A hard fork is essentially a large coordinated migration from one blockchain to a new blockchain, generally with a shared history.
Vitalik does not have the sole power to go against the stakeholders of the network and make massive changes to Ethereum. The power that Vitalik has is one of leadership. If he attempts to coordinate a mass migration from one blockchain (old Eth) to another (new Eth), Vitalik actually needs to convince everyone that this is a good idea. He can't force it to happen if people disagree that it's the right thing to do. If Vitalik launches a hardfork and 80% of the network upgrades, that definitionally means that Vitalik had the support of 80% of the network, otherwise they wouldn't have followed the upgrade.
Blockchains are about consent. If you don't like what's happening on a blockchain, make a change. A single person making a change in isolation isn't interesting, but a large group of people making a change together IS interesting, and can be successful even if that group is just a minority. You end up with two different networks, each capable of thriving on their own.
Miners depend on the users of a blockchain for revenue. If a blockchain has no users, there will be no fees, and no revenue. The reverse is not true. If the users determine that they are better off selecting a different set of miners to build and preserve consensus, they can fork the network in a way that changes who is able to mine effectively, but does not otherwise impact daily use of the blockchain.
This is pretty similar situation. Incentives of the miners are not aligned with those of the users.
If the incumbent miners stop mining in protest of their future profits declining, then new miners will just come in to take the profits they are refusing to collect today. There is no incentive for them to conspire and every incentive for them to not conspire.
Some resources (they link to DPoS alternatives and discuss them):
- https://vitalik.ca/general/2016/12/29/pos_design.html
- https://vitalik.ca/general/2017/12/17/voting.html
Miners are only one participant in the ecosystem, there are also users, merchants and developers. Governance of any cryptocurrency is extremely touchy subject and one thing you don’t want to do is setting a precedent for making a controversial change. If you justify such change by “majority of miners want it” - you’re basically handing over the protocol to their hands. Nothing will prevent miners to adopt changes that eventually centralize currency control, increase rewards(inflation), etc.
What? Not really. Miners do indeed dictate the protocol rules, its is the miners agreeing to following a certain version of the consensus algorithm that makes a blockchain do what it does. So they are partly responsible for more than just mining blocks. Like I said initially it is hard to say who the actual decision makers of the chain are because it is not defined properly by eth.
>>Miners are only one participant in the ecosystem, there are also users, merchants and developers.
Like I mentioned in my previous comment, my whole disagreement with the OP of this comment chain is, their analogy calling miners bodyguards only, my argument is that its hard to tell, because anyone can play any role in this network, on eth the incentives are set up in such a way that each actor can be multiple actors, and there isn't any clear distinction as to who gets to decide what on the network.
>>If you justify such change by “majority of miners want it” - you’re basically handing over the protocol to their hands. Nothing will prevent miners to adopt changes that eventually centralize currency control, increase rewards(inflation), etc.
I am not trying to justify it as majority miners want it, my criticism of the eth chain is they have done this sort of nonese in the past (remember the DAO hack where vitalik and co decided to serve their own interests and rolled back a blockchain? )
It clearly shows eth hasn't grown or come up with a solution as to how to govern their blockchain in a decentralized manner. At the moment, a small select group of people, rather than the majority of its stakeholders get to decide what happens to the blockchain, and that to me doesn't look like decentralization.
Whats to stop a powerful government forcing vitalik and co to implement or remove what they want in the future?
Who dictates the rules is who controls the logic of the chain where the value resides. The miners can create their own fork, and Vitalik can create his own fork. I think we know where the value will go.
> Who dictates the rules is who controls the logic of the chain where the value resides. The miners can create their own fork, and Vitalik can create his own fork. I think we know where the value will go.
Vitalik only has this power because he appears to be choosing freely and the public agrees with him. If it appeared he was being forced to do something, or he did something that people didn't like, the value wouldn't follow him.
It is in this economic sense, and only this economic sense, that crypto is democratic. The only votes that matter are the dollars people trade to buy Ethereum.
You have cause and effect mixed up.
The miners that follow the same consensus rules that the merchants and exchanges do, get paid. The others do not.
A majority of miners following incompatible consensus would look like a huge drop off in mining capacity from the end users perspective. Similar things have happened multiple times.
This is why I refuse to hold ETH... when the financial big boys finally start moving to blockchain rails, they are going to look at ETH and think “WTF is this?” and pass it up for more principled designs like Cardano.
This got me thinking. How likely is it that, if and when crypto grows into a significant financial sector, the actual government will take over the governance.
It seems likely that the public (or their representatives) will grow increasingly uneasy with such an important matter being handled by random internet people and foundations. Especially if these institutions are not willing to include themselves into other policy making processes.
I believe that sooner rather than later effective control will be wrestled away from people like Vitalik, through laws and regulations.
Users would be overjoyed, and the user base would grow dramatically.
People aren't using bitcoin day-to-day because it lacks a government backing.
People are actually using Bitcoin strictly because it lacks a government backing. For those users who want an asset that is government-backed, there are already lots of options and there is little need for cryptocurrency to try and compete in that space.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petro_(cryptocurrency).
In fact colleagues at Status went to Venezuela to check how payments worked there:
- https://www.figma.com/community/file/780788775246577039?prev...
* there is no legal entity representing the Ethereum blockchain because it is decentralized
* the correct chain is not dictated by a single person or group of people
What you are seeing is an implicit form of democracy or people acting in shared interests and in support of Ethereum’s original developer and “leader”. The moment vitalik loses it and the organization loses credibility, alternate plans will be made according to the common interests of the people who have a stake in the system. Perhaps there will be a fork, but in the end the greatest demand will be for the most universally accepted version and the other will whither into insignificance ala Ethereum classic.
Hence GP talking about bodyguards at a concert-- who would typically be a minority of persons there.
The problem here is with the design of eth, eth was a rushed blockchain from the start, now vitalik is trying to rush the release all of a sudden because the people managing his network are not happy with the up coming changes?
What the hell kind of decentralization is this if vitalik can escalate major decisions about network? Eth is not a decentralized project if one individual(or a few) can decide to go against 51% of the stakeholders of the network.