Ethereum: 2nd gen cryptocurrency with contract programming, "dagger" hashing

[pyrofade]

Very promising project, I'll definitely watch this and invest a little.

I do think it should be PoS though. Any form of PoW will become obsolete at one point because of Moore's law, which is not suitable for a project that seems to be aimed to even remain valuable post-singularity.

interesting..

let's observe history & the projects with the Proof~of~work
what has it already told us?

Is it not healthy & wise to use proof~of~stoke scheme instead for the success & longivity of the
project?

how about learning what are some of the key factors thats contributing to other popular

BTCitcoin 2.0 decentralized trustless technology projects.. ( XCP, MSC, PTS, Etheruem)


One can only imagine with these (4) projects being greatly considered part of a descendent & well
diversified CryptoPortfolio of 2014

best regards
Peer2peer360 Group

i have to agree with this..

[digicoin]

Ethereum is not new. It is yet another coin from what I read here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=420457.0

Qixcoin (http://qixcoin.com/) appeared 1 year ago.

[spiffcow]

The countdown on the page reads NaN now.  Is etherum out?  Is it delayed?

[PGPpfKkx]

refer to my bet

[lophie]

so where is the client and where is the ipo?

[msin]

Very promising project, I'll definitely watch this and invest a little.

I do think it should be PoS though. Any form of PoW will become obsolete at one point because of Moore's law, which is not suitable for a project that seems to be aimed to even remain valuable post-singularity.

interesting..

let's observe history & the projects with the Proof~of~work
what has it already told us?

Is it not healthy & wise to use proof~of~stoke scheme instead for the success & longivity of the
project?

how about learning what are some of the key factors thats contributing to other popular

BTCitcoin 2.0 decentralized trustless technology projects.. ( XCP, MSC, PTS, Etheruem)


One can only imagine with these (4) projects being greatly considered part of a descendent & well
diversified CryptoPortfolio of 2014

best regards
Peer2peer360 Group

This is one of the most confusing posts I have read this year.

[msin]

Since Ethereum needs a re-write, how long with the launch be delayed?  Can't be good for the Conference IPO announcement.

Nonsense, and I don't mean to be rude. But to say that something that's not yet deployed needs a rewrite simply doesn't make sense. Dagger is well understood and within the time it will take to get the main net going it will for sure receive many upgrades (some of them being organized as contests though the funding).

In short, fear not, Ethereum is coming and the early code on github demonstrates commitment not seen elsewhere.

It's okay, I'm used to people being rude to me on a daily basis, after all I'm married with two kids. 

[northranger79510]

The countdown on the page reads NaN now.  Is etherum out?  Is it delayed?

Lol. Switch to Firefox or Chrome. Guess they didnt make their site IE compatible

[Ursium]

It's okay, I'm used to people being rude to me on a daily basis, after all I'm married with two kids. 

I feel your pain, brother

[Rassah]

Pretty messed up seeing people discussing Ethereum on here from the point of view of "coin and profit," instead of "platform and possibilities." I guess it's mostly the same newbies that still see Bitcoin as just a coin/commodity to invest in, and not a financial platform to develop on top of. Personally, I would invest 20BTC in things like BitMessage and OpenTransactions, despite their "coins" themselves not having any value, just because the possibilities they offer as platforms are enormous! I will be investing in this as well. Not because of the possible return on the coins (though I suspect that will still be substantial), and not even because of the initially proposed technology (which, as someone pointed out, is similar to some other coins out there), but because of the team involved. Ask any top VC out there. They don't invest in ideas, they invest in people. It's also why Bitcoin will always be top coin, despite other altcoins constantly coming out with little fixes here and there. The quality, and quantity, of people working on it is way superior to any other alternatives.

