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>Totally independent of Ethereum, this style of argument is kinda weak. We really should be trying to build something better, either by improving the existing s

>Totally independent of Ethereum, this style of argument is kinda weak. We really should be trying to build something better, either by improving the existing system or building a parallel system that will slowly replace what's there. Good enough is the enemy of great. While I agree that this style of rethoric is often overused, GP does raise an important question. Now that Ethereum has forked, there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding the real benefits of the system, and about whether the benefit is worth the risk of switching. The Ethereum project has always marketed the value of the system by emphasizing the predictable, deterministic, and impartial nature of the blockchain. Now that it has failed this first trial by fire, it is up to the project to present a new value proposition for why it is an improvement over the traditional legal system. We as the public must ask questions to analyze and critique this value proposition.

jfoutz 10y ago
>GP does raise an important question. Now that Ethereum has forked, there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding the real benefits of the system, and about whether the benefit is worth the risk of switching. Oh, absolutely. We should always talk about what was good, what was bad, and what was irrelevant. I feel the "what we have now is ok" argument is dismissive. It actively prevents us considering the good, bad or irrelevant perspective. After rereading everything, perhaps i was harsh. The OP presented things in comparison to the current system, which is the right thing to do. I think the emphasis on "the current system works" distracted me.
- geofft 10y ago
  You bring up a fair point. The only reason I feel the need to emphasize "the current system works" is that so much cryptocurrency discourse seems to act as if the current system is horrible beyond repair and literally anything would be better than it. That's far from true, and it's definitely far from true when you've reintroduced humans caring about fraud--just human programmers writing soft-fork code (that didn't even work right, according to this manifesto) as opposed to people who make a profession out of understanding fraud. There's a lot to be fixed about our current financial system. But I think both Ethereum-with-fork and Ethereum-without-fork are demonstrably worse than the status quo (which I think you also agree with). Ethereum is great as an experiment, but now we have experimental results from the DAO hack, showing something that clearly needs to be rethought. This manifesto seems to instead be presenting Ethereum-without-fork as a good and complete option, and all of its reasoning could have been written the day before the hack.

jfoutz 10y ago

>GP does raise an important question. Now that Ethereum has forked, there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding the real benefits of the system, and about whether the benefit is worth the risk of switching. Oh, absolutely. We should always talk about what was good, what was bad, and what was irrelevant. I feel the "what we have now is ok" argument is dismissive. It actively prevents us considering the good, bad or irrelevant perspective. After rereading everything, perhaps i was harsh. The OP presented things in comparison to the current system, which is the right thing to do. I think the emphasis on "the current system works" distracted me.

geofft 10y ago
You bring up a fair point. The only reason I feel the need to emphasize "the current system works" is that so much cryptocurrency discourse seems to act as if the current system is horrible beyond repair and literally anything would be better than it. That's far from true, and it's definitely far from true when you've reintroduced humans caring about fraud--just human programmers writing soft-fork code (that didn't even work right, according to this manifesto) as opposed to people who make a profession out of understanding fraud. There's a lot to be fixed about our current financial system. But I think both Ethereum-with-fork and Ethereum-without-fork are demonstrably worse than the status quo (which I think you also agree with). Ethereum is great as an experiment, but now we have experimental results from the DAO hack, showing something that clearly needs to be rethought. This manifesto seems to instead be presenting Ethereum-without-fork as a good and complete option, and all of its reasoning could have been written the day before the hack.