Bitcoin Forum

With the recent issue with Tornado cash and some other users complaining about transactions being censored over the ethereum network we are seeing a wide range of problems coming in. Apart from this behaviour being everything that Satoshi did not advocate for, it goes against all the principles that cryptocurrency stands for. Well, for me Eth died back in 2016 with the DAO event and with the recent events and the POS fork and see it as dead.

Of course that even so, Ethereum is still the leading network but slowly developers are turning to alternative networks, so the future of ethereum may be compromised.

What are your thoughts on these recent events? And what project do you guys believe could surpass Ethereum?

I think that Ethereum going to proof of stake pretty much sealed its fate as far as censorship goes. Most of the blocks being confirmed these days are complaint to whatever standard of processing transactions that the government has set forth. I imagine in time all of the blocks will be, otherwise funds will start being frozen. Ethereum is definitely the biggest target of blockchain regulators at the moment, and I’m sure such censorship will attempt to find its way to Bitcoin in the future. Although I’m sure they’ll try to steer Bitcoin towards PoS first to make their job easier.

None. All the big PoS projects that provide a platform for smart contracts are centralized and subject to censorship. Do you think other networks offer something decentralized and free of regulators? Not likely. Ethereum was apparently the last platform to run on RoW. Blockchain is slowly buckling under centralization and regulation. Tokens and coins are trying to fit under securities law so that they can be regulated and fully controlled.

Well, you look like you must have an even darker vision than I do for the future of cryptocurrencies. So, does it mean that you believe we are just watching the beginning of the end for Decentralization and everything that Satoshi's main vision stood for? Do you think we are heading to complete control with no alternatives?

Even before the censorship issues, many people only use the Ethereum network when it is absolutely necessary I think Ethereum are missing the main issues of target, I think this recent energy they are putting into other developments should be directed towards the transactions issues on their network, with so many options available now it's becoming a tougher competition for Ethereum.

No that Ethereum is the one Altcoin I would first hold if I had larger capital, it already has the history, solid team backing and popularity let's see if it would still have longevity.

Well Satoshi's vision was for Bitcoin and not Altcoins, i'm afraid, that was what he stood for: Bitcoin being decentralized and the algorithm to bring coins into circulation being the proof of work mechanism, and it is still that way. Ethereum and quite a lot of other altcoin projects are rightly centralized and there is prolly no alternatives in the altcoin industry. But the Bitcoin network is still decentralized thus far, not that it isn't targeted by governments and regulatory bodies, but there is as yet no change in how Bitcoin operates/has operated, thus i'd not talk about the end of decentralization just yet because we haven't gotten to such end.

I wouldn't call it dark, I would call it as logical and realistic as possible. Look around you, almost the entire industry has been influenced by kyc and regulators. Most countries around the world have created their legislative frameworks and taxation for cryptocurrencies. And all of this is part of centralization and control. Any centralized exchange that supports kyc and aml policies can block and confiscate cryptocurrencies. Also, cryptocurrencies have political censorship and sanctions that prevent certain citizens from using cryptocurrencies and using services. That's a full-fledged control and regulation.  How do I see the future of cryptocurrencies? Fully regulated. Alas, there is no trace of the original intent of cryptocurrencies themselves. Cryptocurrencies were supposed to fight the oppression of central banks and governments, but that's not how it turned out. These same bankers and governments control cryptocurrencies and dictate their terms. People do not use cryptocurrencies as an alternative to fiat, they seek to exchange cryptocurrencies for fiat, through various speculations.

Governments will continue to increase control and regulation. The reason for this is that once worthless coins, once worth very little and taken seriously by few, have become worth very much and a huge value has been transferred through the blockchain. Billions of dollars. Now it is a full-fledged industry, and governments, along with banks, will not miss the opportunity to make it all work for them.

They are already trying this with the stupid Bitcoin mining energy consumption agenda. Ethereum fell for the trap and what worsened was their very high transaction fees... lol

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POS or not, Ethereum is still a very large network compared to other altcoins. From the beginning, their selling points were transaction fees and smart contracts. I don't think any other shitcoin like BNB will overtake them in terms of adoption, but they certainly will drop further down way from Bitcoin from many points.

Developers moving to another network? Like networks that also suspends or halts transactions whenever attacks or exploits happen to one of their platforms? Those same centralized networks? That is not the end of Ethereum. Most users are already aware of such censorship but they still support it regardless.

