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Comment by remir | Hacker News Reader

Why go with Bitcoin specifically? Why not use the Celo blockchain or Algorand instead and create their own stable coins on there? Both these networks are proof of work, transactions are very fast and cheap as well.

Bitcoin is slow to validate transactions, is environmentally costly, and its value fluctuate, so I'm not sure what they were thinking. I wonder what the 30$ they receive from the gov is worth today after the dip.

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The "problems" you've listed have been very clearly debated for the past 5 years. You can find answers. Youre just repeating talking points.

Please point me to good answers on why proof of work is a reasonable way to run a currency

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

I understand how it works thanks, i'm looking for an explanation as to why this waste of energy is a good way to run a currency

Downvoted for snark that doesn't contribute to the discussion. I would like to see less of this on HN.

Well, it's the only way to run a trustless currency that has been tested at scale. I dislike energy waste as much as anyone else, but that's the current state of things. We will eventually move past this phase with PoS or something, but all the approaches are still in their infancy.

Security

Because the president has fallen prey to the 1% fallacy.

He’s on record at a Bitcoin conference saying “BTC is worth x billion dollars, if we can attract just 1% of that to El Salavador as investment…”

They will be using Algorand for much of their blockchain infrastructure:

https://www.coindesk.com/events/2021/08/31/el-salvador-to-la...

What's likely is they'll end up with wrapped Bitcoin on the Algorand chain and using all the Algo tools.

Algorand is not proof of work. Its a variation of PoS with very interesting use of VRF functions.

More than a year after its smart contract introduction devs have still failed to create a single DEX (let alone something more complex) there despite trying. The one Algo were hyping about having a dex last October (idex i believe) have quietly removed mentions of Algo on their site after failing despite all the PR.

This should tell you how good of a choice Algo is for anything. There's plenty other promising POS chains on which devs are actually successfully managing to build stuff on to be focusing on Algo.

True. They never had any good growth strategy anyway. Also there is no good plan to keep the ledger size sane. Like I mentioned, their consensus algo is innovative the execution beyond that is lacking because there wasn't any organic growth happening.

Solana would be a much better choice IMO. They already have Saber and Serum.

And raydium which is the 4th biggest DEX in crypto[0].

Yes, from those I follow Solana would also be my choice if I had to bet because they are already at/close to the point where they can have high tps, low fees, POS, and still be decentralized (more work on that end is needed but now they are nearing 1k validators). They also have built their chain in 2 years which is barely enough time to implement minor changes for competitors. Additionally, they just got the hype/huge investments so they have the users and attention, too.

0. https://www.coingecko.com/en/dex

is it because of programming difficulties with their runtime (non-turing complete?), bugs in their runtime, or just no one interested in programming on their platform?

I believe the first (incomplete implementation). There's definitely plenty that tried (with money behind them). I hear that with some changes to the chain it might be feasible soon (there are some demos on their testnet, none on mainnet) but I've stopped following them much.

Is AlgoDex not working? What would be the purpose of rushing out tools and smart contracts that need to be verified and routinely cause irreparable damage due to security and bugs?

There are already two HN startups using Algorand: 1) Lofty.AI, which has been a smash hit for tokenizing real estate and making daily income and 2) Algofi, which is S21 and intended for lending.

There's also ANote + Opulous for owning tokenized music royalties, and AlgoGems for NFTs + Yieldly for NLLs, etc. With the recent news that El Salvador will use Algorand for their infra and the $100M+ ArringtonXRP investment fund, Algorand is only getting started. Devs are flocking to Algorand for how easy it is to use the wallet and create unique tokens on a fast and scalable network.

>Is AlgoDex not working?

According to their site[0] no, but now they do have a testnet demo. Looking at the demo it's Order Book, not AMM which further makes me think that AMMs are still impossible there while Order Book-style can always be done with some centralization. The docs are sadly one tiny page that has no technical details so I won't dig further.

>What would be the purpose of rushing out tools and smart contracts that need to be verified and routinely cause irreparable damage due to security and bugs?

But they did publish smart contracts. More than a year ago. They also hyped them up, and hyped up a DEX which was supposed to come last October. Some random PR articles from 2020[1,2,3]. This clearly failed quietly despite supposedly smart contracts already being functional then.

>There are already two HN startups using Algorand: 1) Lofty.AI, which has been a smash hit for tokenizing real estate and making daily income and 2) Algofi, which is S21 and intended for lending.

Cool, if I see them working how I see similar dapps working on so many other chains maybe I'll change my mind.

>Devs are flocking to Algorand for how easy it is to use the wallet and create unique tokens on a fast and scalable network.

Are they? I see devs that try and fail to build there, and less devs discussing it than other chains. I see a lot of PR. That's it. Maybe it has a future but it seems much further behind, despite claiming it was already there in respect to smart contract last year. At this point if they catch up I'll give it another look but for now their PR seems to just make claims that don't reflect reality.

0. https://about.algodex.com/

1. https://blockonomi.com/idex-complete-rebuild-ethereum-scalin...

2. https://coinpedia.org/press-release/algorand-crypto-hidden-g...

3. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/08/06/idex-raises-25m-...

>Cool, if I see them working how I see similar dapps working

As if installing a custom browser plugin and managing a wallet thru the browser is convenient for any average user. Lofty.AI is far better than the current crap-dapps workflow. Add the token to your Algo wallet, buy them on Lofty with CC or bank account. Done.

>Are they? I see devs that try and fail to build there

I literally just provided two HN startups that are using it now, including one that pivoted to use it. There's also $50M+ in assets on Yieldly and there is still no simpler crypto wallet to use than the Algorand branded wallet.

By see them working I mean have a working dapp on the mainnet I can use. Not a few static pages and a waitlist.

It is on MainNet, I already own property tokens that are paying me rental cash daily.

https://www.lofty.ai/account/register

Ok cool. That is something. I'm not going to give them my ID to try it out but looking at it it seems like they just use basic tokens and then pay to holders, rather than any complex smart contracts. Maybe something like yieldly but with property? At any rate, fair enough that looks like a real business on it which people are at least using, even if I doubt they're leveraging much smart contracts or that there's anything about Algo that helps here.

Celo is a proof-of-stake blockchain.

You're right. I made a mistake and now it's too late to edit my comment.

algorand is proof of stake and is still essentially centralized. they've created and gifted coins to themselves since the start (the early distribution was awful). imo PoS is only viable and "fair" if its bootstrapped by PoW. need to put something in to get something out, at least until there are a lot of stakeholders.

Shill those coins. Let me guess you have no idea about the technical tradeoffs involved in bitcoin

Lazer eyes

Because bitcoin is by far the most scalable decentralized censorship resistant cryptocurrency. That isn’t a popular opinion here but it’s true. Improvements to the protocol are slow and often boring. The kind of thing that countries want in a cryptocurrency.

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