
Show HN: 4chan on the Ethereum blockchain - baby
http://davidwong.fr/FiveMedium/
======
aaron-lebo
I thought it was a mirror of 4chan or something, but it's apparently a (4chan
inspired) imageboard. Title is confusing.

Blog link at the bottom of the page is interesting:

[https://cryptologie.net/article/424/writing-a-dapp-for-
the-e...](https://cryptologie.net/article/424/writing-a-dapp-for-the-ethereum-
block-chain/)

~~~
kakarot
They missed a golden opportunity to call it blockchan.

------
joshuakelly
I built something similar to this - but as a Twitter clone - at ETHWaterloo a
couple of weekends ago. Posting messages this way is relatively expensive -
storage on Ethereum isn't cheap. Using contract event logs saves you ~10x the
gas cost. Here's the project for anyone interested:
[https://github.com/jdjkelly/transponder](https://github.com/jdjkelly/transponder)

The contract itself is simple:

    
    
        pragma solidity ^0.4.15;
    
        contract Transponder {
            address public owner;
    
            event Squawk(address indexed _author, string _text);
    
            function Transponder() {
                owner = msg.sender;
        	}
    
            function squawk(string _text) {
                Squawk(msg.sender, _text);
            }
        }
    

Others in the thread are questioning why you'd do this in the first place when
the alternatives are so much cheaper. Well, censorship resistance for one. All
of the major social media platforms openly engage in political censorship.

~~~
0x4f3759df
There's a microblogging clone, twister, which works pretty well, but its not
on the Eth blockchain

[http://twister.net.co/](http://twister.net.co/)

~~~
joshuakelly
There's actually a full fledged Twitter clone on Ethereum -
[http://leeroy.io](http://leeroy.io). The difference is that it uses full-
fledged contract storage, so the cost-per-post is ~10x the gas.

My attention has re-oriented towards Whisper instead, which ultimately is the
right place for this in the web3 stack.

------
albertgoeswoof
>Fee to post: 0.001 ethers (0.30 USD)

>Fee to reply: 0.0005 ethers (0.15 USD)

DOA

Blockchain apps are too expensive to operate vs paying for traditional
bandwidth and hdd space.

~~~
eyezick
This statement is too broad.

Current state of software is only appropriate for some use cases. Email/text
messaging (like 4chan) are not practical uses. Financial business logic
handling is a great use case.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
Financial business logic is not a great use case, approximately no one uses it
for that. Almost all of the interest in BTC/ETH is driven by speculation and
greed, which is a shame as it's a whole new computing paradigm.

~~~
fleitz
Speculation and greed is the foundation of all new technology.

    
    
      Entrepreneur: 'Hey, look if we boil water it moves this piston'
      Investors: 'We speculate that this may be important in the future, here's money'
      Entrepreneurs: 'I made a steam engine'
      Investors: 'We speculate that this may be important in the future, here's money'
      Entrepreneurs: 'I made a railway system'
      Investors: 'We speculate that this may be important in the future, here's money'

...

~~~
viraptor
I do not see greed anywhere in this exchange. Also there's a difference
between what people normally describe as investment vs speculation. The first
being assuming a growth of value of something useful. The second is making
money on the difference in a value, completely ignoring what the value
represents. (yeah, the line is a bit fuzzy in practice)

------
elorm
Came across the thread earlier on Reddit and tried it. Pretty much fun. I used
real money ($0.30) per post but you can get some Testnet Eth from the Rinkleby
faucet(0), switch to Rinkleby on your Metamask plugin(1) and you're good to
go. Also with Eth you can lower the gas(fee) all the way down to 0.1
gwei($0.01) and you'd still have impressive confirmation times. Far better
than bitcoin at the moment in my modest opinion and Eth isn't even a currency.

