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Did the crypto community see this coming? It always seemed pretty obvious that the government would succeed in doing this. It seemed inevitable.

by nicbou 4y ago

ls15 4y ago
Well, there have been sceptics that said that PoS is more prone to centralized control than PoW. Seems like they've been right.
- exo762 4y ago
  > Well, there have been skeptics that said that PoS is more prone to centralized control than PoW. Seems like they've been right. Except nothing that happen actually proves their point. PoW had "luxury" of being concentrated outside of US and yet, miners censored. Also, whole story is barely news. Tornado Cash txs don't get included in some blocks. Which means that they have to wait 30 seconds instead of 15 seconds. Yeah, the sky is falling. Please note that both mev-boost authors and core-devs are aligned w.r.t censorship resistance being the most important feature of Ethereum. They all work to assure that even such non-events like this are really hard to cause.
- nicbou 4y ago
  I'm a bit behind the times with crypto, but my question was closer to this: Didn't people foresee that governments would control crypto when it interfaces with the real world? They can pressure the banks, the exchanges, and any crypto infrastructure within their borders. The government can't stop crypto completely, but they can make it really painful to use and thus reduce its value. Assume that I'm asking in good faith, but with imperfect knowledge.
  - datadata 4y ago
    They did. The primary solution to this is decentralization. The more people holding up a project, the greater effort a government must exert to stop it.
  - xiphias2 4y ago
    Of course they did, Adam Back and many others in the OG crypto community risked going into prison for exporting cryptography algorithms on T-shirts, as they believed that end-to-end communication and privacy is a basic human right. They are still fighting for the same thing for the last 30 years, just now with peer-to-peer money. Sancioning people based on the country they were born is the antithesis of what many of us are still fighting for.
xiphias2 4y ago
The Bitcoin community yes. That's partly why Taproot was activated, because it helps almost all transactions look the same. Fungibility is an essential part of what makes a money good money. For example US dollars can't be invalidated just because trace cocaine can be found of them or they don't look as good as a new US dollar, or they took part in money laundering some time ago and the last owner didn't know.
- spir 4y ago
  The parent is a highly misinformative comment. Three things are true here 1) If you dig into the details, the actual censorship is so weak in practice that calling it "censored ethereum blocks" is mostly false. 2) There are great reasons to think that the weak form of censorship this does in fact comprise is an inherently temporary problem with ethereum. And pretty much no good reasons to think it'll end up being a long-term state of affairs. 3) Nobody informed was surprised by this. It became an outcome whose high likelihood became generally known within industry shortly after the tornado contracts were added to the OFAC sanctions list. source: I'm a low-grade ethereum insider. If you would like to know (much) more, this recent podcast episode with a top ethereum researcher explains the past, present, and future of this issue in great detail - video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azjpYTB7PVE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azjpYTB7PVE - podcast: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/134-ethereum-unsensored-with-justin-drake http://podcast.banklesshq.com/134-ethereum-unsensored-with-j...

Did the crypto community see this coming? It always seemed pretty obvious that the government would succeed in doing this. It seemed inevitable.

by nicbou 4y ago

Did the crypto community see this coming? It always seemed pretty obvious that the government would succeed in doing this. It seemed inevitable.

ls15 4y ago

Well, there have been sceptics that said that PoS is more prone to centralized control than PoW. Seems like they've been right.

exo762 4y ago
> Well, there have been skeptics that said that PoS is more prone to centralized control than PoW. Seems like they've been right. Except nothing that happen actually proves their point. PoW had "luxury" of being concentrated outside of US and yet, miners censored. Also, whole story is barely news. Tornado Cash txs don't get included in some blocks. Which means that they have to wait 30 seconds instead of 15 seconds. Yeah, the sky is falling. Please note that both mev-boost authors and core-devs are aligned w.r.t censorship resistance being the most important feature of Ethereum. They all work to assure that even such non-events like this are really hard to cause.
nicbou 4y ago
I'm a bit behind the times with crypto, but my question was closer to this: Didn't people foresee that governments would control crypto when it interfaces with the real world? They can pressure the banks, the exchanges, and any crypto infrastructure within their borders. The government can't stop crypto completely, but they can make it really painful to use and thus reduce its value. Assume that I'm asking in good faith, but with imperfect knowledge.
- datadata 4y ago
  They did. The primary solution to this is decentralization. The more people holding up a project, the greater effort a government must exert to stop it.
- xiphias2 4y ago
  Of course they did, Adam Back and many others in the OG crypto community risked going into prison for exporting cryptography algorithms on T-shirts, as they believed that end-to-end communication and privacy is a basic human right. They are still fighting for the same thing for the last 30 years, just now with peer-to-peer money. Sancioning people based on the country they were born is the antithesis of what many of us are still fighting for.

xiphias2 4y ago

The Bitcoin community yes. That's partly why Taproot was activated, because it helps almost all transactions look the same. Fungibility is an essential part of what makes a money good money. For example US dollars can't be invalidated just because trace cocaine can be found of them or they don't look as good as a new US dollar, or they took part in money laundering some time ago and the last owner didn't know.

spir 4y ago
The parent is a highly misinformative comment. Three things are true here 1) If you dig into the details, the actual censorship is so weak in practice that calling it "censored ethereum blocks" is mostly false. 2) There are great reasons to think that the weak form of censorship this does in fact comprise is an inherently temporary problem with ethereum. And pretty much no good reasons to think it'll end up being a long-term state of affairs. 3) Nobody informed was surprised by this. It became an outcome whose high likelihood became generally known within industry shortly after the tornado contracts were added to the OFAC sanctions list. source: I'm a low-grade ethereum insider. If you would like to know (much) more, this recent podcast episode with a top ethereum researcher explains the past, present, and future of this issue in great detail - video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azjpYTB7PVE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azjpYTB7PVE - podcast: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/134-ethereum-unsensored-with-justin-drake http://podcast.banklesshq.com/134-ethereum-unsensored-with-j...