[ANN] Ethereum: Welcome to the Beginning

[LeoC]

Ethereum is 100% open source. If the community gets angry at the way we handle the funds, they can release a fork and delete whatever portion of the issuance they don't like out of existence. We are thus very aware that we have to tread carefully here.

What stops copycats from doing the same ruining investments of the good guys?

Could you please anwser the question I quoted.

Did Bitcoin copycats and even coins with vast improvements ruin the investment of the "good guys"?

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[Ademan]

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?)

[Bourbon44]

I'm in.  Good luck all.

[btcusr]

Hey guys, am I late to ask questions? I admit I didn't read much except first post.

1. What if you 30k funding goal is reached within a week? 2X ether for everyone?

2. What kind of inflation you're talking about? You evenly distribute 4% new ether to every investor every year? Or, you keep it?

3. Is total ether (X) ever going to be a problem? 30,000 BTC » X ether; X = 30 Million, or 30 Billion ether.

All the best.

[LAHAINA]

Seems Quite Ambitious, But Interesting Enough That I'll Follow The Progress . . .
 

[scarface]

IPO AND PREMINE?

[digitalmagus]

It seems many people are confused by the bold titles being used in the opening post (see below)... I know I'm not 100% clear, so might as well ask.

* Early investors for taking a great risk due to the uncertainty of investment will be rewarded by a bonus of 2*initial investment for the first week and then this bonus decays by 2 percent per day for the remainder of the fundraiser until it reaches a floor of the base exchange rate of 0.001 BTC per 1 Ether
* After the fundraiser closes, the total sum of ether produced will be denoted as X and we will instantiate a premine of 0.50*X for the fiduciary members, early stakeholders, strategic partners, a pool for use between the conclusion of the fundraiser and the launch of mining and finally a long term endowment. Specific percentages will be discussed in the Prospectus to be released on the day of the fundraiser (Feb 1st)
* The fiduciary members will be vested over a 12 month period and cannot divest more than ⅓ of their position per year thereafter

... Since you used different terms; for example: "Early investors", "Early stakeholders" and "Fiduciary Members", are we to conclude that these are in fact completely different parties? Specifically, can you please clarify the differences between each and also which one of these are you characterizing as the ones that participate in the crowd funding that may (combined) contribute up to a total of 30,000 BTC? Typically a "fiduciary member" represents a legal entity, so I'm assuming this would exclude the individual crowdfunders, but I just want to triple check on all this.

TL;DR:  We need absolute clarity on whether the individuals participating in the crowd funding will have their Ether's tied up for 3 years (1/3 release per year) or whether they are able to trade their ether's for BTC or other cryptos immediately after the coin is launched.

Thanks!

[number37]

hype hype hype 

never it will get to Bitcoin's level, it's just yet another coin, and the one more like ripple.

[seek4dream]

intersting. looking forward to Feb 1st.
I suggent there should be some investment limit to ensure fair distribution.

[extee]

If you're a dev and want incentive to work, invest big in mining or purchasing from miners at the start.

invest in mining and buying from miners lollllll.... hm what about NO!
I prefer to support the developers directly than pay feckless miners sitting on their ass while their useless dirty machines (they don't serve any other purpose) waste our precious energy resources and pollute our planet and become an ever increasingly menacing centralized presence that could hold us at ransom (mining corporations could well be the evil banks/energy companies of the future, with increasing fees when rewards will run scarcer)
in 2014 miners are not even needed anymore as a crypto-network can be secured and transactions completed all through ProofofStake technology(proven in Nxt despite what the naysayers say, and its network has been under attack 24/7 and still going). and all running from end user devices (no need for your asic datacenters or gpu rigs).
miners are a totally useless and detrimental category of greedy vocal trolls which now come as an unneeded baggage from the bitcoin days,.
miners have become the main problem in bitcoin if you haven't noticed. with network energy consumption ever increasing and the mining becoming increasingly polarized.
http://www.bitcarbon.org/introduction.html (skip the global warming BS and read the footprint calculations....3x worlds total if it is to become the worlds currency)
and bitcoin's PoW wasn't even fair distribution cos early miners who got an early sniff (those from the cryptomailing list) got tons and ppl who farmed later only got crumbles, and is not evenly distributed 5 years later: with 50 ppl owning more than 30% of toatal bitcoins. . at the end of the day it will be the free market the main force responsible for distribution, as always.
NXT which was "unfair IPO bullshit omfg?" after only 2 months is already more evenly distributed than bitcoin is. just goes to show PoW failed all round.
miners now are just some sort of middle men which grabs the early coins and sells them on exchanges for an high price. nothing more.

