Consider the following. If smart contracts where implementable, one of the easier rationality raising measures and most profitable things to do would be to immediately hold a number of contractually enforceable dollar auctions until there remained no one naive to that exact class of irrationality
Similarly, you could burgle people’s houses until there remained no one poorly protected against whatever sort of burglary you committed. You could go around insulting people until there remained no one so thin-skinned they couldn’t cope OK being being insulted by strangers. You could put disease-causing viruses and bacteria in the water supply until there remained no one alive who wasn’t resistant to the diseases.
I hope it’s obvious what’s unsatisfactory about those courses of action. Why is the one you propose any better?
If you put diseases in the water until there remains no one who isn’t resistant, this will happen partly because people will be killed by the disease. If everyone developed immunity against the disease but nobody was seriously harmed, it would not be such a bad idea—this is why we have universal vaccination.
I highly doubt that doing a bunch of dollar auctions would lead there being no remaining naive people because the naive people were all killed off rather than because they became non-naive.
They would become non-naive by being harmed (by losing a pile of money). Of course that’s a lesser harm than being killed, and indeed “kill the non-resistant ones” is different from “harm the non-resistant ones until they become resistant”, so I probably shouldn’t have included the diseases-in-the-water example because it uses both effects. It’s the latter that I had in mind as common to the examples I listed (as well as, of course, Clarity’s original proposal).
No they don’t. They’re developing a platform for them. They’re not usable outside of just alleged mathematical proof of concept type stuff that have already been rubbished by academics. What they have is a great approach to marketing, a supportive community, venture capitalists and a house of cards for now. It may turn into something, but they haven’t done enough that I wouldn’t bet on the next outsider that comes along with proper cryptological credentials.
They have enough that the prediction market Augur get’s build on their technology.
There’s http://slock.it/ and http://airlock.me/ build smart locks with Ethereum
Take a look at Slockit or Airlock’s page. Can you buy or implement their system? No.
We are developing a framework...
They are working on developing something contingent on something that doesn’t exist
Ethereum launched as a currency already, but that doesn’t mean it’s implemented it’s claim to value—smart contracts. It’s borderline a scam dare I say. That, or they’re is something seriously wrong about the way they are conducting themselves. Altcoins really have been underwhelming as a whole since bitcoin—and even bitcoin is so poorly integrated into existing financial infrastructure it’s not an immediately tractable concept and until it is...I’d rather not hedge my bank account into something that may very well end of catastrophic failure—some day there will probably be an ″attack″ which destroys a virtual coin economy and networks and delegitimises the movement, killing confidence in the concept.
Augur doesn’t actually implement smart contracts in a prediction market, not yet at least. The best solution we have to that problem is ″oracles″, which are somewhat decentralised but not at all original and not at all trustless smart contracts.
edit: btw, Augur specifically is a fork of ethereum. It’s a big way of saying fuck you and thanks for the code, basically. Consider for example the case of anoncoin planning to fork into zerocash—zero cash will entirely dominate anoncoin in theory so all those people who hold anoncoin can basically kiss their holdings goodbye thanks to their developers defecting to the new technology. If augur is successful, what can augur holders do that ethereum holders can? Everything. Coins of any currency become redundant when their selling point is a gimmick for which there are low barriers of entry to improving upon their inherent value (imagine being able to easily alchemise a more useful prettier version of gold, then sell it for less than gold initially—certainly doesn’t make gold feel like a good investment—particularly as in the case of Ethereum were the use is merely aspirational...)
and even bitcoin is so poorly integrated into existing financial infrastructure it’s not an immediately tractable concept and until it is...I’d rather not hedge my bank account into something that may very well end of catastrophic failure
Of course investing in new technology is always risky.
Altcoins really have been underwhelming as a whole since bitcoin
I haven’t heard of any altcoin besides Ethereum that provides a significant benefit over Bitcoin, so it’s natural that other altcoins don’t lead anywhere.
edit: btw, Augur specifically is a fork of ethereum.
I haven’t read anything about Augur wanting to fork ethereum. Where did you get that idea?
The FAQ says that Augur wants to run on Ethereum (https://augur.zendesk.com/hc/en-us)
From Augur’s perspective I don’t think it makes much sense to fork Ethereum. There’s more security against attacks without forking. Augur also profits from having Ether as the core currency that’s payed inside the network and not have a separate currency for that.
imagine being able to easily alchemise a more useful prettier version of gold, then sell it for less than gold initially
None of the direct Bitcoin forks are more useful than Bitcoin because of network effects. The same is true for Ethereum. Ethereum is better than Bitcoin because it allows applications like Augur to run on it. It’s more difficult to legally attack Augur when it runs on Ethereum instead of it’s own network.
If you are a company renting out lookers than it useful to have the payment for the lockers to be in Ether instead of your own currency XEther because Ether is a currency for which other applications exist.
Sooner or later there will be a SilkRoad type service on Ethereum. In contrast to a lot of BitCoin markets, the market owner won’t be able to run away with the money in that market.
Consider for example the case of anoncoin planning to fork into zerocash—zero cash will entirely dominate anoncoin in theory so all those people who hold anoncoin can basically kiss their holdings goodbye thanks to their developers defecting to the new technology.
I don’t see a huge market for those currencies. If trades happen in a Ethereum based markets it’s quite easy to provide a trustworthy mixer where the trust is based on Ethereum escrow that internally uses zerocash.
edit:
There no good reason to edit instead of writing a new post to continue the conversation.
Hey I was thinking earlier this morning that I lots of my reasoning above has been emotionally motivated after losing ~$110 in transaction fees cashing in what would otherwise have been a profitable trade in bitcoins haha.