<rant>
As for PoS, I really hope Ethereum doesn't take that route. PoW "decentralizes" the act of securing the currency from the currency itself. With PoW, I have a choice to either invest in the currency itself by buying it directly, OR invest in securing the currency by using it to buy mining hardware. There is also absolutely nothing to prevent a new miner from entering and competing with others, regardless of how many coins others hold. As a wealthy coin holder, I can't prevent a PoW miner from coming in and continuing to enforce rules on how I can spend my coins. The most I can do is spend some of my coins to buy some hardware and join him.
PoW, on the other hand, incentivises, and in fact directs, the flow of money to one or few people, since you invest in "mining" by holding the coins themselves, and continue to increase your wealth by having those same coins collect even more coins. Threat of 51% in PoW is quickly resolved by having miners switch pools and redistribute themselves. Threat of a 51% in PoS can't be fixed by having mining wealth redistributed. Worst case end-game scenario in PoS is wealthy PoS miners continuing to accumulate wealth until they get a majority of the stake, while allowing users to become more and more dependent on their PoS coins, then the wealthy few pool their resources together, create a single, completely controling PoS stake, and change the coin to do whatever they want, including causing it to inflate. If you think PoS owners will be incentivized not to inflate away their wealth, think again. Central Banks around the world are PoS systems, and they do just that, printing more and more to buy up more and more assets, while letting those they sell their inflating money to pay for the inflation.
</rant>

[Seth Otterstad]

Ethereum Thoughts and Questions
Rassah, I agree with you that the people behind ethereum are the reason I have spent a few days looking at this very hard.  I will be at the Miami conference, and I will consider investing if my questions have reasonable answers.  Illegal contracts are particularly concerning to me.

NECESSITY OF A NEW BLOCKCHAIN
The whitepaper states that colored coins inherit the same limitations as the bitcoin protocol.  Metacoins do not, but they cannot be truly secure without having a copy of the blockchain.  How big of a problem is this?  Hasn't the Electrum model worked for Bitcoin?  Is there a big issue with just querying a bunch of supernodes to see if they all give the same result?  Is it necessary to have absolute security with every contract, or only very high value transactions?  Is it correct that metacoin clients won't need the first 14gb of the blockchain?

BITCOIN BLOCKCHAIN SIZE
Bitcoin Magazine's analysis showed that since storage capacity and internet bandwidth follow Moore's law, the blockchain size will not be a problem to store on phones.  How many years from now should we predict that the blockchain size will become irrelevant?  If the blockchain size were irrelevant, would that remove the need for ethereum?  How much demand is there for blockchain contracts at this time, and how fast should we expect demand to accelerate?

ETHEREUM BLOCKCHAIN
How fast should we estimate the ethereum blockchain size will grow?  What will be the effects of ethereum blockchain size growth several orders of magnitude greater than Bitcoin?  Will this lead to more mining centralisation?
TURING COMPLETENESS
Is it reasonable to think the client can be sandboxed?  What will be the effects of these, since the protocol is Turing complete:  viruses, malware, adware, keyloggers, scam contracts, wallet stealers

ILLEGAL CONTRACTS
What will be the effects of illegal contracts? An assassination market, for example?  Will the Silk Road be able to run on ethereum?  Will a database of child porn be able to be stored?  If there is child porn stored on the blockchain that is easily accessible, will it be legal to store the blockchain in any country?  What will be the effects of running all the clients over Tor by default?  Can a 60s block time with huge blocks work over Tor?

SATOSHI'S ARGUMENTS
In 2010, satoshi succesfully argued against including Namecoin into bitcoin, suggesting merge-mining instead.

     "Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.
     Bitcoin and BitDNS can be used separately.  Users shouldn't have to download all of both to use one or the other.  BitDNS users may not want to download everything the next several unrelated networks decide to pile in either.
     The networks need to have separate fates.  BitDNS users might be completely liberal about adding any large data features since relatively few domain registrars are needed, while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices."  -- Satoshi

You can view the rest of his arguments in the thread here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.0;all

DEVELOPER COMMENTS
I have not seen any core bitcoin developers comment on ethereum.   Is there somewhere besides the reddit and the thread on bitcointalk about it?
I am not very technical, so sorry if some of my questions are invalid or stated incorrectly.  I also posted this on reddit.com/r/ethereum since it seems like Vitalik responds there more often.

