Bitcoin Forum

I've done a lot of rookie research and can't seem to understand what it is.

I've heard that it's turing complete, the html to bitcoin's http, an extra layer, NOT an alt etc.

Is it just 'BML?' (bitcoin markup language?)

How does it use and relate to the blockchain to do whatever it's doing that bitcoin isn't?

What does it all mean??

Craigslist + escrow + Bitcoin + Namecoin + integrated Namecoin web hosting. Basically, it's Bitcoin with much more functionality baked in (allowing nodes to host much more content than current [already-overworked] BTC nodes do), but uses Ether as the currency with horribly-named, arbitrary sub-units.

Don't think too hard about it (its blockchain will be quite different than BTC's -- they don't expect everyone to download "the Internet," so it necessarily becomes a much more complex system) -- it allows the network to host, basically, the Internet, but tries making this a much less burdensome process for regular users by baking in certain features the devs find to be critical in a trustless web society. They're basically trying to "facilitate" a new decentralized Internet with the coin by aligning incentives so moving away from the current centralized model is profitable for most involved. It'll be interesting to see if it can actually scale.

(... basically)

Yes. But will it blend?

An overhyped project which raised a lot of funds using buzzwords and smart marketing.

A good, but challenging, question. I would say it is unlikely, unless smartphones end up making up many of the nodes, where older smartphones were shown to be blendable. -But, if you were to only blend certain critical components, then absolutely. Any CAT/coax cable could be blended, and obviously a telephone wire can.... I'm not sure about the newer fiber cabling, though.... probably.

I mean... You could blend a GPU and knock out its active cooling capability, but I doubt a Blendtec could truly disable a GPU in 30s of blending. A rack-mounted server wouldn't even fit, but a RPi would be annihilated. ... So it depends.... I think at least a significant percentage of the network would blend, but Ethereum would ultimately survive the attack.

Well now I'm completely baffled.

I of course am familiar with Blender, the 3D Modeling/Rendering app from the FOSS world. Is this s thinly disguised riff on the the return of GPU mining?

Not sure if serious. me. on me. srsly.

Thanks a lot for the explanation Kludge.

Question 2:

wtf is blending?

Will it Blend? - iPhone 6 Plus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBUJcD6Ws6s

Enjoy. :)

Background:
Bitcoin transactions are "programmable" in that they support a basic scripting language (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script). This allows for things like multi-signature transactions and timelocks. That is, the existence of this scripting language allows transactions to be formed which say: "for this bitcoin to be spendable in the future, the following TWO signatures are necessary"... Or: "This bitcoin is not spendable under AFTER this date."

Bitcoin supports a number of basic operations which allow things like that. Stacking these operations on top of each other can possibly yield some pretty complex and interesting behavior. But there is no looping construct. If you're a programmer, you'll understand that immediately (if not, probably need to look it up). Essentially, without looping, many types of things are not possible.

It's critical to understand that Satoshi omitted looping (and various basic operations themselves) very intentionally. Satoshi was concerned with simplicity, robustness, and security, and adding complexity to the transaction scripting rapidly introduces all sorts of very difficult issues. Here's an interesting quote on this from Ray Dillinger, one of the cryptographers who worked on the code with Satoshi before the genesis block: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=819656.msg9171295#msg9171295


Ethereum:
Seeks to create a "Turing-Complete" transactions language; ie, one that allows for all the complexity which Bitcoin intentionally omits. It's unknown whether this is feasible without introducing potentially severe or fatal security issues. Gavin Andresen has noted these concerns, as well as the value-tradeoff in the first place: http://gavintech.blogspot.com/2014/06/bit-thereum.html

My own assumption is even if Ethereum *eventually* works, it's going to be very hard to trust it with any real value for quite a long time. It's troublesome, because it won't get battle-tested until there's significant value to attack, and I for one, sure don't want *my* value to be the guinea pig. Bitcoin is experimental enough...

My other issue with Ethereum is that it tries to "fix" non-problems in bitcoin, like coin distribution and mining algs. It comes with it's creator's built-in notions of economic "fairness". It's partly possible to level that same criticism at bitcoin, except that bitcoin is very simple and largely takes a "the distribution will work itself out in the end" approach, whereas Vitalik has specifically tried to engineer ideas of fairness into it (an ultimately futile and counter-productive reflex often characteristic of youth).


tldr: Ethereum is technically interesting, but I wouldn't trust its security for many years after launch (many more years than it took for me to become confident in bitcoin).

