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by iskander 1666 days ago
Miners already put up a fuss over some of preparatory changes for PoS and definitely don't like having to give up mining. They're free to run a parallel Ethereum chain of their own (which has already happened, most prominently with Ethereum Classic - $ETC). Everyone will have parallel balances on both chains from the point of departure. The cultural weight is with the developers however and all of the popular apps will use the proof of stake chain instead of whatever forks emerge from grumpy miners.
1 comments

But doesn’t this power dynamic - the fact that there is a miners committee somehow talking to a devs committee -beat the purpose of decentralization (no single decision-maker)?

Won’t this become politicized eventually and we’ll end up with a Central Bank-like structure? Imagine some elected dev going on CNBC to tell us they need to mint more coins.

You still need to make decisions in a decentralized system, I don't really see what alternative you're imagining that's even more decentralized than "start a parallel chain if you dislike it, let people vote with their feet". You can't really start a parallel USD to see if people like your monetary policy better.

And, obviously, this is political. Miners make a lot of money off the status quo, devs want to reduce the energy/environmental impact of their chain. Proof of stake takes away a moat that miners have built around their operation (now anyone with 32eth can be a validator). There's no way out of that conflict of interests without some degree of politics.