72 karma · joined October 3, 2017
The only people that notice the different look are those who "know", wraps serve the purpose for 95% of people at a fraction of the cost.
On your second point - where I am coming from is that there is nothing stopping countries from creating laws which introduce these powers and outlaw methods to avoid the new legislation. No it doesn't work with the current architecture. But we absolutely can end up in a situation where there is a U.S Ethereum chain where all nodes are legally required to follow updates/forks to the chain as they occur, caused by various court orders to reverse transactions etc. At this point the consensus can go whichever the government likes because those operating the nodes would want to be participating in the current legal chain.
Here we are talking about the hypothetical situation of the U.S claiming complete jurisdiction of Ethereum. The U.S could make whatever laws it likes around the usage of Ethereum, legislate that all nodes have to adhere to these laws and job is done. The rest of the world can say "lolbye" and continue using it like nothing has happened, but in the U.S they would likely have to fork and create a new chain, and those who want to use it legally in the U.S would also have to use this new U.S-regulated chain. From there they can then implement processes to reverse transactions, introduce identification requirements etc.
A very US-centric view is it not? Many places can force you to decrypt something by law. In fact the US does on entry to the country and can refuse entry if you do not comply.
> there ain't shit they can do to actually enforce that demand.
Watch forks become more commonplace and "official" forks being recognised and non-official forks being barred from use in any legitimate transactions. The courts will have the power to force blockchains to reverse transactions or other fraud this way - at a technical level still quite difficult but if it becomes law then solutions to make it easier will be created. Perhaps to cherry pick transactions just like you can cherry pick git commits.
I'm sure they could make it redirect anywhere they want.