[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.