5 ms·

As decentralized as in “someone stole my funds, let’s roll back the whole chain”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

As decentralized as in “someone stole my funds, let’s roll back the whole chain”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic

dvt 5y ago
I know you're being a bit snarky, but the miners voted on that decision and decided, collectively, to fork. It's decentralized in the sense that there's no central mandate, and everyone needs to agree with a decision or that decision will ultimately fizzle.
- hannasanarion 5y ago
  Yeah, and then nearly half of the miners kept going with the old fork anyway. On Ethereum Classic, the theives who scammed $400 million worth of 2016 ETH from the founders, valued at who knows what now, still have that money, and they have spent it, and it's still considered good on the ETH Classic chain.
  - DennisP 5y ago
    ETH Classic's current price is $47 (compared to ETH at about $3000). The DAO hacker got 3.6 million ETH, so its current value on the Classic chain is $169 million.
- activitypea 5y ago
  That's not how "decentralization" should work.
  - djohnston 5y ago
    How should it work? No one gets to make a choice which fork they run?
    - activitypea 5y ago
      People cast votes (digitally mind you, which is always great and unproblematic and very secure also) and then a very tiny minority executed what is, by every standard imposed by cryptoheads, illegitimate behavior. That's more or less the definition of a referendum, which makes the ETH foundation and a top percentage of miners an executive government.
- akyu 5y ago
  This is a distorted retelling of history. Mining pools ultimately did settle on voting in favor of the hard fork, but did so through collusion and lack of transparency. Most notably, ethermine miners voted against the hard fork, but the pool operators contributed the entire pools votes in favor of the fork any way. There were similar situations with other mining pools, and in general the actual miners were left in the dark. The Ethereum Foundation was communicating with mining pool operators and exchange operators in private chats the entire time all of this was playing out. Was the hard fork the right move in a pragmatic sense? Probably. But it was not at all the exemplar of decentralized consensus that people seems to remember these days. It was messy and ugly.
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    Yeah but collusion and lack of transparency is what you get with a decentralized network! With no rules to enforce, the powerful can do whatever they want, including acting badly.
    - 0ldskool 5y ago
      how does that differ from a centralized network. Let me copy/paste your comment Yeah but collusion and lack of transparency is what you get with a decentralized network! With no rules to enforce, the powerful can do whatever they want, including acting badly. into Yeah but collusion and lack of transparency is what you get with a CENTRALIZED network! With no rules to enforce, the powerful can do whatever they want, including acting badly. I see no difference.
      - TameAntelope 5y ago
        You should see a difference, because a centralized network can be governed (by the central entity!). A decentralized network necessarily cannot, because there is no controlling... centralized... mechanism.
  - suikadayo 5y ago
    Miners are never in control of the chain. Node operators are.
ipnon 5y ago
What's more decentralized than being able to fork an open source blockchain solely on the basis of majority consensus? The hullabaloo over the DAO fork arises because decentralization is conflated with fairness. Was the fork fair? Maybe, maybe not. It's irrelevant to the question of whether Ethereum is decentralized. Ethereum prevailed over Ethereum Classic precisely because the majority of users switched to the fork! This would not have been possible if Ethereum wasn't decentralized. A centralized system would have left Ethereum users in the dust and the DAO hacker with all the loot.
- mccorrinall 5y ago
  The whole idea of the blockchain is to prevent the double spending problem. You realize that hacker sends funds to his own wallet -> ETH Foundation decides to roll back and contacts their miner bros, who had ZERO problems performing a 51% attack -> ETH Foundation can send the same funds again is essentially a double spend? And that the network is centralized and tightly controlled by $CEO_OF_BLOCKCHAIN_ENTITY? Also, it’s not just their transactions who get rolled back, but everyone’s! People who sent goods after seeing 20 confirmations on the blockchain already dispatched them and lost both: the funds AND the goods. How is this fair?
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    The DAO fork only directly rolled back that single transaction, right?
  - nootropicat 5y ago
    Everything you wrote is incorrect. >You realize that hacker sends funds to his own wallet -> ETH Foundation decides to roll back and contacts their miner bros, who had ZERO problems performing a 51% attack -> ETH Foundation can send the same funds again is essentially a double spend? This is how a rollback happened in bitcoin two times: during the value overflow bug and during the database incompatibility bug (2013). The bitcoin blockchain was rolled back via a coordinated 51% attack. In the second case at least one double spend happened. Ethereum never had a rollback, the change was a hard fork that changed ownership of eth previously owned by the dao hacker.
suikadayo 5y ago
I remember Satoshi rolling back the chain.

