Ethereum Is a Dark Forest
Perhaps due to a certain naivete I enjoy almost all discussions on HN. There are few exceptions and discussions under blockchain-related posts are the a prime example. I will disclose right away that I wholeheartedly think that blockchains are here to stay and to solve many problems. The general sentiment on HN, and this thread so far is an example, seems to be animosity toward the idea in general lightly veiled by pretext of pointing out technical challenges (which are numerous, I do not think the most ardent blockchain proponent will deny). Every time I try to point some great ability of &quot;smart contracts&quot; in return I hear blanket unthoughtful responses like &quot;well how is it better than a database&quot; or &quot;how is it better than a REST call&quot; (for example this exchange about the Baseline protocol <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23824584" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23824584</a>).<p>Perhaps starting with a general accusation of the community is not the best method. But I&#x27;ll move on... There are things that are very important to understand about blockchain. The most important one is that the technology and the systems built on it are _extremely_ young. Blockchain is like the 80s of computing. I would compare it to editing Unix system settings with &quot;nano&quot; to adjust a basic setting of your operating system - lots of horror stories for sure. The big difference is that people are out there to make money off of your mistakes. Yes, it can be a hostile environment. As the article alludes to - full anonymity of transactions is still in the pipeline! I do no know a single blockchain project out there that allows to interact with contracts anonymously yet. If blockchain is still alive a few years from now (and I have little doubt about that) then things like Optimism (mentioned in the article) will have made a whole array of shortcomings obsolete. Awesomeness does not happen overnight, it took _decades_ for the internet to become the ubiquitous integral thing that it is now.<p>Actually, I&#x27;m glad the author used Uniswap as an example, because it is a simple and powerful system that would not have been possible without blockchain. (Aside: Uniswap is actually one of the first products to create a POC of running on top of Optimism&#x27;s Optimistic rollups, so they are no unaware of issues). It was conceived initially by Vitalik himself and implemented as an Ethereum grant. The basic idea is that a contract controls two pools of tokenized assets. The assets are provided by people who get a cut when a trade happens. The price of assets being exchanged is equal to the ratio of their quantities in every pool. That is it!!<p>Now, why do I think that a system as Uniswap is awesome. Right now most tokens are either tokens for other projects or USD. As the variety of tokenized assets grows (for example some Japanese banks are looking to create a digital Yen, and there are clues that suggest it might be on Ethereum) what you get is an extremely simple no-middlemen system for exchanging things of value. Now, in theory, any programmer can write a program, say, for currency exchange in one evening - no middlemen, no 3rd parties to trust, no banks, no clearing houses and a basic API anybody can integrate. The system is not perfect, and that&#x27;s what the article is about. But the concept can be revolutionary.<p>The blockchain money-grab is disgusting to look at. But do not throw the baby out with the bathwater.