
Red Lang goes blockchain - userSumo
http://www.red-lang.org/2017/12/leaping-into-future-red-goes-blockchain.html
======
eggy
I like Red, and I have been following it. I dabbled with Rebol back in my
Amiga days, but not much. Red is a nice batteries-included, small, Lispy-forth
language in my perception.

I am sticking with my Lisps (SBCL, Racket, Emacs Lisp, Shen, and Wasp Lisp)
for now, and my beloved J [2], but I love the size of the whole Red/Red System
environment. I think it is going to take off.

I know Naned, the man behind Red, was CEO of Fullstack Technologies, and it
was based in Beijing after an initial $500k VC funding round from Chinese VCs
[1].

Curiously, I predict a bunch of conspiracy theory people to relate Red =
Communism, Blockchain/ICO/Coins = Socialized currency, and a decentralized
internet running DAPPs to dilute the USA's currernt juice in the internet all
with a connection back to China, but I am ecstatic about a distributed
internet that cannot be censored like it is in China, or in less obvious ways
in the US. I missed the Bitcoin buy-in when it was selling at $200-something,
but I always knew in my readings that the blockchain is its secret sauce.
Aside from the energy expenditure, I like the concept. How can it, or can it
become energy efficient, but still stay difficult to mine to work out both
ways? Seems like it will not be possible. You cannot make it easy for
everyone, and hard enough to have value...

    
    
      [1]  http://www.red-lang.org/2015/01/dream-big-work-hard-and-make-it-happen.html
    
      [2]  jsoftware.com

~~~
9214
s/Naned/Nenad

I recently got interested in J too by the way, how do you use this language
and Lisps in your work?

~~~
eggy
I can't go back and edit the spelling error, thanks anyway.

I use J daily on my desktop as a calculator, and for more involved
calculations. I am a senior project manager/technical designer/business
developer at an engineering firm in the their Entertainment department. We do
rock concerts, Broadway, film, live events, theme parks, stage machinery, art
installation engineering and more. J is like my quicker-than-Excel-tryout-
space. I have developed more mathematically-heavy applications in it, but when
the need is for something beyond J's strengths of array handling and beautiful
succinctness, I reach for Lisp for developing more of what people call apps,
but they are for my sole use. Particularly SBCL. I also use Emacs Lisp a lot,
since I am in Emacs all day for org-mode, writing, coding and LaTex. I am
addicted to Emacs. It is the Lisp Machine for me until another is developed,
or I can afford a relic.

I picked up Shen [1] a few years back to keep me from straying to far into
Haskell/Idris, and I am working through The Book of Shen 3rd Edition. I had
looked into Wasp Lisp years ago for fun, but I am now looking more into it
since Chris Double ported Shen (and with it Klambda) over to the Wasp Lisp
[2]. It made me leave any studies I started of Erlang or LFE, since my focus
is on networking and distributed computing as a hobby. I always stay up to
date with Racket, and use it for procedural geometry generation using Rosetta
[3] instead of Rhino and Grasshopper. I actually used it to generate
procedural truss for a sphere and then exported the centerlines to run
analysis on the structure in RISA 3D [4].

I like to fiddle with Extempore for livecoding, but I am a mere dilettante [5]

    
    
      [1]  http://shenlanguage.org/
      [2]  https://github.com/doublec/shen-wasp
      [3]  http://web.ist.utl.pt/antonio.menezes.leitao/Rosetta/tutorials/introduction.html
      [4]  https://risa.com/p_risa3d.html
      [5]  https://github.com/digego/extempore

~~~
mindB
Have you dabbled with Julia [1] before? It sounds like it might be right up
your alley. It's not a lisp, but it's very "lispy" in a lot of ways, and it's
focused on scientific/numeric computing with an active community focused on
the same. The creators also mentioned J as an influence I believe, though I
haven't used J myself, so I can't comment on that.

[1] [https://julialang.org](https://julialang.org)

~~~
eggy
Yes I have. J and Wasp Lisp are tiny ecosystems, and I like that a lot about
them. Julia is trying to be a Matlab replacement and a whole lot more. I'm
going to wait until it matures. I'm teetering on Zig and Rust for my C
replacement and as a hook into J’s libraries, or a Wasp VM written in Rust.

------
phantom_oracle
_edit_

I know we're all experiencing blockchain fatigue, but for once, I actually
know what the tokens will be used for (beyond the usual snake-oil that other
ICOs sell). For reference:

Some of the target usages for the token holders, will include:

\- voting rights: influence the Red roadmap, vote for features and issue
tickets.