[flug]

I will be investing in this as well. Not because of the possible return on the coins (though I suspect that will still be substantial), and not even because of the initially proposed technology (which, as someone pointed out, is similar to some other coins out there), but because of the team involved.

+1

[td services]

Pretty messed up seeing people discussing Ethereum on here from the point of view of "coin and profit," instead of "platform and possibilities." I guess it's mostly the same newbies that still see Bitcoin as just a coin/commodity to invest in, and not a financial platform to develop on top of. Personally, I would invest 20BTC in things like BitMessage and OpenTransactions, despite their "coins" themselves not having any value, just because the possibilities they offer as platforms are enormous! I will be investing in this as well. Not because of the possible return on the coins (though I suspect that will still be substantial), and not even because of the initially proposed technology (which, as someone pointed out, is similar to some other coins out there), but because of the team involved. Ask any top VC out there. They don't invest in ideas, they invest in people. It's also why Bitcoin will always be top coin, despite other altcoins constantly coming out with little fixes here and there. The quality, and quantity, of people working on it is way superior to any other alternatives.

+1  

I look at the idea, the people working on it,what has been produced so far, and the level of interest by the community. So far, my hot list is Ethereum, Mastercoin, Invictus, and XCP. Despite my personal issue with the pre-sale, I also have respect for NXT and the community which has evolved around it, and would recommend it as an investment to others.

<rant>
As for PoS, I really hope Ethereum doesn't take that route. PoW "decentralizes" the act of securing the currency from the currency itself. With PoW, I have a choice to either invest in the currency itself by buying it directly, OR invest in securing the currency by using it to buy mining hardware. There is also absolutely nothing to prevent a new miner from entering and competing with others, regardless of how many coins others hold. As a wealthy coin holder, I can't prevent a PoW miner from coming in and continuing to enforce rules on how I can spend my coins. The most I can do is spend some of my coins to buy some hardware and join him.
PoW, on the other hand, incentivises, and in fact directs, the flow of money to one or few people, since you invest in "mining" by holding the coins themselves, and continue to increase your wealth by having those same coins collect even more coins. Threat of 51% in PoW is quickly resolved by having miners switch pools and redistribute themselves. Threat of a 51% in PoS can't be fixed by having mining wealth redistributed. Worst case end-game scenario in PoS is wealthy PoS miners continuing to accumulate wealth until they get a majority of the stake, while allowing users to become more and more dependent on their PoS coins, then the wealthy few pool their resources together, create a single, completely controling PoS stake, and change the coin to do whatever they want, including causing it to inflate. If you think PoS owners will be incentivized not to inflate away their wealth, think again. Central Banks around the world are PoS systems, and they do just that, printing more and more to buy up more and more assets, while letting those they sell their inflating money to pay for the inflation.
</rant>

+0

Both PoS and PoW are useful in different cases, PoW for resource allocation in a network where mining rewards useful work and resource contributions, PoS for allocating dividends and voting with proxy for investment funds and other applications for pooling resources.

[DubFX]

Subscribing...any actual chance of getting few bocks with intel i3 superbook for CPU mining?

[-kj-]

For those who asked, instructions on how to build the windows client are here:
http://dr-pra.tumblr.com/post/73526554416/build-and-run-the-ethereum-go-client-on-windows

Thanks Dr Pra!!!

Any one have a how to build on Linux (Ubuntu) guide?

[Rassah]

Both PoS and PoW are useful in different cases, PoW for resource allocation in a network where mining rewards useful work and resource contributions, PoS for allocating dividends and voting with proxy for investment funds and other applications for pooling resources.

Since Ethereum is a computing platform, and not a distributed corp, that would suggest that Ethereum would benefit more from PoW's contribution of useful work and mining resources, as opposed to PoS's earnings, dividents, and voting from speculative holders. Thanks for further clarification.

