As far as I can tell, the only cryptocurrency that actually delivers on its name (i.e. being used as a currency) is Monero. Sure, it's all drugs and stolen credit cards, but it does undeniably solve a real world problem for its users instead of just being used as a vehicle for speculative investment.<p>With that said, I think if anyone comes up with a "killer-app" for crypto, then it'll be on the Ethereum chain. They seem to be the only ones who consistently work towards adding capabilities to the core technology.<p>Edit: I realize I haven't commented on the article at all. This sentence stood out to me:<p>> Today, we have all the tools we'll need, and indeed most of the tools we'll ever have, to build applications that are simultaneously cypherpunk and user-friendly. And so we should go out and do it.<p>Clearly, this is an important step. But the two examples he provides as a beacon of what's possible (Daimo and Farcaster) don't inspire a lot of enthusiasm. Daimo is just a decentralized version of Venmo and Farcaster is a protocol to build social networks on the blockchain, which is yet another tool and not an application.<p>I do still like reading Vitaliks thoughts. He's a pretty good writer, and it's evident that he spends a lot of time actually thinking about the topics he writes about.
Hmm ... "proto-danksharding" which activated the "blobscriptions protocol" so that blobs are "much cheaper than calldata", all of this helping it to become an "L2-centric ecosystem". In the end, this leaves them "not confident enough in the complex code of an optimistic or SNARK-based EVM verifier".<p>I'm sold ... just tell me where to transfer the money.
Key quote from the article:<p>> Many have argued that the lack of large-scale applications for the past ten years proves that crypto is useless. I have always argued against this: pretty much every crypto application that is not financial speculation depends on low fees - and so while we have high fees, we should not be surprised that we mainly see financial speculation!<p>> Now that we have blobs, this key constraint that has been holding us back all this time is starting to melt away. Fees are finally much lower; my statement from seven years ago that the internet of money should not cost more than five cents per transaction is finally coming true.<p>---<p>All of this depends on so called "Layer 2s", which adds a great deal of UX complexity to the end user. I'm skeptical that this is best way to solve the scalability issues that plague cryptocurrency, but I will say that this looks to me like it has a much better shot of succeeding that anything Bitcoin has ever attempted to do on this front.
> Basically, Ethereum is no longer just a financial ecosystem. It's a full-stack replacement for large parts of "centralized tech", and even provides some things that centralized tech does not (eg. governance-related applications). And we need to build with this broader ecosystem in mind.<p>I have respect for ethereum. It seems like one of the few cryptocurrency projects actually trying to push those ideas as far as they'll go, instead of just being endless scams.<p>But still, at the end of the day, this feels like endless complexity and in the end we are just back we started: applications we could already do much better using traditional technologies.<p>What even is the elevator pitch use case of all this?
All this crpyto technology is fascinating. But is it used for anything?<p>I asked this in an Ask HN today, but got no answer so far:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39852389">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39852389</a><p>It looks like not a single HN reader is using blockchain technology for anything.<p>If nobody is using blockchain technology outside of blockchain projects, what are the reasons we expect that some day we will? What could be a near term use case?
7. The blockchain is now at a stage in its development equivalent to where
the internet was in or around 1995. The internet was unstoppable in 1995
and blockchain technology is unstoppable now. It will become ubiquitous
in all major industrial and financial sectors, simply because it allows for the
immutable recording of data, thereby reducing friction in commercial and
consumer transactions and obliterating the scope for dispute as to what
has occurred.<p>8. As the Master of the Rolls and Head of Civil Justice in England and Wales,
I hold an office that pre-dates modern trade in derivatives and
reinsurance, even steam engines, powered flight, and certainly the
internet. I am particularly and obviously concerned about the reputation
and development of English law and the jurisdiction of England and Wales.
9. Many people do not realise that English law governs trading in €600 trillion
of OTC derivatives annually, in €11.6 trillion in metals trading, in £250
billion in M&A deals, and in £80 billion in insurance contracts every year –
just to take a few examples. My hope is that English law will prove to be
the law of choice for borderless blockchain technology as its take up grows
exponentially in the months and years to come.<p><a href="https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Speech-MR-to-Smarter-Contracts-Report-Launch-Lawtech-UK-UKJT-Blockchain-Smart-Contracts.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Speech-M...</a><p>Case closed.