\- tipping: useful chat posts, code contributions, learning materials
providers, etc.

\- intra-community cryptoeconomics (or rather tokenomics): selling/buying
services from other community members (coding tasks, consulting, learning
help, bug fixing, decentralized gaming, etc.)

\- paid Dapps, or in-app purchases.

In addition to that, the foundation will hold a significant amount of RCT,
which will be used for rewarding:

\- code contributions

\- Red-related online learning or presenting materials (blog, documentations,
etc.)

\- promotional actions (presenting Red at a conference)

\- any other actions that will help spread Red and make the community grow up.

I'm not sure I personally agree with turning the org into a "dapp", unless
language-design remains with the core designers of the language and doesn't
become influenced by decentralized decisions. _edit: It looks like "voting
rights" may actually impact this_

There is always an issue with OSS projects struggling for funding. Regardless
of how flawed the idea may be, at least they are trying to find a model to
sustain themselves. It certainly trumps the model of depending on big-tech-
company-X giving you handouts for your SSL library.

~~~
wyager
Literally everything except “voting rights” is better served by a more popular
existing cryptocurrency, and program language design doesn’t need a fancy
voting system.

~~~
otoburb
ICOs increase the emotional connection to a project by catering to the "in-
group" tribal mentality no matter the original intent (i.e. greed). It can be
debated how (or whether) this is fallacious, but the empirical evidence thus
far indicates this model generally raising funds more quickly and in larger
quantities than mere donations.

------
john_moscow
Oh boy. It would suck ass to see those guys busted by SEC for offering
unregistered securities. The voting rights will definitely make it a security
from SEC's standpoint, so the only question is whether they will be considered
too small of a fish to bother.

The irony with the ICO market is that it's safe for total scams with
untraceable founders and it's safe for big players like FileCoin that
voluntarily comply with the securities laws. But if you're a well-meaning
techie with no legal team, you may be easily breaking dozens of security-
related regulations without even realizing it.

~~~
Hendrikto
The SEC has absolutely no say in this whatsoever, as the Red Foundation is
being set up in France.

------
tadasv
Not sure what to think of this. Smells like FOMO. I looked at their roadmap
and they're planning to support so many different architectures. Adding EVM
support seems like adding more complexity to the project just because
blockchain.

I think something like this is needed for programming on blockchain, but I'd
prefer to see a dedicated project instead.

~~~
jesperlang
also, documentation seems to have be an after thought. I want to like Red, but
the documentation has been so scattered, unorganized and limited, I felt more
slowed than I needed to be.

Will still keep an eye on Red though, hoping it will improve on that level

~~~
greggirwin
It's not an afterthought, but it takes a lot of time and work. The project
priorities are driven by the people paying for the work, and it hasn't been a
priority for them. We hope the new projects will allow us to improve the
situation. In the meantime, telling us what docs are most lacking, or most
needed, helps.

------
nickpsecurity
“but after studying many other ICO, I am convinced now that this is not just a
short-lived fad, but a real new model to fund projects, and especially open-
source projects related to blockchains.”

There’s been quite a few of us suggesting people jump into blockchain just to
get funding for more important stuff (e.g. language-level tooling or
libraries) they’ll produce as part of the coin offering they sell to
investors. Plus, with the focus on correctness, it’s easier than ever to get
the private sector to invest in high-assurance tooling. Problem is they keep
trying to clean-slate everything when there's piles of work to build on with
better benefits in the long term. And this work is _hard_ even when doing
simple things if you want end result to be widely usable. So, you better have
a good justification for trying to redo decades worth of hard work on your own
with some VC funding.

Anyone wanting a shortcut should build your language on top of capabilities of
the SPARK Ada language [1] with this book [2]. Your smart contracts get all
the benefits it currently offers plus whatever extra you build plus whatever
they build with the influx of money for Pro edition. Recent projects already
add some pointer [3] and floating-point [4] safety to what they already mostly
automate with that tooling. This is also a mature tool whose development and
commercial use goes back decades [5].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARK_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARK_\(programming_language\))

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Building-High-Integrity-
Applications-...](https://www.amazon.com/Building-High-Integrity-Applications-
SPARK/dp/1107040736)

[3] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.07047](https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.07047)

[4] [http://lists.forge.open-
do.org/pipermail/spark2014-discuss/2...](http://lists.forge.open-
do.org/pipermail/spark2014-discuss/2017-November/001446.html)

[5]
[http://www.spark-2014.org/uploads/itp_2014_r610.pdf](http://www.spark-2014.org/uploads/itp_2014_r610.pdf)

~~~
greggirwin
Thanks for the info @nickpsecurity!

