
Ethereum, Bitcoin’s most ambitious successor - Libertatea
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/4/7/code-your-own-utopiameetethereumbitcoinasmostambitioussuccessor.html
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malanj
The idea of turing complete crytocontracts is super exciting, but I understand
why Satoshi didn't add a turing complete language in Bitcoin.

Turing complete contracts add a whole new level of complexity (e.g.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem)).
I guess many (most?) could be solved by limiting computation time - it it's
still a scary world. If one just considers how many significant issues the
much more basic Bitcoin protocol has managed to hide (e.g. transaction
malleability). If implementing a "basic" protocol is that hard - the idea of a
turing complete protocol is formidable!

~~~
a-priori
In Ethereum, you need to fund a contract in order for it to perform
computations, and the amount that gets charged to a contract depends on the
amount of work it does. So if someone were to write an infinite loop, for
example, eventually the contract would run out of money and die.

The halting problem is not a practical issue with Ethereum, because the system
doesn't care, in advance, whether or not a contract will halt. It will just
run it to find out.

~~~
anfedorov
How does this work as the network scales? If I understand it correctly, every
node needs to execute every contract. This means that for some large enough
number of nodes, it must either cost more for the network to perform the
computation than any constant cost of execution, or the cost of contracts must
vary by the size of the network executing them. Could someone more
knowledgeable about the project explain more?

~~~
nullc
They propose fixed mandatory fees.
[https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-
Pa...](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-Paper#fees)

Nodes can't be compensated for this— only the single miner who chose to burden
the chain with the contract. Everyone else has to go along for the ride (or
skip verifying it and hope that the anonymous miner wasn't lying). This is one
of the reasons Bitcoin has very purposefully eschewed contracts which are
computationally expensive to execute.

You can almost always perform a computationally expensive contract externally
to the system and bind it with a hashlock or multisig, in any case. The
inability of the a consensus system to perform IO to outside world usually
demands those techniques in any case.

~~~
runeks
It would be really cool if they could figure out a way to adapt the fees of
various operations to match their costs. Fixed fees will almost certainly not
do this.

Imagine someone develops a chip that can calculate ECDSA operations 10 times
faster, consuming 100 times less electricity. In a well-functioning market,
the consequence of this would be that the price of ECDSA operations would
drop, to reflect the fact that they now cost less to verify. With fixed fees,
this isn't possible, and there is no financial incentive to optimize any given
operation, without optimizing all operations simultaneously.

~~~
DennisP
In the latest paper, they have a fixed price in "gas" per operation, but the
market determines price per unit of gas.

[http://gavwood.com/Paper.pdf](http://gavwood.com/Paper.pdf)

~~~
runeks
Right, it's relative price fixing, which is what my post described a problem
with.

~~~
DennisP
Ah, gotcha. I guess in principle you could use a similar market approach for
each type of resource. That might work out better long-term.

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lukasm
"The project’s team, _which is almost entirely male_ , includes experts in
finance, "

I don't understand how is that relevant. Why is press so sexiest these days?
Are they trying to toehold to anything even remotely political to get the
views?

~~~
singold
I understand that it probably isn't relevant, but I don't think it is sexist.
It doesn't say that an almost entirely male team is good nor bad for the
project.

For me is like they have said, a team mostly based on <random city>

~~~
SerpentJoe
If the team were all female, it would be the headline.

~~~
pessimizer
In that light, it might be better if we always mention when a team is all-
male, if just for parity.

