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Not quite. They would need to coordinate a new hard fork before Mid-End August because of the incoming ice age which intentionally slows the chain to a stop unl

Not quite. They would need to coordinate a new hard fork before Mid-End August because of the incoming ice age which intentionally slows the chain to a stop unless a hard fork happens. Simply saying "No I don't want to do that" isn't enough, you need to get together people to form at least one suitable alternative. That's why the ethereum devs could maintain control of the chain and the Bitcoins couldn't. Consequently the Bitcoin chain is not able to incorperate any innovations that would ever so slightly hurt mining profit in the short term even if it would be great for the ecosystem as a whole

ithinkso 5y ago
So it's not up to the miners and the consensus to decide what's best for the network? The leadership can decide the rules of a new fork unless everyone else coordinate to oppose it? Edit: What prohibits the leadership to do an arbitrary fork? How do cryptographic protocols factor the fact that leadership can just say 'no' and do the opposite and the chain will follow. Especially the word 'secure' in every coin looses it's meaning isn't it?
- ascendantlogic 5y ago
  It is up to the consensus. If enough people opposed a release and were able to coordinate their own fork then they are still free to do so. > The leadership can decide the rules of a new fork unless everyone else coordinate to oppose it? You are 100% free to not install the latest upgrade on your node(s). Unless you have enough people who agree with you and coordinate their refusal to upgrade you will be a network of one that goes entirely unused. This is exactly how decentralization is supposed to work. You have to obtain some level of consensus to get anything done. This isn't a situation where "everyone" has too coordinate to oppose something, just "enough" people to form a fork that has enough hashpower/security to attract users. Even if a large enough minority of miners were able to coordinate a new chain, fork the code, make the necessary code changes and start their own version of Ethereum they still have to get people to use their network.
  - ithinkso 5y ago
    Sounds like 'you are in your right to opt out of our policies if you disagree with an upgrade, it will immediately terminate all of your mining' And then saying that most people support you because only small percent of people opted-out
    - ascendantlogic 5y ago
      How did you expect a decentralized, consensus-driven network to operate without some level of consensus? You think 1 node forks should be as viable as 10,000 node forks?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - cinquemb 5y ago
      There are other evm compatible chains out there that people use: bsc, matic and avalanche c-chain come to mind. They all on some level opted out of some of the assumptions in go-ethereum.
    - strombofulous 5y ago
      In think there's a subtle difference. A side effect of Bitcoin's rules is that people with more hashing power have a disproportionate amount of weight in deciding the future of the protocol. Eth solves this by putting a hard deadline on some replacement being chosen. This can be the current maintainer's updated fork, or it can be a fork someone made that's identical to eth today with the date pushed back a few more years.
      - wmf 5y ago
        95% of Bitcoin miners voted to increase the block size and it didn't happen, but you're right about the benefit of the ice age.
        5y ago
- wmf 5y ago
  Besides miners and developers, exchanges are a major stakeholder. If exchanges declare that a particular chain is Bitcoin or Ethereum, others tend to agree. Also see https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html
- zeven7 5y ago
  Why the hell should I trust the miners more than the leadership? You say this like the leadership is this big, scary, shadowy group. The Ethereum leadership is one of the main reasons I invested in the coin. I love the leadership, and I trust them to make good decisions for the ecosystem.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    'Ethereum leadership' did a rollback once, so there is zero reasons to believe they won't do this again if this will be in their interests. You see, 'code is a contract', but then it isn't.
    - delaaxe 5y ago
      In “their” interest, as in, in the interest of thousands of people that got rug pulled because of a hack
      - tobltobs 5y ago
        Code is law ... until it doesn't suit my interest.
      - NationalPark 5y ago
        I think he’s talking about the DAO situation which was not a hack, the contract executed exactly as it was written. But it was also a long time ago.
        zeven7 5y ago
        All hacks are code executing exactly as it was written.
        NationalPark 5y ago
        Not necessarily, a large class of exploit has to do with manipulating the call stack.
- pjc50 5y ago
  At this point you realize that value is fundamentally a human creation, dependent on the belief and action of other humans, and there's nothing crypto or burning a power station's worth of electricity can do to change that. The only thing prohibiting arbitrary forks is the risk of loss of trust in the leadership. And there's no guarantee of their long-term trustworthiness; what does succession planning look like among the dev team? What will you do when they retire?
ricardobayes 5y ago
I wonder why do people spend their time (and money) on this? Real-world crypto is 'solved' by nano, with its feeless and instant transactions. I'm very new to the crypto world but ETH (especially BTC) seem way, way too complex, expensive and slow for any real world application. No wonder why there isn't any.
- kolinko 5y ago
  Nano doesn’t have smart contracts, so you cannot really do much with it.
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  That’s why you are new. Nano ain’t anything special. It’s another PoS shitcoin that scammers promote to sell their bags. When you don’t actually do any work, it’s cheap to transit garbage
  - ric2b 5y ago
    Nano does have PoW, but only on the client side as spam protection. It's quite clever actually, if someone is trying to spam the network your wallet can just include a higher difficulty PoW to get your transaction processed ahead of all the spam.

