[lostmsu]

The academic part would be interesting. The time of operation matters less, as if there is a fundamental flaw, it would go in flames over night. Anecdotally that point was demonstrated by a 50%+1 attack on one of PoW clones, which worked fine until someone actually bothered to make it happen.

I still don't think your comment on ETH and scams is either objective, or relevant to a technical discussion.

As for smart contracts - Turing completeness is a substantial difference from the development point of view. The idea of gas seems to be novel. The fact, that people made mistakes in the contracts themselves only shows their incompetence in developing serious contracts. It has nothing to do with the platform.

[jki275]

ETH has objectively enabled the entire scam ICO market. right, wrong, indifferent, purposeful or not -- that's its entire usefulness, its entire value, and the entire usefulness of "smart contracts" at the moment.

Smart contracts in general have not been well thought through or implemented correctly. It has a lot to do with the platform if the platform enables it. Gas is nothing new, it's just a transaction fee.

Turing completeness in smart contracts is a bug, not a feature -- which is why it was taken out of bitcoin in 2010.