
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Ethereum - wslyvh
https://www.wslyvh.com/ethereum-guide/
======
wslyvh
Over the past few years, I’ve been helping and on-boarding new team members
and developers into the blockchain space. This helped me to collect blogs,
links, materials, and resources and see which worked well for everyone’s
learning journey. It’s time to share that with a broader audience.

The guide provides a starting point for developers who’re keen to learn more
about blockchain and development on top of Ethereum.

~~~
bitxbitxbitcoin
Thanks so much for putting this together!

~~~
wslyvh
My pleasure. Hope you find it useful

------
aazaa
> Blockchain has emerged from the once shadowy world of cryptocurrency to
> become the most in-demand skill in 2020, according to LinkedIn. The promise
> of blockchain is huge. And large companies are continuing to hire and expand
> their blockchain teams, incl. Facebook, Amazon, Microsft, EY, Deloitte, IBM,
> and Oracle, to name a few. So, it should be well worth the effort to become
> familiar with how blockchain works, what its perceived benefits are, and as
> a developer starting building on top of them.

This is the problem with "Blockchain" in one paragraph.

Notice how there's no statement of a problem? Notice how it leads with hype
and technology? Notice how it tries to FOMO you into action?

The Bitcoin block chain has been tried in many different situations. So far
there is very little show beyond electronic cash. Not inventory control, not
voting, not land registration.

The one other application that might be considered mostly viable is
timestamping. Bitcoin is a timestamping server, after all.

The good news is that the problems electronic cash solves are getting worse
every year. Privacy. Deplatforming. Weaponization of the dollar and other
local currencies.

The bad news is that Bitcoin is also good at running itself, which means there
isn't a lot of room for startups in the traditional sense. There may be room
for sponsored non-profits such as Blockstream and Lightning Labs. There the
funder model seems to be "improve Bitcoin and the value of your holdings will
increase."

~~~
gas9S9zw3P9c
The article lost me at "According to LinkedIn" :) I think this perfectly
captures how Blockchain is something you put on your LinkedIn profile purely
for signaling to recruiters and non-technical PR and marketing people that use
LinkedIn, which is full of spam and pyramid schemes.

------
lowmemcpu
I see these "Hitchhiker's Guide" a lot, but other than a reference to the book
"hitchikers guide to the galaxy", is there a better definition here?

How should I picture "Hitchhiker" \- in the book, isn't the main character an
unintentional observer/participant? So is this a beginner?

Or perhaps a hitchhiker is a hardened, obstinate person who enjoys the
frontier and moving around a lot?

I don't know; it never made sense to me.

~~~
parksy
In the books, there is an electronic guide to the combined knowledge and
wisdom of all the various species that inhabit the universe. The guide is
itself called "the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy."

I have always interpreted such titles to be a reference to this in-universe
guide rather then to the novel or its characters.

We could split hairs over the fact the in-universe guide is more analogous to
Wikipedia in scope and scale than a more condensed tutorial or primer, or
whether the reference is obscure enough that it confuses, alienates, or
distracts readers who aren't part of the intersection of Hackernews Readers
and Hitchikers Guide fans.

It never really bothered me but I was a huge fan of the series when I was
younger.

Edit to add: as I am a technical writer on the side, it's a timely reminder to
avoid any analogies or cultural references that require knowledge others in my
target audience might not share. So, interesting point!

~~~
dmurray
Before those books, there was a non-fiction book called _The Hitch-hiker 's
Guide to Europe_ [0]. It was a reference for travellers in Europe on a budget,
something similar to the niche the _Lonely Planet_ books fill today. It was a
big tome, updated regularly with new editions from 1971 through the mid-90s,
and well enough known that Douglas Adams' readers would have got the joke. My
parents had a copy.

That's the original inspiration for the in-universe _Hitch-hiker 's Guide to
the Galaxy_ and perhaps the better point of comparison for other guides that
are named after it.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitch-
hiker's_Guide_to_Europe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitch-
hiker's_Guide_to_Europe)

~~~
parksy
Thanks for the insight, I never heard of this until today and this adds
another dimension to explore.

I read some excerpts here
[https://h2g2.com/edited_entry/A4158164](https://h2g2.com/edited_entry/A4158164)
and it definitely adds context that only really improves my interpretation of
the Douglas Adams series.

"Always carry a towel" is one such reference that I can now replay and re-
imagine as a parody of the original guide. I'd assumed them to just be a
random amalgamation that parodies the overall genre of various guides and
travel literature, it's fun to know there's a solid reference point.

As for the relevance of the "Hitchhiker's Guide to <subject>" title format in
light of this information, I agree with you that the original source is a
better comparison point; while there will be a lot of fans of the Adams work
who can relate on that level, there will be others who either owned or knew
about the original source of the parody who will interpret the format more
closely to its intention. And ultimately it's a format that's so frequently
used that there will be a broader spectrum of people for whom "Hitchiker's
Guide..." is just synonymous with "down and dirty advice to get you started
quickly, without pretension."

This has turned out to be an interesting rabbit hole, personally at least.

