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A comment on A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol.

Re:A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol by shpx on Sunday September 17, 2017 @05:57PM (#15271919)
The idea of smart contracts is actually older than Bitcoin, Nick Szabo wrote about it in 1997.

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/formalizing-securing-relationsh...

Abstract: Smart contracts combine protocols with user interfaces to formalize and secure relationships over computer networks. Objectives and principles for the design of these systems are derived from legal principles, economic theory, and theories of reliable and secure protocols. Similarities and differences between smart contracts and traditional business procedures based on written contracts, controls, and static forms are discussed. By using cryptographic and other security mechanisms, we can secure many algorithmically specifiable relationships from breach by principals, and from eavesdropping or malicious interference by third parties, up to considerations of time, user interface, and completeness of the algorithmic specification. This article discusses protocols with application in important contracting areas, including credit, content rights management, payment systems, and contracts with bearer.

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Re:A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol by macroexchange on Sunday September 17, 2017 @11:47PM (#15273266)
Bitcoin has smart contracts. That's what people usually don't understand about ETH - its much more of an extension of Bitcoin and ColoredCoins than most people can ever realize. In fact this article shows exactly in what way this extension came up. Ethereum's history in two steps: 1) try to generalise Mastercoin 2) the same on its own blockchain. Grasping the internals of Bitcoin and its smart contracts capabilities is almost an requirement to understand ETH. Actually its very similar to going from assembly to a higher level language.

I worked on a Bitcoin project which in a strange turn of events led to Nick Szabo becoming an advisor there. But the limitations of Bitcoin are so large that all the attempts failed - Counterparty and Mastercoin were clearly never as succesfull as ETH for very good reasons.

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Re:A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol by CryptoPunk on Monday September 18, 2017 @01:11AM (#15273546)
Just to add: Mastercoin isn't the Bitcoin protocol. It uses Bitcoin as a data layer, but has an independent contracting system that doesn't interface with Bitcoin script.
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Re:A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol by sillysaurus3 on Sunday September 17, 2017 @07:10PM (#15272210)
Was there any consensus on whether Szabo is Nakamoto? He seems to be on the short list of people who had both the brains and the talent to pull off Bitcoin.
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Re:A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol by brndnmtthws on Sunday September 17, 2017 @07:45PM (#15272342)
He's just one of several candidates[1], although I think the late Hal Finney is more likely to be Satoshi.

Another theory is that the Satoshi persona was created by a group of individuals (cypherpunks) who were involved in the early Bitcoin community, including Hal Finney and Nick Szabo.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto#Possible_iden...

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Re:A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol by brndnmtthws on Sunday September 17, 2017 @07:48PM (#15272359)
And for those curious about Hal Finney, here's a fascinating post he wrote before his death: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.0
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Re:A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol by vernon99 on Sunday September 17, 2017 @08:41PM (#15272572)
Except he didn't completely die, he was actually cryo-preserved. Although you can look at it in multiple ways.
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Re:A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol by smitherfield on Sunday September 17, 2017 @11:39PM (#15273238)
All available evidence suggests that cryonics is likely pseudoscience in theory and certainly pseudoscience in practice. Irreversible brain damage occurs within seconds (and total brain death within minutes) of oxygen deprivation, and freezing cell tissue in water ice permanently destroys it.
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Re:A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol by DiThi on Monday September 18, 2017 @08:23AM (#15275199)
We don't really know. Cryonics avoid ice formation with cryoprotectants or via vitrification. And assuming there _is_ brain damage, in theory it's still possible to recover as long as the _information_ of the brain hasn't been destroyed. It's akin to having the mainboard and the read head of a hard disk destroyed, but having the plates intact.
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Re:A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol by vernon99 on Monday September 18, 2017 @08:03PM (#15280764)
Yeah, as pointed above nobody's using ice for ages, your information is pretty outdated. Would also help if you would support your opinion by related research on the current state of the art cryo.
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Re:A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol by devrandomguy on Monday September 18, 2017 @01:16PM (#15277686)
What if we don't try to repair the body, but instead reconstruct it in a simulation? Even if the person's cells have all been mangled by ice crystals, a future medical team could conceivably map their neural network and estimate the strengths of the connections between neurons, with some futuristic high resolution scanning device. Maybe it doesn't matter that a frozen person is dead for now, if we could give their mind a virtual body transplant, and rehabilitate them in an idealized virtual environment.
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Re:A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol by nugget on Sunday September 17, 2017 @07:48PM (#15272357)
Given how hard it is for any group of people to keep a secret, I've always thought it much more likely to be a single individual.
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Re:A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol by eternalban on Monday September 18, 2017 @07:01AM (#15274793)
The fact that intelligence services employing armies of people exist worldwide should be sufficient to disabuse you of that meme.
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Re:A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol by macroexchange on Monday September 18, 2017 @12:15AM (#15273364)
Szabo reposted this blog post [1] on December 27, 2008

The Bitcoin genesis block was created Jan 4, 2009 [2]

At that time there was about say 3 people in the world interested in these ideas. Make your judgement and consider the probabilities for P(Szabo = Satoshi) and P(Szabo != Satoshi).

I think if you read up on all the articles and convince yourself. In [3] Szabo said there is a lot similarities with Bitcoin and Bitgold, and he talked about the differences in interviews.

[1] http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html [2] https://blockexplorer.com/block/000000000019d6689c085ae16583... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_yUeuKu7L4

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Re:A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol by tylersmith on Sunday September 17, 2017 @07:37PM (#15272315)
There's certainly no consensus on it. Many people think he is but probably not a majority.
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