Another update as of June 2016 in italics
Since writing this an aeon ago (in Sept 2014), much has happened and much has not happened. So this is an update as of end Jan 2015.
Happened:
– many more people are connecting the dots between re-decentralization and Internet Of Things.
– many more announcements from IBM and Samsung and Ethereum.
Not Happened:
– any shipping products.
The last point will bring out the skeptics, but I am sticking with two convictions:
1. Crazy brilliant move by IBM. The need for decentralization in IOT is immediate but more long term in finance. IBM gets to make money now in IOT and learn more to make money in finance later.
2. Ethereum is the platform to bet on. There is a lot of debate on this score, but the two big reasons why people are skeptical of Ethereum look less compelling with each passing day:
A. Ethereum is not shipping yet. Yes, but it is getting closer every day. Sure, they could still fail to ship working code, but that does look more unlikely with every passing day.It is shipping now. Obviously it is still a work in progress (but so is every tech product that does not die). Today the preponderance of evidence is that Ethereum will work.
B. Ethereum does not use Bitcoin. It uses Ether. Link A + B and you get cries of Scam! Now that Bitcoin price is falling below its mining costs, the idea of a Blockchain platform that divorces Blockchain from Bitcoin looks increasingly smart. Ethereum DAPPS (some examples here) do also use Bitcoin as the crypto currency. It is wrong to look at it as Ether vs Bitcoin – it is more like “horses for courses”.
Original Post in Sept 2014:
This will be a short post, as I am still getting my head around the implications of this announcement that IBM is creating a fork of Ethereum called Adept (news release as pf Jan 2015 here).
I have been fascinated by Ethereum for some time. (Index to all Ethereum related posts on Daily Fintech are here).
I had a thought about how Ethereum connects with Internet of Things in relation to the professionalization of sharing economy services such as AirBnB here. This is worth reading and the need I was expressing there has been realised in Slock.it (which represents the best use case of decentralised smart contracts in the wild).
All I know now about the IBM announcement is:
- This is a massive validation for Ethereum. A company of the scale of IBM ($98 billion of revenue last year) does not get involved with bleeding edge technology like this on a whim.
- This demonstrates what an amazing company IBM is. To be able to operate simultaneously at the level Fortune 500 Board/CXO and at the level of bleeding edge technology that is usually only understood by a few developers is very, very cool.
[…] building open source software that anybody can take without paying the founders a dime. Indeed IBM has already taken Ethereum to make it work on your fridges and light-bulbs for the Internet of T…. As Stephan Tual of Ethereum told me on Friday, “take” implies a one-way street; which is not […]
[…] IBM a déjà annoncé un fork, c’est-à-dire une copie du programme. Et Counterparty, un protocole très populaire construit sur Bitcoin, a publié les résultats positifs des premiers tests de l’intégration d’Ethereum rendant les contrats déjà compatibles entre eux… Nous n’en sommes qu’aux débuts de la drôle de vague qui risque d’emporter ce qui reste de l’ancien système pour laisser place à la structure plus crédible d’un système monétaire divers et transparent. […]
[…] company at this layer is Eris. They forked Ethereum (which anybody can do and which IBM did with Adept). Their proposition appears to be Ethereum without Ether. In other words, Eris is an internal IT […]
[…] company at this layer is Eris. It forked Ethereum (which anybody can do, and which IBM did with Adept). Its proposition appears to be Ethereum without Ether – in other words, Eris is an internal IT […]
[…] has been validation from Big Tech – both from IBM and from Microsoft. This will make big Banks and existing intermediaries feel safe when choosing […]