Ethereum and Oracles

One of the more popular proposals for implementing smart contracts differently from the way they are typically presented in Ethereum is through the concept of oracles. Essentially, instead of a long-running contract being run directly on the blockchain…

the ethereum project: learning to dream with open minds

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” Friedrich Nietzsche Ethereum as a project is more than just a technology, even if technology is at its core. In the rush of creating, co-creating and de…

Toward a 12-second Block Time

One of the annoyances of the blockchain as a decentralized platform is the sheer length of delay before a transaction gets finalized. One confirmation in the Bitcoin network takes ten minutes on average, but in reality due to statistical effects when o…

Background on the mechanics of the ether pre-sale

During the run-up to the ether sale we will be releasing a series of blog posts regarding our development plans and intended organizational structure. Today we describe some of the background details of the ether sale module.  The sale module will be d…

On Stake

The topic of mining centralization has been a very important one over the past few weeks. GHASH.io, the Bitcoin network’s largest mining pool, has for the past month directed over 40% of the Bitcoin network’s hashpower, and two weeks ago briefly spiked…

Advanced Contract Programming Example: SchellingCoin

Writing effective decentralized applications in Ethereum is at the same time easy and hard. The easy part we all know: rather than needing to create your own blockchain, manage complicated database code, deal with networking and NAT traversal, or any o…

On Mining

Decentralization, n. The security assumption that a nineteen year old in Hangzhou and someone who is maybe in the UK, and maybe not, have not yet decided to collude with each other. There has been a large amount of ruckus in the past week about the is…

Cloud Computing Comes to Health IT

Cloud Computing – The adoption of cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) models are disrupting traditional enterprise software in health IT.

Cloud Computing Comes to Health IT

Cloud Computing – The adoption of cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) models are disrupting traditional enterprise software in health IT.

Ethereum Project Update

Development of the Ethereum project has gone very well over the months since inception.  The core activity — development of the software platform — is on track and many developers around the world are starting to build small, exploratory distributed ap…

Nest: The Tip of the IoT Iceberg

Nest offers a thermostat that learns and adapts to individual temperature preferences and commuting schedules. It programs itself, and does all of the work.