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This is overlong and pretty florid, but its conclusion (that a long record of forked changes, each being good for big ETH holders but bad for miners, is roughly

This is overlong and pretty florid, but its conclusion (that a long record of forked changes, each being good for big ETH holders but bad for miners, is roughly equivalent to the self-dealing of wealthy insiders in the traditional financial world) doesn't seem wrong.

kristofferR 5y ago
The distinction he makes between miners and holders seems totally arbitrary in my view, it's not like the miners aren't also holders. The more you mine the more you hold.
secondaryacct 5y ago
Anyone who thought differently when crypto appeared was most likely young and naive. If a system deal with effort credit, some will find ways, whatever rule you think they follow, to get more credit for less effort. There s no solution, it s the basic of energy limitation: you have an enormous incentive to conserve energy until we can get so much more than we require with so little spending that it becomes irrelevant. But then, we ll find ways, probably, to spend so much energy that we ll reach the limit again. A bit like in the 2000s when you kept doubling your disk drive space every year and still kept filling it at exponential rate :D
chrisco255 5y ago
Why is it wrong? Ethereum has had the plan to move to proof of stake for years, and the purpose of the network is to serve its users not to enrich miners. We pay miners for security. That's great, but if we find a cheaper way to do security, there's nothing wrong with choosing a different security solution.
everfree 5y ago
Miners are contractors. They have no stake in Ethereum's long-term success unless they become ETH holders as well. Ether's price has risen exponentially. It doesn't make sense (and isn't necessary) to pay miners exponentially higher amounts of money to do the same job, thus the issuance reductions.
- ineptech 5y ago
  Making sense isn't equivalent to being justifiable. Imagine a FAANG telling their devs, "We're reducing your options, but that's okay because our stock price has gone up."
  - everfree 5y ago
    I don't see any inherent moral issue with writing an employment contract that way. Of course as a developer, I would heavily discount the value of options designed to work like that - which Ethereum miners should have been doing this whole time. Software development is a pretty free market as far as labor markets go. If a developer doesn't like the terms of the contract they're offered, they can bail and work somewhere else. With Ethereum, their "Minimum Necessary Issuance" social contract has been very clear in the docs since the beginning of the project.

kristofferR 5y ago

The distinction he makes between miners and holders seems totally arbitrary in my view, it's not like the miners aren't also holders. The more you mine the more you hold.

secondaryacct 5y ago

Anyone who thought differently when crypto appeared was most likely young and naive. If a system deal with effort credit, some will find ways, whatever rule you think they follow, to get more credit for less effort. There s no solution, it s the basic of energy limitation: you have an enormous incentive to conserve energy until we can get so much more than we require with so little spending that it becomes irrelevant. But then, we ll find ways, probably, to spend so much energy that we ll reach the limit again. A bit like in the 2000s when you kept doubling your disk drive space every year and still kept filling it at exponential rate :D

chrisco255 5y ago

Why is it wrong? Ethereum has had the plan to move to proof of stake for years, and the purpose of the network is to serve its users not to enrich miners. We pay miners for security. That's great, but if we find a cheaper way to do security, there's nothing wrong with choosing a different security solution.

everfree 5y ago

Miners are contractors. They have no stake in Ethereum's long-term success unless they become ETH holders as well. Ether's price has risen exponentially. It doesn't make sense (and isn't necessary) to pay miners exponentially higher amounts of money to do the same job, thus the issuance reductions.

ineptech 5y ago
Making sense isn't equivalent to being justifiable. Imagine a FAANG telling their devs, "We're reducing your options, but that's okay because our stock price has gone up."
- everfree 5y ago
  I don't see any inherent moral issue with writing an employment contract that way. Of course as a developer, I would heavily discount the value of options designed to work like that - which Ethereum miners should have been doing this whole time. Software development is a pretty free market as far as labor markets go. If a developer doesn't like the terms of the contract they're offered, they can bail and work somewhere else. With Ethereum, their "Minimum Necessary Issuance" social contract has been very clear in the docs since the beginning of the project.