be happy that there's any PoW at all in Ethereum ...it is basically just there to give you some free biscuits for doing nothing of real value. just something to keep miners happy.
vitalik thinks some mining makes the system more robust (i disagree) and is good for PR (as the mining community is huge and he might not want to get on the wrong side of them).
imo the PoW parts is just a waste (although the dagger mining should be more efficient and less prone to centralization than what we seen so far in PoW)
you mining community need to switch to investing (creating opportunities) as it is a more worthwhile job than mining (destructive by definition). mining WAS needed for crypto 5 year ago when the only crypto technology available (bitcoin) required it.....it is not needed now anymore. move on.
if you wanna keep mining and pump and dump coins with  PoW you got a huge selection of coins to choose from. you don't need ethereum...you got all those bitcoin/litecoin clones to last you a lifetime .the true scamcoins have become the miners-coins. just new names and logos with no technology innovations for pumps and dumps on exchanges.  this is the reality of current miners coins.





 

[du5570]

I am a new one and I am lucky to see the begining

[Thrillho]

I didn't even read anything. The pretentiousness is staggering. Have you heard of BTC? Welcome to the Seconding. Maybe.

But good luck, eh. Ethereum piqued my interest before this but I'm felling cheeky.

[gutshot5820]

What am I missing here? All I'm seeing is a bunch of smart guys that have figured out a new technology to sell people on investing in their computer generated monopoly money printing technology.  As a trader of coins, I keep hearing every avid tech guy on chats and message boards tout their technology.  You know what?  Nobody gives a shit outside of the programming tech nerds.  We only care if it will make us money in the short term.  All these coins have a short life span outside of Bitcoin.  You know what is most important to people who will actually use these coins?  Anonymity and Liquidity, Liquidity, Liquidity.  You can take all the tech of the ten thousand different coins and none of them will be worth anything if you can't buy ten million and cash out ten million in a day.  But somehow this coin is worth 36 million in pre-sale along with salaries and 50% pre-mine?  Frack that, there are new coins that return 20x investments in a day with decent dev support, this one will be no different from the others.

And who are all these guys that are interested in this coin and the underlying technology?  I'm sure if I read through it thoroughly, I will be impressed with the tech, but c'mon this is just another specially designed coin to make the founders rich with no risk.  Will I trade the coin if it does well initially? Yes, but I will dump it as soon as it reaches its peak , just like every other coin not named bitcoin does eventually.  Trading this coin is probably smart, but fracking dumping 36 million plus 50% premine into their laps from day one is just dumb.  There are plenty of coins with great dev support that don't ask/beg people disguised as an IPO (LMAO) for their money for a new tech coin.  I don't care if Obama designed the coin, it's just idiotic to hand over 36 million and 50% pre-mine to a bunch of strangers just because they have a new tech coin.  Coins are worth something because they are liquid and can be transferred from one person to another.  This, my tech is better than your tech is a war being fought by tech nerds trying to make money off of people while crypto coins are hot.  In three years the coin fad may be over and all these altcoins with superior tech will all be gone.  

I can accept a few million IPO and a small percentage pre-mine but 36 million and 50% pre-mine?  They are just beating everybody with a stupid stick and trying to get rich without any risk.  How about a change of pace and they personally invest 36 million of their own money and then take 50% of the pre-mine at least they would have some skin in the game.  THey want to get rich before the coin even starts and trying to disguise the greed as an IPO.  Trade and invest in the coin, but frackin don't give your goddamn money away just because they say so.

