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There's plenty wrong with Ethereum, but casting miners as 'the working class' is a flawed analogy. The mercantile class would be closer to the mark. Notably, th

There's plenty wrong with Ethereum, but casting miners as 'the working class' is a flawed analogy. The mercantile class would be closer to the mark. Notably, their hashing power is based in real world economic power and they extract an annuity from capital expenditure on mining operations and hardware. I also question whether miners are really providing the labour power, as you might expect the working class to do. They build the roads and keep the lights on but the means of production of value is (or ought to be) the services provided by those writing functionality that makes the network useful, i.e. the smart contract writers. Whether one thinks smart contracts on Ethereum have any value is another question but that was at least the vision. A move to proof-of-stake does not remove the role of miners/validators. Validators will still earn a reward from validating blocks. So it's not as if this 'class' is being disenfranchised totally. Finally the social class analogy entails disjointness of classes, this is certainly not the case for miners, many of whom are major token holders, and some of whom are involved in governance (of course by miners we are taking about the humans controlling the mining rigs not the computers themselves)

denton-scratch 5y ago
> There's plenty wrong with Ethereum, but casting miners as 'the working class' is a flawed analogy. Agreed. Marx's working class consists of those who do not own means of production, and are therefore compelled to sell their labour. Miners do not lack means of production; they operate expensive mining machinery. That machinery continues to run, and earn money for the miner, even while the miner sits on the beach. Selling their labour really isn't a good model for what's going on. Miners are just ordinary capitalists, exploiting a market opportunity.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  And there's a fixed amount of mining labor to be done, requiring far less than 1% of the current effort spent. So why are the pay cuts a problem? (Especially if you chart payout in USD.)
- dragonelite 5y ago
  The two class cycles workers cycle: Commodity(labor) -> Money -> Commodity(food, housing bills) Capitalists cycle: Money -> Commodity(means of production) -> Money(profit/surplus value) At least that is the bit that kind of sticked to me and made me realized in the west you want to do the second cycle. Earn money by selling labor, live life as a cheap ass for a while use savings to become a asshole landlord.
  - jkhdigital 5y ago
    > use savings to become a asshole landlord Being an asshole is not a requirement for landlords, nor is it exclusive to them. Oppressed workers can be assholes too!
    - dragonelite 5y ago
      An oppressed class has every right to be a asshole.
      - WJW 5y ago
        To their oppressors, perhaps. But if they are also assholes to everyone else then they are just assholes and the oppression has nothing to do with it.
  - EveYoung 5y ago
    Unfortunately, the second option becomes more and more difficult for most people. With increasing costs of living, saving enough money for investments often times seems impossible.
- throw3434053 5y ago
  Of course this is kind of reductive and silly but I see the analogy as taking Ethereum as Money (abstracted labour power), there are those who have to put said labour power into the system, and those who don't. This too: "But the ruling class now feels that’s too much because it amounts to a lot of value for the work. So the ruling class changes the rule of 5 Eth per block to 4 Eth per block.", mirrors the contradiction of wages and surplus value in the capitalist mode of production. The thing is regardless of the form of abstracted labour power, those who hold large sums of a commodity are free to buy lots and make an easy turnover in the market world, resulting in easy power in most societies as well.
- tim333 5y ago
  I think the working class in crypto would be the nocoiners.
nearbuy 5y ago
The miners, collectively, is also the group with the power to hard fork or not. So in some sense, they're the ruling class and the core developers are just proposing the changes to them.
- Taek 5y ago
  This is a general misconception about how consensus works in blockchains. Miners can choose whether or not to adopt a "soft fork". A soft fork can't violate any existing rules, it can just introduce new rules. A hard fork is allowed to violate existing rules, and gives you more flexibility in what can be changed. And miners do not have the power to decide whether or not a hard fork will happen. A hard fork is determined by the users, who have to upgrade their software. If the software updates automatically, then the power of hard forking lies with the developers, who could just push the new code out via an automatic update.
  - nearbuy 5y ago
    Ah, I should have known better. I was misinterpreting from the article linked in the article where it says (about a fork), "Miners, exchanges, and node operators also had to agree to update their software."
    - noxer 5y ago
      The reality is that people sit together and try to make a deal that all parties agree on simply because disruption and uncertainty is not in the interests of any of the parties. This doesn't change the fact that the parties do not have aligned interests and therefore its a constant fight everything is slow and expensive because of that. Kinda funny how this problem was solved before ETH even existed simply by removing the incentive for the hardware operator. No block rewards and no fees to collect aka no reason to fight over it. The only people who run the hardware without getting paid for it are the people who want to use it. They have aligned interest like a fast and cheap network and fast update cycles. And ofc no one who has to pay for the hardware and energy has any interest in PoW.
    - 5y ago

