Elk is the easiest way to start building decentralized hardware projects | Hacker News Reader

Elk is the easiest way to start building decentralized hardware projects

elk.cc

32 pointskaranbhangui26 comments

You're kidding, right? This is some kind of belated, unfunny April Fools joke, right?

This is a specialty IoT device for "blockchain", something whose only hardware requirements is some kind of on-board crypto device... and it doesn't even have one. "Elk doesn't have any form of hardware security and shouldn't at any point in time be used to hold significant amounts of (real) crypto assets."

Kickstarter should remove the project for being a scam.

At least they aren't lying about it. They seem clear there's no hw crypto, and that whatever value is there is in the software.

The pictured chip is an Octavo AM335X, so it should be somewhat similar to a Beaglebone, run Linux, etc. Assuming it's not priced a lot higher than a BB, it may not be a scam.

i used to work on a similar board 5 years ago called ESP8266. So not sure whats new here.

An ESP8266 is not similar to an AM335x. AM335X is a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8. Microcontroller versus Microprocessor.

Yeah, so much more powerful..... And sooooooo much more challenging to secure. At least with microcontrollers, you (can) lock down execution of arbitrary code almost entirely, because Harvard architecture.

It’s a “scam” now to sell hardware bundled with special purpose software? This post is almost a parody of the shrill anti blockchain rants on HN.

And your damning criticism of this device is that it doesn’t contain a hardware security module and shouldn’t be used to secure millions of dollars?

You’re tearing someone down for trying to support their open source software by selling hardware with it pre-flashed.

> And your damning criticism of this device is that it doesn’t contain a hardware security module and shouldn’t be used to secure millions of dollars?

From a bird's eye view, objectively the project appears to be marketing a generic low-powered SoC which at best runs some blockchain software.

And the "millions of dollars" was your claim, so if you want to criticise someone for making it then the only one you have to criticise is yourself.

> You’re tearing someone down for trying to support their open source software by selling hardware with it pre-flashed.

It's actually the other way around. Someone is trying to sell uninteresting hardware at a premium by making unbelievablr hyperbolical claims about its capabilities, which sounds quite honestly like a blatant scam.

There's nothing hyperbolic about the claims- all of it is easily possible with some software on the device. They are very open about this, and the software is open source. You begrudge them trying to make a living by selling hardware with the software conveniently pre-flashed.

Hi this is imake from the Elk team. I'm happy to discuss any claims you feel are unbelievable.

To reiterate what I mentioned in an earlier comment, our true value is in the full experience of developing blockchain applications for embedded devices, which we strongly believe is 10x better than solutions that exist today.

We didn't share details on hardware specs, and part of the reason we haven't done so yet is because we don't want to frame the conversation into specs - we won't necessarily beat other boards in the market when it comes to specs, and it's not our intention to do so.

Our intention is to make a plug-and-play Arduino-like device for embedded blockchain development. We want to an experience where you won't have to fuss over setting up a node, tuning its parameters to run well on a low embedded device, handle crashes, etc.

That's part of the reason why we chose to build our own hardware, it's because nothing existed that would allow us to give the developer experience we have in mind: breadboard compatible, 3.3v and 5v tolerant, integrated emmc preloaded with our OS, plug-and-play as a regular micro controller board not a single board computer, an RGB LED for indicating status, and no irrelevant and unneeded ports (HDMI, Audio, Ethernet, camera, etc).

We'll be adding more details and shedding more light into our development experience in upcoming blog posts. Please subscribe at https://elk.cc to learn more.

Happy to address any other concerns you might have.

Hi this is imake from the Elk team. Our original plan was to actually have hardware security built-in, but we decided to drop it given that it would substantially increase the cost of development. Given the nascent nature of blockchain protocols currently, we felt we would put our resources to better use by focusing on the development experience, which is what we think is quite lacking in the blockchain space today.

