On the basic problems of Ethereum

1. Ethereum is a new and open blockchain platform, which allows anyone to build and use decentralized applications running through blockchain technology in the platform
just like bitcoin, Ethereum is neither controlled nor owned by anyone - it is an open source project created by many people around the world. Different from bitcoin protocol, Ethereum's design is very flexible and adaptable. It is very easy to create new applications on the Ethereum platform. With the release of homestead, anyone can use the applications on this platform safely
Ethereum is a programmable blockchain. It does not give users a series of preset operations, but allows users to create complex operations according to their own wishes. In this way, it can be used as a platform for many types of decentralized blockchain applications
in a narrow sense, Ethereum refers to a series of protocols that define a decentralized application platform. The core of Ethereum is Ethereum virtual machine (EVM), which can encode any complex algorithm. In computer science terminology, Ethereum is "Turing complete.". Developers can use the existing JavaScript and python as the model of other friendly programming languages to create applications running on the Ethereum simulator.

2.

There is an essential difference between Ethereum and bitcoin. What is the difference? Bitcoin defines a set of currency system, while Ethereum focuses on building a main chain (which can be understood as a road) to allow a large number of blockchain applications to run on this road

from this point of view, Ethereum's application scenarios are more extensive, which is why we say that Ethereum marks a simple monetary system in the era of blockchain

1.0, and a transformation to other instries and application scenarios in the era of blockchain 2.0

however, there is no perfect thing in the world. Although Ethereum has expanded the application scope of blockchain in all walks of life and improved the speed of transaction processing, it also has some disputes and doubts

first, the solution to the lack of scalability of Ethereum: slicing technology and lightning network

the bottom design of Ethereum, the biggest problem is that Ethereum has only one chain and no side chain, which means that all programs have to run on this chain equally, consuming resources and causing system congestion. Just like last year's very popular Ethereum game "encryption cat", when this game was very popular, it once caused Ethereum network paralysis

to improve the processing capacity, Ethereum proposes two ways: shard and lightning network. Let's introce these two technologies respectively

(1) fragmentation technology

vitalik buterin, founder of Ethereum, believes that the reason why mainstream blockchain networks such as bitcoin process transactions very slowly is that every miner has to process every transaction in the whole network, which is actually very inefficient. The idea of fragmentation technology is: a transaction does not need to be processed by all nodes in the whole network, as long as some nodes (miners) in the network are allowed to process it. Therefore, Ethereum network is divided into many pieces. At the same time, each piece can handle different transactions. In this way, the network performance will be greatly improved

however, the slicing technology is also controversial. As we all know, the important idea of blockchain technology is decentralization. Only when the whole network witnesses (processes) the same transaction can it have the highest authority. The Ethereum slicing technology is similar to the group witness, not all nodes witness together. In this way, it will lose the absolute "decentralization" attribute, and can only achieve the purpose of high performance by sacrificing certain characteristics of decentralization

(2) lightning network

lightning network uses the way of transaction under the chain. What does that mean? It means: when the participants of lightning network transfer money to each other, they do not need to confirm the transaction through the main chain of Ethereum, but create a payment channel between the participants and complete it under the chain

however, lightning network is not separated from the main chain. Before establishing a payment channel, you need to use the assets on the main chain as collateral to generate a balance proof, which indicates that you can transfer the corresponding balance. In the case that both parties of the transaction hold the balance certificate, both parties can make unlimited number of transfers under the chain through the payment channel

only when the off chain transaction is completed and the assets need to be transferred back to the chain, the balance change information of the main chain account will be registered on the Ethereum main chain, and no matter how many transactions occur ring this period, there will be no record on the main chain

another real benefit of lightning network is that it can save the cost of miners for you. At present, when we trade on the main chain of Ethereum, we need to consume gas and pay for miners. Once we move the transaction to the lower chain, we can save this part of the cost

Of course, lightning network is not perfect. When using the lightning network, the assets on the main chain should be used as collateral; And this part of assets as collateral can not be used before the user completes the transaction under the chain. This also determines that lightning trading is only suitable for small transactions

the above is the problem of insufficient scalability of Ethereum, as well as the two main solutions: fragmentation technology and lightning network

Second, there are loopholes in Ethereum's smart contract and the infamous Dao event

Ethereum's smart contract is very powerful, but there are loopholes in any code. The biggest controversy of Ethereum's smart contract lies in the so-called loopholes, that is, security issues. According to relevant research, 34200 (about 3%) of the nearly 1 million smart contracts based on Ethereum contain security vulnerabilities, which will allow hackers to steal eth, freeze assets or delete contracts, such as the infamous Dao incident

(1) what does Dao mean

before introcing the Dao event, let's first introce what Dao is. Dao is the abbreviation of decentralized

autonomous organization, which can be understood as decentralized autonomous organization. From the perspective of Ethereum, Dao is a kind of contract or a combination of contracts on the blockchain, which is used to replace the government's review and complex intermediate proceres, so as to achieve an efficient and decentralized trust system. Therefore, Dao is not a specific organization, that is to say, there can be many Dao, all kinds of Dao

