Thanks for sharing the conclusions of your detailed study. Yeah you're right I've never looked at those integration issues.

Okay but I had already agreed with you that Bitcoin is more polished in some facets. But I am talking big picture concepts and you are talking about details. Vitalik is not the kind of guy you put in charge of the details (and I don't know to what extent he has delegated management of all the fine grained details). He is too busy blazing new trails and doing important research.

Ethereum is the more experimentative and novel ecosystem. It is not yet the refined ecosystem.

I am a programmer and I like good APIs. But good APIs require a lot of painstaking effort by focused designers. Bitcoin has that. For example, Gmaxwell is afaik German.

Vitalik is Russian. Russians are known for their algorithm twists of genius. Vitalik displays precisely that sort of attitude and interest. He is always creating an abstract model of everything he studies. I have watched him in videos and observed him doing this live in real time.

I have German ancestry but also Welsh, French, and Cherokee native American tribe.

Leaders bring different personalities and priority skills sets. Bitcoin is clearly the more tightly engineered ecosystem.

It is very, very difficult for one company or project to do all facets at the same level of excellence. Maybe for a major corporation such as Facebook or Google, but even Google has stumbled so many times and has shut down so many services and stranded former users of those services. And some of Google's APIs have sucked. It is difficult to keep every facet perfect when rushing to do many experiments.

Bitcoin I think has more top-notch methodical engineering types than Ethereum does. Ethereum's contributors seem to be much more out-of-the-box type personalities (also quite young and perhaps inexperienced) of what I remember about the coders I've seen in the videos.

JavaScript's ecosystem is a nightmare of chaotic experimentation with millions of confusing choices on npmjs. We even now have incompatible module formats competing with each other, and other examples of disorder.

Experimentation is messy. Orderly ordiness is sclerotic.

That is actually very astute.

They have no power in my OpenShare design. And I am not referring to PoS either.


That will be the one who improves on Satoshi's solution to the problem of decentralized consensus. No one has yet.

Having discussions with anonymous Newbie account is somewhat analogous to getting a blowjob by sticking your dick into a hole in the wall. As Gump said, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna to get". Kind of weird when you don't know who or what is sucking your dick.  

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Bitcoin has more ecosystem advantages in one facet of blockchains, but Ethereum has smart contracts. Ethereum isn't as polished, but it arguably casts a wider influence demographics net.

CounterParty is not a secure design.

Also Bitcoin is bogged down in a HF war involving the major mining cartels. Ethereum is probably going to beat Bitcoin to market in offering payment channel instant transactions.

ETH reached $1.6B mcap in June 2015 when Bitcoin was $3.xB. So minimum upside I see for Ethereum in Q2 is $8 billion mcap. But I think parity with BTC's mcap is now possible and if BTU is killed off and BTC heads up to $2000+ as expected, perhaps ETH will reach $20 - $30billion market cap in 2017 also. So I am considering an upside of 400 - 500% this year as a possibility. With a double or so coming quite soon as a distinct possibility.

Other smaller mcaps may have even more upside, but I don't know which one to choose (roll a dice). XMR was another possible choice (and my angel investor already holds some, as well some of a DAG blockchain).

I am not a long-term bull on ETH. I am hedging. Will reevaluate as the BTU vs. BTC fiasco plays out.

Because you can build all the experimental smart contract ICO tokenized apps on ETH. So many of them in the pipeline now. Ethereum is possibly winning the race for developer mindshare.

Right now we claim that none of these apps will ever get any real world adoption, but we forget the speculators are the users. And now the developers are the users. Programmers matter A LOT.

I don't think Ethereum's technical design and ICO model is the best possible one, but there is nothing shipping now (or about to ship this month) which is unarguably better in app developer mindshare.

Who is in second place? Bitcoin or Steem?

And one or more of those ETH apps may end up causing a mania again. May not happen, but the chance of happening is one of the reasons to hold ETH.

I like Zimbeck. He appears to have very high ethics.

But (at least in terms of adoption by app users) I am betting against apps with their own tokens running by themselves as a viable model (but as you know I am biased as I am working on an app platform project). You've got to be part of something bigger such as an app store in order to get economies-of-scale.

But he can try making Bitbay an app on platform with many apps and more economies-of-scale.

I might be incorrect in my understanding and expectation. Let's see what transpires. Just adding my opinion here. (I hedged against my own project by diversifying a little bit of BTC into ETH which is an ICO app platform)

Also it seems projects are more about speculator delusion than actual user adoption (unless speculators trading are considered the users).

The current order of the world is fracturing.

We were promised a Utopian, socialist dream and now people are starting to realize that you'd have to be asleep to believe it.

Possibly we can actually do something about that. We can at least set lofty goals can't we? I was trying to compose some internal notes tonight about project plans:

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We need a decentralized version of this:

http://health.stackexchange.com/

So the best I can do is put all my effort into making OpenShare a reality.

