain. Very intrigued by Ethereum now.

Hexayurt 11y ago

"by the end of this article, you’re going to understand blockchains well enough to decide what they mean to your life." I very deliberately didn't explain mining or blocks or consensus protocols because, really, that's technical gubbins that fits between "BEGIN TRANSACTION" and "COMMIT TRANSACTION" in an SQL database. Unless your technical concerns are between those two statements, you don't need to care about mining. That's where we've been going wrong explaining blockchains so far.

natch 11y ago
I already understand mining. I didn't need to learn about mining. It's just looking for hashes with successively larger numbers of zeros at the ends as the difficulty increases (or the other way around.. the difficulty increases as the zeros do). But I wanted to understand the blockchain, which I didn't, and still don't. Apparently it being distributed is important in some way, and there is some mechanism by which it gets updated with records of recent transactions (again nothing to do with mining) but I don't know the details, and would like to. The promise was not fulfilled. But otherwise, great article. BTW I have no database background but do know what a transaction is.

asdfgP 11y ago

Good writing indeed. And for a technical audience, I also like to use the following (if oversimplified) description of Ethereum (quoting from [1]): "... In a way, Ethereum is like a cloud infrastructure that is extremely open. You can run any code you like in this cloud, as long as you follow some rules. Firstly, the code you run in Ethereum has to be essentially open source: you can only run your code if you publish it, unmodified. Secondly, even your database contents are public. (Privacy is still possible with client-side encryption, though client-side encryption will not work if the server also needs to read the data. In that case, preserving full privacy is still possible, though it may require sophisticated cryptography). The openness goes further: the underlying cloud infrastructure has no single owner. Rather, Ethereum is a fully distributed system, enabled by the block chain technology. Why would anybody need this much openness? There are certain applications that truly require this level of trust and auditability. The Bitcoin currency is one example. Bitcoin already uses the same underlying block chain technology as Ethereum (in fact, Bitcoin pioneered it). It is unlikely that Bitcoin could have succeeded otherwise. Indeed, who would trust a startup that essentially prints and sells their own money, and whose founders are not known?" [1] https://ristoalas.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/what-is-ethereum/ https://ristoalas.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/what-is-ethereum/