**** Official Ethereum QA thread ****

[Ursium]

Looking at your team- it's quite impressive and probably costly.

1) what is the current burn rate for team, offices and other expenses? I would imagine that it can run up to $250k a month

2) how is it being financed? are there big seed investors? any commitments ALREADY from the IPO?

Thanks

1) It's completely self funded, people contribute what they can. I was at our Swiss 'prototype incubator' and we slept 11 in a 2 bed apartment. Fun times, we got to know each other really well.
2) It's self funded. People volunteer on the project.

Did you guys have a pillow fight?

What happens in Zurich stays in Zurich

[Alohaboy?!]

Looking at your team- it's quite impressive and probably costly.

1) what is the current burn rate for team, offices and other expenses? I would imagine that it can run up to $250k a month

2) how is it being financed? are there big seed investors? any commitments ALREADY from the IPO?

Thanks

1) It's completely self funded, people contribute what they can. I was at our Swiss 'prototype incubator' and we slept 11 in a 2 bed apartment. Fun times, we got to know each other really well.
2) It's self funded. People volunteer on the project.

Did you guys have a pillow fight?

What happens in Zurich stays in Zurich

haha^^

[Come-from-Beyond]

Guys, what about my question?

(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

[BittBurger]

Are we any closer to an IPO announcement date, where the date for the IPO will be announced lol ?

[cbeast]

vitalick could you please answer

[1] I don't quite see how the price to execute etherium code will be determined.

there has to be some sort of clever system based on realtime or near realtime demand for, well what ever the limitation is to get things into the next block?

it could be an etheirum fork would set fees lower......

etherium = a bundle of switches, how do you price using a switch? ( iasked the same question of master coin and still don't have  an answer....)

[2] I am also wondering if some sort of of chain processing can be done, and results are somehow integrated back into the etherium chain, that can be verified thus reduce bottle necks.....

still no answer to [1]...

Regarding #1, it's something we're currently actively researching and modeling. You can read some of Vitalik's though on the subject at http://blog.ethereum.org/2014/02/01/on-transaction-fees-market-based-solutions/

Ok, so it looks like I hit the nail on the head this is a crucial question, and etherium is a bundle of switches waiting to be arbitraged out by a fork, if fees are too high.

Thinking out loud

Perhaps you need a special attribute of "time" to colour etherium with, So ethreium coins have two core attributes, on of unit of sale like bit coin, that is 1 eth = 1eth,  and the current usage of the computational power of ethrium weights in a relative value to each etherium.

that multiplication of the two gives the market rate of etherium.

thus the usage / demand  of the network can dynamically colour an attribute of the coin. say the whole processing network is operating at 1000/s Unit, and has a capacity of 10000 units/s then, the number of eth in existence can be weighted by PRactual/PRcapacity *1/Number of eth.

So the code must have some sort of ability to detect execution requests, so that overcapacity can be dealt with, e.g. 1Million / 1000.

this raises the problem of knowing how much a program will request before you execute it......to solve this, the task should be thrown that allows a code to run on vm local cpu of with test net ruthenium, and an execution rate per second, that has its power defined as current ethrium network CPU.

thus your entering into a PID sort of feed forward/Feed back control system, (better brush of those nyquist stably theorems etc). I'm not sure there is any other way around this. The market does exactly the same thing but at a slower pace by simply releasing etherium forks.

A final note maybe that some how to allow all process to be run on an executors own cpu and only results at the interface be verified.Etherium seems to be pose the question of distributed computing needs to be tied together and pooled to solve a single problem in an efficient not cheat able manner.

Everybody keeps missing the critical point when they talk about forking Ethereum: the user base.

I can create a brand new TV network and sell my advertising for pennies on the dollar, compared to Fox and TNT and TBS. But is anyone going to buy the advertising? Not unless I can somehow attract the users, too. And in order to attract the users, I have to do something better than what everybody else is doing. I can't merely copy content from a major network (even if that were legal) and run it on mine--nobody would pay any attention. To gain users and market share, I would have to actually innovate.

