A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol | Hacker News Reader

A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol

vitalik.ca

161 pointsCryptoPunk15 comments

The idea of smart contracts is actually older than Bitcoin, Nick Szabo wrote about it in 1997.

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/formalizing-securing-relationsh...

Abstract: Smart contracts combine protocols with user interfaces to formalize and secure relationships over computer networks. Objectives and principles for the design of these systems are derived from legal principles, economic theory, and theories of reliable and secure protocols. Similarities and differences between smart contracts and traditional business procedures based on written contracts, controls, and static forms are discussed. By using cryptographic and other security mechanisms, we can secure many algorithmically specifiable relationships from breach by principals, and from eavesdropping or malicious interference by third parties, up to considerations of time, user interface, and completeness of the algorithmic specification. This article discusses protocols with application in important contracting areas, including credit, content rights management, payment systems, and contracts with bearer.

Was there any consensus on whether Szabo is Nakamoto? He seems to be on the short list of people who had both the brains and the talent to pull off Bitcoin.

There's certainly no consensus on it. Many people think he is but probably not a majority.

He's just one of several candidates[1], although I think the late Hal Finney is more likely to be Satoshi.

Another theory is that the Satoshi persona was created by a group of individuals (cypherpunks) who were involved in the early Bitcoin community, including Hal Finney and Nick Szabo.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto#Possible_iden...

Given how hard it is for any group of people to keep a secret, I've always thought it much more likely to be a single individual.

The fact that intelligence services employing armies of people exist worldwide should be sufficient to disabuse you of that meme.

And for those curious about Hal Finney, here's a fascinating post he wrote before his death: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.0

Except he didn't completely die, he was actually cryo-preserved. Although you can look at it in multiple ways.

All available evidence suggests that cryonics is likely pseudoscience in theory and certainly pseudoscience in practice. Irreversible brain damage occurs within seconds (and total brain death within minutes) of oxygen deprivation, and freezing cell tissue in water ice permanently destroys it.

We don't really know. Cryonics avoid ice formation with cryoprotectants or via vitrification. And assuming there _is_ brain damage, in theory it's still possible to recover as long as the _information_ of the brain hasn't been destroyed. It's akin to having the mainboard and the read head of a hard disk destroyed, but having the plates intact.

What if we don't try to repair the body, but instead reconstruct it in a simulation? Even if the person's cells have all been mangled by ice crystals, a future medical team could conceivably map their neural network and estimate the strengths of the connections between neurons, with some futuristic high resolution scanning device. Maybe it doesn't matter that a frozen person is dead for now, if we could give their mind a virtual body transplant, and rehabilitate them in an idealized virtual environment.

Yeah, as pointed above nobody's using ice for ages, your information is pretty outdated. Would also help if you would support your opinion by related research on the current state of the art cryo.

Szabo reposted this blog post [1] on December 27, 2008

The Bitcoin genesis block was created Jan 4, 2009 [2]

At that time there was about say 3 people in the world interested in these ideas. Make your judgement and consider the probabilities for P(Szabo = Satoshi) and P(Szabo != Satoshi).

I think if you read up on all the articles and convince yourself. In [3] Szabo said there is a lot similarities with Bitcoin and Bitgold, and he talked about the differences in interviews.

[1] http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html [2] https://blockexplorer.com/block/000000000019d6689c085ae16583... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_yUeuKu7L4

Bitcoin has smart contracts. That's what people usually don't understand about ETH - its much more of an extension of Bitcoin and ColoredCoins than most people can ever realize. In fact this article shows exactly in what way this extension came up. Ethereum's history in two steps: 1) try to generalise Mastercoin 2) the same on its own blockchain. Grasping the internals of Bitcoin and its smart contracts capabilities is almost an requirement to understand ETH. Actually its very similar to going from assembly to a higher level language.

I worked on a Bitcoin project which in a strange turn of events led to Nick Szabo becoming an advisor there. But the limitations of Bitcoin are so large that all the attempts failed - Counterparty and Mastercoin were clearly never as succesfull as ETH for very good reasons.

Just to add: Mastercoin isn't the Bitcoin protocol. It uses Bitcoin as a data layer, but has an independent contracting system that doesn't interface with Bitcoin script.

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