Ethereum
ethereum.org
ethereum.org
2. How on earth do you intend to store everyone's data in a single blockchain? This is like having every application's database (not even the one's you use yourself) on your computer.
*edit - starting to get some responses here: http://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/21orz7/noob_questi...
If this is important, it will appear again on (HN|Reddit|etc) for me to take a closer look.
Oh, and 30 seconds is a looooong time to spend on a site. I would guess people spend no more than 5 to 10 seconds on a site before they decide to investigate further or move on.
I'm not affiliated, but basically Ethereum is an alternative cryptocurrency (or alt-coin) to Bitcoin with it's own separate mining algorithm and blockchain. The really interesting part is that it comes with a Python-like Turing-complete language, such that you can embed small scripts into transactions to define smart contracts.
This theoretically allows you to implement all kinds of applications in a distributed way with no central trusted authority. For example: DNS resolution, options, betting, distributed exchanges.
Yeah I guess they need to do a better job on the presenting who/what/how
Edit: and the new link you just added has 4 votes and no comments.
This is why the Internet is so powerful. It only take a couple of people to pursue something to report back to others and say "hey, this is important".
https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-Pa...
In short, it is a proposal for a framework/protocol/platform/you-name-it sort of like BitCoin with more feature.
In any case it seems like there are a lot of people in Ethereum meetup groups around the world [2], so this isn't a new thing.
[1] https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-Pa...
[2] http://www.meetup.com/find/?allMeetups=false&keywords=Ethere...
In this case thought, the authors are making clear that it's for advanced technical audience[1]. They are just trying to get developers, but mainly communities that will run their blockchain (their version of bitcoin), which comes with a language that makes easy to implement all the beautiful things we're talking about when the discussion revolves around the bitcoin protocol (as opposed to the currency).
You're right that it might not be a big priority to them, but it couldn't hurt.
Also, I thought the same thing about Bitcoin the first few times I saw headlines posted on HN in 2009 and 2010. Kind of wish I payed attention sooner...
It's not hard to understand. If you don't want to give new ideas the time of day, don't click on it; and especially don't waste your precious time on commenting about it.
I'm guessing the majority of people on HN have some great idea that burning in their gut. Hopefully they will realize the important of great marketing and sales copy, because there are countless other ideas vying for our attention.
Btw, I actually have a vague sense this could be something cool and interesting and would like to understand....
So, just the other day, I was lamenting with my friend and we had a thought experiment on whether it would be possible to use a bitcoin-like network/blockchain to solve the identity problem for voting on the internet.
We had some rock solid ideas for lots of details, but got stuck on the anonymous vote part. For example, everyone should be able to tell that I actually voted, but not who I voted for.
Does anyone know how this could be accomplished?
This looks like a great project. Would be interested to see what they meant when they listed voting as their first example.
* It must be somehow possible for authorities (state owned organizations) to re-count the votes manually.
* The voter should get back to the ledger and be able to check for whom he voted.
Yeah, looks like an optimal and bright (IMHO) future.
The team is growing rapidly, with impressive new members. The community as well.
Comments about the site are entirely appropriate on HN (this is something that concerns most of us), and you could consider your own advice and simply skip over them if they don't interest you, instead of wasting emotions on being appalled.
Exactly as others experienced, I skimmed the site and found nothing compelling me to look deeper. The site gives the feeling of significant style but little substance (technologists usually put attention only on substance, which itself is seldom compelling. There is a middle ground somewhere in between).
That didn't tell me anything.
Exactly, first impressions matter. If it were a consumer product, than the flashy decoration would have a purpose in marketing terms.
On another note, this looks like an awesome project. I wonder what implications this could have in net neutrality.
contract.storage[tx.data[0]] = tx.data[1]
They could have at least used a named local variable for "tx.data[0]" to give some context. What the hell is this doing?
name = tx.data[0]
value = tx.data[1]
contract.storage[name] = valueYou only need one "killer app" to prove an abstraction, but you do need one, and it should be front and center.
It will be interesting to find out how this pans out. Possibly in the Chinese proverb sense.
[http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/01/twister/]
Seems to be related to the idea behind Twister.
They do not have the marketing skills of ethereum tho..
Ethereum is a vision to provide a higher-level language for implementing contracts - ECLL (Ethereum C-Like Language) - which compiles down to the assembly-like opcode instructions of "ethereum script". It will supposedly also have more flexible ways to store data/state (in bitcoin script, a contract's state is encoded as spendable or unspendable inputs and outputs).
In bitcoin, the central abstraction is the transaction: tx inputs and outputs are your memory address references. In ethereum, the central abstraction is the higher-level contract: your inputs and outputs are variables, and the ECCL compiler does the memory management and assembly opcodes.