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by CryptoPunk 1857 days ago
>>My point is that miners will decide which chain gets the bigger hashrate and that chain is likely to be adopted as the "real" chain by users, if it's the vast majority of the miners.

If that were true, then an upgrade that switches to PoS, i.e. a hashrate of zero, couldn't succeed, and it's safe to Ethereum's upgrade will succeed.
1 comments
incrudible 1857 days ago
It is true for Bitcoin. People who buy into Ethereum are buying into a cult of personality, so it might not be true in that particular case. We will see.
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CryptoPunk 1857 days ago
That's a pretty inflammatory and totally unsubstantiated assertion, which reveals the baselessness of your entire argument, and the biases that motivate it.
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incrudible 1857 days ago
> That's a pretty inflammatory and totally unsubstantiated assertion, which reveals the baselessness of your entire argument...

Non-sequitur.

> ...and the biases that motivate it

I do think it's obvious that many ideals of cryptocurrency can not be reconciled with Ethereum. There clearly is a lot ill-placed trust into key personalities such as Vitalik Buterin.

If you're "inflamed" by this assertion, which I believe is well-supported by the history of Ethereum, that should make you question your own biases.

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CryptoPunk 1855 days ago
>>Non-sequitur.

Your entire argument is premised on this baseless starting assumption, that Ethereum is somehow not a genuine crypto and instead a 'cult of personality'. It's an absurd foundation for your position.

>>I do think it's obvious that many ideals of cryptocurrency can not be reconciled with Ethereum. There clearly is a lot ill-placed trust into key personalities such as Vitalik Buterin.

A good response to this:

https://twitter.com/AdrianoFeria/status/1393743016741965824

>>No. Vitalik is an influential contributor, but he has no authority over it. His influence is merited because his contributions have added immense value to $ETH. It's that simple.

>>TLDR: Influence != Authority

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incrudible 1854 days ago
> Your entire argument is premised on this baseless starting assumption, that Ethereum is somehow not a genuine crypto...

Again, one does not follow from the other.

My point is that you can't make generalized statements over crypto governance such as "miners are subservient", based on just the protocol.

We can infer from the history of a given cryptocurrency how its userbase will most likely react to proposed changes. For Bitcoin, that means "nothing happens without majority miner support". Nothing in the protocol says that this is how it works, of course.

Sure, it's users making the decision at the end of the day, but ultimately their hand is forced by the more influential actors in the system. For Bitcoin, that's the validators who have significant capital invested into infrastructure. For Ethereum, that's clearly the personalities, with Vitalik being at the forefront.

Given either alternatives, Bitcoin is unsurprisingly closer to the ideals that popularized cryptocurrency. I don't think there's much of a debate to be had here. Whether Ethereum should therefore be considered "genuine cryptocurrency" is irrelevant.

> "His influence is merited because his contributions have added immense value to $ETH."

This is a variant of the sunk cost fallacy. If your governance is de-facto based around clout - as opposed to capital expenditure - you have more centralization, because clout can't just be reproduced.

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