[msin]

Pretty messed up seeing people discussing Ethereum on here from the point of view of "coin and profit," instead of "platform and possibilities." I guess it's mostly the same newbies that still see Bitcoin as just a coin/commodity to invest in, and not a financial platform to develop on top of. Personally, I would invest 20BTC in things like BitMessage and OpenTransactions, despite their "coins" themselves not having any value, just because the possibilities they offer as platforms are enormous! I will be investing in this as well. Not because of the possible return on the coins (though I suspect that will still be substantial), and not even because of the initially proposed technology (which, as someone pointed out, is similar to some other coins out there), but because of the team involved. Ask any top VC out there. They don't invest in ideas, they invest in people. It's also why Bitcoin will always be top coin, despite other altcoins constantly coming out with little fixes here and there. The quality, and quantity, of people working on it is way superior to any other alternatives.

<rant>
As for PoS, I really hope Ethereum doesn't take that route. PoW "decentralizes" the act of securing the currency from the currency itself. With PoW, I have a choice to either invest in the currency itself by buying it directly, OR invest in securing the currency by using it to buy mining hardware. There is also absolutely nothing to prevent a new miner from entering and competing with others, regardless of how many coins others hold. As a wealthy coin holder, I can't prevent a PoW miner from coming in and continuing to enforce rules on how I can spend my coins. The most I can do is spend some of my coins to buy some hardware and join him.
PoW I think you meant POS, on the other hand, incentivises, and in fact directs, the flow of money to one or few people, since you invest in "mining" by holding the coins themselves, and continue to increase your wealth by having those same coins collect even more coins. Threat of 51% in PoW is quickly resolved by having miners switch pools and redistribute themselves. Threat of a 51% in PoS can't be fixed by having mining wealth redistributed. Worst case end-game scenario in PoS is wealthy PoS miners continuing to accumulate wealth until they get a majority of the stake, while allowing users to become more and more dependent on their PoS coins, then the wealthy few pool their resources together, create a single, completely controling PoS stake, and change the coin to do whatever they want, including causing it to inflate. If you think PoS owners will be incentivized not to inflate away their wealth, think again. Central Banks around the world are PoS systems, and they do just that, printing more and more to buy up more and more assets, while letting those they sell their inflating money to pay for the inflation.
</rant>

To me, POW is such a waste of resources, we are spending millions on resources to mine BTC, it doesn't seem like the direction we should continue heading as the world struggles with limited resources.  The amount of power wasted mining BTC is absolutely atrocious.  Regarding your concerns with POS, read up on Transparent Forging.  POW is completely susceptible to corporate control, look at the mining pools, you are close to 51% with Ghash.io alone.  Meanwhile I'm forging Nxt right now on my RasPi.

[td services]

Both PoS and PoW are useful in different cases, PoW for resource allocation in a network where mining rewards useful work and resource contributions, PoS for allocating dividends and voting with proxy for investment funds and other applications for pooling resources.

Since Ethereum is a computing platform, and not a distributed corp, that would suggest that Ethereum would benefit more from PoW's contribution of useful work and mining resources, as opposed to PoS's earnings, dividents, and voting from speculative holders. Thanks for further clarification.

Yes, executing the contracts will involve processing power, storage, and bandwidth, suggesting PoW mining.

Other things built on top of Ethereum might use PoS for distribution and voting.

[td services]

Meanwhile I'm forging Nxt right now on my RasPi.

This is really cool. It will be very good for mining on always on, solid state gateway devices and routers.

[msin]

Meanwhile I'm forging Nxt right now on my RasPi.

This is really cool. It will be very good for mining on always on, solid state gateway devices and routers.

Yes, we have an army of RasPi's and Cubietrucks securing our network.  Here is the first look at our high-end forging rig.

http://www.nxtcoins.nl/first-look-nxt-high-end-forging-rig/