[mbrock]

I work full time on Ethereum development, and I don't have any kind of maximalistic opinions about decentralization, the evils of banks, or whatever.

It's just a very interesting technology with a really great momentum. But everything is flawed under the sun. There is no perfect technology that can completely decentralize authority with no resource demands.

Or maybe Satoshi's reincarnation will come and deliver a new mind-blowing concept that makes blockchains completely deprecated. That would be pretty cool. But until then, you know.

By the way, Ethereum's roadmap includes switching away from proof of work towards proof of stake, which doesn't waste electricity. This model has been used successfully, for example by Bitshares.

It also includes a light client protocol so mobile nodes don't need much disk space or processing power.

[As always, Hacker News is full of critics...]

[cookiecaper]

This isn't a nitpick about how the blockchain isn't perfect. IPv4 is imperfect, HTTP is imperfect, etc. The blockchain is ill-conceived and impractical.

At this point, I only check in on the bitcoin community casually, so I'm not familiar with proof of stake, but I'm glad to hear work is underway to resolve that glaring issue in Ethereum. I'll definitely read up on it. Thanks for the pointer.

>[As always, Hacker News is full of critics...]

Indeed. We come here to discuss, which will involve some criticism. Working on Ethereum is not really an indictment, so don't worry. :)

[mbrock]

That's what I mean, you're not familiar with what's happening, yet you comfortably dismiss the whole idea of blockchain as ill-conceived and impractical.

So both of your major criticisms are being actively addressed by very smart people who plan to have them solved in the near to medium term future.

Does that in any way change your view of blockchain? Maybe it could possibly work? Or, no, it's just a hopeless dumb idea that will surely crash?

[cookiecaper]

>That's what I mean, you're not familiar with what's happening, yet you comfortably dismiss the whole idea of blockchain as ill-conceived and impractical.

It's not "the blockchain" anymore if they've changed the fundamental mechanisms of its operation (e.g., eliminating miners, which the sibling commenter indicated as a goal).

It may be a blockchain, if we want to use "blockchain" as a generic descriptor for a chain of cryptographic signatures, or a blockchain-inspired / blockchain-derived concept, but "the" blockchain, as in the blockchain concept developed for use with bitcoin, is fundamentally dependent on mining for its validity. Change that, and it's not really "blockchain" anymore, at least not as used in the current vernacular. And that's fine -- bitcoin quickly outgrew its britches and needs revision.

>So both of your major criticisms are being actively addressed by very smart people who plan to have them solved in the near to medium term future.

Yes, that's awesome. I'm glad that some people are now deciding that these issues deserve a response instead of continuing headlong into the hype abyss. Why should this mean that people can't complain? If I hadn't, I wouldn't have known that Ethereum is working on a solution. :)

>Does that in any way change your view of blockchain? Maybe it could possibly work? Or, no, it's just a hopeless dumb idea that will surely crash?

Again, I haven't reviewed it yet, but sure, changing the mechanisms of operation could potentially make a thing called "blockchain" workable. "A rose by any other name..." and all that.