
Ask HN: Is Ethereum the next Bitcoin? - emgram769
It&#x27;s surging right now but seems to be heavily underreported.  They&#x27;re pretty similar, though, right?  Why is it climbing at all?
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cjbarre
Heavily underreported? Yes.

Similar? Yes.

Ethereum is different because it is built to be a platform first and foremost.
This platform is for allowing other individuals and organizations to build new
blockchain technology without having to engineer their own blockchain.

Imagine if every crypto company had their own blockchain, adoption of crypto
would be unlikely.

So, Ethereum allows you to create 'smart contracts' which you can think of as
microservices (yeah, code) that exist forever on the blockchain, maintaining
application state on a decentralized and infinitely expanding database i.e.
the blockchain.

Industries will be disrupted by the new concept (web3) of the decentralized
app or DAPP. This concept effectively removes middlemen from various processes
(middlemen charge fees and own your data in a centralized way).

So think:

\- No more centralized trading exchanges with fees.

\- No more Google owning your digital identity data.

\- No more AWS running your computing infrastructure in a proprietary, closed
manner.

\- Direct licencing for artists and musicians.

\- Impossible to censor, decentralized news.

The list goes on.

Why is Ethereum different? It aims to make it EASY for others to create ontop
of a blockchain.

A few interesting projects:

Golem - Decentralized cloud computing

Uport - Self-Sovereign digital identities

Augur - Prediction market platform

OH and don't forget about the popularization of a new (to me) investment model
called​ the ICO, or "Initial Coin Offering" there are DAPP companies rasing
millions of dollars in immediate funding in a matter of days right now.

See Gnosis.

Hope this helps you understand.

Edit: Missed letter (on phone), Formatting

~~~
cjbarre
ALSO:

A beautiful feature of this market is that most of these projects have
whitepapers!

[https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-
Paper](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper)

[https://golem.network/doc/Golemwhitepaper.pdf](https://golem.network/doc/Golemwhitepaper.pdf)

[https://whitepaper.uport.me/uPort_whitepaper_DRAFT20170221.p...](https://whitepaper.uport.me/uPort_whitepaper_DRAFT20170221.pdf)

[https://bravenewcoin.com/assets/Whitepapers/Augur-A-
Decentra...](https://bravenewcoin.com/assets/Whitepapers/Augur-A-
Decentralized-Open-Source-Platform-for-Prediction-Markets.pdf)

[https://gnosis.pm/resources/default/pdf/gnosis_whitepaper.pd...](https://gnosis.pm/resources/default/pdf/gnosis_whitepaper.pdf)

It's important for everyone to realize that as some of the more technical
people in the world, we are uniquely positioned to be able to judge the value
of these projects by understanding of the technological implications they
introduce.

I.E. We know the value of platforms, well, some of these projects are
positioning themselves to be core platforms in an ecosystem where entire
industries will be built with software. Any project that makes it easier to
build this software is worth looking into and reading their whitepaper.

That's all from me. It's really exciting!

