Since then Eth has proved to be a successful investment, so this is not a commentary on the performance of this digital asset. But rather a comment on the false immutable, decentralized claims of this blockchain.
It's certainly fair to debate the strength of immutability guarantees with respect to a given blockchain, but in practice no blockchain is perfectly immutable given that humans still write and deploy the clients that run them. Consider the 184 billion Bitcoin hack from 2010, a similar straw man about the _current_ immutability claims of Bitcoin.
But it being possible is still a non-zero risk.
I'd argue he CAN indeed do it again today. Perhaps not in the exact way as the DAO fiasco, but lets be clear, the fundamental transgression was selling one story "the code is law" and then not abiding by that law when it affected him and his friends aversely.
So can he still commit such an egregious breach of trust in this timeline, despite having done it before? Absolutely, though that and the DAO instance may indeed look different from one another.
https://twitter.com/vitalikbuterin/status/118851166038788915...
Vitalik goes on to defend against Mow's claim that he is "pivoting" by saying that it is indeed a principle. It's extremely clear with basic reading comprehension that Vitalik is claiming that as a principle of his.
Not sure how you extracted the meaning you did. If I'm being honest, you seem to not really be researching the subject in good faith, as a simple google search will turn up many times he's either stated he believes that in text or even video.
You are welcome to believe what you'd like to though, I unfortunately don't have the time to do your research for you, nor do I care to change your mind. So cheers and good luck!
For what it's worth I have passing familiarity.
Taken from wikipedia:
> The people who continued with Ethereum Classic advocate for blockchain immutability, and the concept that "code is law" against the pro-fork side (Ethereum) which largely argued for extra-protocol intentionality, decentralized decision-making, and conflict resolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic#Code_is_law
Ethereum Classic clearly believes in code is law, that's not the chain that Vitalik works on.
I tried ~5 searches and went ~15 deep. I generally don't appreciate the "just Google it" manta, but I'd really like to know the answer to this.
Credibility is the fact that Ethereum has succeeded with sufficient immutability since The DAO hack to convince billions of dollars of transactions for various use cases. Proof is in the pudding.
That "credibility" metric is meaningless when the core devs can rug-pull at any time. "Jude-, go run Ethereum Classic if you're that bent out of shape about it" isn't a compelling argument either, because if the vast majority of the Ethereum economy goes along with the core devs' whims, then there's no point of having a blockchain at all. Might as well just replace Ethereum with a replicated PostgreSQL database, and give only the core devs permission to change the schema and UPDATE rows. If we're trusting core devs to not rug-pull in the future, after they have done so in the past, then there's really no need for the current low-trust environment -- after all, the things that make it low-trust also make it slow and expensive.
Weird, I didn't make an argument to use Ethereum Classic. I am arguing that given humans are still the ones who develop clients perfect immutability is impossible.
I do belive that Bitcoin is more immutable than Ethereum. I also don't buy that Ethereum is unusably mutable. But hey, looks like the market thus far agrees with my position on this.
Wake me up when it happens. The Bitcoin project's developers still get the benefit of the doubt because unlike Ethereum, they haven't betrayed the trust its users placed in them. Also, network upgrades happen through a miner voting process, which checks the power of the project's developers. Ethereum provides no such check.
> But hey, looks like the market thus far agrees with my position on this.
Bitcoin is worth considerably more than Ethereum, and that will likely be the case for the foreseeable future in part because in each Ethereum hard fork, the monetary policy changes. Why would anyone park capital in Ethereum for the long term if they can't even be sure what their dilution will be next year?
Doesn't seem like a sound argument for perfect immutability. Sounds reasonable as an argument for better immutability.
> Bitcoin is worth considerably more than Ethereum
Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency. To imply that it hasn't been successful is disingenuous. Of course Ethereum doesn't need to "flippen" Bitcoin to still have demonstrable value.
> Why would anyone park capital in Ethereum for the long term if they can't even be sure what their dilution will be next year?
I guess its $400bn of irrational market participants then. Funny, because most of the institutional world would say the same of Bitcoin. One can ignore both at their own financial peril.
It is a fact that Ethereum's developers altered the consensus rules to revert the DAO (after touting "code is law" for some time prior to it), and it is a fact that Bitcoin's developers have done no such thing. It is also a fact that subsequent Ethereum hard forks have altered the token emission policy, whereas no such alterations have occurred on Bitcoin. Furthermore, it is a fact that the whole selling point of using a blockchain -- a very slow, inefficient, expensive, power-hungry, unforgiving time-series replicated database -- to implement world-class financial instruments is that in principle, the code decides what happens, and alterations to this arrangement only happen with the support of a majority of network voting power (e.g. hashrate, stake). The Ethereum project's behavior is in violation of this core principle, whereas the Bitcoin project is not.
I'm sorry, but your attempt to convince me that Ethereum's behavior here has been in any way comparable to Bitcoin because "nothing is immutable" comes across as weak nihilism. It's like saying that Ethereum's decision doesn't matter because eventually we'll all be dead and the heat death of the universe will render mining inoperable. Like, yes, this is true, but it's also not germane.
> Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency. To imply that it hasn't been successful is disingenuous.
Where did I say that Ethereum wasn't successful in an absolute sense? All I said was that it isn't as successful as Bitcoin, and that I don't think it will never be until these unresolved governance questions get addressed.
> I guess its $400bn of irrational market participants then.
Okay, two things.
First, if everyone sold their Eth right now, would they collectively receive $400bn? Is the buy side of the market actually that deep?
Second, you're actually correct here -- markets are irrational. The crypto markets are especially so, since they lack many of the hard-won investor safeguards that traditional markets have gained over the years to defend against the bad consequences of irrational behavior. Also, markets can afford to remain irrational far longer than either of us can remain solvent, so caveat emptor, DYOR, and so on.
I've never argued that Ethereum is more successful than Bitcoin, but you've continued to deflect any point where I've indicated that it has any merit as a network at all. Seems pretty irrational -- or purely agenda driven.
> you've continued to deflect any point where I've indicated that it has any merit as a network at all.
That's because the minute the Ethereum project leaders retroactively altered the transaction history the way they did is the minute the project lost all credibility with me (and hence my original comment about why Ethereum should just switch over to a PostgreSQL database if their stance is that the devs should be able to invalidate prior transactions on a whim). I've outlined a set of reasonable governance safeguards in a sibling thread that I believe could restore confidence in the project by bringing it back in line with the aforementioned core principle of operation that justifies building it as a blockchain (and not just a database), but I'll point out that the project has enacted nothing like them to date.
I'm not opposed to hard forks on principle. I'm opposed to hard forks that get pushed through without measurable majority stakeholder consent. Even if Ethereum had done a very simple miner-based vote to upgrade the system to disable the DAO contract (something they could have done in the time between the attack and the time the attacker could have exited with the DAO's ETH), it would have been enough to satisfy this requirement. But they didn't.
And the idea that it doesn't seems to ignore reality as a whole. Ethereum already had thousands of nodes running when the DAO scandal was perpetrated, that didn't change a thing.
As for your second statement, it stinks of a bag holder grasping at straws. There is zero credibility in the project after the DAO scandal. But you are welcome to convince yourself otherwise.
Really, it just seems intellectually lazy to me to use The DAO as a way to gauge Ethereum today. Folks should instead focus on what devs are doing now (e.g. EIP 1559 would be something of concern) to have an honest debate about mutability today vs. whinging about Vitalik then.
Here are a few things Ethereum could do to reassure the world that the DAO disaster won't be repeated. I think that even if only a subset of these measures were adopted, it would at least demonstrate that the project has learned something from the experience.
* Create a representative "hard fork board" in the core developers group that procures and shepherds all future changes to the codebase that could create hard forks. Hard forks may only originate from this board, and membership in this board is decided through regular free and fair elections by individuals in the ecosystem (there would need to be a KYC-like process to verify that these individuals are actual, real Etherians).
* Make it so any hard forks proposed by this hard fork board can only take effect if a large amount of the total circulating supply of ETH to vote for the upgrade. This serves to allow the anonymous masses to check the power of the board.
* Involve miners (or block-producers in ETH 2.0) in the vote-to-upgrade procedure, such as by giving them veto power if they can muster enough mining or staking power. This ensures that developers can't make changes that would boot off marginalized miners/block-producers.
* Involve users in the vote-to-upgrade procedure. Make it so exchanges cannot vote with their users' funds; the users themselves must vote with their keys.
"but what about eth classic?"
The ETC chain exists, yes, however it is not "Ethereum". There's a timeline where the majority was against the fork, and ETC would have remained "Ethereum", with the forked chain taking on a new name like Ethereum Cash or something.
A majority of eth miners and users decided to change the rules and ignore the promises of immutability previously made to all.
Having a majority does not make an action ethical. Hence the term: tyranny of the majority.
This serious breach of faith soured many people on the project, and the mis-trust continues to this day.
Pricing is not "tyranny of the majority." If nobody wants to buy what you are selling, you are not being oppressed.
Given that people decided they would much rather buy the coin with the altered ledger, it is more valuable.
As a meta note: Crypto seems to bring out the most low-brow critiques on either side. Maybe because it has become popular with a mass audience?
I don't see how ethics plays into it; it's a judgement call and the existence of the forked Ethereum isn't an attack on ETC.
> On 15 July 2016, a short notice on-chain vote was held on the DAO hard fork.[8] Of the 82,054,716 ETH in existence, only 4,542,416 voted, for a total voter turn out of 5.5% of the total supply on 16 July 2016; 3,964,516 ETH (87%) voted in favor, 1/4 of which came from a single address, and 577,899 ETH (13%) opposed the DAO fork.[8]
I don't care about the morality of rights and wrongs. I'm making a limited categorical claim: this event by itself is proof that Eth is not immutable nor is it decentralized.
That is all I am saying.