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The Ethereum "ice age" is a mechanism to ensure smooth transition to future planned hard forks. By tweaking the difficulty adjustment formula to artificially in

The Ethereum "ice age" is a mechanism to ensure smooth transition to future planned hard forks. By tweaking the difficulty adjustment formula to artificially increase block times after some time (the so called "difficulty bomb") it makes mining on the old chain unprofitable, and incentivizes everyone to move to the/a new one. The general idea is to prevent extreme conservatism and stagnation w.r.t. hard forks, as we are seeing in Bitcoin.

sleavey 9y ago
So is this giving the developers the control instead of - as with Bitcoin - the large mining pools? Is that any better?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jstanley 9y ago
  Incidentally, in Bitcoin, large mining pools do not have control over the consensus rules. It doesn't matter what the miners say, their chain is worthless if people refuse to run it. In Bitcoin, the economic majority decides what is Bitcoin. And when there's a substantial disagreement (e.g. BCC) there's a fork. Large mining pools have no more power to enforce consensus rule changes on others than anybody else does.
  - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
    Miners can attack rival chains with the same PoW -- so they do have some extra power over "similar" chains.
    - tfha 9y ago
      Attacks that cost them money to the tune of millions of dollars. Sure they can do it but it's not free.
      - mrtree 9y ago
        You mean real money and not this fake one?
- nhhehewr7 9y ago
  The former offers far more visibility than the latter for say in the future. So yes, IMO it is. Otherwise private concentration of power will do as it always does: leverage it's monopoly to control the system as a whole. The discussion & development are in the open. The large mining pools can sit at the table and discuss the changes as a part of the community. Or fork off.