(2) the infamous Dao event

however, when we talk about Dao now, we basically refer to the Dao event, that is, the infamous hacker attack event we just mentioned. As we know, the English word "the" refers to "the Dao event". The Dao event

refers to "the Dao event", because we just said that Dao is not a specific organization, there can be many Dao, all kinds of Dao

in 2016, slock.it, a German company focusing on "smart locks", launched the Dao project on Ethereum in order to realize decentralized physical exchange (such as apartments and ships). Since April 30, 2016, the financing window has been open for 28 days

unexpectedly, this Dao project is very popular. It raised more than US $100 million in just half a month. By the end of the whole financing period, it raised a total of US $150 million. Therefore, it has become the largest crowdfunding project in history. However, it didn't last long. In June, hackers took advantage of the loopholes in the smart contract to successfully transfer more than 3.6 million Ethernet coins and put them into a Dao sub organization, which has the same structure as the Dao. At that time, the price of Ethernet currency fell directly from more than $20 to less than $13

this event shows that there are loopholes in smart contracts, and once the loopholes are exploited by hackers, the consequences will be very serious. This is why many people criticize Ethereum and say that its smart contract is not smart

to solve this problem, many foreign companies begin to provide code audit services in order to solve the vulnerability problem of smart contract. From a technical point of view, some teams are currently testing smart contracts. Most of these teams are led by professors from Harvard, Stanford and Yale, and some of them have obtained investment from leading institutions

in addition to the problems of insufficient expansibility and loopholes in smart contracts, the controversy over Ethereum lies in the POS consensus mechanism it pursues, that is, the proof of equity mechanism. Under the proof of equity mechanism, if anyone holds more money and holds it for a longer time, he will get more "rights" (interests) and have the opportunity to get bookkeeping power, Bookkeeping can also be rewarded. In this way, it is easy to create the oligarchic advantage of "the stronger the stronger"

Another problem is the chaos of ICO. ICO is a common way to raise funds for blockchain projects, which we can understand as pre-sale. The outbreak of ICO projects on Ethereum has caused illegal activities such as fund allocation and money fraud under the banner of ICO, which has caused security risks to social and financial stability

3. Ethereum blockchain has exposed three major problems, and its founder vitalik buterin has been unable to interpret them for a long time. The first is the low performance and TPS of Ethereum blockchain as a whole; The second is that resources are not isolated. The event of cryptokitties virtual cat once occupied 20% of the traffic of the whole Ethereum, which directly caused Ethereum network users unable to carry out timely transactions, which is the biggest pain point of resources not isolated; The third problem lies in the embodiment of Ethereum's governance structure. As a decentralized distributed ledger, the founder team of Ethereum has dominated its network development in the past. The over centralized governance mode has led to the bifurcation of eth, etc and ETF in Ethereum, and the Ethereum community is now in a state of fragmented governance. In the view of Ma Haobo, founder and CEO of "aelf", all kinds of disadvantages of Ethereum are unacceptable. Therefore, the positioning of "aelf" is born for the next generation of decentralized underlying computing platform of Ethereum, which focuses on solving the problems of insufficient performance, non isolation of resources and governance structure of Ethereum.

4. At the top of Ethereum is DAPP. It exchanges with the smart contract layer through Web3. JS. All smart contracts run on EVM (Ethereum virtual machine) and use RPC calls. Below EVM and RPC are the four core contents of Ethereum, including: blockchain, consensus algorithm, mining and network layer. Except DAPP, all other parts are in the Ethereum client. The most popular Ethereum client is geth (go Ethereum)

5.

1. about the variability of blockchain

2. eth, if most people agree to modify the chain, that is, variability, then they can modify the blockchain records and contracts

3. etc, blockchain records and contracts can't be modified, that is, they can't be tampered with

4. here are the advantages and disadvantages of the two methods

   The advantage of

5. variability is that people can make timely changes to make the right decisions. Therefore, modifying the specification is more practical than finding loopholes

6. non modifiability means that no matter how smart people are at that time, it is impossible not to make mistakes. Therefore, when problems arise in this scheme, it is best to find and solve the loopholes through the existing legal framework

7. differences in development

8. eth, whether it is intentionally arranged or since its birth, the core decisions of blockchain are made by Ethereum foundation with the participation of the community and most of them are developed by it

9. etc, the decision-making of blockchain is mainly decided by the feedback of three loose, collaborative teams with community participation

10. in any case, anyone can put forward improvement suggestions for the two kinds of blockchains. This is the benefit of open source, and it is also very common. You will find that developers of the two chains communicate with each other through GitHub and reddit. I hope to improve the frequency of communication in order to achieve the common goal

11. about compatibility

12. at present, the two kinds of blockchains are compatible with each other. Contracts or applications written by eth can be applied on etc, and vice versa

13. eth, focusing on ewasm, is committed to providing a platform for more and more developers, while the issue of contract security is secondary, such as viper

14. etc focuses on making developers create more secure contracts, such as viper, iohk research, at the cost of consuming the number of potential developers

15. it's obvious that both chains can accept each other, regardless of whether their wishes are the same or not. My view is that the number of developers is not necessarily related to the quality of the proct