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aspidistra
> arrangements are being made to incorporate a nonprofit for Ethereum in the
> legal free-for-all of Switzerland

Swiss Law might be a bit idiosyncratic but I would hardly call it a "legal
free-for-all".

~~~
vbuterin
Ethereum founder here.

The general four categories of options that we had are:

(i) a traditional banking/tax haven (Isle of Man, Panama, etc)

(ii) Switzerland

(iii) Iceland

(iv) Singapore / some other "Asian tiger"

The reason we discarded (i), aside from reputational concerns, is that such
jurisdictions tend to be unstable; they are nice to you right up until the US
government wants them to stop being nice to you, at which point they flop over
in ten seconds. (iii), while nice for other crypto-startups, is bad here
because there is unfortunately a hostile legal environment for cryptocurrency.
The choice between (ii) and (iv) is arbitrary; both categories of
jurisdictions have a good legal environment for these kinds of projects, and
both have a reputation for being reliable and consistent. We chose Switzerland
because (1) the government is more accessible, so there is no need to wait six
months to talk to regulators, (2) we are working with OpenTransactions, who
had an established understanding of the local legal environment and have been
able to provide massive help to us, and (3) because it's linguistically and
culturally easier for us to deal with Swiss regulators than Chinese
regulators.

So it's not at all a free-for-all; it's a solid legal environment with an
established reputation for stability that meets our objectives. If we
wanted/needed a true free-for-all, we would be working with Panama.

~~~
aspidistra
Thanks for commenting. I don't think there is a misunderstanding, but just to
clarify, I was taking issue with the article author's description of
Switzerland -- not your choice of where to set up shop.

I can see why Switzerland is a smart choice, for reasons such as those you
give.

~~~
vbuterin
I understand. I was simply clarifying for everyone's benefit.

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JetSpiegel
Wait, doesn't Bitcoin already have a scripting language baked in?

And it is disabled on most clients to avoid trolling and DoS attacks.

EDIT: It is addressed on the white paper:
[https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-
Pa...](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-Paper)

~~~
nullc
> And it is disabled on most clients

This is not correct. It's a part of the consensus system rules and cannot be
just enabled and disabled on a node by node basis. It must be preformed
precisely and identically on all systems.

What is the case is that nodes don't relay transactions with unusual scripts
to prevent DOS attacks, but once they're in a block they're fine.

~~~
JetSpiegel
This is what I meant, but I didn't knew the particulars.

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eudox
>“Anything that is completely computer-operated is a potentially oppressive
system.”

Anything that is completely people-operated is a certainly oppressive system.

~~~
vbuterin
Copying from a post I made on Reddit:

Lately I have become much more comfortable with the idea of computer-
controlled systems for one simple reason: our world is already computer
controlled. The computer in question is the universe with its laws of physics
and humans provide the inputs to this great multisig by manipulating their
body parts. At the "base layer", no semblance of compassion really exists: the
person who wins is the one who can wield the most violence. This is true even
in anarchies; when it comes down to it, it's the guy with the guns who has the
final say. And yet humans have managed to take this base layer and build all
sorts of other structures on top. The world of programmatic smart contracts is
exactly the same; it's just a set of cryptographic "laws of physics" that you
can build stuff on, except it's designed to be both much more efficient and at
the same time voluntarist at the core - unlike in the "real world", it's much
harder to successfully steal a private key than it is to create and use one.

~~~
FD3SA
Very well said. In addition, due to our evolutionary origins, humans tend to
be inherently far more prone to malevolent behavior. Human history
demonstrates the severity of this tendency quite dramatically.

A an impartial system of rules may not be understanding of specific emotional
contexts, but it is by definition fair. This is because it will always behave
in the same manner given the same inputs.

Given the judicial reality of most present (and past) societies, I would trust
my fate to a carefully designed legal algorithm over a human jury every time.

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DennisP
The Ethereum team just released a more technical paper:

[http://gavwood.com/Paper.pdf](http://gavwood.com/Paper.pdf)

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mikekij
The use of the word "successor" in the article title implies that Bitcoin is
dead. It's a shame how many people (and news outlets) equate the failure of
MtGox with the failure of bitcoin.

~~~
massappeal
I dont think the subjugation of bitcoin to the past-tense is exclusively due
to Mt Gox; the recent IRS ruling in the US of bitcoin as property also
downgraded bitcoin's status significantly, at least in the US

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torbjorn
Any idea on when investment and mining in Ethereum will begin?

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ekianjo
Related video of a presentation of Ethereum at one of the recent HN Kansai:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jjzz...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jjzzplJ3sS0)

