[flixic]

I absolutely love this.

One of the more poetic reasons why I like Ethereum VM is because it seems likely to keep running for a very, very long time. I would take a Long Bet that it will still exist 100 years in the future.

With that in mind, this might end up being the longest "continuously running" (both words with some heavy qualifiers) Conway's Game of Life implementation.

[joosters]

Never mind 100 years in the future, this game of life implementation isn't running even now. As the article says, it would cost $80 just to register the code to run it, never mind funding each compute step.

And yet your phone could compute the next 100 years of this ethereum GoL calculations in far less than a second!

[flixic]

I wouldn't bet on my phone's processor being functional in the XXIInd century, but this code will likely still be in EVM, ready to run.

Sure, it's a very different beast, but I still find it really _cool_.

[bluescrn]

People will still be able to play Super Mario Bros, even though the last NES will be long gone. Code of any real value will be preserved by enthusiasts, and be run via emulation or ported to modern systems.

Meanwhile, most of todays blockchains will be dead. No nodes left to sync with. Maybe the blockchain concept will live on in a new form, but even now, there seem to be dying blockchains that are very difficult to connect to and use (e.g. Dogecoin, at least before the recent price surge)

I guess a real threat to all historical code would be the end of open computing, and the requirement for any code run anywhere to be signed and censored by a megacorporation. Something we're getting worryingly close to. But in that world, most of today's blockchains will quickly die, too.

[joosters]

But that's my point, it is already NOT in the EVM, the cost is so high that the author didn't commit the code to it - ethereum fell at the very first hurdle!

[zadler]

Unfortunately for naysayers, Ethereum or other blockchains will achieve cheap and long running dapps sooner or later.

[vages]

“Naysayers”? Technologies do not prove themselves in a court of opinion. They prove themselves in the field. Critics are essential to any emerging technology; their criticism gives us a chance to fix its weaknesses.

That being said, The Paris Agreement and I hope you’re right.

[pavel_lishin]

Next year on the blockchain!

[Taek]

Ethereum doesn't have a mechanism to run an operation periodically. If you want this game to step forward you need to make a new transaction and pay new fees.