(0)[https://faucet.rinkeby.io/](https://faucet.rinkeby.io/)

(1)[https://metamask.io/](https://metamask.io/)

------
clemensley
So what happens if someone post illegal content to this? As it's on the
blockchain it cannot ever be deleted. Plus anyone what stores the Ethereum
blockchain (for example to mine or run a node) now has illegal content on
their hard drive as well. How will this play out?

~~~
sillysaurus3
It calls into question the very idea of "illegal content."

If you think about it, what does it mean that content is illegal? How can you
forbid a set of ones and zeroes?

It's a fake idea we've invented, and new technology has a way of forcing us to
realize that.

That said, practically, the world will adapt however it adapts. If we can
survive the advent of unbreakable encryption, a little trolling won't matter
much.

~~~
joshuamcginnis
> How can you forbid a set of ones and zeroes?

This is like asking, "How can you forbid a set of iron atoms?" in reference to
guns.

~~~
sillysaurus3
Yes. And that leads straight to the question of morals and ethics, which the
courts of every country are built around.

Guns can cause harm. Does information?

If someone photographs your private life and makes it public, that could be
called information. But it's not quite the same: That's an action that goes
against your will, and it seems quite ethical to let you enforce it.

Yet even still, how do you propose to do that? What happens when a service
literally cannot delete the information? And when that service becomes crucial
infrastructure, what then?

These are questions that technology is going to force us to address.
Pretending that it's naive won't change that. Decentralization is coming.

~~~
joshuamcginnis
Like information, guns _may_ cause harm. It sounds like you're looking for an
absolute definition of illegal. I don't believe that exists given the evolving
nature of law and society. Bottom line: information, content, or whatever you
want to call it can be illegal, regardless of the elements that make up its
physical form. Who is liable in the chain of creation and distribution of the
content may be debated.

~~~
sillysaurus3
Fine; corrected. I grew up with guns, so I didn't mean anything by it.

To your edit, you're just punting the question. What do you do when the
information cannot be removed, and the service is critical infrastructure?
What happens when the content is in a decentralized internet that everyone
uses, and that everyone receives automatically?

You can punish the uploader, sure. But do you ban the service? You'll take
part of your population with it. Most countries seem to agree that banning
Bitcoin is a bad idea, for example.

So what do you propose?

~~~
joshuamcginnis
> So what do you propose?

I'd do what we do with every advancement that challenges are existing
paradigms: study it, debate it, and seek out creative and equitable ways to
deter the negative externalities. That may involve banning, restricting or
regulating services.

> What do you do when the information cannot be removed, and the service is
> critical infrastructure? What happens when the content is in a decentralized
> internet that everyone uses, and that everyone receives automatically?

Even in this scenario, there is still going to be a common denominator that
can be regulated to control illegal content (ISPs for example).

~~~
sillysaurus3
_Even in this scenario, there is still going to be a common denominator that
can be regulated to control illegal content (ISPs for example)._

Imagine that Bitcoin's genesis block contained an encrypted image. Satoshi
today releases the key, and it turns out to be the worst image imaginable. BTC
doesn't drop; the price keeps going up over time. What do you do?

If you have an answer, it would be an important one.

------
elevensies
Interesting!

I think this is the contract:
[https://etherchain.org/account/0x470fb19D08c3d2eB8923A31d140...](https://etherchain.org/account/0x470fb19D08c3d2eB8923A31d1408c393Dab09ccF#txreceived)

If you look at a transaction hash that transferred nozero ETH to the account,
you can see the ASCII encoded post.

~~~
taternuts
Etherscan is nice for this:
[https://etherscan.io/address/0x470fb19D08c3d2eB8923A31d1408c...](https://etherscan.io/address/0x470fb19D08c3d2eB8923A31d1408c393Dab09ccF#code)

