Open thread, July 21-27, 2014

polymathwannabe

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one.

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

The Ethereum pre-sale has begun.

Given that Ethereum is explicitly designed as a platform for distributed decentralized applications, it seems to me like it could be the next big cryptocurrency after Bitcoin. I'm not terribly confident in this assessment, however. Do people here have an opinion on how likely it is that it'd be the "next tech gold rush"?

It's a pre-pre-mine. Ethereum will never succeed if they go through with this.

0wedrifid12y

Curious observation about the incentives for buying ethereum during the pre-sale: The issuance model will be as follows: Ether will be sold in a Mastercoin-style fundraiser at the price of 1 ether for 0.0001 BTC. Suppose that X ether gets collected in this way. 0.25X ether will be given to the founders. 0.25X ether will be given to the Ethereum organization as a reserve pool to pay expenses in ETH such as ETH salaries or bounties for those developers who want part or all of their compensation to be in this form 0.5X ether will be mined per year forever after that point (ie. permanent linear inflation) This is similar to a tragedy of the commons problem. The value given to the investors is their relative contribution and the total contribution of bitcoins makes no direct difference (except for positive PR). Of course, apart from the participants in the sale being human (rather than ideal UDT agents) the ideal solution (of token purchases in proportion to what the players "would have" bought if they could not cooperate) is modified somewhat because the Etherium founders have an incentive to inflate the price away from a cooperative solution. Regarding the value transfer represented (the Etherium organisation + the founders thereof) end up with: * All of the bitcoin spent. * 1/3 of the Etherium currency. That probably could be worse, given how such currencies tend to be launched. It is worth taking into consideration that the currency has permanent linear inflation. That means the inflation will be trivial in the future but relatively huge to begin with. The currency purchased in the initial sale will represent 25% of the currency after 5 years.

5wedrifid12y

I notice that the smallest denomination of the ethereum currency is the "Wei". Is that named in honor of Wei Dai for his foundational work in the same vein as the "Satoshi"?