------
zzzcpan
Not sure why people are so skeptical. I'm hoping for ICO to become a
successful model for open source projects. Maybe more projects will be able to
sustain themselves with ICOs, Patreon, donations.

------
jchw
I was pretty sure it was going to be a joke, but like the Long Blockchain
Company announcement[1], it's pretty apparent that its real. Good god.

[1]: [http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/21/investing/long-island-
iced-t...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/21/investing/long-island-iced-tea-
bitcoin-blockchain/index.html)

------
CryptoPunk
Exciting stuff. Just a heads up that NEO is being marketed as a decentralized
platform but its roadmap describes a platform run by Trusted Third Parties,
which have to be approved by NEO after proving their identity and proving they
have a legal entity backing them.

The NEO team also promotes itself as compliant with regulations (probably to
stay on the good side of the authorities in China where it is based). If they
want to go down this route, that's their prerogative, but it's downright
misleading to describe it as decentralized or even as in the same space as
cryptocurrency. It's more like a traditional Fintech company, with greater
separation of concerns between users and trusted third parties (e.g. updates
to the database are cryptographically validated, with each user controlling
their own private keys to authorize updates to their respective account), to
provide more transparency and security than closed database models.

I would add Ripple, Stellar and EOS to this class of pseudo-cryptocurrency
platforms, that while arguably offering interesting innovations on the
centralized server-client architecture, are exploiting the hype around
decentralization to raise funds and users for platforms that are not
decentralized.

Its centralized consensus model means NEO can afford to place very high
resource loads on its nodes (or really, servers), and use traditional
programming languages that are not optimized for the decentralized world. This
ability to use Java, C# and Python to write programs for it is actually one of
its features that is marketed on its website.

~~~
dreit1
There is nothing misleading about it at all. A delegated system is
decentralized, whether it is decentralized enough for you is your decision,
but it is misleading to claim otherwise.

Disclosure: NEO fan

~~~
CryptoPunk
A set of trusted third parties that are pre-approved by a central authority,
and are operating in a platform designed to comply with rules created by a
central authority (the government), is not decentralized, in any context, let
alone in the cryptocurrency context, where the original Bitcoin whitepaper
describes a radical consensus algorithm designed specifically to make trusted
third parties unnecessary.

You could call it federated, but not decentralized.

~~~
dreit1
This radical consensus mechanism has led to multiple hostile parties go into a
pseudo economic war with each other. These parties are fairly centralized,
miners, developers, and business interests, with the users largely standing on
the sidelines of all of this.

A decentralized system takes power from one party and moves it to multiple
parties. That is the definition of decentralization. A decentralized system is
not one that completely does away with trust. That would be a trustless
system.

~~~
CryptoPunk
>>This radical consensus mechanism has led to multiple hostile parties go into
a pseudo economic war with each other.

I'm not arguing about the merits of its consensus algorithm or of
decentralization. I'm providing context for how the term 'cryptocurrency'
originated, and how 'decentralization' was used in this context.

Having a central authority determine who can be a consensus server, and being
explicitly designed to put known and trusted third parties in charge to comply
with the rules of a central governing authority, is not a decentralized
system, especially in the context of cryptocurrency, where the term was used
in relation to the absence of trusted third parties.

The economic wars you speak of could put to question whether Bitcoin succeeded
in being decentralized, but it doesn't change the fact that NEO and other
permissioned blockchains run by pre-approved and known trusted third parties,
are definitely not decentralized.

>>A decentralized system takes power from one party and moves it to multiple
parties.

But the ultimate power still resides in the hands of one party in NEO, because
there is one party acting as a gatekeeper, deciding what can happen on its
ledger, and who can run a server.

To call this decentralization, with whaboutisms about problems in the Bitcoin
space, that are not even comparable, to justify the characterisation, is
disingenuous.

~~~
dreit1
I don't think that we will be able to convince each other. If you think that
everyone needing to run a validating node in a blockchain ecosystem to be
decentralized, then NEO certainly won't fit your criteria. I don't subscribe
to this definition of decentralization

~~~
CryptoPunk
You're right that we won't convince each other and that carrying this on isn't
a good use of either of our time.

I'll add however that "everyone running a validating node" is not my
definition of decentralization. Needing to 1. identify oneself to the NEO
Council, 2. be a legal entity and 3. get approval from the NEO Council, to run
a fully validating node, is not decentralization according to any meaningful
definition of the term.