------
tekromancr
I wonder if the contract supports a way to pull posts when some shitlord posts
CP

~~~
baby
author here, I posted about publishing the smart contract[1] which might be
interesting to some people as I had no idea how much it would cost prior to
doing this.

The source code is on etherscan.io[2] so you can check it for yourself, there
are no functions that allow me to remove a post by someone. Whatever ends up
there will stay there. Images and videos are not hosted on the blockchain
though (thank humanity it's already large enough), so there are always ways to
get rid of CP. Right now most of the images there are from imgur.

[1]: [https://cryptologie.net/article/425/publishing-my-smart-
cont...](https://cryptologie.net/article/425/publishing-my-smart-contract-on-
the-main-ethereum-network/)

[2]:
[https://etherscan.io/address/0x470fb19D08c3d2eB8923A31d1408c...](https://etherscan.io/address/0x470fb19D08c3d2eB8923A31d1408c393Dab09ccF#code)

~~~
krrrh
> so there are always ways to get rid of CP

What if the images are hosted in another blockchain-like, censorship-resistant
service like IPFS instead of imgur?

~~~
Fej
Then the FBI gets involved, if anyone is willing to host it.

------
keyboardhitter
perhaps it would be better to advertise as an "imageboard" or "futaba-style
imageboard", or even "4chan clone" etc? since 4chan is not the original
website of that style. sure, it is the most popular but to say "4chan on"
something gives off a very different message

------
spurcell93
Be aware of goatse in the OP link

~~~
odammit
The internet exists for surprise goatse and cats.

I wonder what the goatse guy is doing right now?

~~~
pavel_lishin
Running an ICO.

I'm not kidding.

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ne78vd/goatse-
cry...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ne78vd/goatse-
cryptocurrency-launch-dank-memes-ethereum-token-ico)

(Unless you're asking about the guy in the photo, no idea about him. I hope he
remains happily married, and ... limber.)

~~~
odammit
Jeez that’s a niche currency.

I was wondering about the guy in the photo though.

I imagine he’s probably “relaxing” on a yacht from all that internet fame
money.

Edit: had to quote “relaxing” because, yeah it’s the guy in the pic so who
knows.

~~~
makomk
Pretty sure he's still posting new content to one of the more modern porn
hosting sites.

------
p-h
Hadn't seen Goatse in quite a while.

------
mbrock
I think it would make sense (in a lulz way) to run the 4chan clone on one of
the Ethereum testnets, instead of the mainnet. It's a lot cheaper, because
you're not paying for permanence!

~~~
baby
You can run it on the Rinkeby test network, just switch to it via your wallet
(metamask, mist, ...) and reload the page.

------
ecesena
It's a nice proof of concept, but $0.3 for posting seems extremely expensive.
In addition, there's no guaranteed visibility unlike creating an ad on any
platform, so why would I want to post here? (I'm not trying to complain, I'm
curious if I'm missing anything)

~~~
Legogris
Could you elaborate on how you mean there's no guaranteed visibility?

~~~
ecesena
Why would you pay x > 0$ for posting an image? I think the only reason is if
you're somehow advertising something and you expect somehow a return > x.

Block chain could be great, but you also need somehow to guarantee me a level
of visibility, like an ad provider does. For example, even the job posts on HN
decay slowly in the homepage, guaranteeing a pretty good visibility.

Otherwise the risk is that I post an image, paying, and suddenly other people
post and mine disappears immediately.

Again, I'm not 1. complaining about 4chan, and 2. complaining about this as a
proof of concept. But this as a real product has no incentive for me to really
pay for posting.

------
brad0
I thought that a big appeal to 4chan is that the content will disappear after
a few days at most? By using this surely the content will be around forever?

------
rrggrr
Give me the ability to create the contract via a GUI, fund it in real-time,
hedge it for me, and transfer funds to USD as the contract executes. Do all
that for me and I'll never use another bank or payment processor again.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
>transfer funds to USD as the contract executes

this can't be done in a contract, you'll need some kind of payment processor
to do that

------
amatecha
Free decentralized social networking: Rotonde
[https://louis.center/p2p-social-networking/](https://louis.center/p2p-social-
networking/)

------
emingo
nfsw tag please, just clicked on the link ended up looking at a dudes asshole.
:sad_face:

