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Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

vitalik.eth.limo

11–20 of 70 posts

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#11

> Having lived through that era, the number one culprit that I would blame as the root cause of this shift is the rise in transaction fees. Haha no, the number one culprit is that 99% of blockchain projects are either scams, bullshit, not actually decentralized, or simply fail despite pulling in vast amounts of funding (sometimes more than one of the above!). However, I do agree that most--if not all--problems in the…

You are right but it is by design. From day one Satoshi had a road map to scale BTC to Visa-like levels while keeping TX fees around a penny. Just incrementally increase the block size over time. Soon after Blockstream's Greg Maxwell and Adam Back hijacked the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo they locked down the block size to 1mb, something Satoshi and the original devs never imagined anyone being dumb enough to do let alon…

>Bitcoin Cash (BCH) stayed with the road map and has worked great with low fees for over a decade now. BTC twisted itself into a digital ponzi scheme for morons.

I believe most people call this bcash.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right but it is by design. From day one Satoshi had a road map to scale BTC to Visa-like levels while keeping TX fees around a penny. Just incrementally increase the block size over time. Soon after Blockstream's Greg Maxwell and Adam Back hijacked the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo they locked down the block size to 1mb, something Satoshi and the original devs never imagined anyone being dumb enough to do let alon…

>Bitcoin Cash (BCH) stayed with the road map and has worked great with low fees for over a decade now. BTC twisted itself into a digital ponzi scheme for morons. I believe most people call this bcash.

Only those that want to throw dirt at the project in order to legitimize the development direction of BTC.

And those who are clueless and just follow the hivemind.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right but it is by design. From day one Satoshi had a road map to scale BTC to Visa-like levels while keeping TX fees around a penny. Just incrementally increase the block size over time. Soon after Blockstream's Greg Maxwell and Adam Back hijacked the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo they locked down the block size to 1mb, something Satoshi and the original devs never imagined anyone being dumb enough to do let alon…

> Soon after Blockstream's Greg Maxwell and Adam Back hijacked the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo they locked down the block size to 1mb, something Satoshi and the original devs never imagined anyone being dumb enough to do let alone intended. Doesn't this point to Bitcoin's decentralized nature being largely smoke and mirrors? You're claiming that just two individuals have had a significant negative impact on a project th…

There was a big fight over the future of bitcoin. There are 6-7 core developers in that era, and multiple clients, but bitcoind was dominant.

Blockstream was able to create the perception of an economic majority — thanks to forums like Bitcointalk and Reddit (moderated by one guy: Theymos / Michael Marquant).

In reality, a lot of people didn’t support blockstream, but through censorship and permanent bans, a few people were able to create the perception of economic majority.

More info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14240267

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#14

> Having lived through that era, the number one culprit that I would blame as the root cause of this shift is the rise in transaction fees. Haha no, the number one culprit is that 99% of blockchain projects are either scams, bullshit, not actually decentralized, or simply fail despite pulling in vast amounts of funding (sometimes more than one of the above!). However, I do agree that most--if not all--problems in the…

I don't see any possible usecase for crypto if a 100-200$ gas fee during high demand is considered acceptable.

You can make anything in the world but if you have transaction fees that high every single time that project will be guaranteed to fail.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right but it is by design. From day one Satoshi had a road map to scale BTC to Visa-like levels while keeping TX fees around a penny. Just incrementally increase the block size over time. Soon after Blockstream's Greg Maxwell and Adam Back hijacked the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo they locked down the block size to 1mb, something Satoshi and the original devs never imagined anyone being dumb enough to do let alon…

> Soon after Blockstream's Greg Maxwell and Adam Back hijacked the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo they locked down the block size to 1mb, something Satoshi and the original devs never imagined anyone being dumb enough to do let alone intended. Doesn't this point to Bitcoin's decentralized nature being largely smoke and mirrors? You're claiming that just two individuals have had a significant negative impact on a project th…

Yes and no.