You just lost confidence on ETH that is why you look at it as dead project, in reality ETH is thriving.  People who are into ETH will keep using it no matter what is the condition of the censorship of its network.


I don't mind what happen to ETH, I long abandoned it when it gas fee become insane.  About a project that can surpass ETH, there are many potential candidates but it is hard to say if those candidate will really surpass ETH.

That’s correct, I don’t think censorship will be the reason of a set-back for ETH, it won’t die easily.
ETH push this update because it can help their network more competitive in the future, and I believe they did it right. It’s the trend now where a project ship into a new network to address their current issues, it seems very effective to other project as well.

Some devs will pull out but I highly doubt it will be the end of eth network. Eth is PoS now and such is expected. If other networks did not die doing the same thing I don't see how eth will be affected because of that with the size of its user base. They just have to get use to this new changes.

Well, once it's no longer censorship resistant, it's no longer decentralized because much of the cryptocurrency ideals like censorship-resistant, immutability, true public consensus, etc work handinhand. If one is compromised or weakened the network becomes centralized and less secure.
PoS is anti- decentralization and should never be encouraged by any right thinking person. It helped in turning the network into zombies and could actually be considered dead/dying. So, it's best to use it with what you can afford to risk, or avoid completely.

I'm not aware of the recent Ethereum users that got censored or did you mean it's AFAC block compliant? AFAIK, the ones who got censored are the ones who interact with the Tornado Cash mix address right?

Regardless of it, some already say that majority of Ethereum users are already in favour of the current implementation, so I bet they could care less regarding censorship. They have been getting used to using "middlemen" after all. When the RPC API won't follow the regulation standard, the possibility of the block itself getting filtered/cleansed out with what the regulation affirms could be a likely possible scenario as of now.

If the regulator gives an order to centralized organizations and projects to block certain addresses, then this order will be executed. This must be understood, and no laws will help you, and lawyers will be very expensive, and they will not guarantee the release of funds. Now it is better to transfer some of the coins to other decentralized blockchains. Anonymous coins like Monero I think will also be blocked in the future on centralized exchanges.

proof of stakes are not totally decentralized, POW remains the best. Ethereum should have stayed in POW and allow L2 disgest the network and other EVM. POS validators can decide to halt the entire network and take a suppose decentralized protocol offline, this recently happened to BSC network when a hacker stole some fund from of the protocols. Juno is a project I lost $1400 to, it's a POS, there was a whale account they fear could destroy the JUNO liquidity, they said he gamed the JUNO airdrop, community voted to seize his asset. Lols an asset that was already in his private wallet but staked with validators. Lols,. Good as it sounds, POS will cause many problem.

And this is the problem with centralization, by concentrating the power in a just a small number of hands this makes the work of the governments way easier and they can begin to influence the markets in the direction that benefits them the most, and since most people do not really care about the ideals which started this market then it is clear this is the direction most of the coins in the market will follow, the only question that remains is if governments will be able to do this to bitcoin and privacy coins? Which seems to be the only projects left which are willing to stand up to the governments and their manipulation.

I don't think that there will ever be a project that will surpass Ethereum as of the moment. The fact that it's grown a lot and with this transition, it's making the rich folks be richer and that's what they like from it. So, huge capitalization will remain on it as it gives these huge part of its network the advantage to take on the lead as they help Ethereum also remain on its state. Being a PoS now really has changed it into a less censored project and let's see where it'll be in the next years.

Fact is the network of Ethereum has been growing after the DAO fork in 2016 and it you said Ethereum was dead after that, it is not correct.

Dead after The Merge, I don't know because it must be verified by time and the people who use Ethereum blockchain. However in my opinion, it won't be dead because of Proof of Stake. If you look at Binance Smart Chain which I am sure is the more centralized network than Ethereum network. You can compare two networks' validators to see how Ethereum network is better than Binance Smart Chain.

Do you see Binance Smart Chain is dead? If you don't see BSC is dead, Ethereum PoS network won't be dead.

It is very hard for younger blockchain to surpass Ethereum and Bitcoin networks. New blockchain projects are created to promise they are building something bigger, better and more efficient than Bitcoin and Ethereum networks. In reality, their networks show more weaknesses after a few months of growing after launches.

There will definitely be a competitor of the ether, history does not stand still. ETH was just very lucky at the time, at the initial stages of the market they were able to attract miners who made the network reliable and stable from 51 attacks, then it was time for ICO, most of whom were on the ETH platform and collected ETH in exchange for their tokens, simultaneously increasing the transaction price and the income of miners.
Then there was USDT, which was also on the air, then Define and NFT. All of them only added money and opportunities to the ETH, it is clear why with such data the other became the second after the BTC.
Now without mining and clear rules, the future of the project is not so rosy.

