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Comment by meirelles | Hacker News Reader

IMHO such planned improvements shouldn't be called hard forks, it's a kind misleading for folks outside cryptocurrencies.

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But it is a hard fork, termed that way by the organization that is the custodian of the ethereum network. It is only misleading if people outside cryptocurrencies misrepresent what a hard fork means.

Ethereum foundation is not the custodian of the network. This is a debatable point, since it's not perfectly clear what that would mean. Ethereum Foundation doesn't own the miners or the validating nodes on the network, and can't control who joins or what software they run. Like other development teams, they can propose and try to drum up support for upgrades, which they've been successful at so far.

Detractors of Ethereum would prefer to view the Foundation as having much greater influence over the network, since that would mean it's less centralized. Proponents of Ethereum on the other hand would say Ethereum Foundation's role is similar to that of Bitcoin Core, except the divisiveness hasn't set in yet (or in the case of Ethereum Classic, opposing factions split off before it got bad).

The Ethereum Foundation owns and controls the trademarks of Ethereum. While they cannot dictate the code the various participants on the network run, they get to explicitly decide which version of the code gets to be called "Ethereum". That's how they maintain control.

There's a good chance that the trademark is no longer enforceable due to their failure to apply enforce it against Ethereum Classic. There has been quite a bit of discussion about this within the community.

Who should they have sued to enforce their trademark in the case of Ethereum Classic? Unless the argument is for genericization as opposed to failure to enforce, I don't understand.

The also own a lot of eth, directly and through their members private holdings. Keep in mind that Ethererum is mostly pre-mined.

Slight gripe: I'm pretty sure they own a lot of validating nodes.

Maybe calling it a "preplanned hardfork" is the better idea then, as that seems to be a critical difference.

Very much agree. Hard fork has the implication of people disagreeing to the point where two things go in the opposite direction. Whereas this is just improvement for the future. Using the term hard fork is fine, but throw "update" in the phrase to make it sound positive.

I mean, you argument is that we should all lie about what the "upgrade/hardfork" is, because the truth could cause controversy.

This change is not backward compatible. Therefore it is a hardfork. Full stop.

To many familiar with open source, "fork" implies some sort of intractable difference: personality, legal, technical decision, etc. "Incompatible change" seems more accurate, at least based on terms I'm used to hearing.

I think it's not about lying, but very often software upgrades are not backward compatible, in that case, everybody should upgrade, that's all. It is probably more intuitive concept for the mainstream market than saying "a hard fork is coming soon".

This is quite clear terminology in cryptoworld, although I can understand why people are a bit confused with the events that unfolded in August. A hard fork is any fork where new nodes produce blocks that old nodes do not accept (and vice versa). A soft fork is one where new nodes produce blocks that old nodes accept, but not the other way around (e.g. new nodes reject blocks made by old nodes). That's it.

So this _is_ a hard fork, albeit not a very contentious one. And it _will_ result in a chain split, with the minority chain probably having low activity/worth due to (1) lack of support (2) the ice age which will increase block times to slowly kill it (and that it itself has to be hard forked to stay alive).

“Hard fork” has a precise technical definition.

(Which is that if all nodes don't upgrade, a chain fork will occur)

Although not guaranteed, a soft fork can still result in a (lasting) chain split. Especially in the case of Bitcoin (which has slow difficulty adjustment), if the hash rate of the SegWit miners was lower than that of the old miners, the legacy chain could have easily prevailed/survived. It's a game of chance (read: race) right after the fork though, with the new nodes "winning" as soon as they generate a longer chain than the old nodes. This becomes ever more likely of course with a higher percentage of the combined hash rate.

Could this result in ETH splitting up into two currencies again, like it did last year? If so, there will be tax consequences / realized gains for those who sell out of the version they don't want to hold... further complicating things.

Almost certainly not. The expected outcome is that everyone will update their software, and the old fork will die.

Unlike last year this is not a controversial fork. It's just a planned part of the network upgrade process. No groups are planning to boycott the fork.

(It's futher enforced by code in the old fork that will cause it to die shortly, so even if a group of people wanted to keep running the old fork, they would actually have to hard fork it themselves to remove the 'ice age' anyway. So it would have to be a concious act, rather than just people forgetting to upgrade)

Agreed, "schism" is a better term in this instance

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