It's bizarre to me that one would gauge the credibility of Ethereum today based on an event that occurred less than a year into the existence of the protocol, and despite massive performance with respect to digital assets since then (algorithmic stablecoins, AMM's, etc.).
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.
It's bizarre to me that one would NOT gauge the credibility of Ethereum today based on what the developers actually did vs what they said they would do. What exactly have they done to redeem themselves from their previous scandal?
The idea that a blockchain with thousands of nodes requires redemption from some historical act seems to ignore the very nature of how it functions at a protocol level. Ethereum exists as a collection of nodes who choose to participate using certain clients, not a computer in Vitalik's closet.
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.
What assurance do we have that they won't do it again when it suits them?
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?
> The Bitcoin project's developers still get the benefit of the doubt
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.
> Doesn't seem like a sound argument for perfect immutability. Sounds reasonable as an argument for better immutability.
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.
This is painting a rosy picture of history Bitcoin client consensus that whitewashes over events like the block size debate. Social consensus is required between core devs, miners and exchanges -- Bitcoin came out stronger from these events (far less catastrophic than The DAO), although it wasn't perfectly apparent at the time that it would.
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.
The block size debate wasn't about retroactively changing the outcome of a valid network transaction, was it? That's a pretty substantial difference between this and the DAO disaster. Retroactively changing things without the majority consent of the system's voting power defeats the purpose of using a blockchain at all.
> 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.
>The idea that a blockchain with thousands of nodes requires redemption from some historical act seems to ignore the very nature of how it functions at a protocol level.
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.
The difference is that the Bitcoin chain was not retroactively and incompatibly modified -- that fork still (ostensibly) exists and can be both mined and validated by the same software rules today. The system soft-forked; it didn't hard-fork.
The implementation of the fix was done by a small, early community who moved to effectively eliminate the 184 billion Bitcoin from circulation as humans, fixing a client. As noted, I think its a similar straw man (read: not the same).
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.
The reason this keeps coming up is because Ethereum has not taken any concrete steps in its governance process to make it so that either DAO-like rollback will not happen again, or if it does, it happens with the measured consent of all stakeholders. Hard forks are still a regular occurrence in Ethereum, and most of them change the ETH emission rate (which makes it really hard for anyone who wants to park capital in ETH long-term to make informed decisions). Also, hard forks are executed entirely at the discretion of an in-group of core developers, whose decision-making powers stem from an inscrutable who-knows-who social graph (as opposed to the consent of the governed). The best assurance they seem to be giving that the funds they manage are in good hands is a statement to the effect of "trust us, it won't happen again." Forgive me if I'm not so willing to give them the benefit of doubt a second time.
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.
He can’t do it today. The sheer size of the ecosystem and layers of real world assets that are (supposedly) tied to it would make any such rollback all but impossible.
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.
Huh given the context (especially given that this was post DAO hard fork) I read that as vitalik saying that "Code is law" is a principal, not necessarily saying that "code is law" is a principal held by himself/Ethereum.
I don't think you read that very well. His response is to Samson Mow (CSO of Blockstream) claiming that Vitalik was "Pivoting to 'Principles are law' from 'Code is law?'". This is because anyone who is even remotely familiar with Ethereum/Vitalik knows how many times Vitalik has said he believes "Code is Law".
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!
> 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.
Nope Vitalik believes code is law, just like any simple google search will show you. You just seem to be avoiding that all all costs. Strange really, wonder what your true motives are, good luck buddy!
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.