[jude-]

What assurance do we have that they won't do it again when it suits them?

That "credibility" metric is meaningless when the core devs can rug-pull at any time. "Jude-, go run Ethereum Classic if you're that bent out of shape about it" isn't a compelling argument either, because if the vast majority of the Ethereum economy goes along with the core devs' whims, then there's no point of having a blockchain at all. Might as well just replace Ethereum with a replicated PostgreSQL database, and give only the core devs permission to change the schema and UPDATE rows. If we're trusting core devs to not rug-pull in the future, after they have done so in the past, then there's really no need for the current low-trust environment -- after all, the things that make it low-trust also make it slow and expensive.

[ccamrobertson]

And Bitcoin core devs can _never_ do the same?

Weird, I didn't make an argument to use Ethereum Classic. I am arguing that given humans are still the ones who develop clients perfect immutability is impossible.

I do belive that Bitcoin is more immutable than Ethereum. I also don't buy that Ethereum is unusably mutable. But hey, looks like the market thus far agrees with my position on this.

[jude-]

> And Bitcoin core devs can _never_ do the same?

Wake me up when it happens. The Bitcoin project's developers still get the benefit of the doubt because unlike Ethereum, they haven't betrayed the trust its users placed in them. Also, network upgrades happen through a miner voting process, which checks the power of the project's developers. Ethereum provides no such check.

> But hey, looks like the market thus far agrees with my position on this.

Bitcoin is worth considerably more than Ethereum, and that will likely be the case for the foreseeable future in part because in each Ethereum hard fork, the monetary policy changes. Why would anyone park capital in Ethereum for the long term if they can't even be sure what their dilution will be next year?

[ccamrobertson]

> The Bitcoin project's developers still get the benefit of the doubt

Doesn't seem like a sound argument for perfect immutability. Sounds reasonable as an argument for better immutability.

> Bitcoin is worth considerably more than Ethereum

Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency. To imply that it hasn't been successful is disingenuous. Of course Ethereum doesn't need to "flippen" Bitcoin to still have demonstrable value.

> Why would anyone park capital in Ethereum for the long term if they can't even be sure what their dilution will be next year?

I guess its $400bn of irrational market participants then. Funny, because most of the institutional world would say the same of Bitcoin. One can ignore both at their own financial peril.

[jude-]

> Doesn't seem like a sound argument for perfect immutability. Sounds reasonable as an argument for better immutability.

It is a fact that Ethereum's developers altered the consensus rules to revert the DAO (after touting "code is law" for some time prior to it), and it is a fact that Bitcoin's developers have done no such thing. It is also a fact that subsequent Ethereum hard forks have altered the token emission policy, whereas no such alterations have occurred on Bitcoin. Furthermore, it is a fact that the whole selling point of using a blockchain -- a very slow, inefficient, expensive, power-hungry, unforgiving time-series replicated database -- to implement world-class financial instruments is that in principle, the code decides what happens, and alterations to this arrangement only happen with the support of a majority of network voting power (e.g. hashrate, stake). The Ethereum project's behavior is in violation of this core principle, whereas the Bitcoin project is not.

I'm sorry, but your attempt to convince me that Ethereum's behavior here has been in any way comparable to Bitcoin because "nothing is immutable" comes across as weak nihilism. It's like saying that Ethereum's decision doesn't matter because eventually we'll all be dead and the heat death of the universe will render mining inoperable. Like, yes, this is true, but it's also not germane.

> Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency. To imply that it hasn't been successful is disingenuous.

Where did I say that Ethereum wasn't successful in an absolute sense? All I said was that it isn't as successful as Bitcoin, and that I don't think it will never be until these unresolved governance questions get addressed.

> I guess its $400bn of irrational market participants then.

Okay, two things.

First, if everyone sold their Eth right now, would they collectively receive $400bn? Is the buy side of the market actually that deep?

Second, you're actually correct here -- markets are irrational. The crypto markets are especially so, since they lack many of the hard-won investor safeguards that traditional markets have gained over the years to defend against the bad consequences of irrational behavior. Also, markets can afford to remain irrational far longer than either of us can remain solvent, so caveat emptor, DYOR, and so on.

[ccamrobertson]

This is painting a rosy picture of history Bitcoin client consensus that whitewashes over events like the block size debate. Social consensus is required between core devs, miners and exchanges -- Bitcoin came out stronger from these events (far less catastrophic than The DAO), although it wasn't perfectly apparent at the time that it would.

I've never argued that Ethereum is more successful than Bitcoin, but you've continued to deflect any point where I've indicated that it has any merit as a network at all. Seems pretty irrational -- or purely agenda driven.

[jude-]

The block size debate wasn't about retroactively changing the outcome of a valid network transaction, was it? That's a pretty substantial difference between this and the DAO disaster. Retroactively changing things without the majority consent of the system's voting power defeats the purpose of using a blockchain at all.

> you've continued to deflect any point where I've indicated that it has any merit as a network at all.

That's because the minute the Ethereum project leaders retroactively altered the transaction history the way they did is the minute the project lost all credibility with me (and hence my original comment about why Ethereum should just switch over to a PostgreSQL database if their stance is that the devs should be able to invalidate prior transactions on a whim). I've outlined a set of reasonable governance safeguards in a sibling thread that I believe could restore confidence in the project by bringing it back in line with the aforementioned core principle of operation that justifies building it as a blockchain (and not just a database), but I'll point out that the project has enacted nothing like them to date.

I'm not opposed to hard forks on principle. I'm opposed to hard forks that get pushed through without measurable majority stakeholder consent. Even if Ethereum had done a very simple miner-based vote to upgrade the system to disable the DAO contract (something they could have done in the time between the attack and the time the attacker could have exited with the DAO's ETH), it would have been enough to satisfy this requirement. But they didn't.