Hacker News Reader

You don't even have to invent a new cryptocurrency. Bitcoin has had a non-turing-complete script from day 1. And if you want to run something more complicated, you can use zk-SNARKs combined with a tiny HTLC script on-chain.

View on HN

Yes and you could also send an email by buying raw materials, manufacturing a computer, writing an OS and an email client... doesn't mean you should.

Actually there are ways to run "smart contracts" without running every single computation on every single node like Ethereum does. Blockstack [1] (not affiliated, I just think it's cool) for instance runs most of the decentralized application off of the blockchain, but uses the blockchain for storage, identity, key management, etc.

That means you can have a decentralized application and also have the security of the bitcoin network, for example.

[1] https://blockstack.org/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com