The Roads Not Taken
vitalik.ca
The Roads Not Taken
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Re: The Roads Not Taken
#2> What if the EVM was something totally different?
I'm not sure if Solidity's traps are the EVM's traps exposed at the higher level, but given how hard it is to write a robust VM, I can't see the EVM being based on existing implementations being a bad thing.
Re: The Roads Not Taken
#3Contextually unrelated, but the title compels me
https://eyeofmidas.com/scifi/Turtledove_RoadNotTaken.pdf
Highly recommend.
Re: The Roads Not Taken
#4I think this article portrays what I think is crypto’s biggest problem - the developers are all focusing on /trivial/ matters like preventing double-spend and ensuring economic finality.
And then, every time a hack happens they blame it on the users - “the blockchain wasn’t compromised”. Sure, but users don’t care about that technicality.
Crypto needs better UI/UX and real-world mainstream usecases, not better consensus algorithms.
I don’t think Vitalik et all understand this, outside of the small criticisms they’re willing to bring up to deflect crypto-skeptics.
Eg, POW’s environmental damage is mentioned once in this blog, as a positive that enabled ETH’s “accessibility”. This is a joke right? You can barely mine any ETH even on an rtx3090. Obviously, mining pools/farms and the resulting global GPU shortages are accessible.
Re: The Roads Not Taken
#5I think this article portrays what I think is crypto’s biggest problem - the developers are all focusing on /trivial/ matters like preventing double-spend and ensuring economic finality. And then, every time a hack happens they blame it on the users - “the blockchain wasn’t compromised”. Sure, but users don’t care about that technicality. Crypto needs better UI/UX and real-world mainstream usecases, not better consen…
Especially things like
> once a block gets finalized, it cannot be reverted without the attacker having to lose millions of ETH to being slashed
when most recent hacks are begging for reversibility.
Re: The Roads Not Taken
#6I think this article portrays what I think is crypto’s biggest problem - the developers are all focusing on /trivial/ matters like preventing double-spend and ensuring economic finality. And then, every time a hack happens they blame it on the users - “the blockchain wasn’t compromised”. Sure, but users don’t care about that technicality. Crypto needs better UI/UX and real-world mainstream usecases, not better consen…
Especially things like > once a block gets finalized, it cannot be reverted without the attacker having to lose millions of ETH to being slashed when most recent hacks are begging for reversibility.
Ironically, the hacker gains “millions of ETH” instead. The hack is enshrined in the blockchain forever, and if CEXs blocklist the hacker - the ETH sits dormant and wasted forever - and nobody can fix this without hard-forking. True innovation!
Re: The Roads Not Taken
#7I think this article portrays what I think is crypto’s biggest problem - the developers are all focusing on /trivial/ matters like preventing double-spend and ensuring economic finality. And then, every time a hack happens they blame it on the users - “the blockchain wasn’t compromised”. Sure, but users don’t care about that technicality. Crypto needs better UI/UX and real-world mainstream usecases, not better consen…
You may as well say that the Bank of England is too focused on making counterfeit proof banknotes, and actually they should be building door locks, making alarm systems, campaigning for police patrols etc.
These are two distinct problems completely.
Re: The Roads Not Taken
#8I think this article portrays what I think is crypto’s biggest problem - the developers are all focusing on /trivial/ matters like preventing double-spend and ensuring economic finality. And then, every time a hack happens they blame it on the users - “the blockchain wasn’t compromised”. Sure, but users don’t care about that technicality. Crypto needs better UI/UX and real-world mainstream usecases, not better consen…
You may as well say that the Bank of England is too focused on making counterfeit proof banknotes, and actually they should be building door locks, making alarm systems, campaigning for police patrols etc. These are two distinct problems completely.
Bank of England claims that barely 0.0022% of notes are counterfeit. [1] And that going digital is what’s driving YoY decreases.
If you claim that ETH’s role is purely to be a replacement for the BoE (which is debatable) - surely they’ve solved counterfeiting, and can move on other things? Do we need to bike shed this forever?
[1] https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/counterfeit-bankno...