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Quoting Vitalik: > If someone puts a gun to my head & tells me to write a hardfork patch, I will definitely write it. If I publish a patch to delete a bunch of

Quoting Vitalik: > If someone puts a gun to my head & tells me to write a hardfork patch, I will definitely write it. If I publish a patch to delete a bunch of accounts, how many people here would download & install the update & switch to that chain? I see few raised hands. This is called decentralization. Sure, the Ethereum Foundation has substantial influence in the sense that their proposed changes tend to be adopted, but that's because they tend to propose good changes. If they propose a bad change, chances are the community will reject it. If they propose a questionable/controversial change, chances are the community will fork, as with the DAO fork.

StreamBright 8y ago
This is a joke, not decentralisation.
- amasad 8y ago
  Is it really a joke? Because if this is seen as a valid argument in the Ethereuem community then they've really gone off the deep end.
  - wuliwong 8y ago
    Decentralization is not my area of expertise but I am growing very interested. I've recently been learning a lot more about building decentralized apps using blockchains and distributed file storage. Could you expand a little upon why this is a joke? I understand that it is not describing a good situation but my understanding was that the miners are a part of the decentralizing infrastructure in the way that was described in the quote. Also, if you wouldn't mind, could you suggest some other reading for me on creating decentralized applications not using blockchain. I've wondered myself if it makes much sense that everything would be built on blockchains in the future.
    - StreamBright 8y ago
      Everything is centralized on the internet. People quite often forget that most of the internet backbone is vulnerable to all sort of attacks (BGP hijacking) or even just mass surveillance because most of the traffic is going through few devices. Unless I can directly reach your computer on the network without a 3rd party provider which can deny me that access you can't be seriously thinking about decentralization. Another issue that I see with these projects that claim to be decentralized, for example ipfs.io is that they do not consider worst case scenarios so they cannot have a service level agreements on their service. Most of the customer networks are asymmetric, you have much more bandwidth to download content than to upload so if you are providing services than you are going to saturate your uplink. Nodes can also be turned off, worst case scenario is that all of the nodes are off that has a piece of data that you can't recover from anywhere else. As of everything going to be built on the blockchain in the future, most definitely not. I think 2019 going to wipe out most of the cryptocurrencies and we are going to see very few successful blockchain (or more like distributed ledger) projects succeeding in the corporate space. Maybe there will be some use cases for blockchain/DLT like food traceability (one project i have contributed to) and customer warranty for example but all this hype that everything will be running on blockchain will just fade.
- nil_pointer 8y ago
  It's valid. The distributed consensus ultimately decides which chain will be used.
  - StreamBright 8y ago
    So Your definition of decentrealization is distributed consensus decision making? Makes sense than.
TekMol 8y ago
You could say the same about a government backed currency. "Sure, the government can send men with guns. But that's because they have the backing of the people. The police and the military. If they lose that, they can't."
- menzoic 8y ago
  TekMol, I don't get how your analogy relates? A gun would have to be put to every individual miner's head to force the majority to upgrade. Even then, if it caused a fork, individual users have the freedom to continue using the old version, new miners can choose the old version. Miners can even switch back to the old version after the gun is gone. Everything will still work.
  - justtopost 8y ago
    The gun here I wager is metaphorical, the loss of value by 'force' is the point. If your currency forks, and you are now in the minority, chances are your values will fall, and become harder to make liquid, as the market shrinks.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    > A gun would have to be put to every individual miner's head to force the majority to upgrade. The analogy applies to this, too. Governments have long shown that you don't have to put a gun to each individual's head - murder a small amount of dissidents in a nasty manner and it quite effectively squashes dissent in a lot of cases. A lot of miners are in China, which has lots of practice doing this.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    I think he's saying that without the support of the demos (voting public) the police/army won't move to support the government's position so their power is curtailed; in the same way that a centralised coin administration has their power curtailed if the community don't support their "army" (system changes to force a particular new regime).
    - 8y ago

StreamBright 8y ago

This is a joke, not decentralisation.

amasad 8y ago
Is it really a joke? Because if this is seen as a valid argument in the Ethereuem community then they've really gone off the deep end.
- wuliwong 8y ago
  Decentralization is not my area of expertise but I am growing very interested. I've recently been learning a lot more about building decentralized apps using blockchains and distributed file storage. Could you expand a little upon why this is a joke? I understand that it is not describing a good situation but my understanding was that the miners are a part of the decentralizing infrastructure in the way that was described in the quote. Also, if you wouldn't mind, could you suggest some other reading for me on creating decentralized applications not using blockchain. I've wondered myself if it makes much sense that everything would be built on blockchains in the future.
  - StreamBright 8y ago
    Everything is centralized on the internet. People quite often forget that most of the internet backbone is vulnerable to all sort of attacks (BGP hijacking) or even just mass surveillance because most of the traffic is going through few devices. Unless I can directly reach your computer on the network without a 3rd party provider which can deny me that access you can't be seriously thinking about decentralization. Another issue that I see with these projects that claim to be decentralized, for example ipfs.io is that they do not consider worst case scenarios so they cannot have a service level agreements on their service. Most of the customer networks are asymmetric, you have much more bandwidth to download content than to upload so if you are providing services than you are going to saturate your uplink. Nodes can also be turned off, worst case scenario is that all of the nodes are off that has a piece of data that you can't recover from anywhere else. As of everything going to be built on the blockchain in the future, most definitely not. I think 2019 going to wipe out most of the cryptocurrencies and we are going to see very few successful blockchain (or more like distributed ledger) projects succeeding in the corporate space. Maybe there will be some use cases for blockchain/DLT like food traceability (one project i have contributed to) and customer warranty for example but all this hype that everything will be running on blockchain will just fade.
nil_pointer 8y ago
It's valid. The distributed consensus ultimately decides which chain will be used.
- StreamBright 8y ago
  So Your definition of decentrealization is distributed consensus decision making? Makes sense than.

TekMol 8y ago

You could say the same about a government backed currency. "Sure, the government can send men with guns. But that's because they have the backing of the people. The police and the military. If they lose that, they can't."

menzoic 8y ago
TekMol, I don't get how your analogy relates? A gun would have to be put to every individual miner's head to force the majority to upgrade. Even then, if it caused a fork, individual users have the freedom to continue using the old version, new miners can choose the old version. Miners can even switch back to the old version after the gun is gone. Everything will still work.
- justtopost 8y ago
  The gun here I wager is metaphorical, the loss of value by 'force' is the point. If your currency forks, and you are now in the minority, chances are your values will fall, and become harder to make liquid, as the market shrinks.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  > A gun would have to be put to every individual miner's head to force the majority to upgrade. The analogy applies to this, too. Governments have long shown that you don't have to put a gun to each individual's head - murder a small amount of dissidents in a nasty manner and it quite effectively squashes dissent in a lot of cases. A lot of miners are in China, which has lots of practice doing this.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  I think he's saying that without the support of the demos (voting public) the police/army won't move to support the government's position so their power is curtailed; in the same way that a centralised coin administration has their power curtailed if the community don't support their "army" (system changes to force a particular new regime).
  - 8y ago