[GigaCoin]

Really solid team behind this development, you can't go wrong. Thanks for the update Vitalik 

[GigaCoin]

What am I missing here? All I'm seeing is a bunch of smart guys that have figured out a new technology to sell people on investing in their computer generated monopoly money printing technology.  As a trader of coins, I keep hearing every avid tech guy on chats and message boards tout their technology.  You know what?  Nobody gives a shit outside of the programming tech nerds.  We only care if it will make us money in the short term.  All these coins have a short life span outside of Bitcoin.  You know what is most important to people who will actually use these coins?  Anonymity and Liquidity, Liquidity, Liquidity.  You can take all the tech of the ten thousand different coins and none of them will be worth anything if you can't buy ten million and cash out ten million in a day.  But somehow this coin is worth 36 million in pre-sale along with salaries and 50% pre-mine?  Frack that, there are new coins that return 20x investments in a day with decent dev support out every other day, this one will be no different.

And who are all these guys that are interested in this coin and the underlying technology?  I'm sure if I read through it thoroughly, I will be impressed with the tech, but c'mon this is just another specially designed coin to make the founders rich with no risk.  Will I trade the coin if it does well initially? Yes, but I will dump it as soon as it reaches its peak , just like every other coin not named bitcoin does eventually.  Trading this coin is probably smart, but fracking dumping 36 million plus 50% premine into their laps from day one is just dumb.  There are plenty of coins with great dev support that don't ask/beg people disguised as an IPO (LMAO) for their money for a new tech coin.  I don't care if Obama designed the coin, it's just idiotic to hand over 36 million and 50% pre-mine to a bunch of strangers just because they have a new tech coin.  Coins are worth something because they are liquid and can be transferred from one person to another.  This, my tech is better than your tech is a war being fought by tech nerds trying to make money off of people while crypto coins are hot.  In three years the coin fad may be over and all these altcoins with superior tech will all be gone.  

I can accept a few million IPO and a small percentage pre-mine but 36 million and 50% pre-mine?  They are just beating everybody with a stupid stick and trying to get rich without any risk.  How about a change of pace and they personally invest 36 million of their own money and then take 50% of the pre-mine at least they would have some skin in the game.  THey want to get rich before the coin even starts and trying to disguise the greed as an IPO.  Trade and invest in the coin, but frackin don't give your goddamn money away just because they say so.

It's free markets at work, it's either you make the most of it or you don't  

Some win, some loose, maybe Ethereum will tank who knows, but what matters is we're witnessing the birth of incredible ideas and technology that are changing the world and will change the way we look at finance, assets & contracts. And i think it's fucking awesome that we are all here being part of this revolution (and hopefully making some decent money along the way)

[108.50]

Certainly an innovative and interesting project. I’ve read a bit about it here, on reddit and the official webpage (including whitepaper). Nowhere did I see, though, an explanation for these points:

-What exactly funds will be used for? There must be a plan I assume, on a more serious level after “30 kbtc should do it for us folks, right?” Why do you need funds at all?
- What are the achievements of those respective sounding gentlemen in the “Who is behind” section? Why exactly should anyone investing their btc? Vitalik, what achievements do you put into your “resume”?
- What is the project timeline? What are the goals? “Valve time” is not going to cut it here.
- Investors commit their btc, what investments each of those listed in the “behind” paragraph are committing apart from promises that are not an ethereum contract as of yet?

I hope these do sound as fair questions and are not too harsh. Looking forward for a honest answer.

[asnghost]

interested  

good luck and hope it starts soon.

