Re:Ethereum Sharding FAQ
by lojack on Wednesday April 25, 2018 @07:26PM
(#16927369)
Vitalk was originally a bitcoin developer who proposed extending the op codes to make a more general purpose computer, and only started Ethereum after he encountered resistance to the idea. I don’t think anyone was claiming bitcoin wasn’t prior work.
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Can you cite any evidence at all that he actually proposed new op codes? I've heard this claim many times, but never seen any evidence to back it up.
What opcodes does Ethereum support that Bitcoin does not support, or could not be implemented using Bitcoin's opcodes?
You've got everything that looks essential to me: add/sub, mul/div, logical and/or, bitwise, string, crypto, etc.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script#Opcodes
No disagreement that the Bitcoin development process is broken as fuck though.
Bitcoin specifically avoids loops and recursion. The codes you included allow basic contracts, but bitcoin scripts are guaranteed to halt. Its a conscious decision, and I'm not sure its a bad choice for the project.