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The Problem with Ethereum

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Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#151

Post by jstx1 »

ikt wrote: post #146
amarant wrote: post #136

A lot of comments here criticise the analogies made in the post. While the criticism might be correct, I feel this is like missing the forest because of the trees.. Etherium, and most crypto-currencies for that matter, were initially made to fix a broken financial system, where banks unjustly control too much wealth, and changes the rules so that they will always control too much wealth. Etherium does not fix this, i…

> Etherium, and most crypto-currencies for that matter, were initially made to fix a broken financial system No? Buterin argued to the bitcoin core developers that Bitcoin and blockchain technology could benefit from other applications besides money and needed a more robust language for application development that could lead to attaching real-world assets, such as stocks and property, to the blockchain.[15] It's lik…

I think that you're confusing money and finance. In addition to being money (like Bitcoin), Ethereum is clearly doing a lot in the space of finance - that's the whole point of DeFi (it's also supported by what Vitalik said according to your own comment).

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#152

Post by Tepix »

tofukid wrote: post #71
kristofferR wrote: post #24

> As a Bitcoiner I find these actions intolerable and unacceptable. I know none of them would ever be accepted in Bitcoin. This sums up the whole piece in my view. Bitcoin development stagnated years ago exactly because nobody involved wanted to change/hard fork it to implement improvements. For people who want a Bitcoin-like Ethereum with no DAO fork or staking there's Ethereum Classic.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commits/master I wouldn’t consider that stagnate.

How many hardforks has the core bitcoin project seen in the last five years?

Bitcoin has been incapable of doing a hardfork for whatever reason for a while.

That's why it will disappear sooner or later. If you don't evolve, you die.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#153

Post by nootropicat »

cliftonk wrote: post #14

That this gets upvoted to #2 speaks poorly of HN. Why on earth are we still talking about the DAO? This is a collection of tired, irrelevant arguments that entirely ignores product-market fit and a large, vibrant community of developers. [edit] ah, of course. a bitcoin maximalist. how dare there be an alternative use-case for crypto that involves people using it. the thing bitcoin has going for it is a large communit…

There are enough bitcoin maximalists afraid of ethereum to upvote this. They know very well that eth flipping btc is the 'emperor's has no clothes' moment - instantly all memes about btc being a store of value, 'hard money' and similar turn into jokes, and what remains is btc itself: an unbacked inflationary coin, in which the only way to make money is at the expense of someone else.

At this point, the only thing that can stop the flippening after the merge is a government ban that specifically impacts ethereum (like they tried with the PoW-only exemption amendment).

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#154

Post by Tepix »

javert wrote: post #102
kristofferR wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it's just moving very slowly after the block size civil war. I remember the early years when the talk was about interesting developments instead of just the value.

Bitcoin has chosen consistency with its original principles over "innovation." A good choice, in my book. What we should think of as constituting sound money has not changed since 2008. That is what bitcoin is supposed to be - sound money. Ethereum is supposed to be something else - and it makes sense for Ethereum to "innovate" much more than bitcoin does.

> That is what bitcoin is supposed to be - sound money.

Bitcoin can't be used as money in most cases as transactions are too expensive and slow. It has failed its primary function. Instead of doing something about it, the notion of using bitcoin like money has been abandonded and it's merely a "store of value". That's until people stop valuing it.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#155

Post by elevenoh »

birdyrooster wrote: post #143

Everything wrong with crypto is the notion you can make a global reserve currency impervious to special interests. It’s going to be gamed by the people at the top, they will use all and any leverage to change the code to favor them more. They will extract the value from the system like they have every other system and the easiest part is that stakeholders like you and me don’t get any vote. You can’t decouple monetar…

>Everything wrong with crypto is the notion you can make a global reserve currency impervious to special interests

This ain't binary. Ain't yes or no.

Also.. why do you assume crypto is gunning for 'global reserve currency'?

Crypto enables all types of experiments toward reducing the insider-asymmetry nature of central control control (e.g. political whim money printing, political whim monetary policy)

>Fiat will always be better for the stability of finance and governance bc they perceive or have a tiny lever of control

Political, centrally controlled money shifts economic risk from away from markets/market participants (the most efficient distributed value-computation we have) onto politically-determined populations.

example: fiat policy shifted 2008 wall street bankruptcy risk away from markets onto ordinary people who're being inflated-away & exploited by the Cantillion Effect.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#156

Post by dalbasal »

The social class metaphor is stretched pretty thin, but it can be interested to follow such threads and see where they lead. I suppose it's endlessly interpretable, but here's my take on bringing it down to earth.

- Different "classes" have different interests. (1)Miners. (2) Big, rich coin owners. (3) Rule makers and influencers. Group 2 & 3 overlap and might collaborate to screw miners.

- The author is thinks fundamentals/promises like "code is law" and such will gradually crack, because absolute adherence will be broken.

- Rule making is corruptible.