[gutshot5820]

What am I missing here? All I'm seeing is a bunch of smart guys that have figured out a new technology to sell people on investing in their computer generated monopoly money printing technology.  As a trader of coins, I keep hearing every avid tech guy on chats and message boards tout their technology.  You know what?  Nobody gives a shit outside of the programming tech nerds.  We only care if it will make us money in the short term.  All these coins have a short life span outside of Bitcoin.  You know what is most important to people who will actually use these coins?  Anonymity and Liquidity, Liquidity, Liquidity.  You can take all the tech of the ten thousand different coins and none of them will be worth anything if you can't buy ten million and cash out ten million in a day.  But somehow this coin is worth 36 million in pre-sale along with salaries and 50% pre-mine?  Frack that, there are new coins that return 20x investments in a day with decent dev support out every other day, this one will be no different.

And who are all these guys that are interested in this coin and the underlying technology?  I'm sure if I read through it thoroughly, I will be impressed with the tech, but c'mon this is just another specially designed coin to make the founders rich with no risk.  Will I trade the coin if it does well initially? Yes, but I will dump it as soon as it reaches its peak , just like every other coin not named bitcoin does eventually.  Trading this coin is probably smart, but fracking dumping 36 million plus 50% premine into their laps from day one is just dumb.  There are plenty of coins with great dev support that don't ask/beg people disguised as an IPO (LMAO) for their money for a new tech coin.  I don't care if Obama designed the coin, it's just idiotic to hand over 36 million and 50% pre-mine to a bunch of strangers just because they have a new tech coin.  Coins are worth something because they are liquid and can be transferred from one person to another.  This, my tech is better than your tech is a war being fought by tech nerds trying to make money off of people while crypto coins are hot.  In three years the coin fad may be over and all these altcoins with superior tech will all be gone.  

I can accept a few million IPO and a small percentage pre-mine but 36 million and 50% pre-mine?  They are just beating everybody with a stupid stick and trying to get rich without any risk.  How about a change of pace and they personally invest 36 million of their own money and then take 50% of the pre-mine at least they would have some skin in the game.  THey want to get rich before the coin even starts and trying to disguise the greed as an IPO.  Trade and invest in the coin, but frackin don't give your goddamn money away just because they say so.

It's free markets at work, it's either you make the most of it or you don't  

Some win, some loose, maybe Ethereum will tank who knows, but what matters is we're witnessing the birth of incredible ideas and technology that are changing the world and will change the way we look at finance, assets & contracts. And i think it's fucking awesome that we are all here being part of this revolution (and hopefully making some decent money along the way)

Have at it then, I'm sure you will be selling your house and cashing out your retirement to give these guys money that they never had just because they say so.  With 36 million and 50% stock options we could invest in a venture capital company that is regulated by US laws that could start-up 20 of these coins with full devs and office and equipment and salary and have money left over to buy a condo and a Mercedes for every employee.  It's great that we are all part of this revolution that you are talking about, but here in the real world 36 million and 50% is real money.  How many total man hours are each of these principal owners putting into the coin? One or two months tops in their spare time?  Revolution and changing the world is great, I hear you, but do people have to get swindled and ass-fracked along the way?

[lonsharim]

The video published on the project's main page mentions Dropbox as one of the examples that could be recreated as a distributed system with this project, but I couldn't find any info on the more interesting question: how?

Which of its facilities would be useful for that? Who would store the data? Would it be a separate system which just happens to use ethereum for user authentication, or would it actually has anything to do with data storage? How would the insanse amount of data stored distributedly in a way that it doesn't choke the individual nodes, but would be readily available any time?

Dropbox really stands out of the other example applications and without at least some basic techincal description it sounds like just a marketing stunt... so can we have some more info?

My understanding is that different types of contracts will be broadcast through the system for various purposes, including renting out your disk space for periods of time for a consideration i.e. X amount of ETH which someone can accept and backup their stuff on your space. Only the contract will be part of the database of transactions.

[mehransaam]

Why crowdfunding startups could get ugly
Venture capitalism is about to go mainstream. But while online fundraising could be a gold mine for startups, experts warn of risks to average investors.
http://money.msn.com/technology-investment/post--why-crowdfunding-startups-could-get-ugly