Can you outspend Visa/MC/Discover? What's stopping them from branding a fork and incorporating it into their userbase? They could build a nice point of sale system based on your work. Is that you real goal?

[keepwalking1234]

when will ipo start？ and mining start？

[acorcos]

Interesting article about fractional reserves and audits in the wake of the Mt Gox demise:

http://www.coindesk.com/prove-exchanges-really-money/

Firstly, I was surprised to learn that not all exchange transactions are blockchain transparent.

Secondly, as I read it, and particularly at the bit about decentralized audits, I couldn't help thinking about Ethereum as a potential solution.

Thoughts?

[Ursium]

Interesting article about fractional reserves and audits in the wake of the Mt Gox demise:

http://www.coindesk.com/prove-exchanges-really-money/

Firstly, I was surprised to learn that not all exchange transactions are blockchain transparent.

Secondly, as I read it, and particularly at the bit about decentralized audits, I couldn't help thinking about Ethereum as a potential solution.

Thoughts?

Two things:

1) Exchanges, decentralized or not, should be fully transparent - including accounting no matter what. Do they really hold the funds they say they do? One solution is Open Transactions, another one is independent audits.
2) Full decentralization is in my view inevitable. The second a decentralized exchange goes online, it will become the gold standard - no need to 'trust' the issuer, and users retain full control over their funds.

Once the cat is out of the bag, it's game over for centralized marketplaces, exchanges, cloud file systems, etc.



 

[mxmz.in]

Interesting article about fractional reserves and audits in the wake of the Mt Gox demise:

http://www.coindesk.com/prove-exchanges-really-money/

Firstly, I was surprised to learn that not all exchange transactions are blockchain transparent.

Secondly, as I read it, and particularly at the bit about decentralized audits, I couldn't help thinking about Ethereum as a potential solution.

Thoughts?

Two things:

1) Exchanges, decentralized or not, should be fully transparent - including accounting no matter what. Do they really hold the funds they say they do? One solution is Open Transactions, another one is independent audits.
2) Full decentralization is in my view inevitable. The second a decentralized exchange goes online, it will become the gold standard - no need to 'trust' the issuer, and users retain full control over their funds.

Once the cat is out of the bag, it's game over for centralized marketplaces, exchanges, cloud file systems, etc.



 

How you gonna make sure they hold enough cash?

[ThePatient]

Can a decentralized exchange be properly explained to me please? In as much detail as possible, how it works, benefits over regular exchanges, drawbacks, potential weaknesses, how money (say, USD) will be transfered to it (where would that money go?), etc..
The only difference i know is that it is....well, decentralized. I need more detail (I'm not that tech savvy).

I made a post on ethereum forums...got no answer
I contacted you, Ursium via reddit....no answer

Thanks

[Come-from-Beyond]

2) Full decentralization is in my view inevitable. The second a decentralized exchange goes online, it will become the gold standard - no need to 'trust' the issuer, and users retain full control over their funds.

Decentralized solutions r unable to compete with centralized ones coz blockchain-based HFT is impossible.

[Ursium]

2) Full decentralization is in my view inevitable. The second a decentralized exchange goes online, it will become the gold standard - no need to 'trust' the issuer, and users retain full control over their funds.

Decentralized solutions r unable to compete with centralized ones coz blockchain-based HFT is impossible.

Decentralized != blockchain based.

You're correct, blockchain-based solutions are unlikely to be able to support HFT, even in the medium term. However, OT is decentralized and can handle HFT just fine (amongst other things). The ideal setup would be decentralized exchanges operating their 'backbones' on a blockchain and frontends (including HFT) over OT.

[benjyz]

You're correct, blockchain-based solutions are unlikely to be able to support HFT, even in the medium term. However, OT is decentralized and can handle HFT just fine (amongst other things). The ideal setup would be decentralized exchanges operating their 'backbones' on a blockchain and frontends (including HFT) over OT.

after this comment I would have expected a link to an elaborate report, of how exactly OT handles anything at all, let alone sub microsecond precision.

