RE: Beta-ing the Tezos Experience: Red Flags for the ICO and Open Questions
Has no one noted that the Breitmans are former GOLDMAN-SACHS people???
There's your Biggest RED FLAG!
Here is Clif High's synopsis on the "Tezos Foundation" without the buy-sell or long-short recommendation, deleted that because it is paid subscription info.
Tezos Foundation (ICO)
Tezos Foundation is founded by Kathleen and Arthur Brietman. It is being touted as a replacement or competitor to Ethereum as a network, and as a coin/token. The founders are from Goldman Sachs, and other banking interests. There are also associations with very large 'accounting and consulting' corporations. All of that colors their ideas of the 'marketplace' for their product, and is directly influencing both their language and their behavior. There is big money in the form of billionaire (Tim Draper) is said to be 'backing' the ico for Tezos. Critique: Note that Tezos is a 'foundation'. The organization is touting a distributed network competition for Ethereum, and chooses to arrange itself as a 'foundation'. The language of the Tezos site, as well as the many examples being offered in public relations venues by the founder, are providing a view of a group that is in an intense fight. Tezos core developers, and its operating crew are viewing themselves as saviors of the distributed smart contracts world with their 'unique' contribution which is viewed as the use of Michelson proofs for code for smart contracts. Their idea is that Ethereum as a network is languishing due to the failure of Ethereum to provide proof of correctness to code prior to letting contracts be launched. The language offered by the founders in their public appearances, as well as the language at Slack and other coin developer forum postings, is showing some very clear signs to avoid this offering. First there is a delusional perception of themselves as 'saviors' to the Ethereum concept, a failure to note that their one point of differentiation is both easily copied, and not at all on consumers awareness. Further, their language betrays both arrogance, and passive/aggressive patterns. There are slight hints of social themes within the language for/of Tezos, however, given the arrogance of their other language sets, the impression is one of an elitist view at odds with the space they are trying to enter. The math proofs they are touting are not being sought by the market. Their smart contract programming language is OCAML, which, while a decent language, robust, and supported by many libraries, is still a relatively isolated, French focused programming language. It is designed for what are termed 'abstract machines', and while the Ethereum Virtual Machine, upon which all smart contract software runs, certainly fits that description, the OCAML language is not well suited to development of smart contract code. This is due to it being first an interpreted language, and second to the large, and bloated bytecode it produces (a side effect of its robust nature for large scale applications). Even though a descendant of Caml Light, this version of the compiler produces even more bloated bytecode than expected of 'enterprise level programming language'.
As a practical approach, for Tezos to chose OCAML over Solidity has already put them behind the Ethereum adoption curve, and falling further back faster. May well make coin in the ICO. But crowded space already, and growing by the day.
NOW what do you think?
Goldman Sachs is fine, conspiracy theories are silly. Lots of good people and bad people work at Goldman Sachs and have. Same goes for all big companies.