Actually, your identity can quite easily be identified through your facebook activity since you are the manager of the peercoin page – I can point to your facebook page, I believe:)
This conundrum could be solved by creating a spin-off company, just like Maker DAO is doing with Nexus. You could incorporate and specialize in developing tools that utilize/leverage the Nu network. That way it could be for-profit and also enjoy certain protection from the law in unlikely case that cryptocurrencies are ruled illegal.
Ethereum definitely is running at the forefront in terms of core technology; that’s why it’s catching the eye of many mainstream tech firms, and Vitalik was put on the editorial board of Ledger along with top academics. Perhaps conferences have bad ROI, but getting a big name sponsoring it is a big mainstream win.
That said I’m with @tomjoad that attracting this kind of support imposes an ideological cost to the ecosystem. In my opinion, Ethereum’s versatility is also its curse - unless it allows for much more efficient ways of dealing with blockchain bloat than others, in the long term it can only formally accommodate a handful of resource-intensive purposes at once. Special-purpose blockchains like ours always have a way to win in efficiency.
Thus aligning Ethereum’s interest with its sponsors would leave little space for the sort of ubiquity they are hoping for, even push away some great opportunities. There can still be a lucrative business model on top of that, but at least there’s less chance an Ethereum-based asset can be a direct competitor of Nubits.
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Yeah, I don’t actively talk about my identity, but I haven’t done that much to hide it either, so I’m guessing it’s already too late anyway.
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I am still struggling to get a grasp about ethereum purpose and usefulness.
They have been around for 1.5y now-- anything useful that they have produced?
I AM ALL EARS
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“trust” will follow crypto universe for a long time (if not for ever). economics = trust anyway.
faces and real names help very much a startup company.
a manager that has the ability to promote the work and organize events is the most useful asset in a company.
but NU is a DAO, how can be handled and promoted as a traditional company?
edit: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/microsoft-will-offer-ethereum-blockchain-tools-to-azure-users/
this is huge for ethereum!
To reply to the “Nu anonymous DAO” argument, I think I know a way to get out there into the official sphere without having to reigster a company nor put any face on conferences :
Entering the “real cryptocurrency recognised business ecosystem” (if such thing exist) from the backdoor of science.
I insist we should try to get into Ledger ;`
nope, the first beta software came out two months ago. Go to their forum to get a feel of how much is being done in little time
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I read the white paper back in jan 2014…
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So now you can compute how long did it take them to go from whitepaper-vapoware to product 
In any case, i d like to take the best from Ethereum. Their ability to get publicity compared to Nu is difficult to ignore.
However it is still unknown to me what problem it solves.
Ethereum provides a programming language and a suite of tools that allow for the easy development of and deployment of smart contracts(eventually DAOS) for experienced crypto developers and those who are new to cryptocurrency.
Marley Gray, Microsoft’s director of technology strategy for its US Financial Services, said in a statement: “Our enterprise clients will have the ability to deploy private and semi-private or consortium blockchain networks, as well as public Ethereum nodes with a single click on Azure.”
If the devs are successful, it could end up being one of the primary blockchains used to help separate blockchains talk with each other. Augur is building their decentralized prediction market using ethereum…it is planned to be cryptocurrency agnostic and team members have spoken positively about Nubits since they will need stable crypto! Also, many teams are building out P2P versions of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Uber, etc. using Ethereum.
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i have high expectations from ethereum and i believe that it could be the second in capitalization after BTC!
it would be awesome if NU could cooperate with ethereum in some way 
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A programming language is ambitious – machines do stuff in situ of humans, right?
With ethereum, What do you make machines do ? And which machine do stuff?
Also a smart contract a certainly not a DAC in Nu view.
AFTER 1.5y, I have yet to be cleared about my questions about ethereum but i share vitalik fascination for the power of programming language
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Yes, a programming language is ambitious, I believe that’s why the project has gotten so much attention. With Ethereum, you make machines contribute to the security of a blockchain whose primary function is not to act as a store of value, but rather to be a platform upon which smart contracts can be easily developed. Different machines do different things depending on which smart contracts they are running/interacting with.