They didn't just control the repo, but they somehow managed to convince the miners to support them. Exchanges and users simply defaulted to "the longest chain is Bitcoin", ensuring their victory. So they weren't alone.

But Bitcoin's truly decentralized nature allows for forks, where if you disagree with the development direction you can always go your own way. So the spirit of Bitcoin lives on in other projects (both via forks and via projects with no shared history with Bitcoin).

> You're claiming that just two individuals have had a significant negative impact on a project that was intended to be free from central control. That in itself seems like a failure of the project's goals.

Yes, it was (and is) still a major failure of the project's goals.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#16
"Use DEXes plus stablecoins"

The trouble is, neither of those make money if run honestly. A true distributed exchange never has custody of anything. So there's no opportunity to steal or speculate with customer funds. (Front-running remains a possibility). It's just a back-end data service. It has to charge a commission. Most crypto exchanges are free to use; they make money either by stealing or manipulation.

Much the same is true for stablecoins. Tether just printed another billion dollars worth of Tether. Nobody deposited a billion dollars worth of USD. USDC is supposedly backed by U.S. Government securities, but is not formally audited.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#17
post #16

"Use DEXes plus stablecoins" The trouble is, neither of those make money if run honestly. A true distributed exchange never has custody of anything. So there's no opportunity to steal or speculate with customer funds. (Front-running remains a possibility). It's just a back-end data service. It has to charge a commission. Most crypto exchanges are free to use; they make money either by stealing or manipulation. Much t…

  Tether just printed another billion dollars worth of Tether.
Wait til you learn how much USD is printed.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#18

> Having lived through that era, the number one culprit that I would blame as the root cause of this shift is the rise in transaction fees. Haha no, the number one culprit is that 99% of blockchain projects are either scams, bullshit, not actually decentralized, or simply fail despite pulling in vast amounts of funding (sometimes more than one of the above!). However, I do agree that most--if not all--problems in the…

I don't see any possible usecase for crypto if a 100-200$ gas fee during high demand is considered acceptable. You can make anything in the world but if you have transaction fees that high every single time that project will be guaranteed to fail.

Perhaps the “store of value” use case. Buying and selling physical gold bars adds significant overhead costs as well.

But generally I agree with you, the fees are a big problem.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#19
post #16

"Use DEXes plus stablecoins" The trouble is, neither of those make money if run honestly. A true distributed exchange never has custody of anything. So there's no opportunity to steal or speculate with customer funds. (Front-running remains a possibility). It's just a back-end data service. It has to charge a commission. Most crypto exchanges are free to use; they make money either by stealing or manipulation. Much t…

How problematic is a 0.3% fee? If the two options were otherwise equal, I think most users would rather pay that than deal with potentially losing their funds altogether due to fraud or insolvency.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#20

> Having lived through that era, the number one culprit that I would blame as the root cause of this shift is the rise in transaction fees. Haha no, the number one culprit is that 99% of blockchain projects are either scams, bullshit, not actually decentralized, or simply fail despite pulling in vast amounts of funding (sometimes more than one of the above!). However, I do agree that most--if not all--problems in the…

The high transaction fees are intentional and a symptom of a sick system which allows people to profit from inefficiency.

The higher the transaction fees, the more validators earn. There is no incentive to build tech which will lower transaction fees, even though it would enable practical use cases. Ethereum community is not interested in value creation because they know that value creation doesn't pay. They can earn more money just monopolizing media attention, attracting new investors and lobbying (aka corrupting) politicians.

Having worked in the industry, I've witnessed how they literally suppress innovations which would result in more scalability and lower fees. They only embrace solutions that are flawed by design to create an illusion that they're trying. Billions of dollars are literally wasted just to maintain the illusion.

I don't know where all that money is coming from. The crypto folks are clearly right about one thing; the monetary system is broken... But they seem to be making more money keeping it broken than fixing it.

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