
Ethereum Blockchain Project Launches First Production Release - ca98am79
http://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-blockchain-homestead/
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jasonmorton
Among the interesting things about Ethereum is that they built a billion-
dollar "company" in a totally nontraditional way. Instead of VC, they raised
money in a presale, the developers have liquidity from the beginning, and none
of it required permission from anyone. Just people buying into the concept.
Seems clear that this sort of thing being possible stands to change things for
regulators, investors, and other market participants.

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TylerE
Is that really a valid valuation? If they tired to liqudate even a small
fraction it would surely tank the price to essentailly zero.

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onestone
The same can be said for any public company.

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TylerE
Not really. Is there any public company whose entire product is essentially
printing stock certificates?

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erikpukinskis
The product is actually internet hosting as a service. It is being
administered by an autonomous artificial intelligence, who runs the books and
decides who owes who how much. That AI is its own corporation, and is a
separate entity from the Ethereum Foundation, which created it and organized
the initial public offering of web hosting tokens. The tokens can be exchanged
for hosting.

They have some value on the open market which is a function of how much people
are willing to pay for Ethereum hosting and how much people think people will
be willing to pay for it in the future.

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jph
Ethereum amd blockchains are incredibly exciting to me.

For an example of Ethereum innovation, musician Imogen Heapis using Ethereum
to create music sharing and remixing, with smart connections among artists,
producers, and fans.

Article: [http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/06/imogen-heap-
sav...](http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/06/imogen-heap-saviour-of-
music-industry)

"her current project: to bring to life an entirely new landscape ... spurred
on by the technology originally designed by libertarians to create the crypto-
currency bitcoin, she’s releasing her next song as an event and an experiment.
What she hopes to emerge is the core of a revolutionary system she refers to
as Mycelia. It could completely transform the music industry."

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impostervt
Not really related but maybe interesting anyway... When etherium got started
they gave away 100 "ethers" to anyone who wanted them to drum up interest. I
just sold mine last week at $12 each. Only time I can recall someone literally
giving me $1200 for nothing...

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philfrasty
"...to drum up interest..." <\--> "...for nothing..."

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cheez
Can someone help explain why the "hard fork by consensus" in Ethereum is any
better than the "hard fork not by consensus" in Bitcoin?

At some point, a hard fork will be required for Ethereum that the community
will not want because they've got vested interests that differ from Ethereum's
developers.

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DennisP
Ethereum is defined by a spec, rather than a reference client. There are seven
independent implementations so far. So it's already a less centralized
development model.

Once the transition is made to proof-of-stake, the incentives of its "miners"
will be more closely aligned to those of the community.

The existing miners can't prevent that transition. They're also using general-
purpose hardware that can be repointed to other chains or sold to gamers, so
they don't have a strong incentive to fight it anyway.

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cheez
So it's more like HTTP than an open source Skype. How is that spec managed and
controlled?

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DennisP
By a nonprofit foundation. The clients are tested against each other, and the
spec is modified if there are any discrepancies due to misunderstandings.

If the community ever loses confidence in the foundation's leadership it can
transition to another arrangement.

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cheez
But Bitcoin has a foundation as well

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milkey_mouse
They aren't too official, and there has been controversy recently over how
much power they have.

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cheez
What I'm getting at is how is Ethereum immune to the social factors currently
plaguing Bitcoin? I don't see anything except "trust us".

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DennisP
I thought my comment amounted to more than "trust us." Development is less
centralized, since Ethereum is defined by a spec and there are seven
independent implementations, and proof of stake aligns incentives better than
mining.

But I'd only claim it's more resistant, not immune.

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cheez
The reason I likened it to HTTP is because of the browser wars and how the big
players can influence the spec. Now we're talking about money and the same
possibility of big players emerging.

It sounds like what you're saying is "yes, big players will emerge but
something will keep them in check." What is that thing?

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steffenfrost
Anyone know how many transaction per second the Ethereum network can handle?

Also, how fast does the blockchain grow in size in GB/month?

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DennisP
They've hit 8 tx/sec in production and 25 tx/sec on the testnet. Proof of
stake should increase capacity to over 100 tx/sec, and a simple sharding
scheme to at least 10,000 tx/sec. Long-term they hope to do even better.

Blockchain size is increasing rapidly, I think it's up to 40GB already. But
they plan to implement pruning before it becomes a serious problem.

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onestone
I think the current size is about 8 GB, not 40 GB, according to some recent
posts (not running a node myself though).

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DennisP
You may be right, I'm just going by hearsay myself.

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repomies69
I have heard a lot talk about these DAPP's. Is any DAPP seeing market
adoption? I saw binary option marketplace earlier, don't remember the name,
anyone have idea how active is it?

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madhancr
Nice to see hacker news slowly catching upto news from two weeks back!

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kristianp
Here's some previous discussions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11197592](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11197592)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11284912](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11284912)

