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just looked at some of the codebase It looks like assembly.... scriptcode_map = { 0x00: 'STOP', 0x01: 'ADD', 0x02: 'SUB', 0x03: 'MUL', 0x04: 'DIV', 0x05: 'SDIV', 0x06: 'MOD', 0x07: 'SMOD', 0x08: 'EXP', 0x09: 'NEG', 0x0a: 'LT', 0x0b: 'LE', 0x0c: 'GT', 0x0d: 'GE', 0x0e: 'EQ', 0x0f: 'NOT', 0x10: 'MYADDRESS', 0x11: 'TXSENDER', 0x12: 'TXVALUE', 0x13: 'TXFEE', 0x14: 'TXDATAN', 0x15: 'TXDATA', 0x16: 'BLK_PREVHASH', 0x17: 'BLK_COINBASE', 0x18: 'BLK_TIMESTAMP', 0x19: 'BLK_NUMBER', 0x1a: 'BLK_DIFFICULTY', 0x20: 'SHA256', 0x21: 'RIPEMD160', 0x22: 'ECMUL', 0x23: 'ECADD', 0x24: 'ECSIGN', 0x25: 'ECRECOVER', 0x26: 'ECVALID', 0x30: 'PUSH', 0x31: 'POP', 0x32: 'DUP', 0x33: 'DUPN', 0x34: 'SWAP', 0x35: 'SWAPN', 0x36: 'LOAD', 0x37: 'STORE', 0x40: 'JMP', 0x41: 'JMPI', 0x42: 'IND', 0x50: 'EXTRO', 0x51: 'BALANCE', 0x60: 'MKTX', 0xff: 'SUICIDE' } so some one can come along and make a higher level language on to of this.... and looks like your going to be running a local server ala pywallet in a browser to use all of this?  From what I've read they plan to build a higher level language on top of it, but that for now they're going to implement a C-like language. I'm not satisfied they can implement first class functions in any reasonable capacity with their current bytecodes. It's just a bytecode scripting language, just like Bitcoin has, but with arbitrary jumps to support loops which per my other post, opens the door to a lot of problems, which I'm not satisfied they've solved... (yet?) |
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So there's a lot to read before asking a *completely* educated question about Ethereum, but hopefully I'm not jumping the gun too much...
Because Ethereum has a Turing complete scripting language, you cannot necessarily know how many cycles a script will take to execute, but Ethereum charges a fee based on how many cycles (past 16) that it takes your script to execute, how are you handling that?
If the contract doesn't have enough funds to fully feed it, my understanding is that it will cease execution. After all, if you're a miner, why would you do work for no fee? Well that really sucks, that means you have to significantly overpay if you can't predict the runtime of your contract (which is a fact of turing completeness, though it's possible to write programs which have a deterministic run-length, what's the point of having a turing complete scripting language in that case?) Then again it'd also suck to have an address drained of funds because of an accidental infinite loop in one of your scripts (though I hope you're not "testing live"!). My point is there are multiple ways to handle this, all of them seem to suck in multiple ways, so I'm wondering what the devs are doing. Vitalik says: http://bitcoinmagazine.com/9671/ethereum-next-generation-cryptocurrency-decentralized-application-platform/Fees - Ethereum contracts will regulate its Turing-complete functionality and prevent abusive transactions such as memory hogs and infinite loop scripts by instituting a transaction fee for each computational step of script execution. More expensive operations, such as storage accesses and cryptographic operations, will have higher fees, and there will also be a fee for every item of storage that a contract fills up. To encourage contracts to clean up after themselves, if a contract reduces the amount of storage that it uses a negative fee will be charged; in fact, there is a special SUICIDE opcode to clear a contract and send all funds and the hefty negative fee back to its creator. I'm afraid that doesn't answer my question though, hopefully this will clarify my concern. I assume a script will stop dead if you run out of fees, but does that mean you have to massively overpay your fees to ensure complete execution? The direct consequence of including a turing complete scripting language is you can writes scripts which you *cannot* know ahead of time how long they will execute for, and consequently, you cannot know ahead of time how much it will cost in fees. If, on the other hand, you write scripts which you *can* know their execution length ahead of time, you may as well not have used a turing complete language to begin with! I personally think the scripting language would have probably been better off with a "for each" like construct, and restricting JMP to forward jumps only. Since you can design your "for each" to be reasonable *prior* to execution (though obviously you could still construct a program which you can't reason about completely, it reigns in the potential for infinite loops if you implement it right). |
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So there's a lot to read before asking a *completely* educated question about Ethereum, but hopefully I'm not jumping the gun too much...