I did not mean to imply that a smart contract is a DAC, just that they could be fundamental building blocks of one. I think skepticism of Ethereum’s ability to deliver is warranted, but the desirability of such a system seems clear to me. Augur could be incredibly useful for Nu as it would create organic demand for stable cryptocurrency.
From Programmable Blockchains in Context
"So what do we mean by world computer? In essence, Ethereum simulates a
perfect machine — a thing which could never exist in nature because of
the laws of physics, but which can be simulated by a large enough
computer network. The network’s size isn’t there to produce the fastest
possible computer (although that may come later with blockchain scaling)
but to produce a universal computer which is accessible from anywhere
by anybody, and (critically!) which always gives the same results to
everybody. It’s a global resource which stores answers and cannot be
subverted, denied or censored "
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So rather than being in competition with every other cryptocurrency, Ethereum is complimentary? For example, Bitcoin, Peercoin, NuBits, B&C and others could all co-exist with Ethereum and actually benefit from its existence?
Yep, that’s how I see it. Ethereum itself is complimentary and a good thing for the whole ecosystem, although it might be used later on to build products that compete with Nu and B&C(very early stage and non-functioning stablecoins and decentralized markets are being built.)
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well, “the hardest competition is the perfect cooperation”
i don’t remember where i read it!
For those that are still trying to understand Ethereum, I will try to explain it with non-technical words. Sorry for the long post.
Lets start with the premise we have 3 programs that acts on two values passed to them (input), and return a result (output):
- The sum program.
- The subtract program.
- The vote program.
Ethereum aims to be a decentralized computer, so I will subdivide it in three parts to make it analogous to a regular computer:
-
Input (like the keyboard):
Imagine any crytocurrency, but when you send coins to an address you do not send value(money), you also send data(text, numbers, images, etc). How? Recorded in the transaction body along with the coin transfer details.
This data is then stored in the blockchain, so all nodes process it and verify it. -
Processing (logic):
Depending where that data is sent, it is processed by the nodes in any way or another, and all nodes do the same processing and verify it.
How? Because previously the creator of the recipient address sent special data with the “keyboard” saying, if data is received at this address process with the sum program, if it goes to this another process it with the subtract program, and so on.
These programs are called “smart contracts”. As you can suppose, this processing have to be repeated by every node in order to verify it and validate the output. -
Output (the feedback you get back, the result, you can think of it as data on the screen, sound on the speakers, text on the printer…)
When the processing ends, the result is stored in the blockchain, and all nodes record it the same way as an “input”.
Example:
Input: you send the data “8” and “2” embedded on a transaction of 0.00001 ETH to the subtract program identified by its address. All the nodes run the subtract program against your data and they come up with “6”. The output, 6 is stored on the blockchain and all nodes see it. Your wallet see the result on the blockchain and shows you the result, 6.
You can imagine the use cases, for example you can easily define the program 3 (vote) by modifying the add program to look at previous inputs to itself and come up a sum of all of them. And so on.
You could even build Nu on top of it, what would be the advantaje? None!
It would be much slower and you would have to pay for using it. Yes, PAY. Did you notice that the input is on a transaction? So for sending data you have to effectively send coins and that coins have to be ETH, That is the value of ETH coins and why people is buying. Of course it can be forked, and the original Ethereum blockchain would not have any advantage whatsoever compared to the new, smaller, and probably cheaper one.
Having said that, forget about privacy or secure communication, since everything processed by the platform has to be public to allow being verified by all the nodes.
Also I must raise my main concern, we are worried about bitcoin scalability (the block size debate) and yet we expect this blockchain to withstand the load of a ton of other platforms? And without (pun intended) motions? You decide.
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Having said that, forget about privacy or secure communication, since everything processed by the platform has to be public to allow being verified by all the nodes.
There exist protocols and active research efforts to realize the concept of verifiable private computations - people can audit the results while they are encrypted. I’m not knowledgeable but it works for certain types of operations, and people seemed to be getting close to doing both addition and multiplication, which are deemed sufficient for a wide range of applications. So it can’t be ruled out so easily, though I guess it’s going to be extremely expensive on Ethereum.
Edit: It seems we can already do general computation on encrypted data, it’s just incredibly impractical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption
It is not quite ready yet. It exists but it is extremely slow.