If you were suffering from chronic illness you might understand why the desperation and speaking out occurs. It isn't really on topic but it don't wish anyone to remain chronically ill. I don't know what to tell these guys other than try find competent medical testing. I wish I had better suggestions. Feeling fatigued, unwell, and dizzy (unable to concentrate, etc) is not a nice condition to be for years and years (and I'm even experiencing this tonight so I can relate again). When not feeling well, get more sleep. Stay off the computer and get more sunshine. Exercise intensely. Eat right. If you haven't tried those lifestyle changes, then you need to STFU. If all that hasn't worked, then my only suggestion is find a way to get competent, first-world medical testing and diagnosis. I have no extra resources to help anyone financially at this time.

I hope we can stay on topic.


I understand. It isn't my thread, so I can't moderate it. I wasn't trying to demonize you. But the issue is that chronic fatigue can be very debilitating. I wasn't focused on the cancer word, rather focused on his feeling of helplessness and frustration. I didn't realize so many people suffered physically. I was so lucky to have elite level genes and health for most of my life until I apparently got infected with disease due to my travails in the Philippines. So at least I can say it was partially my fault for leaving the relatively good public health environment of the USA. Some of you all are perhaps suffering from conditions that were not due to any mistake you made. I empathize.

Now I agree let's try to stay on topic.

Research roughly approximates that GC requires 5X the memory of explict memory allocation to achieve the same performance, 3X to lose only 17% performance, and 2X to lose 70% performance.

However as I had explained in a discussion with @jl777 last year, we can code in JavaScript with explicit memory allocation by employing an ArrayBuffer heap as Emscripten does for transpiling C to JavaScript and with certain compile-time semantics other optimizations may be possible.

Also explicit refcounting has performance tradeoffs also.

Decentralization (fracturing) is the current trend:

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/religion/the-civil-war-within-the-catholic-church/

That is an interesting way to distill the phenomenon. I had similar thought but hadn't articulated it.

Much to contemplate...

I don't think you need a conspiracy. Nature of man is to compete with the one who has the most.

Everyone is trying to discredit BTC and grab some of your BTC.

And now Bitcoiners are doing self-destructive HFs to divide-and-conquer themselves, forcing us to diversify into for example Ethereum and Dash which are allegedly both not aggregate markets.

So much for our idealism about changing the world, eh?  

Maybe it is healthy experimentation and competition, but adoption by 100s of millions (or billions!) of non-investor users of the Internet would be more comforting to me. Maybe we are still on the path headed there...

I diversified into ETH.

I also agree with you on this:

@Ayers agreed there is new greater fool BTC incoming. The key distinction is that allegedly there is only one coordinated whale/cartel in control (instead of multiple uncoordinated, competing whales) who will run away and let it crash to ~1% of its price in order to conserve their BTC stash in a stampede spiral event (which hasn't happened yet because there is sufficient supply of new fools incoming and the base of the pyramid of hodlers who could stampede is always being diluted relative to the cartel's percent of the money supply by the compounding asymmetrical masternode ROI scheme). Unlike in an aggregate market wherein bagholders could at least get out with say only -80% loss or something reasonable.

It is quite an elaborate scheme. You have to wrap your mind around it holistically. The masternodes are the cartel (technically a masternode isn't a hashrate miner, but because the masternodes are subsidized asymmetrically they can also be the miners then selfish mine and gain more asymmetric rewards).

Please read my post immediately before yours where I replied to @dinofelis's latest post.

Note ETH may be similarly structured but without the masternodes (unless someone has an unreleased more efficient implementation of the ETH PoW algorithm, which I saw someone allege) and with better ecosystem marketing and hype than Dash:

My 2 cents summary... (since I also had to make a decision on this today)

ETH also appears it will end up having the first secure instant off chain transactions system (although realistically via centralized hubs).

BTC is failing into paralysis and self-destruction, which is tarnishing its former flagship image.

DASH is a fool's pyramid pump scheme.

Monero (XMR) doesn't have instant transaction scaling so I can't put it in the same league as the others. @AnonyMity (and privacy) is a feature every serious ecosystem can offer as an option so IMO it isn't sufficient as a sole selling point. Monero has a self-adjusting block size algorithm (but I've argued all PoW systems are subject to the same centralization effect as they scale regardless), but adoption is about scaling and ecosystem applications. Monero might be a good diversification, but speaking for myself as currently a risk adverse speculator, the chart isn't the same as BTC, ETH, and DASH so there might be something else going on there (although one could argue it is same or exaggerated first hump due to BTC millionaire @rpietila shilling it in 2014). Not sure. Ditto Byteball's chart doesn't give me enough confidence to bet big on it (and also know it has major technical flaws such as the transaction fee design and the witness replacement mechanism), although for speculators who want more risk they might consider it.

Thus I've diversified into ETH (with BTC that technically isn't even mine as it was given to me by my angel investor). Best of the worst. Except I do agree that Ethereum has more app-specific (aka smart contract) ecosystem development than any other.


I agree about Bitcoin except Bitcoin is putting that #1 position in great danger by mucking around with HFs such as the technologically myopic Bitcoin Unlimited.

I agree on Dash.

