wtf is ethereum?

[johnyj]

It is liquid and too complex to be understood 

[smalltimer]

biggest presale selfbuy minersscam in crypto history.
If it ever materialises ...

Right now it's hype based on powerpoint presentations.
Later it will be: too complex to run stable or be safe from exploits ... if it ever is released

My personal best guess: 1 decade developement to even get it to run a stable beta if not given up on it sooner

[spooderman]

biggest presale selfbuy minersscam in crypto history.
If it ever materialises ...

Right now it's hype based on powerpoint presentations.
Later it will be: too complex to run stable or be safe from exploits ... if it ever is released

My personal best guess: 1 decade developement to even get it to run a stable beta if not given up on it sooner

Seems a little dismissive in comparison to the other responses in here.

I just watched this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbEtivJIfIU

And am impressed by some things.

It does seem like incentivized decentralisation should be applied to more applications than just currency.

What I would like to see is how easy it is to do this but just by using the bitcoin blockchain rather than making a whole new chain.

Is this what side-chaining is?

Is there a thread on BCT debating ethereum? I am definitely convinced on the ability and sincerity of Vitalik, my reservations about Ethereum are whether or not the technical challenges can all be met.

Decentralised apps may be the future, if they can't work on the bitcoin chain (apart from bitcoin's currency itself) then something like Ethereum becomes inevitable no? (Should it be technically feasible).

Thanks for the thoughts guys!

[spooderman]

I just realised the link to Gavin's blog answers a lot of my previous questions for me (posted by Melbustus).

I think I have no more questions for now! Thank you everyone.

[Boussac]

I could not agree more with Melbustus and Gavin's posts about Ethereum.
I simply wonder wether the ability and sincerity of Vitalik outweighs his naiveté ?
Then again my reservation about Ethereum is not about feasibility but about the centralizing effect of Turing-completeness.

If transactions can be designed with infinite (or very long) loops to perform DoS attacks, miners will have to turn to some anti-malware solution like the ones marketed by MacAffe, Norton , etc.
The solution can be worse that the problem with some miners colluding to filter out some transactions on the grounds that they can be "bad" for the network perfomance. The notion of consensus starts to become fuzzy.

[rz20]

For example Etheruem allows to write crowd contracts. No we won't be able to do with sidechainins in bitcoin.

[Soros Shorts]

I simply wonder wether the ability and sincerity of Vitalik outweighs his naiveté ?

You need to be young and naive to attempt these pie-in-the-sky projects. With a little luck on your side you might just succeed. I'd be very impressed if a 20 year old can pull this off.

[jdbtracker]

Oh man, this is going to be a lot of fun.
Etherium will probably be pretty powerful, a Turing complete Scrypt can get some amazing things done, but just wait till the bugs start showing up, or hackers begin picking at the Blockchain, injecting values into those blocks to cause havok.

It's serious business when you censor viruses and trojans or malicous programs living on the Blockchain. This thing is starting to look like a strand of DNA with all it's infused codes and integrated viruses and programs. wow.

[spooderman]

It does seem like a technical minefield. Best of luck to him!

[BeetcoinScummer]

I am not sure what it is. I think you might be able to synthesize it using ethanol and buteric acid.