"sounds just like the corrupt fiat money system we’re trying to escape"

Sounds to me like you have arrived at "governance." The hope a lot of people had/have for crypto is that it replaces people, institutions and rules with explicit code. Coins would be governed by code instead of people, which works until it doesn't work.

Since this is already framed in a historical materialism sense... Imagine a society where all laws come from God, are engraved in stone and adjudicated with trials by duel, ordeal or some other way of leaving things in His mighty hands. This works until it doesn't. A currency crisis leaves 90% of people in debt slavery, and the army can't find enough recruits. A UFC champion is abusing trial by combat to get away with all crime and rob everyone. Stuff no one could have foreseen. One of the rules isn't perfect.

IRL, such societies will go one of two ways: (1) They have systemic instability, where the stone tablets can be broken and new rules adopted. Or, (2) they fudge. They have a complete and perfect constitution, and a supreme court that interprets it liberally like the US. Maybe they pretend to have a constitution even though one has never been written, like the UK. It turns out we can make that guy fight a bear instead of some poor prisoner.

There's a theoretical option 3: adhere. Play out the consequences whatever that requires. Maybe god wants everyone in debt slavery, and that ufc champion running around robbing old ladies.

Everything crypto seems to drive to the extremes. An obsession with perfect. There is no perfect.

Say smart contracts work great for collectible sneakers. Yes, it collapses when a judge rules to give a sneaker collection back to a guy that got robbed. Does that really make it worthless? Is an institution responsible for cancelling and issuing sneaker coin, on court order, really such a blasphemy?

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#157

Post by simonh »

amarant wrote: post #136

A lot of comments here criticise the analogies made in the post. While the criticism might be correct, I feel this is like missing the forest because of the trees.. Etherium, and most crypto-currencies for that matter, were initially made to fix a broken financial system, where banks unjustly control too much wealth, and changes the rules so that they will always control too much wealth. Etherium does not fix this, i…

>made to fix a broken financial system, where banks unjustly control too much wealth...

I don't think that's quite what you mean to say. The function of banks is to manage wealth. That's their one job. It's like blaming them for being too much of what they are.

Bitcoin has not eliminated banks, it's just created new ones called bitcoin exchanges, online wallets, etc. The only reason they don't function even more like banks (paying interest on deposits, making loans, etc) is because coins are predominantly used more like assets than like currency so there's not much of a market for financial-like services.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#158

Post by ayngg »

ahdeanz wrote: post #70
kristofferR wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Ethereum's development isn't a simple project that can be rushed, it's massively complicated. This road map comes to mind: https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/133392262085774540... It's very outdated now, that's not the point. The point is that every circle on the road map is a very complicated project in and of itself that needs tons of research, development and testing to be implemented properly. Just t…

Absolutely, not to mention Eth just rolled out a major update last week. This rambling, bizarre article boils down to a few very basic, extremely played out arguments. Argument 1: Proof of stake concentrates wealth more than proof of work. You can make that argument, but POS advocates have for a long time argued that proof of work mining has more economies of scale than proof of stake and therefore the opposite is ac…

While reading the article all I could think about was that it sounded like it was written by a bitcoin maximalist, so many things were framed in bad faith that it makes it difficult to take for granted that it is an honest attempt at discussing the issues surrounding Ethereum, especially when it is basically rehashing things that have been discussed many times before. It makes me wonder how this got to the top of HN, maybe an enemy of an enemy is a cryptocurrency skeptic's friend or something.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#159

Post by elevenoh »

caf wrote: post #140
Sevii wrote: post #12

I emphasize with the arguments here but I differ in my conclusion for two reasons. 1. I don't own just Ethereum, its not a boat that I'm riding in, its one of many gambles I'm making. 2. The Ethereum network has generated a ton of really good stuff (Smart Contracts, DEFI, NFTS, IPFS, ENS, etc) despite whatever governance problems it has. Cryptocurrencies are far from mature. There is no guarantee eth and btc will sti…

Even when gambling, I don't gamble on a crooked table.

I've gambled a lot.

But honestly:

No playing field has been as level/fair as that of crypto.

The nature of crypto means 'The house' is more transparently verifiable & cost-efficient than.. anything else.

Be it tokens, prediction markets, nft markets etc.

It seems to be the one place where disconnected individuals anywhere on earth with little but an internet connection can get a decent seat at the economic table.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#160

Post by birdyrooster »

dash2 wrote: post #7

"Something here seems awfully similar to the system that crypto-currency was meant to fix. It was meant to eliminate rulers. It was meant to make everyone accountable for their actions. It was meant to reward the intelligent, the hard working and the capable, and not reward the incompetent, or the makers-yet-breakers of promises. However, this repeat of the broken old system seems to be playing out again." One respon…

I personally enjoy the absurd concept of decentralization that crypto proponents have while centralizing the governance and law of global monetary policy. If you wanted to create a global government, this is where you would start. It takes financing to enact laws and the board directing the dominant coin are defacto legislators of this new world order.
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