------
edhelas
Is blockchain still a thing ?

~~~
louwrentius
Nobody has ever been able to explain to me why it has any value for our
society.

[https://louwrentius.com/cryptocurrencies-are-detrimental-
to-...](https://louwrentius.com/cryptocurrencies-are-detrimental-to-
society.html)

~~~
bitxbitxbitcoin
Reading through your post, I want to point out that all your insightful
reasons why cryptocurrency should be shut down are actually acknowledged
problems that have been worked on by many in the space leading to solutions
that address different pain points you've brought up. Examples include
stablecoins (this name is meant to be as ironic as you think it is), private
blockchains (here's a hint, nobody is using these to buy drugs or demand
ransom), blockchains protected by something other than "energy wasting" Proof
of Work.

I do have a few points for you to consider that might help you see the value
of all this experimentation for society:

\- Imagine someone living in a country such as Cuba or Venezuela or Iran that
wants to buy things online (no, not heroin) and why they might find the
existence of something like Bitcoin or Ethereum useful.

\- You call for it all to be shut down, but how exactly would that be
accomplished? (Most) cryptocurrencies are open source software and in a fringe
scenario where experimentation here only serves to improve the anti-fraud
precautions surrounding traditional currencies, isn't that still of some value
to our society?

Some might argue that these supposed benefits don't outweigh the existing harm
and therefore there isn't net value to society and there I'd just say we need
to agree to disagree.

Have I perhaps changed your mind that cryptocurrencies don't have any value
for our global society?

------
Tepix
Ethereum seems to be taking a lot of time to release their "2.0" version that
provides scalability and doesn't require using huge amounts of energy -
something that is pretty much inexcusable in this age of global warming.

In the meantime other contenders seem to have more momentum.

Case in point: CryptoKitties is leaving Ethereum because it lacked capacity
and had high transaction fees.

~~~
RexetBlell
Ethereum is scalable already. Layer 2 solutions like
[https://zksync.io/](https://zksync.io/) and
[https://loopring.org/#/](https://loopring.org/#/) are already live and allow
2000 transactions per second. This is based on ZK-rollups and provides the
same level of security as the base layer. This technology can be used for
trades or transfers.

Another exciting technology that is coming this year is optimistic rollups,
which will provide the same level of scalability for arbitrary smart
contracts.

~~~
joosters
From the zkSync website:

"WARNING: _zkSync v1.0 is in alpha. Blockchains and zero-knowledge proofs are
still experimental technologies with rapidly evolving attack vectors. zkSync
relies on cutting-edge cryptography that has never been used in production
before. While Matter Labs is rigorously following scientific and engineering
best practices with regard to security, we can not provide 100% fault-free
guarantee. Use zkSync at your own risk and do not put more money into it than
you can afford to lose._ "

That doesn't sound like 'scalable already', it sounds more like be prepared to
lose your money.

Further, on the ZK-Rollups website, we have:

" _The initial set up of ZK-Rollups promotes a centralized scheme_ _The
security scheme assumes a level of unverifiable trust_

 _The initial setup of ZK-Rollups is assumed to be a trusted state, when this
trust cannot be proven. A small group of developers will be subject matter
experts on the initial trusted state. This undermines decentralization and
opens the risk of social engineering hacking attacks by convincing a developer
to manipulate code or provide vulnerability information._ "

This is not reliable scalable technology. It's centralised so it takes all the
supposed advantages of blockchains away, at which point you are better off
just using a single trusted database, instead of thousands of machines
duplicating the same work.

------
ForHackernews
The world's most expensive tech demo / self-assembling pyramid scheme
continues apace.

Has anyone found a non-criminal use case for blockchain yet? Preferably one
that isn't better addressed by a single Postgres instance?

~~~
RexetBlell
Yes, here’s a use case - an open, decentralized, neutral, borderless and
censorship resistant prediction market like Augur.

~~~
ForHackernews
Why does anyone want that? Aren't you describing the supposed proposed
assassination market?

[https://reason.com/2018/07/27/markets-in-assassination-
every...](https://reason.com/2018/07/27/markets-in-assassination-everybody-
panic/)

~~~
RexetBlell
Why do people instantly jump to the extreme negative? Any technology can be
used for to do bad things. The community is aware of this possibility and have
taken precautions. Also any financial market can also be viewed as an
assassination market. You can short a stock and assassinate the CEO and
profit, but people don’t actually do that in practice. Also, Augur v1 (V2 is
coming out this month) has existed for about 2 years and there were no
assassination markets on it. The community would resolve them as “invalid”, so
it’a not possible to guarantee profit unlike in the regular stock market.

~~~
notahacker
If people tout anonymity and 'censorship resistance' as a market's main
advantage over other markets, it's hardly surprising that people focus on the
use cases - hypothetical and otherwise - which wouldn't be possible on
prediction market platforms where the platform operator knows their customer
and rules out certain types of trade. If your USP is the ability to do 'bad
things' to manipulate outcomes [manipulating the 'reporting' is probably a
likelier outcome than assassination, admittedly] with little chance of your
trades being discovered or reversed then people are going to focus on that.

------
anoraca
My guide to Ethereum: don't get involved in shady, unregulated industries
unless you're aware of the possible consequences are are willing to accept
them gracefully

~~~
RexetBlell
What are the consequences that you’re talking about?

~~~
swagonomixxx
Ever heard of the DAO? [1]

Seriously, crypto is one of the shadiest things you can get into. Avoid it,
and any exchanges, like the plague. It's interesting tech, but nothing more
than that. Hugely speculative and not worth wasting hard earned money over.

[1] [https://www.coindesk.com/understanding-dao-hack-
journalists](https://www.coindesk.com/understanding-dao-hack-journalists)