[opticalcarrier]

OK people, I know what HFT is, but WTF is OT?

[benjyz]

OT = http://opentransactions.org
HFT = highfrequency trading

Seems like how things have been going.

It's not a surprise if you understand the issues. Mastercoin went from 100M$ marketcap to 25M$ in 2 months.

[Come-from-Beyond]

Decentralized != blockchain based.

You're correct, blockchain-based solutions are unlikely to be able to support HFT, even in the medium term. However, OT is decentralized and can handle HFT just fine (amongst other things). The ideal setup would be decentralized exchanges operating their 'backbones' on a blockchain and frontends (including HFT) over OT.

Any decentralized solution won't be able to handle HFT. Brewer says so.

[benjyz]

how HFT works is you co-locate a server next to the exchange in a couple of meters of proximity. there are an army of PhD's working on the lowest latencies possible, approaching compute cycle level (<100 ns = 1e-07 sec).

if you want to do "HFT" speed of light is by far the most important factor. if you pick two locations on the surface of the earth at random the maximum distance is ca. 20'000 km. with a dedicated line you get a factor of ca. 30% of speed of light (fibre optic cables in labs achieve 99%*c), which implies a latency of 0.2 sec ( = 1e-1 sec). and if you do TCP packets you have latencies of 1-2 seconds which is seven orders of magnitude away from HFT. so trading over the internet to a random server has nothing to do with HFT. there are possibly other ways to get to at least stable 1 second latencies, which the bitcoin exchanges don't achieve. the internet's transport protocol (TCP) doesn't care about latencies. CDN's and other infrastructure partly solve this problem, a rather new development.

incidentally if one has studied this one understands why bitcoin uses blocks in the first place. it's impossible to coordinate time under a certain scale. which is the reason the GHOST chain selection algorithm suggested is nonsense (IMHO). it takes quite a lot of experience with these things, which is why I believe satoshi was working on bitcoin for 10 years+. There is evidence to suggest he was working on it since the late 80's. I do support the idea of alternative cryptocurrencies, but more humility couldn't hurt.

[opticalcarrier]

how HFT works is...

good sir, may I ask as to how to subscribe to your newsletter?

[majik]

how HFT works is you co-locate a server next to the exchange in a couple of meters of proximity. there are an army of PhD's working on the lowest latencies possible, approaching compute cycle level (<100 ns = 1e-07 sec).

if you want to do "HFT" speed of light is by far the most important factor. if you pick two locations on the surface of the earth at random the maximum distance is ca. 20'000 km. with a dedicated line you get a factor of ca. 30% of speed of light (fibre optic cables in labs achieve 99%*c), which implies a latency of 0.2 sec ( = 1e-1 sec). and if you do TCP packets you have latencies of 1-2 seconds which is seven orders of magnitude away from HFT. so trading over the internet to a random server has nothing to do with HFT. there are possibly other ways to get to at least stable 1 second latencies, which the bitcoin exchanges don't achieve. the internet's transport protocol (TCP) doesn't care about latencies. CDN's and other infrastructure partly solve this problem, a rather new development.

incidentally if one has studied this one understands why bitcoin uses blocks in the first place. it's impossible to coordinate time under a certain scale. which is the reason the GHOST chain selection algorithm suggested in ethereum is nonsense (among other nonsense). it takes quite a lot of experience with these things, which is why I believe satoshi was working on bitcoin for 10 years+. There is evidence to suggest he was working on it since the late 80's. the idea that you can just sit down and conjure up the next generation cryptocurrency is misplaced, in my opinion. I do support the idea of alternative cryptocurrencies, but more humility couldn't hurt.

where can I learn more about all this? Reference sites would be appreciated.

[koby]

How do I make money with Ethereum?