[rglullis]

In two to three years, Ethereum 2.0 will be using a Proof-of-Stake system and environmental concerns will be no more.

> the court can still order the thief to send back the money.

What if the court can not find the thief? What if the thief is from another nation? What if the thief is another nation?

[sjy]

I’m sure I remember people saying the same thing about proof of stake 2 – 3 years ago. What’s the hold up?

[rglullis]

I am not so sure that people were talking about having PoS already used in 2020. What has been planned was to have the first phase of a PoS on testnets, and this milestone has been hit.

In any case, Ethereum still has a lot of characteristics of a research project. If you follow closely, you start seeing that ideas are explored, some approaches are validated, some are proven impractical, etc. Some delays and hiccups are inevitable. As long as the Ethereum Foundation keeps its transparency and does not overpromise I am fine with it.

[wolco]

So that 2 year timeframe mentioned earlier means very little?

[TeMPOraL]

It will ultimately have to be handled the same way these problems are handled with fiat: through international treaties and multinationals subject to several jurisdictions simultaneously.

[rglullis]

How?

We are talking about a scenario where cryptocurrency become prominent enough that people would be trading with it. Governments and financial institutions can only control the on- and off-ramps from fiat to crypto. So now the US can claim to a quarter billion USD from North Korea [0], but what about a scenario where your assets are just numbers in a ledger that no one can control and these fiat ramps simply are irrelevant?

You want to talk about Governments trying to make it illegal? That is debatable, but a better argument. You want to make the argument that States and Institutions will create their own blockchains with backdoors so that they can override it? That is possible (or actually implemented if you look at Ripple), but that will be no real disruption of the existing global financial system.

I fail to see how "Governments will allow it as it is, but control it" is a possibility, though.

[0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielcassady/2020/08/27/feds-m...

[TeMPOraL]

> I fail to see how "Governments will allow it as it is, but control it" is a possibility, though.

I do not claim that. I believe governments will allow it iff it's in a shape and form they can control. If some features prevent effective oversight, these features will have to be removed for the cryptocurrency to be officially sanctioned.

[rglullis]

So you are talking about the "blockchain with backdoors" scenario (which absolutely defeats the principle and the purpose of any major existing system) AND making the existing leading chains illegal.

That is certainly is a possibility and a valid view, but to me a very short-sighted one. It assumes social-political systems are static. It makes us take for granted that global top-down Governments (hopefully democratic) will be the only legitimate form of power for a long period of time.

Blockchain or not, that leaves me with a very grim outlook of our future.

[TeMPOraL]

This may be my lack of imagination, but I can't see it ever being any other way. Hierarchical governance seems natural to us, pretty much written into fabric of social reality.

Once a group reaches more than couple dozen members, interpersonal pressures crumble as two random people don't really know each other or depend on one another - and you need to create a level of governance in order for the group to grow and stay coordinated. Rinse repeat, and you end up with hierarchical governance we know from every single society throughout history.

I know that "blockchain with backdoors" (or, "blockchain with anarcho-capitalist guarantees removed") goes entirely against the vision on which leading chains are built. But then, I disagree with that vision and consider it naive. I may be wrong about this, though. Time will tell.

[rglullis]

This could be a good long conversation to have. Not sure if HN is the best place and format for it, so I will keep it short.

> Hierarchical governance seems natural to us, pretty much written into fabric of social reality.

Hierarchies have existed for basically forever and it's almost always the natural state of organizations not just for humans. I wouldn't argue the opposite. What has changed and almost certainly will keep changing is the nature of these different hierarchies. Moreover, we have more than one single type of hierarchy co-existing. Just compare Switzerland to China in present time, or compare the independence of Hellenic city-states with the growing centralization of the EU and you will know what I mean.

The one thing that is recent (and IMO misguided and/or totalitarian) is the idea that we can organize ourselves into one single global hierarchy, an all-encompassing entity that would be able to subject all different countries into one unified set of rules. Some look at Europe and the EU as a way to show that would be a good thing, but completely ignore the fact that the EU it is not an unanimous organization. Libertarians think that all-out globalization and absolute free-flow of commerce will smooth out every international issue and will completely ignore the fact that this only works if every one is on similar level of individual freedom and economic development. Communists refuse to accept past failed attempts because in their view Communism can only work if the whole world adopts it.

Every Utopian project that requires every one to conform to one single set of rules has failed and will always fail due to the impossibility of satisfying the needs, values and wants of everyone at a global scale. I hope we can agree on that.

> Once a group reaches more than couple dozen members (...) you need to create a level of governance in order for the group to grow and stay coordinated.

Right, and the beauty of blockchain is precisely that it solves the Byzantine Generals Problem. You can have any number of people that don't know and don't trust each other able to coordinate without any central authority.

Granted, this is not a perfect solution. It's not like that just because we can have a computer network telling us "who controls X and who should have access to Y" that people will blindly follow it. You will still have groups trying to control things by force, abuse the system and so on. Societies will still have to have their military forces.

The key difference is that now these disparate people and societies no longer requires nation-states to organize themselves. People won't be forced to swear allegiance with to one tribe or another just because of the place they were born, etc.

[ethbro]

It's amazing how many cryptocurrency users are citizens of Panama...