[pavlov]

In the Ethereum PoS model, those with money perpetually own the network by definition.

At least with AWS, Amazon doesn’t also control the US dollar and the euro. If their service starts to suck, I can take my business elsewhere. But if Ethereum were to actually become a global standard, there would be no escape from the Ether plutocrats.

Any participation you and I can have in a system like Ethereum is table scraps from the overlords.

[anonymouskimmer]

> If their service starts to suck, I can take my business elsewhere.

This is an extraordinarily good point.

Centralization of Etherium means a centralization of both the VM and the currency. It would be as if the Fed and US Mint also owned AWS.

If Amazon sucks, as you say, you can take your dollars elsewhere. If Ethereum sucks, your Ether is going to be worthless, even if you could bridge it to another chain.

[pavlov]

I’ve sometimes thought that Ethereum represents the kind of computing network that 1950s Soviets would have appreciated. Massively inefficient, every operation needlessly repeated across every node only for the pretense of equality and democracy, and ideologically obsessed with a rhetorical illusion of immutability and permanence even though data can be wiped by simple agreement of the Politburo that controls the network.

“Now that the next five-year plan will be implemented as a smart contract on the Sovgosethereum, we’ll be mathematically guaranteed to meet our economic goals.” — Makes as much sense as the guaranteed crypto lending yields of 2021.

[mattdesl]

What you are describing does exist in some blockchains, like Tezos. But Ethereum's governance is social: not driven by token stake or "coin voting." In Ethereum PoS, users do not cede control of the protocol to validators - the users who run nodes and decide what software to run effectively own and control the protocol.

If the protocol starts to suck, users can change or fork the protocol (this has already happened multiple times, PoS being the latest example).