If federations of trusted third parties are decentralized, then corporations
with multiple shareholders are decentralized. Even the Federal Reserve, with
its regional banks voted in by the member banks of each respective district,
is decentralized, by this loose definition.

------
cordite
I was actually looking at Red in consideration for my next year's personal
projects.

I'd consider it further if I felt it was more complete. Perhaps this is a
cursory evaluation, but it feels like the emphasis is to use what's built in
as much as possible. Given a lack of json (yes, there is an implementation out
there, but not built in), and still pending linux GUI support, it still feels
too unfinished for me to invest my time into.

~~~
Hendrikto
The lack of Linux GUI support is a dealbreaker for me.

------
sidi
Curious - How is Red sustained, who currently supports it? Or what does the
roadmap look like for this to be a five-year sustainable project?

Edit: They seem to address this down in the blog post, with the creation of a
RCT token. What is the incentive for a potential backer to buy this token?

~~~
greggirwin
@ZenoArrow is correct. Nenad Rakocevic supported himself, with modest
donations and other work, until he could raise the initial investment money.
He and another full time developer have been working on it for a few years,
using those resources. This is the next phase, with one goal being to grow the
core team, but also encourage community involvement by being able to reward
people.

One incentive for backers is if they want a say in how things are prioritized.

------
ziikutv
I am excited. Wish they wrote more details on how to participate in ICOs as
some - like me - never have.

~~~
sillysaurus3
Step 1: don't live in the US.

(I'm a bit jealous.)

~~~
rebelidealist
Just use an VPN if you want to participate

------
AlexCoventry
> We have produced a whitepaper earlier this year in October (co-authored by
> Tamas Herman and myself), to describe with more details and context what we
> are building. We will release it publicly in a few days.

Why not release them simultaneously?

~~~
onetom
> Nenad Rakocevic @dockimbel 00:35

> @OneArb I need to update the whitepaper with latest data, so it should be
> available maybe tomorrow, or in a couple of days.

—
[https://gitter.im/red/blockchain?at=5a4128da0163b02810796948](https://gitter.im/red/blockchain?at=5a4128da0163b02810796948)

~~~
AlexCoventry
Thank you.

------
nivesh2
Anyone found their whitepaper for ICO? Looks pretty interesting to me.

~~~
9214
As said in the article, it will be released in a couple of days.

------
pixie_
What has been the most successful use of smart contracts so far?

~~~
Cyberdog
That hasn't ended in theft (so far)? CryptoKitties, probably.
[https://www.cryptokitties.co/](https://www.cryptokitties.co/)

------
flembat
I was hoping the Red project would announce something interesting at the end
of the year; but not something as interesting as this.

~~~
greggirwin
We live in interesting times.

------
AlexCoventry
Do they have a plan for staying on the windy side of the SEC, or should US
residents stay away?

------
blattimwind
This reads like an Aprils Fools joke.

~~~
lepinekong2
No it's Christmas Gift :)

------
Sir_Cmpwn
God! Enough! At this point any announcement with "blockchain" should turn any
informed person off of the whole project. Checking out Red was on my roadmap
and now it's firmly not.

~~~
MR4D
I’m with you about blockchain announcements, but this looks like it’s actually
appropriate.

From the linked page: “Such dialect will compile to the Ethereum VM (EVM)
bytecode directly as first target, and more backends will be added later to
support other chains, like NEO. ”

That seems significant to me.

~~~
MuffinFlavored
Sounds like an opportunity for a startup.

JSON input in one format, let the SaaS translate it to ETH, NEO, etc.

Thoughts/

------
sxcurry
Still waiting for Red Lobster blockchain

~~~
rev_null
I'd buy into that Initial Crab Offering.

------
jabgrabdthrow
I just bet myself 5:95 odds (lose means donate directly to the org - they just
missed out on 12.5k) that there would be only rent-seeking or “voting” in the
“token use cases”. These guys don’t know what they don’t know.

Also, HA HA HA. I used to feel bad for the victims but now I think they
deserve it.

~~~
dang
Please don't post snarky dismissals to HN, even if something else is wrong or
bad. That's no reason to make this place worse.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
lepinekong2
Fantastic news !!!

------
rurban
Priorities. He realized that buzzwords are more important than multithreading.

------
arthurcolle
Its like a traditional ICO, but the code is already written. Interesting
approach

~~~
T-A
Not really:

> We are at the design stage, the first alpha (prototype) is planned for end
> of Q1 2018.