I agree the possibility of hacks in Ethereum is great, but I am not diversifying into it long-term. I'll be back out of it again when I see the next YUGE smart contract which a hacker can target. I think Ethereum's community will be much more diligent about not letting such a concentrated accumulation occur again at this nascent stage of the new pump that is just getting under way (as it passed its ATH recently).

The real world use is that is a massive experimentation platform for figuring out which applications of blockchains might be worthwhile. And a speculators ICO paradise. Massive amount of smart contract ICO app activity kicking in now. ETH is the next hot thing coming as Dash's pump gets nearer to its apex.

BTC is undergoing turbulence and I think ETH will step on accelerator for the next month or two at least, while BTC and BTU slug it out. ETH and ETC already had their war and Vitalik won.

But that is roughly 3 orders-of-magnitude incorrect about the Sybil attack. It is actually consensus between Evan, Evan, Evan, Evan, Evan, ... , Evan (how many masternodes does an instaminer with a compounded higher ROI own?).


Note our FUD caused someone to sell 5000 DASH at 0.006 BTC, which is now worth $500,000 if he hadn't listened to us. 

It helps when the whale/cartel manipulator's (aka Evan Inc's) stash of both DASH and BTC is very large compared to base of the pyramid of non-cartel (aka the float of) DASH hodlers. And your stash never shrinks if the supply of new buyers is growing faster than the base of hodlers (who could compete with the manipulator by selling).

Also the masternode scheme further reinforces this in at least two ways:

1. The hodlers are not selling because they are earning ROI paid in newly minted DASH.
2. The non-cartelized hodlers are paid less minted coins ROI than the cartel, so the cartel is continually diluting their free market competition. (This is diminishing over time as their block reward shrinks although not if transaction volume x fees is offsetting increasing)

The only way the scheme is defeated is if the supply of new buyers becomes MUCH lower than those who want to cash out. Then the cartel has to expend their stash of BTC to prop up the price. So they would instead allow the price to crash, because their goal is to obtain BTC (which can be traded for real fiat money) for this worthless token DASH which they printed out-of-thin-air for themselves.

So from the crashed price, they could buy out all the bagholders and renew the pump process again (while not losing much of their BTC stash).

So that is why I say, that at nosebleed levels, Dash is likely to have crash event at some point, especially people stop believing Dash's InstantX offers anything worthwhile (e.g. when Ethereum and Bitcoin both get instant transactions). I had already linked to the math security errors and design flaws of InstantX, but the n00bs prefer their delusion and only a competing ecosystem with the same features and more adoption will defeat their technological ignorance and delusion.

We are not quite there yet, but at another 4 - 10X the current Dash price, it is possible depending on what happens with other developments interim.

The long-term death of Dash is when some project has moved on to attain millions of users adoption and Dash offers no features that aren't already provided by that mainstream project. Then no one will buy Dash's hype any more. It will be like Steem with a crashed price and loss of speculator confidence in their ability to FOMO pump it to fools again.

I was able to cash out ~$6000 of earnings from blogging on Steem (which has sustained me during this years when I was ill with disseminated Tuberculosis and didn't even know which illness I had), which also dovetailed with my research about decentralization. So it was very productive use of my time. Also I still hold 5421 STEEM as a hedge against if Steem actually got their head-out-of-their-ass and promoted their scaling advantages (which are superior to both Dash and Ethereum).

You are still on ignore (not because I dislike you as a human being actually you are often cordial, but because you violated all your own principles by going easy on Dash recently and because you waste my very scarce time with the frequent defense against your ad hominem attacks about actions, motives, etc ... so it is more productive if I don't even know what you are writing about me), but I saw someone quoted your comment in another thread, where you made this same accusation against me.

Most of us are here for a combination of profit and trying to appeal to our idealism about decentralization. Most of us are losing some of our enthusiasm about whether decentralization can really be obtained. But the Internet should be our inspirational example, that maybe it can be achieved. The YUGE distinction is that the Internet is not a total ordering and consensus is. So that is where the centralization always creeps in (via economies-of-scale).

I am not just working on decentralization of consensus systems. My work also includes improvements to the JavaScript ecosystem designing a new transpiler for an improved mainstream programming language. I continue to try to generate value for humanity and earn a living while doing so. I reject your Communism.

The Internet is a counter example. The mass media centralization was defeated by the Internet. Facebook and Google are next to be defeated (along with StackExchange! grrrr)

My decentralization design is to bring the Linus' law (given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow) Internet model to consensus systems. This in theory inverts the economics lamented by the following:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=984
http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/#example-2-delegated-proof-of-stake-dpos

I had some initial doubts about my system (as I was writing it down and thinking it all out) because the choke point is who controls which clients the users download, but the Internet has proven (e.g. BitTorrent) there is no such choke point. So I think I have the solution we need, but peer review will be nice. I'd love peer review right now, but then Ethereum would just adopt it and all my reward would be lost.

Don't expect a perfect nirvana design. There is no such absolute nirvana. Expect something along the lines of the innovation of the Internet. It won't make everything perfect, but hopefully it will change everything.


I need to go back into the programming cave...

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