3 ms·

You listed two forms of control: social and computational. The latter is baked into Bitcoin and we rely on the assumption that no single entity will control >50

You listed two forms of control: social and computational. The latter is baked into Bitcoin and we rely on the assumption that no single entity will control >50% of the computing power of the network. This situation being "bad" is purely a consequence of the construction of the blockchain. On the other hand, the DAO fork was a result of centralized control due to social factors. As with bitcoin, a >50% consensus is necessary to fork a blockchain. But because there is a single overwhelmingly popular ethereum client, the developers had the ability to make the software obey the fork by default. A referendum was conducted in good faith, and the devs flipped the switch. But again, this was only possible because everyone was using the same client to begin with, and few people bother to change the default behavior.

jerguismi 9y ago
The current segwit non-adoption by miners in Bitcoin shows that with Bitcoin there clearly isn't as much social control as in ethereum. This can be bad or good, depending on viewpoint. I myself doubt that segwit will ever get adopted in bitcoin. It looks like even if a small group of actors want to block some change, they can. So that will mean that the protocol will remain pretty much the same with the good and the bad features.
shandor 9y ago
> the DAO fork was a result of centralized control due to social factors. As with bitcoin, a >50% consensus is necessary to fork a blockchain I'm not very well-versed in computational power requirements on this scale, but it doesn't sound at all infeasible that a nation state (or a couple in unison) could setup a "51% attack", thus reducing the social form of control back to only the computational one. And if anything, that threat is only going to become worse with ever-increasing computational capability, advent of quantum computers at some point, etc. Nations (and other huge players) have the resources to tap into all that new power, while the individuals ideally making up the bulk of a blockchain's computing power would most probably not, at least not in big enough scale. I don't see how that could be prevented, and that leaves me somewhat confused on why the blockchain is advertised as "immutable" as it is.

jerguismi 9y ago

The current segwit non-adoption by miners in Bitcoin shows that with Bitcoin there clearly isn't as much social control as in ethereum. This can be bad or good, depending on viewpoint. I myself doubt that segwit will ever get adopted in bitcoin. It looks like even if a small group of actors want to block some change, they can. So that will mean that the protocol will remain pretty much the same with the good and the bad features.

shandor 9y ago

> the DAO fork was a result of centralized control due to social factors. As with bitcoin, a >50% consensus is necessary to fork a blockchain I'm not very well-versed in computational power requirements on this scale, but it doesn't sound at all infeasible that a nation state (or a couple in unison) could setup a "51% attack", thus reducing the social form of control back to only the computational one. And if anything, that threat is only going to become worse with ever-increasing computational capability, advent of quantum computers at some point, etc. Nations (and other huge players) have the resources to tap into all that new power, while the individuals ideally making up the bulk of a blockchain's computing power would most probably not, at least not in big enough scale. I don't see how that could be prevented, and that leaves me somewhat confused on why the blockchain is advertised as "immutable" as it is.