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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

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.

Bromskloss 10y ago
> Such a fork would not be more difficult in Bitcoin Did you mean to say that it _would_ be more difficult?
- aakilfernandes 10y ago
  yup. fixed, thanks!
onestone 10y ago
I disagree. The ability to reach consensus within a community does not necessarily imply centralization.
- croon 10y ago
  Genuine question: As a self-described fairly intelligent tech person, the blockchain and its working is still fairly magical to me, so answer me this: Would it be theoretically possible for big players on the market (read EvilCorp) to push the market over to a fork by convincing enough of its cronies to make the switch? I'm assuming what you mean is that market consensus is (at least) 51% of the market accepting the fork as "the truth" in terms of value by making further business there instead. Or would it not even require 51% but merely (for example) 20% of the capital that covers 80% of the transactions? I also assume anyone that wanted could still stick to the former blockchain as long as it has other participants to deal with? Am I wrong in expecting a synecdoche to the current "real world economy" within cryptocurrency that it loses its democratization when the top X% can force for example a fork?
  - aakilfernandes 10y ago
    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
  - onestone 10y ago
    Hard forks don't require any particular adoption percentage (unlike soft forks). The network simply splits in two chains. If one of the chains is obviously weaker, it usually dies quickly, as it's no longer economically viable. In this case the sentiment among actual ETH holders is ~ 85% in favor of the hard fork. Check http://carbonvote.com/ http://carbonvote.com/ (it's not a binding vote, just an indication showing which way the wind blows).
drcode 10y ago
To be fair, ethereum is a newer, and more experimental platform- It has many arguable advantages over Bitcoin, but as an etherean I am happy to agree that right now Bitcoin is more established and also may be somewhat more decentralized (given that the ethereum community is giving some deference to the core team at this early stage, in the future this will likely no longer be true)
- aakilfernandes 10y ago
  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.
  - drcode 10y ago
    I'm not exactly thrilled about the fork either, but I'm happy to support it for the sake of the community.
  - gst 10y ago
    PoS will be much harder without a fork. I don't care about the DAO holders (disclaimer: I have around 5% of my total Ether holdings locked in the DAO), but due to the issues with PoS I think that a fork would be the best option at this point.
    - drcode 10y ago
      This is mainly an issue because Vitalik endorsed DAO forks- If he had said "This does not justify a fork" I would be 100% anti fork, for the same reasons you describe: Vitalik needs credibility to pull the POS transition through.
    - aakilfernandes 10y ago
      Heads up that Vlad (the guy leading PoS) does not share this assessment. https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4rohdy/vlad_zamfirs_thoughts_on_the_hard_fork/d52s60v https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4rohdy/vlad_zamfi...
WorldMaker 10y ago
«This fork, if it happens, will be proof that Ethereum is far behind bitcoin in terms of decentralization.» Wouldn't a fork imply more decentralization? Multiple active forks would imply multiple actors working to their own agendas towards different objectives/goals and no central fiat to realign their interests. That would certainly sound more decentralized to me. (The block size tangle and the inability for Bitcoin to fork recently to deal with that almost certainly sounded like a power/political centralization problem to this lay observer from what I was reading, but I've managed to stay somewhat unfamiliar with much of the technical nuance.) It seems to me like a truly decentralized system would likely be prone to forking. The issue should likely not be whether the system can fork (and how difficult it might be), but how the system handles forks when it does fork. (This is the "DVCS criteria": a DVCS must realize that merges must be common and handle sometimes heavily divergent forks well and with grace, otherwise it is a bad DVCS that users will hate.)
- mhluongo 10y ago
  Not really, if the fork is orchestrated and primarily by one group (the Ethereum Foundation).
whyoh 10y ago
Bitcoin mining is essentially controlled by a handful of people in China. Let's not use it as an example of decentralization.
Shorel 10y ago
It depends. If by centralization you mean control of the mining power by a small group of people, then Bitcoin is a lot more centralized than Ethereum. It's just that the response to the DAO problem was one of consensus, instead of the response to the block size issue in Bitcoin, where they behave like playing a zero sum game and every proposed fork is rejected by someone.

