Money quote from Maxwell:
“Vitalik’s project immediately before Ethereum is that he was collecting investments from people to fund building a computer program to solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time, supposedly by simulating a quantum computer. (Never mind that even real QC aren’t conjectured to be able to do that, nor does ‘simulation’ make any sense; unless BPP == BQP that’s not even possible, and virtually all experts agree the complexity classes are probably not equivalent). He built up a reputation for himself writing tech explainers of other people’s ideas usually without any attribution (until someone complains), making him look like the author.”
How in the living fuck do you 'simulate' quantum processing? I'm not an advanced maths kind of guy, but I've been following the tech surrounding Qbits and how rudimentary quantum machines are right now. Trying to encapsulate such a property in software seems like an impossibility without using actual quantum elements to do it. Maxwell has it covered, but this whole story makes me wonder if Vitalik is just an advanced huckster moving on to the next shiny bauble in search of money.
Ethereum is a train wreck, and aside from being infinitely exploitable, is now fractured between two camps and even its purported uses are up for debate. Especially after the "code is law, until we decide it isn't and hard-fork" debacle.
Steer clear of his projects, is all I can say.
