
Ethereum White Paper – annotated version (2015) - slbenfica
http://fermatslibrary.com/s/ethereum-a-next-generation-smart-contract-and-decentralized-application-platform#email-newsletter
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jasode
The annotations I see look very thin.

Was this submission to HN intended to generate interest to crowdsource more
annotations (à la RapGenius)?

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aaron-lebo
Seems to be a subtle way of drawing interest to the site (see the author of
annotations) using a currently hyped tech. Of course, Buterin has earned the
right to be annotated along with greats such as Einstein and Keynes.

Snark aside, this is a really cool site. They seem to be attempting to
annotate a variety of papers (amateur and professional), so it's
understandable. It is a bit jarring to see something by Kenneth Arrow or
Feynman alongside Ethereum marketing material, though.

They've even got McCarthy (maybe a better expenditure of time):

[http://fermatslibrary.com/s/recursive-functions-of-
symbolic-...](http://fermatslibrary.com/s/recursive-functions-of-symbolic-
expressions-and-their-computation-by-machine)

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zdkl
> ...Buterin has earned the right...

Care to explain why?

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aaron-lebo
Is building a new currency that is the platform for billions of dollars of
rampant unproductive speculation not enough?

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ringaroundthetx
That is usually the bar, I like the relativity of how people's opinions
suddenly begin mattering because they were associated with something that is
over a billion dollars now.

Don't know why people may try to create a separate standard for
cryptocurrency.

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yebyen
Of course I'm just speculating (ha), but Ethereum is more than this. You can
build your whole payment gateway from a smart contract. I participated in a
crowd-funding event that (no, not an ICO) had me so impressed with the payment
gateway tech, I had to send more money twice just to recap what I just learned
about this new cryptocurrency.

[https://firefly.city/](https://firefly.city/)

The device itself is pretty impressive for $5 worth of parts, but I did not
really hit "wow" until I saw how easy it was for this guy to take my money and
establish a point of contact and a payment relationship that can support
repeat business. (He's also the one who built this payment gateway, it lacks
some for polish but it is also as a bonus, essentially proof of concept that
shows how the device can work. tl;dr: it's a portable thin wallet that runs
inside of the browser, you get a javascript file that you can save and keep as
a backup of your keys. The arduino jobber is just doing the signatures.)

The tokens do not need to appreciate in value, that helps speculators of
course, but if you don't yet recognize that Ethereum is a substantial
advancement over Bitcoin, I can't really help you with that. You'll have to
figure it out! While I'd love to get rich off of trading the coins, if they
can simply just remain stable in valuation it is ultimately going to change
how we do money around the world, I don't doubt this anymore.

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ringaroundthetx
Did you take my comment to be a criticism or trivialization of Ethereum in
some way? Why are you telling me any of this, I am very familiar with solidity
development

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yebyen
I misread this sentence completely:

> Don't know why people may try to create a separate standard for
> cryptocurrency.

Interpreting Ethereum to be "the separate standard for cryptocurrency" rather
than the standard being about what is noteworthy. Eg. "Why aren't people just
satisfied with Bitcoin, it is already the standard" Sorry! My mistake.

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komaromy
The Ethereum white paper was published in 2013.

The events surrounding TheDAO, which the annotations mention, occurred in
2016.

I'm not sure where the 2015 in the HN title is coming from.

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armenarmen
[https://genius.com/Ethereum-ethereum-whitepaper-
annotated](https://genius.com/Ethereum-ethereum-whitepaper-annotated)

It's also on genius, not super annotated

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baby
is Genius still a thing? It was constantly on HN years ago and the founders
looked like superstars but I haven't heard too much since then.

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ghostbrainalpha
It's definitely still a thing, its just that 99% of people only really care
about song lyrics from (12-24) years old.

A lot of the buzz moved on to stuff like Music.ly but Genius is still doing
good business.

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EternalData
It's funny to see how data generates itself based on societal interest. Like,
you're going to have shittons of training data if you were going to look at
commentary on Jay-Z lyrics but not on, say, Principia Mathematica haha.