We believe current blockchain development is subpar, let alone blockchain development for embedded devices. There's room to make a 10x improvement in its UX, and that's what we're set out to do with this product. With Elk, you won't have to fuss over setting up a node, tuning its parameters to run well on a low embedded device, handle crashes, etc. We are delivering the Arduino-like experience to blockchain development, with all the libraries that Arduino already supports.

Our true value is in our software and in our ease-of-use. The development experience we want to offer is a board that is plug-and-play just like an Arduino, offers over-the-air upgrades, and offers tools for seamlessly controlling your device from your phone through decentralized technologies.

As for why we chose to build our own hardware, it's because nothing exists that would allow us to give the developer experience we have in mind: breadboard compatible, 3.3v and 5v tolerant, integrated emmc preloaded with our OS, plug-and-play as a regular micro controller board not a single board computer, an RGB LED for indicating status, and no irrelevant and unneeded ports (HDMI, Audio, Ethernet, camera, etc).

We'll be adding more details and shedding more light into our development experience in upcoming blog posts. Please subscribe at https://elk.cc to learn more.

Happy to address any other concerns you might have.

Crowd-sourced flim-flam-enabled hardware?

Seriously, doesn't mentioning "blockchain" automatically kill any proposal, yet?

I am a huge skeptic of most of what we've done around "blockchain". Almost every new project that I learn about in the space confirms my bias that people are profoundly, debilitatingly myopic when it comes to the technology.

Content-free dismissals, however, strike me as more or less the exact opposite problem to poorly examined proclamations of panacea.

Step aside granddad. The IoT Blockchain is here.

After all, if your internet connected thermostat isn't on the Blockchain, is it _really_ a thermostat?

I suppose if you're involved in blockchain, selling shovels isn't a bad idea.

The blockchain space (or, more accurately, the decentralization space), is still very nascent and there ought to be developments on various parts of the ecosystem for it to gain widespread adoption. Myself and the team at Elk are excited about what decentralization can bring, and are interested in exploring what it could bring to embedded devices.

Granted, most of the applications are futuristic, but now is a good time to build proper tools to help spark people's imagination and creativity in this space.

We'll be posting lots of projects you can build with Elk. Sign up for our newsletter at https://elk.cc and let us know if you have any further thoughts or questions.

I thought ELK was ElasticSearch, Logstash, and Kibana.

I thought it was the Eclipse Layout Kernel.

Or the Extension Language Kit of yore, in Scheme.

I thought it was a thing that looked like a big deer.

Looks like an interesting software project, bringing powerful and cool libraries to the arduino ecosystem.

Too bad they chose the "let's make a redundant copy of the pi zero-w (or another 10k boards out there) without any actual application specific hardware" model of monetization.

This is really a software project, and the people doing it are looking to sell hardware to fund the development?

Hey exoesquitur, thanks for your comments. This is imake from the Elk team.

We did actually think of building Elk as a pure software project, but we opted not to because we didn't find hardware that we could use that would provide the 10x better embedded blockchain development experience that we want to deliver.

We wanted something that's breadboard compatible, 3.3v and 5v tolerant, integrated emmc preloaded with our OS, plug-and-play as a regular micro controller board not a single board computer, an RGB LED for indicating status, and no irrelevant and unneeded ports (HDMI, Audio, Ethernet, camera, etc).

Additionally, building out our own hardware paves the way for us to add hardware security in future iterations of the board.

We'll be adding more details and shedding more light into our development experience in upcoming blog posts. Please subscribe at https://elk.cc to learn more.

Happy to address any other concerns you might have.

Upon reading the headline I had assumed this had something to do with the ELK embedded operating system, it doesn't. Maybe not a good idea to pick the same name as another product already in the embedded space?

It's just another microprocessor development board.

I was hoping for a low cost PC board assembly service.

Looks like. The comm layer is the value prop, really:

> By default and when possible, Elk runs a light node and communicates directly with the blockchain and not through a hosted service. Elk pushes decentralization to the edge!

Your days of centralized decentralization are over!

If this thing sells, it will jam up the Etherium blockchain the way Crypto Kitties did.

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