Bromskloss 10y ago

> Such a fork would not be more difficult in Bitcoin Did you mean to say that it _would_ be more difficult?

aakilfernandes 10y ago
yup. fixed, thanks!

onestone 10y ago

I disagree. The ability to reach consensus within a community does not necessarily imply centralization.

croon 10y ago
Genuine question: As a self-described fairly intelligent tech person, the blockchain and its working is still fairly magical to me, so answer me this: Would it be theoretically possible for big players on the market (read EvilCorp) to push the market over to a fork by convincing enough of its cronies to make the switch? I'm assuming what you mean is that market consensus is (at least) 51% of the market accepting the fork as "the truth" in terms of value by making further business there instead. Or would it not even require 51% but merely (for example) 20% of the capital that covers 80% of the transactions? I also assume anyone that wanted could still stick to the former blockchain as long as it has other participants to deal with? Am I wrong in expecting a synecdoche to the current "real world economy" within cryptocurrency that it loses its democratization when the top X% can force for example a fork?
- aakilfernandes 10y ago
  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
- onestone 10y ago
  Hard forks don't require any particular adoption percentage (unlike soft forks). The network simply splits in two chains. If one of the chains is obviously weaker, it usually dies quickly, as it's no longer economically viable. In this case the sentiment among actual ETH holders is ~ 85% in favor of the hard fork. Check http://carbonvote.com/ http://carbonvote.com/ (it's not a binding vote, just an indication showing which way the wind blows).

drcode 10y ago

To be fair, ethereum is a newer, and more experimental platform- It has many arguable advantages over Bitcoin, but as an etherean I am happy to agree that right now Bitcoin is more established and also may be somewhat more decentralized (given that the ethereum community is giving some deference to the core team at this early stage, in the future this will likely no longer be true)

aakilfernandes 10y ago
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.
- drcode 10y ago
  I'm not exactly thrilled about the fork either, but I'm happy to support it for the sake of the community.
- gst 10y ago
  PoS will be much harder without a fork. I don't care about the DAO holders (disclaimer: I have around 5% of my total Ether holdings locked in the DAO), but due to the issues with PoS I think that a fork would be the best option at this point.
  - drcode 10y ago
    This is mainly an issue because Vitalik endorsed DAO forks- If he had said "This does not justify a fork" I would be 100% anti fork, for the same reasons you describe: Vitalik needs credibility to pull the POS transition through.
  - aakilfernandes 10y ago
    Heads up that Vlad (the guy leading PoS) does not share this assessment. https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4rohdy/vlad_zamfirs_thoughts_on_the_hard_fork/d52s60v https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4rohdy/vlad_zamfi...

WorldMaker 10y ago

«This fork, if it happens, will be proof that Ethereum is far behind bitcoin in terms of decentralization.» Wouldn't a fork imply more decentralization? Multiple active forks would imply multiple actors working to their own agendas towards different objectives/goals and no central fiat to realign their interests. That would certainly sound more decentralized to me. (The block size tangle and the inability for Bitcoin to fork recently to deal with that almost certainly sounded like a power/political centralization problem to this lay observer from what I was reading, but I've managed to stay somewhat unfamiliar with much of the technical nuance.) It seems to me like a truly decentralized system would likely be prone to forking. The issue should likely not be whether the system can fork (and how difficult it might be), but how the system handles forks when it does fork. (This is the "DVCS criteria": a DVCS must realize that merges must be common and handle sometimes heavily divergent forks well and with grace, otherwise it is a bad DVCS that users will hate.)

mhluongo 10y ago
Not really, if the fork is orchestrated and primarily by one group (the Ethereum Foundation).

whyoh 10y ago

Bitcoin mining is essentially controlled by a handful of people in China. Let's not use it as an example of decentralization.

Shorel 10y ago

It depends. If by centralization you mean control of the mining power by a small group of people, then Bitcoin is a lot more centralized than Ethereum. It's just that the response to the DAO problem was one of consensus, instead of the response to the block size issue in Bitcoin, where they behave like playing a zero sum game and every proposed fork is rejected by someone.