Show HN: Retail Store that runs on Ethereum
github.com
github.com
And without formal verification, bugs are certain sooner or later.
I don't know if that's enough to make it a compelling use case, but it's kind of cool.
Additionally, your response is in the context of the question: "How does Ethereum help with retail?". Your answer is "it helps to avoid erroneous charges", but that doesn't answer the question of why Ethereum is a compelling option compared to a system that has already solved this problem without the inefficiencies of the blockchain approach.
Here's an specific example, and certainly not the only one: I sell a digital good valued in $20k and I don't need to give paypal $580 (2.9% fee), it can be accomplished with $0 fees with the same level of trustworthiness. You just got rid of the middlemen...
Now multiply this sale for 100 articles my store sells daily and you'll begin to understand why this is so powerful.
$20k subscriptions in finance (like a market data live feed) are not only common but even cheap. Now ask yourself why Wall Street is so much more hyped with blockchains than SV...
> You can very easily end up paying a similar price for conversion surcharges and unpredictable daily price swings
You don't have to pay with ETH, you could do things like peg your ERC20 token to the USD, 1 of your token = $1, the underlying asset (ETH) can do whatever it wants with the price, your tokens are decoupled from its value. The monetary policy is up to the party that issues the token... Remember: this is "programmable money".
I'm not saying $20k digital goods are non-existent, I'm saying that they're an extreme niche that does not reflect practical reality for the vast majority of businesses.
> Now ask yourself why Wall Street is so much more hyped with blockchains than SV
Because SV is more often composed of individuals with a deep understanding of technical topics while finance is more often composed of people who are less knowledgable on these topics and more susceptible to buzzwords and hype (not that this doesn't exist in SV, but it is even worse in finance). This is evident by the fact that nearly nobody in finance is using blockchain tech outside of experimental research and buzzword bingo (unless you count crypto gamblers and traders).
> you could do things like peg your ERC20 token to the USD, 1 of your token = $1, the underlying asset (ETH) can do whatever it wants with the price
Except that this is even worse than Eth because arbitrary custom tokens are of questionable liquidity at best and impossible to liquidate at worst.
Also don't forget that digital goods include stuff like "subscriptions"...
Current status quo: you have to sell some etherium for USD to buy stuff. Every store accepts this.
Alternatively, you can only shop at stores that use this software (0)
The idea has been around some time and was used to buy a Sudoku solution for a demonstration last year: https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/02/26/zero-knowledge-conting...
/Every/ single node will have to run these contracts. Not your node, not ten distributed nodes, but /every/ node has to run the contract.
I wouldn't trust anything with my money that works this way.
I understand your not wanting to put your money into a bleeding edge technology, but there are /plenty/ of ways that Ethereum is working on the scaling problem:
1. Sharding and shard-based consensus algorithms are already in development and can be deployed after PoS hits. 2. Raiden offers scalability solutions for certain DApps.
Why is this considered a solution? All it does is formalize Vitalik's control over the network. If he doesn't like it, it gets forked.
Not to mention, do you know how few Ethereum nodes there are that /actually/ verify the contracts? Proof of Stake isn't going to incentivize anyone to execute the contracts on the scale that is needed to maintain this network. Sharding won't work if there aren't enough people to work with.
What about DoS contracts? I know for a fact, that I can write code to brick SSDs by writing as much as possible to them.
I honestly have no idea why anyone thinks joining into a botnet that allows arbitrary code execution is okay.
Furthermore, all it takes is a single vulnerability in the Ethereum VM to cause a chain split that could, theoretically, throw every node off.
Is it just that the registrations are handled in contracts too?
The FBI may not be able to take down the entire store, but they don't have to.
And the second issue: what if cops traced the package to a country where selling these drugs is legal (e.g. generics in India)?
For the second issue, I guess they wouldn't do anything (though I'm pretty sure selling drugs to someone in a country where it is illegal is always illegal). But unless the only dealers on there are doing that they can still pretty easily catch dealers. And, even with a perfect reputation system, once you catch a dealer you can locate the addresses of all the customers he sold to and bust them, or keep his online business running for a while and busting buyers until his reputation runs out.
EDIT: actually, does Ethereum even allow for hidden information between two parties? Isn't it just a public ledger so everyone can run the code and verify? That means anyone could get all the shipping addresses
An account (seller or buyer) with a positive reputation could be hijacked if their computers are compromised or they reveal just enough PII for an investigative team to track them.
Re second issue: It may be legal to sell (drug) in (nation). If it's not legal in (other nation), then you're breaking the law by sending it to (other nation) even if you're in (nation). Local legality does not protect you entirely, though it may shield you partially (through your nation not supporting extradition). But should you enter (other nation), be prepared to be arrested (this has happened several times in the US).
The protection for sellers is that it's actually pretty hard to track one down from a package. Not impossible but hard. (And you might even get the wrong seller. The seller you buy from might just be buying from someone else and entering your information for delivery, like drop shipping. If you're concerned about a seller, you might even pay a premium to sell their same item at a loss and wait for someone else to take the buy risk for you.)
It's interesting to look at known dark market arrests, buyers tend to go down to controlled deliveries of certain items but there's not all that much commonality in arrests. https://www.gwern.net/DNM%20arrests#analysis
The ERC20 token idea is also great, people then would have a reference implementation for their own tokens... it could unlock a new wave of DApps. Kudos!
Why??