
Ethereum: the Yellow Paper [pdf] - beniaminmincu
http://gavwood.com/Paper.pdf
======
na85
All right, forgive me for being negative but I can't take this project
seriously.

[https://medium.com/p/4790bf5f7743](https://medium.com/p/4790bf5f7743)

>"Here are a few verticals where Ethereum could engender disruptive
innovation:"

It's literally dripping with Silicon Valley Newspeak. This is the language of
the serial entrepreneur, the one who is more interested in having his latest
project acquired by a bigger fish for a hefty price than actually delivering a
quality product.

Not to mention I'm so sick of everyone cramming "social" into everything. The
"Social OS"? Yuck. I mean maybe I'm just jaded and cynical at 3am but Ethereum
just seems so... phony.

~~~
eragnew
I understand your sentiment, but I'd warn against judging the project based on
one blog post by Ethereum's communications guy. There seems to be some serious
crypto/engineering heft behind the project:

[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=428589.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=428589.0)

Note: I'm not involved with the project. Simply watching it with interest at
this point.

~~~
nullc
I'm curious about the heft you're talking about. Is there any public
cryptanalysis by any of the Ethereum folks? Any widely used software projects?
Cryptographic protocols? (I don't say this to argue otherwise, but I wasn't
aware of any particular track record there, and a quick google didn't turn it
up— so I was surprised to see that being said... Most of the people I know are
involved in it were responsible for non-technical things in Bitcoin space or
more or less failed other altcoins)

------
zmguy
Could someone explain the difference between: Ethereum, Ripple, and
OpenTransactions?

~~~
ninguem2
One difference that I am aware of is that OpenTransactions uses the Bitcoin
blockchain and the other two are supposed to have their own blockchain. But
it's hard to get details of how these things are supposed to work.

~~~
BobMarin
OpenTransactions is currency agnostic and doesn't use Bitcoin blockchain in
way that I'm familiar with.

It's essentially a open source exchange mechanism based on anonymous federated
servers.

I don't see how it's hard to find out about how these things work since
literally every one of them has it's own wiki, blog and forum.

~~~
ninguem2
If you are able to extract concrete, detailed information about these things
from their wiki, blog and forum, congratulations. I can't. It all sounds
pretty vague to me.

~~~
zmguy
This exactly. I think part of the problem is that each of these projects has a
corporate backer, Monetas, sponsoring Open Transaction is building a business
around the platform. There is _some_ incentive to keep the best doco closed
source. There is a slim to none chance that the only documentation Monetas is
using is available publicly. I spent some time setting up an opentransactions
server, but could never spend enough time/research to get a production server
up.

------
bachback
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_fallacy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_fallacy)

"The problem with an informal fallacy often stems from a flaw in reasoning
that renders the conclusion unpersuasive. In contrast to a formal fallacy of
deduction, the error is not merely a flaw in logic."