Because Ethereum has a Turing complete scripting language, you cannot necessarily know how many cycles a script will take to execute, but Ethereum charges a fee based on how many cycles (past 16) that it takes your script to execute, how are you handling that?
If the contract doesn't have enough funds to fully feed it, my understanding is that it will cease execution. After all, if you're a miner, why would you do work for no fee? Well that really sucks, that means you have to significantly overpay if you can't predict the runtime of your contract (which is a fact of turing completeness, though it's possible to write programs which have a deterministic run-length, what's the point of having a turing complete scripting language in that case?) Then again it'd also suck to have an address drained of funds because of an accidental infinite loop in one of your scripts (though I hope you're not "testing live"!). My point is there are multiple ways to handle this, all of them seem to suck in multiple ways, so I'm wondering what the devs are doing. |
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So there's a lot to read before asking a *completely* educated question about Ethereum, but hopefully I'm not jumping the gun too much...
Because Ethereum has a Turing complete scripting language, you cannot necessarily know how many cycles a script will take to execute, but Ethereum charges a fee based on how many cycles (past 16) that it takes your script to execute, how are you handling that?
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The poll is biassed in my opinion or the thread has been poorly researched. The best altcoin is the one that gives most value either by pump and dump or by stability. There are many coins that can make it. No one knows. There are many coins that give good value if pumped and dumped. If you look at the coin market cap for most adopted coin ( http://coinmarketcap.com/) then Feathercoin is #10 whereas Worldcoin, Quarkcoin and Megacoin are higher yet not mentioned in this thread. Pump and dump coins are not valuable in any real sense, they're just bubbles ready to burst, I don't know why you'd say that provides value. The winners in pump and dump are completely at the expense of the losers, no wealth has been created, the world is not a better place, and it doesn't even serve as a good medium of exchange... EDIT: I guess the initial question is "what should we invest in" which is different from the topic of "what is the best altcoin" and I guess pump and dump could be a valid investment vehicle, albeit a very risky one, you never know if you're the *greatest* fool or not. Yes the topic is "What is the best altcoin" that can be interpreted in many ways. For me the best altcoin is the one I can earn money with. Bubbles allow money to be made we all do it, also what is a bubble? Bitcoin is bubbling all the time is it wrong to invest in Bitcoin. The topic title "what should we invest in" would better fit the purpose of the topic. I believe you want to know in which coin you would put your money for an extended period of time. My definition of "Pump and dump" is mining a coin and trading it for LTC,BTC or whatever. This is risky but can yield good returns and sometimes you become an early adopter of newer coins. Worldcoin and Megacoin have been good for me and I hope my Emerald mining will be profitable too. Fontas style "Pump and Dump" is market manipulation and is ofcourse a bad thing and extremely risky since you can't trust the guy organizing these pump&dumps. And yes I'm a fool  I think you're right that OP meant the title to be "what should we invest in" so now I'm off topic... I think the question "What will be the best Altcoin" is very interesting though. I think it's determined by what makes a good currency, I think that's defined by basic utility (though not much, a currency is helped by, but not defined by its basic utility), scarcity, durability (keeps its value), and liquidity. Other things like fungibility, transportability are roughly identical between cryptocurrencies. Durability and liquidity are also basically impossible to predict, but they probably are influenced by the two other properties I mentioned, scarcity but moreso basic utility. |
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The poll is biassed in my opinion or the thread has been poorly researched. The best altcoin is the one that gives most value either by pump and dump or by stability. There are many coins that can make it. No one knows. There are many coins that give good value if pumped and dumped. If you look at the coin market cap for most adopted coin ( http://coinmarketcap.com/) then Feathercoin is #10 whereas Worldcoin, Quarkcoin and Megacoin are higher yet not mentioned in this thread. Pump and dump coins are not valuable in any real sense, they're just bubbles ready to burst, I don't know why you'd say that provides value. The winners in pump and dump are completely at the expense of the losers, no wealth has been created, the world is not a better place, and it doesn't even serve as a good medium of exchange... EDIT: I guess the initial question is "what should we invest in" which is different from the topic of "what is the best altcoin" and I guess pump and dump could be a valid investment vehicle, albeit a very risky one, you never know if you're the *greatest* fool or not. |
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Namecoin is the only altcoin with a strong reason to exist. Most other alts are very slight variations on a theme, and I don't think that's a good reason to exist. *Because* LTC is the second most popular coin, and because of the short block time, and super low fees (in part because of the lower value of LTC) I think LTC has some value, but it's still just a slight variation on BTC.