This question will never really be ansvered in an easy to understand way. Same with Ripple. They get repect though...

Sounds like Ripple and Steller are kinda broken at the core consensus level: https://www.stellar.org/blog/safety_liveness_and_fault_tolerance_consensus_choice/

I'm guessing they'll be made more and more explicitly centralized as time goes by.

I still have no real idea what Ethereum is. I have really looked at it. Doesnt really make sense to me.

Thank you Melbustus.

At some point, I heard about ethereum was going to be the next big thing. But what happened?

Ethereum is the name of an awesome concept that its inventor failed to materialize.

Failed , do you mean "scam" ? Because I don't think they have scammed anyone...

Melbustus answers is the best so far.

For a concrete example: you can code a crowd funding contract into etheruem.  This contract lives in the ehtereum's block chain and handles pledges and releasing the funds to the final party or returning them to the pledgees if the contract is not fully funded by a certain date.   You can't program that into Bitcoin's blockchain.

 Turing complete meaning you have loops, if/then, functions, etc.. AND storage to use to build your application, like you would in say a ruby web app with a database.  You would want to keep them simple though, each  transaction and your storage size determines the amount of ether it costs for that contract.

It sounds quite amazing, but it's going to take year I imagine before this thing can get its shit together. It must be the mother of all technical challenges to do all this in a decentralised manner. Simple systems FTW. Emergent complexity ftMFw.

Around here that's called a "buy signal", lol.  :D

Whenever someone mentions the unit of currency in ethereum I think of this:

https://33.media.tumblr.com/2b24e0125a9ca32c1de612c44a344a53/tumblr_mw6jn7Eann1rkiuhro1_500.gif

It is liquid and too complex to be understood  ;D

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140915023152/marvelcinematicuniverse/images/7/7a/Aether1.png

biggest presale selfbuy minersscam in crypto history.
If it ever materialises ...

Right now it's hype based on powerpoint presentations.
Later it will be: too complex to run stable or be safe from exploits ... if it ever is released

My personal best guess: 1 decade developement to even get it to run a stable beta if not given up on it sooner

Seems a little dismissive in comparison to the other responses in here.

I just watched this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbEtivJIfIU

And am impressed by some things.

It does seem like incentivized decentralisation should be applied to more applications than just currency.

What I would like to see is how easy it is to do this but just by using the bitcoin blockchain rather than making a whole new chain.

Is this what side-chaining is?

Is there a thread on BCT debating ethereum? I am definitely convinced on the ability and sincerity of Vitalik, my reservations about Ethereum are whether or not the technical challenges can all be met.

Decentralised apps may be the future, if they can't work on the bitcoin chain (apart from bitcoin's currency itself) then something like Ethereum becomes inevitable no? (Should it be technically feasible).

Thanks for the thoughts guys!

I just realised the link to Gavin's blog answers a lot of my previous questions for me (posted by Melbustus).

I think I have no more questions for now! Thank you everyone.

I could not agree more with Melbustus and Gavin's posts about Ethereum.
I simply wonder wether the ability and sincerity of Vitalik outweighs his naiveté ?
Then again my reservation about Ethereum is not about feasibility but about the centralizing effect of Turing-completeness.

If transactions can be designed with infinite (or very long) loops to perform DoS attacks, miners will have to turn to some anti-malware solution like the ones marketed by MacAffe, Norton , etc.
The solution can be worse that the problem with some miners colluding to filter out some transactions on the grounds that they can be "bad" for the network perfomance. The notion of consensus starts to become fuzzy.

For example Etheruem allows to write crowd contracts. No we won't be able to do with sidechainins in bitcoin.

You need to be young and naive to attempt these pie-in-the-sky projects. With a little luck on your side you might just succeed. I'd be very impressed if a 20 year old can pull this off.

Oh man, this is going to be a lot of fun.
Etherium will probably be pretty powerful, a Turing complete Scrypt can get some amazing things done, but just wait till the bugs start showing up, or hackers begin picking at the Blockchain, injecting values into those blocks to cause havok.

It's serious business when you censor viruses and trojans or malicous programs living on the Blockchain. This thing is starting to look like a strand of DNA with all it's infused codes and integrated viruses and programs. wow.

It does seem like a technical minefield. Best of luck to him!

I am not sure what it is. I think you might be able to synthesize it using ethanol and buteric acid.