As decentralized as in “someone stole my funds, let’s roll back the whole chain”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic

dvt 5y ago

I know you're being a bit snarky, but the miners voted on that decision and decided, collectively, to fork. It's decentralized in the sense that there's no central mandate, and everyone needs to agree with a decision or that decision will ultimately fizzle.

hannasanarion 5y ago
Yeah, and then nearly half of the miners kept going with the old fork anyway. On Ethereum Classic, the theives who scammed $400 million worth of 2016 ETH from the founders, valued at who knows what now, still have that money, and they have spent it, and it's still considered good on the ETH Classic chain.
- DennisP 5y ago
  ETH Classic's current price is $47 (compared to ETH at about $3000). The DAO hacker got 3.6 million ETH, so its current value on the Classic chain is $169 million.
activitypea 5y ago
That's not how "decentralization" should work.
- djohnston 5y ago
  How should it work? No one gets to make a choice which fork they run?
  - activitypea 5y ago
    People cast votes (digitally mind you, which is always great and unproblematic and very secure also) and then a very tiny minority executed what is, by every standard imposed by cryptoheads, illegitimate behavior. That's more or less the definition of a referendum, which makes the ETH foundation and a top percentage of miners an executive government.
akyu 5y ago
This is a distorted retelling of history. Mining pools ultimately did settle on voting in favor of the hard fork, but did so through collusion and lack of transparency. Most notably, ethermine miners voted against the hard fork, but the pool operators contributed the entire pools votes in favor of the fork any way. There were similar situations with other mining pools, and in general the actual miners were left in the dark. The Ethereum Foundation was communicating with mining pool operators and exchange operators in private chats the entire time all of this was playing out. Was the hard fork the right move in a pragmatic sense? Probably. But it was not at all the exemplar of decentralized consensus that people seems to remember these days. It was messy and ugly.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  Yeah but collusion and lack of transparency is what you get with a decentralized network! With no rules to enforce, the powerful can do whatever they want, including acting badly.
  - 0ldskool 5y ago
    how does that differ from a centralized network. Let me copy/paste your comment Yeah but collusion and lack of transparency is what you get with a decentralized network! With no rules to enforce, the powerful can do whatever they want, including acting badly. into Yeah but collusion and lack of transparency is what you get with a CENTRALIZED network! With no rules to enforce, the powerful can do whatever they want, including acting badly. I see no difference.
    - TameAntelope 5y ago
      You should see a difference, because a centralized network can be governed (by the central entity!). A decentralized network necessarily cannot, because there is no controlling... centralized... mechanism.
- suikadayo 5y ago
  Miners are never in control of the chain. Node operators are.

ipnon 5y ago

What's more decentralized than being able to fork an open source blockchain solely on the basis of majority consensus? The hullabaloo over the DAO fork arises because decentralization is conflated with fairness. Was the fork fair? Maybe, maybe not. It's irrelevant to the question of whether Ethereum is decentralized. Ethereum prevailed over Ethereum Classic precisely because the majority of users switched to the fork! This would not have been possible if Ethereum wasn't decentralized. A centralized system would have left Ethereum users in the dust and the DAO hacker with all the loot.

mccorrinall 5y ago
The whole idea of the blockchain is to prevent the double spending problem. You realize that hacker sends funds to his own wallet -> ETH Foundation decides to roll back and contacts their miner bros, who had ZERO problems performing a 51% attack -> ETH Foundation can send the same funds again is essentially a double spend? And that the network is centralized and tightly controlled by $CEO_OF_BLOCKCHAIN_ENTITY? Also, it’s not just their transactions who get rolled back, but everyone’s! People who sent goods after seeing 20 confirmations on the blockchain already dispatched them and lost both: the funds AND the goods. How is this fair?
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  The DAO fork only directly rolled back that single transaction, right?
- nootropicat 5y ago
  Everything you wrote is incorrect. >You realize that hacker sends funds to his own wallet -> ETH Foundation decides to roll back and contacts their miner bros, who had ZERO problems performing a 51% attack -> ETH Foundation can send the same funds again is essentially a double spend? This is how a rollback happened in bitcoin two times: during the value overflow bug and during the database incompatibility bug (2013). The bitcoin blockchain was rolled back via a coordinated 51% attack. In the second case at least one double spend happened. Ethereum never had a rollback, the change was a hard fork that changed ownership of eth previously owned by the dao hacker.

suikadayo 5y ago

I remember Satoshi rolling back the chain.