ithinkso 5y ago

So it's not up to the miners and the consensus to decide what's best for the network? The leadership can decide the rules of a new fork unless everyone else coordinate to oppose it? Edit: What prohibits the leadership to do an arbitrary fork? How do cryptographic protocols factor the fact that leadership can just say 'no' and do the opposite and the chain will follow. Especially the word 'secure' in every coin looses it's meaning isn't it?

ascendantlogic 5y ago
It is up to the consensus. If enough people opposed a release and were able to coordinate their own fork then they are still free to do so. > The leadership can decide the rules of a new fork unless everyone else coordinate to oppose it? You are 100% free to not install the latest upgrade on your node(s). Unless you have enough people who agree with you and coordinate their refusal to upgrade you will be a network of one that goes entirely unused. This is exactly how decentralization is supposed to work. You have to obtain some level of consensus to get anything done. This isn't a situation where "everyone" has too coordinate to oppose something, just "enough" people to form a fork that has enough hashpower/security to attract users. Even if a large enough minority of miners were able to coordinate a new chain, fork the code, make the necessary code changes and start their own version of Ethereum they still have to get people to use their network.
- ithinkso 5y ago
  Sounds like 'you are in your right to opt out of our policies if you disagree with an upgrade, it will immediately terminate all of your mining' And then saying that most people support you because only small percent of people opted-out
  - ascendantlogic 5y ago
    How did you expect a decentralized, consensus-driven network to operate without some level of consensus? You think 1 node forks should be as viable as 10,000 node forks?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - cinquemb 5y ago
    There are other evm compatible chains out there that people use: bsc, matic and avalanche c-chain come to mind. They all on some level opted out of some of the assumptions in go-ethereum.
  - strombofulous 5y ago
    In think there's a subtle difference. A side effect of Bitcoin's rules is that people with more hashing power have a disproportionate amount of weight in deciding the future of the protocol. Eth solves this by putting a hard deadline on some replacement being chosen. This can be the current maintainer's updated fork, or it can be a fork someone made that's identical to eth today with the date pushed back a few more years.
    - wmf 5y ago
      95% of Bitcoin miners voted to increase the block size and it didn't happen, but you're right about the benefit of the ice age.
      - 5y ago
wmf 5y ago
Besides miners and developers, exchanges are a major stakeholder. If exchanges declare that a particular chain is Bitcoin or Ethereum, others tend to agree. Also see https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html
zeven7 5y ago
Why the hell should I trust the miners more than the leadership? You say this like the leadership is this big, scary, shadowy group. The Ethereum leadership is one of the main reasons I invested in the coin. I love the leadership, and I trust them to make good decisions for the ecosystem.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  'Ethereum leadership' did a rollback once, so there is zero reasons to believe they won't do this again if this will be in their interests. You see, 'code is a contract', but then it isn't.
  - delaaxe 5y ago
    In “their” interest, as in, in the interest of thousands of people that got rug pulled because of a hack
    - tobltobs 5y ago
      Code is law ... until it doesn't suit my interest.
    - NationalPark 5y ago
      I think he’s talking about the DAO situation which was not a hack, the contract executed exactly as it was written. But it was also a long time ago.
      - zeven7 5y ago
        All hacks are code executing exactly as it was written.
        NationalPark 5y ago
        Not necessarily, a large class of exploit has to do with manipulating the call stack.
pjc50 5y ago
At this point you realize that value is fundamentally a human creation, dependent on the belief and action of other humans, and there's nothing crypto or burning a power station's worth of electricity can do to change that. The only thing prohibiting arbitrary forks is the risk of loss of trust in the leadership. And there's no guarantee of their long-term trustworthiness; what does succession planning look like among the dev team? What will you do when they retire?

ricardobayes 5y ago

I wonder why do people spend their time (and money) on this? Real-world crypto is 'solved' by nano, with its feeless and instant transactions. I'm very new to the crypto world but ETH (especially BTC) seem way, way too complex, expensive and slow for any real world application. No wonder why there isn't any.

kolinko 5y ago
Nano doesn’t have smart contracts, so you cannot really do much with it.
randomhodler84 5y ago
That’s why you are new. Nano ain’t anything special. It’s another PoS shitcoin that scammers promote to sell their bags. When you don’t actually do any work, it’s cheap to transit garbage
- ric2b 5y ago
  Nano does have PoW, but only on the client side as spam protection. It's quite clever actually, if someone is trying to spam the network your wallet can just include a higher difficulty PoW to get your transaction processed ahead of all the spam.