aakilfernandes

I don't have any audo files on my desktop. would be nice to have a default so i could play around without hunting for one

There are extremely important regulatory differences.

The right to run an oracle which broadcasts the winner of the SuperBowl is well protected by the 1st amendment.

The right to arbitrate a gambling contract based on the SuperBowl is not as clear.

I agree that lots of people who talk about blockchain don't understand how it works.

However, there is plenty of cool things to like about a blockchain without POW. A blockchain is just a database which broadcasts signed transactions over a p2p network.

Forging a blockchain requires a validator to sign two conflicting transactions. When that happens, you have undeniable proof of fraud which you can take to a judge.

Compare this to most databases where a sysadmin changes a few values and deletes the logs, no one would be any wiser.

Related: The Fuzzy, Insane Math That's Creating So Many Billion-Dollar Tech Companies

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-17/the-fuzzy...

Title should be change to "plans to defend".

> On Monday, Mr. Thiel plans to defend his position in a speech and then a question-and-answer session with reporters at the National Press Club in Washington.

Seems ipfs might give you something like that. Rather than identifying resources by name, you identify them by the hash of their content.

IMHO this is a good thing for both chains. ETHC benefits from more centralized (efficient) development on ETHF, while ETHF can use ETHC as leverage to avert future forks. ie "We tried to fork in the past, look what happened! If we fork again everyone will just use classic".

I was being facetious :)

Intersting idea. Perhaps we should have a system of governance of the "contracts" whereby we elect "representatives" who appoint "judges".

I'm pretty sure PR releases are supposed to be positive =) This is pretty negative.

Sure it is. If all blocks are relayed to all participants, theyll have a record of whenever theres an attempt to change the block history.

All they need to do is show two coflicting blocks signed by the "approver"

Read-only apps don't require ether. Any time you need to perform a state-change, you need to spend ether.

As for downloading the entire blockchain, light chain verification will make this unnecessary.

Well, they did include a difficulty bomb specifically for that reason.

Heads up that Vlad (the guy leading PoS) does not share this assessment.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4rohdy/vlad_zamfi...

Thats a fair point

Agreed. I think the ship has sailed on the term "blockchain" and it no longer requires decentralization. It means a signed transaction log which can't be secretly forged. Not as sexy as bitcoin, but language is fluid and I think the definition has shifted.

If you want the benefits of a blockchain without the Wild West stuff, why not set up a private chain with an "approver" instead of miners? I'm sure many companies interested in Ethereum are going this route.

Bitcoin reversed to fix protocol errors, this is not a protocol error.

Definitely agree with that. I'm a big fan of Ethereum, just very unhappy about this fork.

I think that until Vitalik pulls a Satoshi, Etheruem will never be as decentralized. This has pros and cons, especially with sharding/PoS around the corner.

Or perhaps if you want mutable contracts based on intent, you could use one of the 253 legal systems that already provide you with that.

This soft fork has been abandoned, and the discussion had moved to a hard fork.

This is based on a false narrative that miners/stakers determine the protocol. The protocol is determined by the nodes. The nodes produced by the dev team and run by the exchanges are the "economic majority" and are sufficient to change the protocol.

Perhaps this is confusing enough to trick regulators, however I'm not so certain.

While I would hardly describe the players as "EvilCorp", or "Cronies", thats exactly what is happening now.

If the protocol developers and exchanges switch to a fork, there's very little the community can do.

Sticking with the former chain is difficult because 1) everyone else is calling a different chain "Ethereum" therefore you probably need to change your name to something else, 2) You need to be concerned with mining attacks

yup. fixed, thanks!

Such a fork would be more difficult in Bitcoin due to their political/financial (not necessarily technical) decentralization. This fork, if it happens, will be proof that Ethereum is far behind bitcoin in terms of decentralization.

Based on a single poll ( <1% of all tokens and not endorsed by Foundation)

I like the Ethereum has a founder and leadership team. I just want them to use their influence wisely.

Hey, admittedly I responded without reading your blog post. Sorry about that.

In my defense, I've spent a lot of time on /r/ethereum where a lot of people think that 51% of miners are capable of changing the protocol.

Could you elaborate on the issue, I take it you're referring to this

> In a proof-of-work blockchain, nobody rational would follow a fork with less than 50% of the mining power behind it because it would be vulnerable to attack by anonymous miners unless there were also a change in the hashing algorithm that required an investment in different kinds of hardware.

That would be a soft fork. For hard forks, the miners have very little input.

http://aakilfernandes.github.io/soft-forks-vs-hard-forks

Thats actually not how hard forks work. If the nodes run by the exchanges, the "economic majority", decide to fork, pretty much everyone else has to follow. Miners don't really have a say.