Ethereum’s entire value proposition was that it was supposed to be an objective contract platform. As they used to say, “the code is law”.
Of course, that turned out to be a big fat lie; someone found a loophole in a big contract and made a perfectly legitimate transaction to take advantage of it. Instead of honoring the contract, the developers rolled back the valid transaction.
This made it manifestly obvious that Ethereum is no more “objective” than the traditional legal contract system, and its biggest value proposition was BS. Bitcoin, on the other hand, has had no hard forks except to fix implementation bugs. Even when huge players got hacked, the network refused to compromise on the idea of irrefutable transactions, even though it most likely hurt the value of Bitcoin in the short term.
In a way, though, this demonstrates exactly what the article argues. Bitcoin is more “trustworthy” not because of some kind of technical merit, but because the people involved have demonstrated themselves to be, at least up until this point, trustworthy (for a particular definition of “trustworthy”).
BitCoin is incapable of representing Ethereum-style contracts. Even the very limited programmability that was designed into the system from the outset was deliberately hobbled early on to be even less expressive.
My comment had nothing to do with the technologies, so I’m not sure how this relates. But sure, their intended purposes are a little different. That doesn’t change the fact that both rely on trust because both can be “forked”.
Hard forks are supposed to be how the Bitcoin network makes its decisions. The political shennanigans around increasing the blocksize limit (e.g. blocking discussion on most popular bitcoin forums) made Bitcoin just as untrustworthy as Ethereum, IMO.
Why do you say that debates over block size changes, which are usually very technical and deliberate (e.g. Segwit vs size changes), make Bitcoin “untrustworthy”? It is unfortunately true that many people are being censorious, but there have been no reversed transactions, no forced changes, nothing. It’s all happening by the book, and very slowly and carefully. Even if the devs somehow forced everyone to use SegWit or something, it would pale in comparison to actually reversing a transaction.
The allegations I heard was that relevant words (Bitcoin XT?) were blocked on relevant fora, anyone who mentioned them banned, etc. rather than allowing open discussion/disagreement and, ultimately, the “putting it to a vote” of a possible hard fork.
In order to trust Bitcoin one would have to trust its mechanisms for evolving, including for making decisions about things like size limits. Forums and open discussion of things like Bitcoin XT would seem like a vital part of that mechanism.
Im with John Nagle (Animats) that smart contracts should consider using decision tables. Even laypeople understand those. If not them, something like FSM’s or bounded conditionals that can be model-checked for fairness, avoiding ridiculous payouts, and do on. Exhaustively analyzed.
The broader concept of trying to secure runtimes against malicious code/data is much of what INFOSEC hasnt succeeded doing. Dont know why they thought theirs wouldnt have similar hacks or problems.
It’s a fair position. I started with BASIC thinking I should make a grand 4GL with best features of other 4GL’s for max productivity. Security, maintainability, and legacy compatibility? Ain’t nobody got time for that!
This article is super interesting, although I’m annoyed by the ‘fall’ aspect. Ethereum is still alive and well - several companies are hoovering up money like it’s going out of style that are based on the currency.
I do think the author makes a fine point about the web of trust being essentially a human thing, and that trying to put your faith entirely in code is ultimately doomed to failure.
Ethereum is still alive and well - several companies are hoovering up money like it’s going out of style that are based on the currency.
Where’s the money coming from? Has anyone figured out a way to produce actual value with Ethereum, or is it all credulous investors and drug dealers/other criminals?
Ethereum’s entire value proposition was that it was supposed to be an objective contract platform. As they used to say, “the code is law”.
Of course, that turned out to be a big fat lie; someone found a loophole in a big contract and made a perfectly legitimate transaction to take advantage of it. Instead of honoring the contract, the developers rolled back the valid transaction.
This made it manifestly obvious that Ethereum is no more “objective” than the traditional legal contract system, and its biggest value proposition was BS. Bitcoin, on the other hand, has had no hard forks except to fix implementation bugs. Even when huge players got hacked, the network refused to compromise on the idea of irrefutable transactions, even though it most likely hurt the value of Bitcoin in the short term.
In a way, though, this demonstrates exactly what the article argues. Bitcoin is more “trustworthy” not because of some kind of technical merit, but because the people involved have demonstrated themselves to be, at least up until this point, trustworthy (for a particular definition of “trustworthy”).
BitCoin is incapable of representing Ethereum-style contracts. Even the very limited programmability that was designed into the system from the outset was deliberately hobbled early on to be even less expressive.
Ethereum is incapable of representing Ethereum-style contracts, because the community has demonstrated that they’re too weak to actually be objective.
Again, technical merits don’t enter into it.
My comment had nothing to do with the technologies, so I’m not sure how this relates. But sure, their intended purposes are a little different. That doesn’t change the fact that both rely on trust because both can be “forked”.
Hard forks are supposed to be how the Bitcoin network makes its decisions. The political shennanigans around increasing the blocksize limit (e.g. blocking discussion on most popular bitcoin forums) made Bitcoin just as untrustworthy as Ethereum, IMO.
Why do you say that debates over block size changes, which are usually very technical and deliberate (e.g. Segwit vs size changes), make Bitcoin “untrustworthy”? It is unfortunately true that many people are being censorious, but there have been no reversed transactions, no forced changes, nothing. It’s all happening by the book, and very slowly and carefully. Even if the devs somehow forced everyone to use SegWit or something, it would pale in comparison to actually reversing a transaction.
The allegations I heard was that relevant words (Bitcoin XT?) were blocked on relevant fora, anyone who mentioned them banned, etc. rather than allowing open discussion/disagreement and, ultimately, the “putting it to a vote” of a possible hard fork.
Yeah, the forums are censorious, but that has little to do with the network itself IMO.
In order to trust Bitcoin one would have to trust its mechanisms for evolving, including for making decisions about things like size limits. Forums and open discussion of things like Bitcoin XT would seem like a vital part of that mechanism.
Im with John Nagle (Animats) that smart contracts should consider using decision tables. Even laypeople understand those. If not them, something like FSM’s or bounded conditionals that can be model-checked for fairness, avoiding ridiculous payouts, and do on. Exhaustively analyzed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_table
The broader concept of trying to secure runtimes against malicious code/data is much of what INFOSEC hasnt succeeded doing. Dont know why they thought theirs wouldnt have similar hacks or problems.
Pretty much anything except a language explicitly modeled after Javascript. Whose bright idea was it to use that for e-contracts?
When I was 19 I thought PHP variable variables were the coolest thing I’d ever seen.
It’s a fair position. I started with BASIC thinking I should make a grand 4GL with best features of other 4GL’s for max productivity. Security, maintainability, and legacy compatibility? Ain’t nobody got time for that!
Somebody is currently spending a lot of money to completely redo this concept with more trustworthy code. http://iohk.io
Sooo many cryptocurrency variants. Neat though!
This article is super interesting, although I’m annoyed by the ‘fall’ aspect. Ethereum is still alive and well - several companies are hoovering up money like it’s going out of style that are based on the currency.
I do think the author makes a fine point about the web of trust being essentially a human thing, and that trying to put your faith entirely in code is ultimately doomed to failure.
Where’s the money coming from? Has anyone figured out a way to produce actual value with Ethereum, or is it all credulous investors and drug dealers/other criminals?
Don’t know but for an example check out https://augur.net/ - raised some astronomical figure and it’s not out of beta yet.