Ethereum

Way back in the time line of this blog I speculated on the broad application of the block chain concept used by Bitcoin to validate anything.  Property titles, public notary functions, etc.

The leader in the broad application system to validate anything using the block chain concept appears to be Ethereum.

This is an explanation of Ethereum.  I like the broad viewpoint that it is a "Social Operating System"  upon which a whole world of various application programs can be run.  My thinking produces a conceptual Monetary Operating System in which finance is an application program on the Operating System.  Maybe that Monetary Operating system is just a subset extension of the bigger parent Social Operating System?

This Ethereum explanation is one among many to be found through Google ranging from simple to stuff I have little ability to comprehend beyond thinking this is something really big.  Like looking at the moon.

Its Big!

In the process of writing the prior entry I discovered Ethereum and Steve Randy Waldman.  He is described in Wikipedia as a computer programmer.  They are bricklayers.  Steve is an architect.  Probably knows how to lay bricks too but workers with less vision can code.   There are many "programmers" with the big picture vision of architects to be found on the web.  Their public discussion of the big picture they see is fascinating and taking up all of my attention on this Sunday morning.

One big picture idea that emerges is the importance of Trust Based Systems.  Centralized and Decentralized. What is the difference between Trust Based and Faith Based?  Trust Base has a Block Chain.  Faith based has a papal lineage chain in one example to validate the Trust in eternity.  I have trust in Block Chain.

I really like this explanation of Ethereum at P2P Foundation:

"a initiative for trust transactions on the blockchain: Ethereum is a next-generation distributed cryptographic ledger that is designed to allow users to encode advanced transaction types, Smart Contracts and decentralized applications into the Blockchain.
URL = http://ethereum.org/
"ethereum it is not another cryptocurrency. It is rather a P2P financial infrastructure able to support any kind of currency design, if expressed as a collective Smart Contract." 

The definition describes it as a financial infrastrucutre able to support any kind of currency design.  While I suppose that it could support a currency design that created currency as a functional product of a bank loan that is not the architecture that designer of the Ethereum concept would endorse.  In general I think they would see currency as an independent debt free monetary system thing of the Bitcoin nature.  My conceptual design thinking as well.  Separate money creation as an independent domain from contractual debt agreements relating to a debt free monetary system.

Ethereum is a social swiss army knife tool!  A lego of crypto monetary and finance systems would be a better description.

If a divine scorekeeper is keeping track of good and bad deeds I am sure it must be in an eternal block chain log.

The ctypto currency could bear a motto:  In Block Chain We Trust. The block chain ledger might even keep derivatives honest.  That would be a fantastic accomplishment the financial world could not afford to have.

Nathan Schneider has some blue sky thoughts about Ethereum application and I think they are all doable: 
With Ethereum, one could code a constitution for a nongeographic country that people can choose to join, pay taxes to, receive benefits from and cast votes in — and whose rules they would then have to obey. One could design a transnational microlending program or a scheme for universal basic income or a new kind of credit score. In one online video two Ethereum pioneers demonstrate how to code a simple marriage contract. The world’s next social contracts, the successors to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the U.S. Constitution, could be written in Ethereum’s programming language.

Stephen Palley makes a good comment here about Ethereum from the perspective of a lawyer.  Something subtle related to what he said and kicked into my attention by the word constitution if reference to writing one in Ethereum is the beauty of the social system architecture design of the separation of powers in a check and balance method.  System designers and programmers as agents of the public create the code law applied by society and adjudicated as necessary by the judicial branch.  Since the coded law is generally self adjudicating, the judicial branch operates on minimal exceptions applying wisdom as necessary and overriding the coders as required by their judicial supreme court role.

That system design is something I thought about regarding a monetary system in a recent blog entry.  It is good architecture.

Stephen Palley mentions Cucumber  As a bridge from the natural language of lawyers to the machine language of coders.  It could be used to create Ethereum contracts.  Fascinating.  Wikipedia describes Cucumber here.

Gherkin DSL

Enough for one Sunday!  I learned a lot.