Ethereum hacker news video
In the beginning the Prophet Satoshi brought us Bitcoin. And the cryptogeeks and libertarians looked upon it, and said lo, we smile upon this, for it is good, and decentralized, and solves the Byzantine Generals Problem. For a time all was well. But then came wailing and gnashing of teeth and wearing of sackcloth. And ethereum hacker news video came the Prophet Vitalik, bearing Ethereum; and lo, it was even better. But it allows for transactions that can be delayed until a particular time; or transactions that occur only if, say, 3 of 5 signatories agree to them; or crowdfunding campaigns that only transfer money if a particular ethereum hacker news video is attained; and many other possibilities.
Importantly, once incorporated into the Bitcoin blockchain, these contracts require no trust and no human intervention. Bitcoin is programmable money … with a highly restrictive programming language. Ethereum removes those restrictions entirely. The Ethereum scripting language is Turing-complete, meaning it can replicate any program written in any traditional programming language. However, to prevent ill-behaved contracts with infinite loops from running forever, every Ethereum transaction computation must be paid for.
You may well be thinking: Bitcoin was more than abstruse and geeky enough. Now this new made-up-magical-money thing is even more complicated? Why should I care? You should care because decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are—or at least could be—essentially an Internet for money, securities, and other contractual transactions.
Like the Internet, they are permissionless networks that anyone can join and use. However, it is now—probably—at the ethereum hacker news video of its initial hype cycle. What is the DAO? In exchange for supporting The DAO financially in the form of Etherbackers get DAO tokens, which they can then use to vote on the direction of the organization. They can use their tokens to vote on big governance ethereum hacker news video akin to traditional shareholders but also on minute details of how The DAO spends its resources.
The code automatically executes payments so long as certain agreed-upon conditions are met. Because this is all built on top of Ethereum, which allows for ethereum hacker news video smart contracts, this can all be done autonomously. Or as Peter Vessenes put it:. People that trust the code, rules and plan are sending ethereum hacker news video directly to fund ethereum hacker news video contract.
Think of it as a kind of corporation incorporated only on the Ethereum blockchain, whose laws consist entirely of those defined by its contract code.
A corporation that appears to be a means of investing in the future … without having any concrete idea exactly what that future is yet. For many people, that kind of investment is a holy grail. What's the future of the DAO? Regulators nuking it, of course. THEDAO might look and feel like a company, but on cursory examination, too many gaps, too few formalities, not enough structure and legally incorrect methods reveal themselves as fatal to the exercise.
I also believe that blockchain tech will one day play a role in facilitating more democratic access to the capital markets. Sad if this sets us back ethereum hacker news video Considering there is no real risk being taken beyond the risk of holding ETH and that there is the potential for a large gain it is no wonder so many people have participated.
Because, I mean, I like hype too, but this is getting more than a little ridiculous. That said, the DAO does serve to illustrate that these are fecund, exciting times for Ethereum. What most concerns me about the Ethereum project is security.
Ethereum is planning a transition from proof-of-work security mining to proof-of-stake security. There are very good reasons to do this, but proof-of-work, for all its flaws and excesses, is simple and thoroughly tested.
Worse yet, this applies not just to the network itself, but to individual Ethereum contracts. As Vessenes puts it: I am genuinely excited about Ethereum in the medium to long term, and you should be too. There appears to be a severe outbreak of Ethereum Fever south of Market.