Datt founder: Ethereum was not chosen because it might bring more problems

Ryan X Charles is the founder of the decentralized content sharing platform DATT. He previously worked as a cryptocurrency engineer at the social network reddit.

In this article, Charles discusses why he continues to build platforms on the Bitcoin protocol instead of embracing new blockchain platforms such as Ethereum.

Since I announced Datt last summer, a social media platform in development that’s powered by Bitcoin, one of the most common questions I’ve been asked is: “Why are you using Bitcoin?”

Last year, the question took a different form. People were asking me “Why not use Stripe?” or “Why not make an altcoin?” But in the past few months, with the rise of Ethereum, the question has evolved into “Why not use Ethereum?”

The answer is that what Datt needs right now is just互联网货币, not any advanced smart contracts. Switching to Ethereum will bring more technical and economic costs, which may ultimately lead to a failure to bring a commensurate return.

If we simply prioritize our feature set, we can add advanced, Bitcoin-based smart contracts when the time is right. Ethereum, from a protocol level, is arguably more advanced than Bitcoin because it is Turing complete, which solves the limitations of Bitcoin's built-in scripting language.

However, the economy around Ethereum is more limited than Bitcoin, so Ethereum is not as useful to Datt.

Possible Paths

Because the protocols between Ethereum and Bitcoin are very different, it is not a simple matter for Bitcoin companies to add Ethereum support.

Roughly speaking, Bitcoin companies have three options:

1. The technical complexity of the platform was increased by adding support for Ethereum.

2. Reduce their holdings in Bitcoin and keep complexity low by switching from Bitcoin to Ethereum.

3. Solve Bitcoin's problems by designing and building complex systems.

Some companies will choose option one and increase the technical complexity of their platform by adding support for both Ethereum and Bitcoin. But this is actually a mistake.

I have a negative view on companies that are leaving their fate to speculators rather than shaping their own future.

Other companies will choose option 2 and reduce their funds in the Bitcoin space and choose to support Ethereum. I think this is a valid option for some companies.

If a company never held a lot of Bitcoin assets, maybe they can find new business opportunities in Ethereum. They will take a hit when they move, but they will still succeed in the long run.

However, this path is actually no easier than Bitcoin’s path. I predict these companies will eventually face the same problem they are facing now – lack of traction. They still need to solve the hard problems, but in a smaller market, moving it back in time.

The third option is to solve the difficulty problem in the Bitcoin space.

Companies such as Blockstream, 21, OneName and OB1 (OpenBazaar development team) are working on these issues. These companies believe that Bitcoin is the largest and most secure foundation for future financial and information services.

When they run into problems, they write code to solve them instead of switching to a different platform.

This is where Datt comes in. For example, since Bitcoin’s block size is limited and has recently caused transaction fees to rise, we have begun implementing a solution based on payment channels.

New Problem

Moving to Ethereum will not eliminate problems for Datt, it will only create new and different problems, delaying our success.

The most useful, important and revolutionary application of blockchain technology is Internet currency.

Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, made the right goals and the right economic decisions when designing Bitcoin, especially limiting the total supply to 21 million.

It is impossible for Ethereum or any other platform to surpass Bitcoin because of its core value proposition.

Datt, like our cousins ​​in the industry, saw an opportunity in Bitcoin for a huge future market, and rather than wait for others to solve these difficult problems, we chose to solve them ourselves.

Note that I haven’t studied Ethereum in all its technical details, so I only assume that its developers have solved the Turing completeness problem correctly. However, I suspect that it will have many more problems to solve, just like Bitcoin.

Moreover, since Bitcoin has greater economic and long-term leading development advantages, I am not optimistic about Ethereum's desire to surpass Bitcoin at the ecosystem level.

Original article: http://www.coindesk.com/why-developer-bitcoin-ethereum/
By Ryan X Charles
Translation: Overnight porridge
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/datt-bitcoin)