If one of the proof-of-stake coins does things "right" (no central checkpointing, prevents gaming the blockchain, etc) that would be very worthy of people's use, but I am unaware of a proof-of-stake coin that avoids the above.
In short, I think Namecoin is clearly the best Altcoin, as it offers something new, maybe LTC as a third.
I predict LTC will continue to be #2 though, because people never listen to me ;-)
Read my post on Namecoin being the Platinum of cryptos. http://www.legitcoinage.com/?p=90Interesting article, I'm glad at the end you mentioned that scarcity isn't the only thing to look at, since that's what I was thinking to myself through the first part of the article  . I think Namecoin deserves an analysis of its value based on its value as a distributed DNS, its value as a general K/V store (some people are talking about building in a torrent tracker, and other features, since Namecoin isn't technically limited to DNS), along with scarcity, and its development problems (NMC has a leadership issue right now). |
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Most altcoins use a different proof of work algorithm from Bitcoin. Bitcoin, Namecoin, and a few others use SHA256, which is what Block Erupters calculate, very quickly, this is the only thing they can do. Litecoin, and most of the other altcoins use Scrypt, a totally different algorithm, which they chose specifically to keep ASICs out so they could continue GPU mining. Ultimately ASICs will probably find their way to Scrypt, but Scrypt is apparently harder to create an ASIC for, possibly because it requires lots of memory, and that memory can't be on-die with the ASIC, and so you end up with a need for external memory modules, so then you end up being memory bus limited, and you end up not much better off than GPU mining, except possibly more efficient. (Note that is *my* understanding, and it's possibly incorrect)
TL;DR Most altcoins use the Scrypt algorithm for proof-of-work which Block Erupters can't do.
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Namecoin is the only altcoin with a strong reason to exist. Most other alts are very slight variations on a theme, and I don't think that's a good reason to exist. *Because* LTC is the second most popular coin, and because of the short block time, and super low fees (in part because of the lower value of LTC) I think LTC has some value, but it's still just a slight variation on BTC.
If one of the proof-of-stake coins does things "right" (no central checkpointing, prevents gaming the blockchain, etc) that would be very worthy of people's use, but I am unaware of a proof-of-stake coin that avoids the above.
In short, I think Namecoin is clearly the best Altcoin, as it offers something new, maybe LTC as a third.
I predict LTC will continue to be #2 though, because people never listen to me ;-)
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I'm in the market for hosting too. I'm looking for VPS hosting with rather odd specs. I have very low general requirements, but high storage requirements (ballpark 50-100GB, could probably get away with 30Gb initially as long as online upgrades are available). It'd be nice to be able to mix and match tiers, because VPS solutions tend to give you tiny amounts of storage with their lower tiers. I know it's unlikely to exist, but does anyone know of a place that offers VPS with high storage amounts with their lower tiered services?
I don't strictly want to spend BTC, but I definitely want to patronize a company that accepts them.
Cheers,
Dan
EDIT: I just noticed that synwebhost has some tiers that aren't overkill but probably have enough storage for my needs. Are they an alright company to deal with?
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