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Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

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Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#21

Post by ikken »

I think that many people miss the most important thing here: it is not important if a currency hard-forks or not - what is important is that it can.

I have no confidence that Bitcoin or any other currency doesn't fork in the future, because it is possible at any moment. The fact that the fork has happened or not changes nothing - it always stays as a possibility.

In other words the chance of Ethereum or Bitcoin hard-forking in the future wouldn't change if the hard-fork didn't happen right now.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#22

Post by skybrian »

alexbock wrote: post #6

Looking in from the outside as someone with no involvement with Ethereum, I really don't understand how the people behind it can justify using their privileged position as developers and community leaders to try to undo this. They spent a lot of time talking about how "the code is the contract"... until they stood to be negatively impacted on a personal level by allowing the literal meaning of the code to stand. I'm…

One way to justify it might be to consider this a beta period. It is still early days for this new currency and perhaps when the system is more robust, they will be able to walk away.

But the question is whether that day will ever come, or the currency will always need emergency overrides.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#23

Post by dnautics »

alexbock wrote: post #6

Looking in from the outside as someone with no involvement with Ethereum, I really don't understand how the people behind it can justify using their privileged position as developers and community leaders to try to undo this. They spent a lot of time talking about how "the code is the contract"... until they stood to be negatively impacted on a personal level by allowing the literal meaning of the code to stand. I'm…

Disclaimer: I don't really have much of a stake in ethereum, although I made some money off of it during the craziness last month (I cashed out when early warnings about the DAO hit hn, and bough back in when it was at the bottom, and cashed out again)

> I'm not sure how anyone could have any confidence in this system after that.

I think the situation is the opposite. After the DAO there were broad calls criticising the lack of leadership, criticism about decentralized/consensus decisionmaking, and comparisons with the broader economy and how the Fed can orchestrate a bailout (and why that's better - in the eyes of the critics). In a way, through consensus with this hard fork the Ethereum stakeholders squared the circle - orchestrating a bailout with majority assent (and if anyone didn't like it they were free to leave). I'm not going to pass judgement on whether or not that is a good precedent to set (or whether a turing complete blockchain - or the EVM implementation in particular - is a good idea in the long-term), but if anything the decisiveness of action should give more confidence in the short-term.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#24

Post by onestone »

leshow wrote: post #13
onestone wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which are the users you are referring to? Because all kinds of _actual_ users have shown that a clear majority is in favor of the hard fork: - ETH holders voted on http://carbonvote.com/ with 87% pro-fork. 5.5% of the total ETH supply participated in the vote. - ETH miners clearly voted pro-fork on the major pools, e.g. https://dwarfpool.com/eth/voting . In nearly all cases > 80% of the hash power was pro-fork. - ETH…

you consider 5.5% of the money supply a good participation rate? In the voting on the pools, 80% of people didn't even vote. Therefore it is simply the fact that the fork was the default choice (and is the default in all the wallets), that is the deciding factor of this 'vote' By the way, "> 80% of the hash power was pro-fork." is demonstrably false. only 15% of the hashing power was pro fork, 85% of miners didnt vot…

Yes, I consider it an _excellent_ participation rate. A 5.5% sample size is orders of magnitude larger than that of nearly any sociological study (usually below 0.01%).

Passive users by definition agree to follow the active users' decision.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#25

Post by davidgerard »

skybrian wrote: post #22
alexbock wrote: post #6

Looking in from the outside as someone with no involvement with Ethereum, I really don't understand how the people behind it can justify using their privileged position as developers and community leaders to try to undo this. They spent a lot of time talking about how "the code is the contract"... until they stood to be negatively impacted on a personal level by allowing the literal meaning of the code to stand. I'm…

One way to justify it might be to consider this a beta period. It is still early days for this new currency and perhaps when the system is more robust, they will be able to walk away. But the question is whether that day will ever come, or the currency will always need emergency overrides.

"beta" isn't really an excuse for a clustercuddle involving $150 million.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#26

Post by markkat »

I am surprised how so many seem to think this is a bad thing. Ethereum is very nascent, and this was how the community wanted to fix this issue. It was not just about returning DTH, it was about the implications of the allocation of the DTH in the hands of one individual when Ethereum moves to PoS.

Obviously the HF isn't ideal, but not forking was potentially much worse. This settles the issue, and allows people to get back to work.

Hard forks will become less viable as a solution the larger the network gets, and as more interests are involved. However, blockchains are consensus mechanisms. Anyone can propose a hard fork update at any time.

Here is something to consider: as more than 80% of Bitcoin's hash power is in the hands of a few Chinese companies, the CCP could very realistically enforce a Bitcoin hard fork.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#27

Post by chejazi »

cloudjacker wrote: post #12
chejazi wrote: post #4

What's happening: the block number of the hard fork is much bigger than the block number of the non-fork. This means that most of the mining power is being devoted to the hard fork chain since it is longer. The non-fork can't keep up, so the fork is considered a success.

Block height has nothing to do with it

The longest chain always wins. Block height tells you which chain is longer. Am I missing something?

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#28

Post by _Codemonkeyism »

markkat wrote: post #26

I am surprised how so many seem to think this is a bad thing. Ethereum is very nascent, and this was how the community wanted to fix this issue. It was not just about returning DTH, it was about the implications of the allocation of the DTH in the hands of one individual when Ethereum moves to PoS. Obviously the HF isn't ideal, but not forking was potentially much worse. This settles the issue, and allows people to g…

"Anyone can proposed a hard fork update at any time."

So there is no difference between me and the core developers?

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#30

Post by bdcravens »

skybrian wrote: post #22
alexbock wrote: post #6

Looking in from the outside as someone with no involvement with Ethereum, I really don't understand how the people behind it can justify using their privileged position as developers and community leaders to try to undo this. They spent a lot of time talking about how "the code is the contract"... until they stood to be negatively impacted on a personal level by allowing the literal meaning of the code to stand. I'm…

One way to justify it might be to consider this a beta period. It is still early days for this new currency and perhaps when the system is more robust, they will be able to walk away. But the question is whether that day will ever come, or the currency will always need emergency overrides.

Once you start handling money, you lose the "beta" cop-out. If they had succeeded in redefining what a business is and proving out the success of smart contracts, would they say, "but we're just in beta" or would they be trumpeting it as a success and a revolution?
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