denton-scratch 5y ago

> There's plenty wrong with Ethereum, but casting miners as 'the working class' is a flawed analogy. Agreed. Marx's working class consists of those who do not own means of production, and are therefore compelled to sell their labour. Miners do not lack means of production; they operate expensive mining machinery. That machinery continues to run, and earn money for the miner, even while the miner sits on the beach. Selling their labour really isn't a good model for what's going on. Miners are just ordinary capitalists, exploiting a market opportunity.

Dylan16807 5y ago
And there's a fixed amount of mining labor to be done, requiring far less than 1% of the current effort spent. So why are the pay cuts a problem? (Especially if you chart payout in USD.)
dragonelite 5y ago
The two class cycles workers cycle: Commodity(labor) -> Money -> Commodity(food, housing bills) Capitalists cycle: Money -> Commodity(means of production) -> Money(profit/surplus value) At least that is the bit that kind of sticked to me and made me realized in the west you want to do the second cycle. Earn money by selling labor, live life as a cheap ass for a while use savings to become a asshole landlord.
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  > use savings to become a asshole landlord Being an asshole is not a requirement for landlords, nor is it exclusive to them. Oppressed workers can be assholes too!
  - dragonelite 5y ago
    An oppressed class has every right to be a asshole.
    - WJW 5y ago
      To their oppressors, perhaps. But if they are also assholes to everyone else then they are just assholes and the oppression has nothing to do with it.
- EveYoung 5y ago
  Unfortunately, the second option becomes more and more difficult for most people. With increasing costs of living, saving enough money for investments often times seems impossible.
throw3434053 5y ago
Of course this is kind of reductive and silly but I see the analogy as taking Ethereum as Money (abstracted labour power), there are those who have to put said labour power into the system, and those who don't. This too: "But the ruling class now feels that’s too much because it amounts to a lot of value for the work. So the ruling class changes the rule of 5 Eth per block to 4 Eth per block.", mirrors the contradiction of wages and surplus value in the capitalist mode of production. The thing is regardless of the form of abstracted labour power, those who hold large sums of a commodity are free to buy lots and make an easy turnover in the market world, resulting in easy power in most societies as well.
tim333 5y ago
I think the working class in crypto would be the nocoiners.

nearbuy 5y ago

The miners, collectively, is also the group with the power to hard fork or not. So in some sense, they're the ruling class and the core developers are just proposing the changes to them.

Taek 5y ago
This is a general misconception about how consensus works in blockchains. Miners can choose whether or not to adopt a "soft fork". A soft fork can't violate any existing rules, it can just introduce new rules. A hard fork is allowed to violate existing rules, and gives you more flexibility in what can be changed. And miners do not have the power to decide whether or not a hard fork will happen. A hard fork is determined by the users, who have to upgrade their software. If the software updates automatically, then the power of hard forking lies with the developers, who could just push the new code out via an automatic update.
- nearbuy 5y ago
  Ah, I should have known better. I was misinterpreting from the article linked in the article where it says (about a fork), "Miners, exchanges, and node operators also had to agree to update their software."
  - noxer 5y ago
    The reality is that people sit together and try to make a deal that all parties agree on simply because disruption and uncertainty is not in the interests of any of the parties. This doesn't change the fact that the parties do not have aligned interests and therefore its a constant fight everything is slow and expensive because of that. Kinda funny how this problem was solved before ETH even existed simply by removing the incentive for the hardware operator. No block rewards and no fees to collect aka no reason to fight over it. The only people who run the hardware without getting paid for it are the people who want to use it. They have aligned interest like a fast and cheap network and fast update cycles. And ofc no one who has to pay for the hardware and energy has any interest in PoW.
  - 5y ago