I’m gonna come back and reply to this if/once I’m thinking more objectively
Consider the following. If smart contracts where implementable, one of the easier rationality raising measures and most profitable things to do would be to immediately hold a number of contractually enforceable dollar auctions until there remained no one naive to that exact class of irrationality
Similarly, you could burgle people’s houses until there remained no one poorly protected against whatever sort of burglary you committed. You could go around insulting people until there remained no one so thin-skinned they couldn’t cope OK being being insulted by strangers. You could put disease-causing viruses and bacteria in the water supply until there remained no one alive who wasn’t resistant to the diseases.
I hope it’s obvious what’s unsatisfactory about those courses of action. Why is the one you propose any better?
If you put diseases in the water until there remains no one who isn’t resistant, this will happen partly because people will be killed by the disease. If everyone developed immunity against the disease but nobody was seriously harmed, it would not be such a bad idea—this is why we have universal vaccination.
I highly doubt that doing a bunch of dollar auctions would lead there being no remaining naive people because the naive people were all killed off rather than because they became non-naive.
They would become non-naive by being harmed (by losing a pile of money). Of course that’s a lesser harm than being killed, and indeed “kill the non-resistant ones” is different from “harm the non-resistant ones until they become resistant”, so I probably shouldn’t have included the diseases-in-the-water example because it uses both effects. It’s the latter that I had in mind as common to the examples I listed (as well as, of course, Clarity’s original proposal).
Unless they’re 12 years old, losing a couple of dollars is not really all that damaging.
I bet the actual gain in wisdom, relative to just telling them “don’t do that”, is in proportion to the damage.
Ethereum does have smart contracts.
No they don’t. They’re developing a platform for them. They’re not usable outside of just alleged mathematical proof of concept type stuff that have already been rubbished by academics. What they have is a great approach to marketing, a supportive community, venture capitalists and a house of cards for now. It may turn into something, but they haven’t done enough that I wouldn’t bet on the next outsider that comes along with proper cryptological credentials.
They launched on 30 July 2015.
They have enough that the prediction market Augur get’s build on their technology. There’s http://slock.it/ and http://airlock.me/ build smart locks with Ethereum
Take a look at Slockit or Airlock’s page. Can you buy or implement their system? No.
They are working on developing something contingent on something that doesn’t exist
Ethereum launched as a currency already, but that doesn’t mean it’s implemented it’s claim to value—smart contracts. It’s borderline a scam dare I say. That, or they’re is something seriously wrong about the way they are conducting themselves. Altcoins really have been underwhelming as a whole since bitcoin—and even bitcoin is so poorly integrated into existing financial infrastructure it’s not an immediately tractable concept and until it is...I’d rather not hedge my bank account into something that may very well end of catastrophic failure—some day there will probably be an ″attack″ which destroys a virtual coin economy and networks and delegitimises the movement, killing confidence in the concept.
Augur doesn’t actually implement smart contracts in a prediction market, not yet at least. The best solution we have to that problem is ″oracles″, which are somewhat decentralised but not at all original and not at all trustless smart contracts.
edit: btw, Augur specifically is a fork of ethereum. It’s a big way of saying fuck you and thanks for the code, basically. Consider for example the case of anoncoin planning to fork into zerocash—zero cash will entirely dominate anoncoin in theory so all those people who hold anoncoin can basically kiss their holdings goodbye thanks to their developers defecting to the new technology. If augur is successful, what can augur holders do that ethereum holders can? Everything. Coins of any currency become redundant when their selling point is a gimmick for which there are low barriers of entry to improving upon their inherent value (imagine being able to easily alchemise a more useful prettier version of gold, then sell it for less than gold initially—certainly doesn’t make gold feel like a good investment—particularly as in the case of Ethereum were the use is merely aspirational...)
Of course investing in new technology is always risky.
I haven’t heard of any altcoin besides Ethereum that provides a significant benefit over Bitcoin, so it’s natural that other altcoins don’t lead anywhere.
I haven’t read anything about Augur wanting to fork ethereum. Where did you get that idea? The FAQ says that Augur wants to run on Ethereum (https://augur.zendesk.com/hc/en-us)
From Augur’s perspective I don’t think it makes much sense to fork Ethereum. There’s more security against attacks without forking. Augur also profits from having Ether as the core currency that’s payed inside the network and not have a separate currency for that.
None of the direct Bitcoin forks are more useful than Bitcoin because of network effects. The same is true for Ethereum. Ethereum is better than Bitcoin because it allows applications like Augur to run on it. It’s more difficult to legally attack Augur when it runs on Ethereum instead of it’s own network.
If you are a company renting out lookers than it useful to have the payment for the lockers to be in Ether instead of your own currency XEther because Ether is a currency for which other applications exist.
Sooner or later there will be a SilkRoad type service on Ethereum. In contrast to a lot of BitCoin markets, the market owner won’t be able to run away with the money in that market.
I don’t see a huge market for those currencies. If trades happen in a Ethereum based markets it’s quite easy to provide a trustworthy mixer where the trust is based on Ethereum escrow that internally uses zerocash.
There no good reason to edit instead of writing a new post to continue the conversation.
Hey I was thinking earlier this morning that I lots of my reasoning above has been emotionally motivated after losing ~$110 in transaction fees cashing in what would otherwise have been a profitable trade in bitcoins haha.
I’m gonna come back and reply to this if/once I’m thinking more objectively
No, but Ethereum works well enough that they are in the process of building their system.
Smart contracts are a building block fo what Augur is doing.
The application of dollar auctions is much simpler. You don’t need any ‘oracles’ for it.