[ANN] Ethereum: Welcome to the Beginning

[sakkosekk]

I am in, I really like this project, I will risk this investment and see how good are you guys

Me too. If it goes to hell I wont lose much anyway.

[1714306297]

1714306297

[1714306297]

1714306297

[Vitalik Buterin]

Interesting but I'm not comfortable locking down my investment for 1-3 years. The uncertainty about the future of Cryptography currency is too high making long term commitment risky

Fundraiser participants are not locked down. Only the premine is locked down.

[Vitalik Buterin]

Some of you have said "but they get the bitcoins, and then they get a share of ether, too!" But you aren't reading their terms carefully enough--those bitcoins go to pay for development. They do not go into the pockets of the founders (other than inasmuch as they are paid salaries, as employees).

Who/what could stop them giving themselves a $20million annual salary for developing?

1. We will have transparent accounting
2. 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.

Also, over two years, we will be transitioning the Ethereum org itself into a DAO, so at some point its reserve holdings will also be maximally trust-free.

[Red- Beard]

I thought Ethereum was launching tonight at midnight, did that change?

I read through this forum waiting for someone to ask, but never saw the question.  I'm starting to think I had my dates wrong.

The ethereum website originally had a timer without any indication as to what the timer actually meant. Some people interpreted that timer as a deadline to begin the IPO, others as a deadline for the announcement to be made...etc.

But it didn't coincide with anything, that's my point.  According to what it showed me, it was set to expire at midnight tonight (Pacific Time) -- but now it seems that nothing is happening at midnight tonight, the website was updated, there's new content and such to mull over, but that didn't align with midnight tonight.

My best guess is that there's legal stuff for them to finish sorting out, so they had to push it back.  Any official word on this?

[marcusnz]

Could someone help clear the air? Assuming I invest 5 BTC, therefore receiving 10,000 ether, what is the worst/best case scenario after the release?

Sorry for the tangent!

I too would like to read an answer to this question.

[justusranvier]

I don't understand why this thread does not belong in the Altcoin section.

[Anduck]

I don't understand why this thread does not belong in the Altcoin section.

It does but someone maybe paid enough bitcoins to some address to not make it happen.

[ThePatient]

^That's why I'm liking this project.  The people behind it seem to have enough power to be able to pull the necessary strings to achieve success

[revjp]

Hello Vitalik! Quick question! Is there a minimum amount required for initial investment? On the blog you wrote:

...on February 1, the fundraiser will begin, at which point anyone will be able to obtain some of the initial pre-allocated ether (Ethereum's internal currency) at a rate of 1000-2000 ether for 1 BTC by going to http://fund.ethereum.org. The fundraiser will run throughout February and March, and early funders will get higher rewards; anyone who sends money in the first seven days will receive the full 2000 ether, then 1980 ether on the 8th day, 1960 on the 9th day, and so forth until the baseline rate of 1000 ether per BTC is retained for the last three days of the fundraiser.

Will the minimum purchase be 1 BTC worth or will you be able to purchase with .5BTC or less for example? I think there are a lot of people who don't have thousands to invest but still want to get involved early on. Me being one of them 

[ddink7]

I don't understand why this thread does not belong in the Altcoin section.

Vitalik posted a Youtube video yesterday where he suggests that ethereum is not an altcoin, but rather a platform. FWIW.

[asdlolciterquit]

a question about the mining: is it work like other alt coin?

[justusranvier]

I don't understand why this thread does not belong in the Altcoin section.

Vitalik posted a Youtube video yesterday where he suggests that ethereum is not an altcoin, but rather a platform. FWIW.

I know.

Just because people say things on the Internet doesn't make it true.

[ddink7]

I don't understand why this thread does not belong in the Altcoin section.

Vitalik posted a Youtube video yesterday where he suggests that ethereum is not an altcoin, but rather a platform. FWIW.

I know.

Just because people say things on the Internet doesn't make it true.

Just sayin'

[edok]

On your site you say fundraising will begin at the Miami conference tomorrow, but then here you say Feb 1st. Will those at the conference have an opportunity to invest? Will they be given better multipliers than those investing on Feb 1?

[Ademan]

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.

[ddink7]

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.

[extee]

I don't understand why this thread does not belong in the Altcoin section.

Vitalik posted a Youtube video yesterday where he suggests that ethereum is not an altcoin, but rather a platform. FWIW.

same can be said about NXT and some other cryptos.
ethereum, by bitcointalk usual standards,  is an altcoin as it is not bitcoin.
although I do believe cryptos that have their own new protocol(=platform) should have a different section from the cryptoclones.
some people already refer to some as class cryptos (the ones which are not forks) as opposed to alts (the clones)

btw I have nothing against ethereum, but this exclusive treatment raises eyebrows

[xray]

Is this going to be Scrypt (GPU) or CPU only mining

[CoinHeavy]

I am most interested in the syntax of the Ethereum scripting language.  The capacity to write cryptofinance scripts/programs/contracts is the real value proposition here.  The success of Ethereum will lie primarily with its adoption by programmers and the writers of such code and the resulting community's ability to compete with other, similar ventures.

Vitalik is a genius.  If you are considering backing Ethereum as an investor or a developer and you have not already done so, consider reading some of his articles for Bitcoin Magazine: http://bitcoinmagazine.com/author/vitalik-buterin/

He is impressively articulate and eloquent for a writer of any age, let alone a young man who is 19 years of age.

Hopefully in the near future we will learn more about the nuts and bolts of the operation so that a broader-based community effort to build supporting infrastructures can begin.

As for the IPO, if you want Ethereum to succeed then you should want their financial interests to be tightly aligned with the success of Ethereum itself.  BTC is needed to fund development initially.  A team of professionals, many of whom likely have families, cannot work on a new venture like this full-time without at least a living stipend.

Exciting times.

[Ademan]

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).