For anyone interested in in-depth details of Ethereum protocol and upgrades, checkout the Protocol Study Group. Yesterday's presentation was about scaling and Danksharding, given by its creator <a href="https://epf.wiki/" rel="nofollow">https://epf.wiki/</a>
I think it would be useful if the full domain (vitalik.eth.limo) was displayed.<p>Not sure if that's possible or if it violates any HN policies about how links are displayed, apologies if it's a silly/useless suggestion.<p>Edit: Not sure how popularis eth.limo w.r.t. to HN submissions, but the full domain should probably be displayed for any eth.limo submission.
I'm going to leave here a few dashboards that might be interesting:<p>See Ethereum scale day by day (today Ethereum is doing 160 tps, more than 10x its initial throughput): <a href="https://l2beat.com/scaling/activity" rel="nofollow">https://l2beat.com/scaling/activity</a><p>You can now settle your transactions on rollups for mere cents: <a href="https://fees-growthepie.streamlit.app/" rel="nofollow">https://fees-growthepie.streamlit.app/</a><p>Neat dashboards regarding blob usage: <a href="https://dune.com/hildobby/blobs" rel="nofollow">https://dune.com/hildobby/blobs</a><p>What's coming... With the current number of blobs Ethereum will likely be able to do up to ~500 tps on average. ~1000 tps in burst mode. But in coming upgrades the blobs will be sharded through Data Availability Sampling, allowing validators to verify only a subset while being sure that the rest of blobs are validated and available by the rest of the network. This will allow to scale Ethereum up to 256 blobs. Which will give Ethereum a throughput of around ~100K tps.
People who still think cryptocurrency is pointless are like fundamentalist Christians saying that condoms are pointless.<p>You're trying to imagine away the use cases because you don't agree with them.
I'm so out of the loop these days...I've written off blockchain junk almost entirely. Can someone break down what blobs are? Is this some kind of temporary place for transactions to go so they aren't charged fees individually?<p>EDIT: NVM, I RTFMed <a href="https://ethereum.org/en/layer-2/" rel="nofollow">https://ethereum.org/en/layer-2/</a>. I wonder what the trade-offs of layer 2 protocols are. Less secure?
> Today, we have all the tools we'll need, and indeed most of the tools we'll ever have, to build applications that are simultaneously cypherpunk and user-friendly.<p>Really looking forward to the next couple years. Everyone has been writing this off as "no killer apps after 10 years" but there's a lot that's been happening to support adoption, from scaling to improved UX. In the next couple years those should percolate to production apps.<p>The primary improvements have been rollups, blobs, account abstraction, and chain abstraction.<p>An example of a new onboarding process being developed by coinbase can be seen here: <a href="https://twitter.com/WilsonCusack/status/1764355750149710190" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/WilsonCusack/status/1764355750149710190</a>
I don't understand half of this. How do I go from "yay, I read the bitcoin paper" to this? A single comprehensive resource so I'm not hoovering crumbs from site to site.
Maybe ETH should focus on solving their scaling so the layer 1 doesn't cost arm and leg to do transfer on. Layer 2 becoming expensive as well and people already talking about Layer 3.
> On March 13, the Dencun hard fork activated, enabling one of the long-awaited features of Ethereum: proto-danksharding (aka EIP-4844, aka blobs). Initially, the fork reduced the transaction fees of rollups by a factor of over 100, as blobs were nearly free. In the last day, we finally saw blobs spike up in volume and the fee market activate as the blobscriptions protocol started to use them. Blobs are not free, but they remain much cheaper than calldata.<p>> proto-danksharding<p>> rollups<p>> blobscriptions<p>> calldata<p>I realize this post is the High Priest of Ethereum preaching to his disciples, but we are deep deep into "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" territory here.<p>Does anyone know if you can use multiple slurp juices on a single danksharded blob?
> Today, we have all the tools we'll need, and indeed most of the tools we'll ever have, to build applications that are simultaneously cypherpunk and user-friendly.<p>> The Daimo wallet is explicitly describing itself as Venmo on Ethereum, aiming to combine Venmo's convenience with Ethereum's decentralization<p>I will forever point this out, but Venmo has a “Private” setting. Your balance on Ethereum is public, as is any transaction you send.<p>It just isn’t a viable replacement for cash
> On March 13, the Dencun hard fork activated, enabling one of the long-awaited features of Ethereum: proto-danksharding (aka EIP-4844, aka blobs). Initially, the fork reduced the transaction fees of rollups by a factor of over 100, as blobs were nearly free. In the last day, we finally saw blobs spike up in volume and the fee market activate as the blobscriptions protocol started to use them. Blobs are not free, but they remain much cheaper than calldata.<p>Can someone please confirm this isn’t the incipit from an unpublished Douglas Adams novel?