16. about the transaction speed

17. eth, the average is 25 seconds, which will be shortened after upgrading

18. etc, with an average time of 14 seconds, maintained at 10-14 seconds after upgrade, according to ecip-1010 and ecip-1036 protocols

19. about the block capacity

20. eth, with the daily trading volume of eth graally reaching 5 million, the block capacity is graally saturated. This situation is similar to the recent transaction cost of bitcoin. This problem can be solved by expanding the block capacity by increasing the default fuel limit

21. ETC­， At present, there is still a lot of room for block capacity. As more and more people accept etc, the block capacity will also increase, just like eth

22. about community

23. eth, mainly discuss on reddit

24. etc, mainly discuss on slack

25. about monetary policy

26. eth, the planned supply is growing steadily, resulting in an average inflation of 3% in eth blockchain in its life cycle

27. etc, before 2025, inflation will reach 3%, and then the total supply will reach 200 million etc, and then there will be deflation

    As for the regional distribution of trading volume, China accounts for 20%, South Korea 25% and the United States 25%
    In etc, China accounts for 50%, South Korea 25% and the United States 10%
    About securities, at present, investors do not have the option to trade securities. Recently, one of eth's ETFs, trading open-end index funds, was denied by the regulators

28. etc owns etc trading trust, which allows investors to own etc instead of the asset itself

6. In fact, the rise and fall of digital currency is a normal situation. The key is to see whether you are optimistic about its long-term value. Relatively speaking, if the long-term value is worth investing in, then the short-term decline can be ignored. At the same time, if you don't know much about digital currency users, it is recommended to choose a reliable and good platform for investment. The investment period needs more than six years, Word of mouth should always be good, you can take a look at AEX, fire coin these two, but also more reliable, you can also understand their own network first

7. The token of Ethereum is proced in the process of mining, with a mining rate of 5 Ethereum coins per piece. The mining process of Ethereum is almost the same as that of bitcoin. For each transaction, miners can use the computer to run the unique title metadata of the block through hash function, and guess the answer repeatedly and quickly until one of them wins

many new users believe that the sole purpose of mining is to generate ether in a way that does not require a central issuer (see our guide "what is ether?"). It's true. The token of Ethereum is proced in the process of mining, with a mining rate of 5 Ethereum coins per piece. But mining is at least as important. Usually, banks are responsible for keeping accurate records of transactions. They make sure that money is not created out of thin air and that users don't cheat and spend money many times. However, blockchain introces a new way to keep records, the whole network instead of intermediary, to verify transactions and add them to the public ledger

Ethereum mining

although "no trust" or "trust minimization" monetary system is the goal, there are still people who need to ensure the security of financial records and ensure that no one cheats. Mining is one of the innovations that makes decentralized records possible. Miners have reached a consensus on the history of transactions in terms of preventing fraud (especially double spending on ether) - an interesting issue that hasn't been addressed before the decentralized currency works on the blockchain. While Ethereum is looking at other ways to reach a consensus on the effectiveness of the deal, mining currently keeps the platform together

how mining works
today, the mining process of Ethereum is almost the same as that of bitcoin. For each transaction, the miner can use the computer to guess the answer repeatedly and quickly until one of them wins. More specifically, the miner will run the unique header metadata (including time stamp and software version) of the block through the hash function (which will return a fixed length, unordered string of numbers and letters, which appears to be random), changing only the 'nonce value', which will affect the hash value of the result

if the miner finds a hash that matches the current target, the miner will be granted ether and broadcast the block across the network for each node to verify and add to their own ledger . If miner B finds the hash, miner a stops working on the current block and repeats the process for the next block. It's hard for miners to cheat in this game. There is no way to fake the work and come up with the right answer to the puzzle. That's why solving puzzles is called "proof of work."

on the other hand, others have little time to verify whether the hash value is correct, which is exactly what each node does. About every 12-15 seconds, a miner finds a stone. If the miner starts to solve the puzzle faster or slower than this, the algorithm will automatically re adjust the difficulty of the problem so that the miner can rebound to about 12 seconds of solution time

miners earn these ethers randomly, and their profitability depends on their luck and the computing power they put in. The specific workload verification algorithm used by Ethereum is called "ethash", which aims to require more memory, making it difficult to mine with expensive ASIC. Special mining chips are now the only profitable way to mine bitcoin

in a sense, ethash may have achieved this goal successfully, because dedicated ASIC is not available for Ethereum (at least not yet). In addition, as Ethereum aims to shift from proof of work mining to "proof of equity" (which we will discuss below), buying ASIC may not be a wise choice because it may not prove useful for a long time< However, Ethereum may never need miners. Developers plan to abandon proof of work, the algorithm currently used by the network to determine which transactions are valid and protect them from tampering to support proof of equity, which is guaranteed by token owners. If and when the algorithm is launched, proof of equity can become a means to achieve distributed consensus, and the consensus uses less resources.

8. Don't say ether, even when big pie trading, there are risks. If you want to rece the risk, you need to find a reliable platform and a reliable team, so as to minimize the risk.