Ethereum isn't have any use cases, the big part of Ethereum is many projects are using their chain because it's the biggest tokenization chain. It's centralized, nothing different with fiat, as sooner or later most projects are migrated to other network which cheaper than Ethereum, Ethereum will not able become top 2 position. Mixing service doesn't make Ethereum network end because not all users are using mixing service.

So many ETH killers were made in the past but they didn't kill ETH. Popularity is still one factor that made ETH to be the top altcoin despite this POS change.

Nothing yet had been censored so far. Maybe us paranoid so much about the issue being ETH compromised. I'm not very confident however if they are not going to censor when the validators controlled it all.

I don't think so, in fact censorship resistance is one of the main features that makes the Ethereum blockchain so strong. The Ethereum blockchain is not based on a single source of truth but rather on consensus, which means we cannot force changes without following the rules set by the community itself.

I really believe in the Ethereum concept, and I think it can bring great prosperity to many parts of the world. But no system ever survives without end users and investors, and they will want a secure network they can rely on.

Ethereum is really concentrating on the dapps instead of using the native coin as currency that is why the developer had no other option to switch from PoW to PoS which affects the decentralization but the utilisation has been increased which reduced the transaction fee especially token transaction a lot so people are happy with that perspective and for someone who loves the complete anonymous has other options so just go for it.

I wouldn't call it dark, I would call it as logical and realistic as possible. Look around you, almost the entire industry has been influenced by kyc and regulators. Most countries around the world have created their legislative frameworks and taxation for cryptocurrencies. And all of this is part of centralization and control. Any centralized exchange that supports kyc and aml policies can block and confiscate cryptocurrencies. Also, cryptocurrencies have political censorship and sanctions that prevent certain citizens from using cryptocurrencies and using services. That's a full-fledged control and regulation.  How do I see the future of cryptocurrencies? Fully regulated. Alas, there is no trace of the original intent of cryptocurrencies themselves. Cryptocurrencies were supposed to fight the oppression of central banks and governments, but that's not how it turned out. These same bankers and governments control cryptocurrencies and dictate their terms. People do not use cryptocurrencies as an alternative to fiat, they seek to exchange cryptocurrencies for fiat, through various speculations.

Governments will continue to increase control and regulation. The reason for this is that once worthless coins, once worth very little and taken seriously by few, have become worth very much and a huge value has been transferred through the blockchain. Billions of dollars. Now it is a full-fledged industry, and governments, along with banks, will not miss the opportunity to make it all work for them.
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I completely agree with you. And that is basically the end of the main concept that Satoshi envisioned if that rolls as you say... Even so, I do believe that there will be alternatives. If we can escape the ethereum oppression by finding a truly decentralized alternative, then we may keep and maintain Satoshi's vision. With CBDCs coming in soon, it will be either that or we will be back to fiat paper cash as it is still the most anonymous form of transacting...

I agree with you but have some reserves. It would be the end of the main concept that Satoshi envisioned for cryptos if that rolls as you say... Even so, I do believe that there will be alternatives. If we can escape the ethereum oppression by finding a truly decentralized alternative, then we may keep and maintain Satoshi's vision. With CBDCs coming in soon, it will be either that or we will be back to fiat paper cash as it is still the most anonymous form of transacting...
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Over the years there have been many projects that tried to challenge the dominance of ethereum, and while at the beginning they had some success at the end they failed on their objective of trying to replace ethereum as the second best coin in the market, and even if I do not agree with this transition to POS it seems this could help ethereum over the long term and it could become even more competitive, which will make it more difficult for future projects to surpass it.

It seems to me that it is the stability of the network and the reliability that the ETH had when it was based on the POW algorithm and contributed to its spread, and I think that now the owners of ASICs and GPU probably still remember the time when you could mine ETH as one of the best times in mining.
Profitability seemed to be about of several billion dollars only from miners, not counting the sellers of video cards, ASICs.

Switching to POS in the long term does not seem like such a good idea to me, because in the end, miners will be able to find an alternative to Ethereum and a lot of money will go into a new alternative to ETH.

There have been a lot of new projects launched in recent years and most of them claim to be ETH killers, but so far none have done so. EOS may be the biggest hope to replace ETH, but now I hardly see anyone talking about it anymore. I don't know if it's still alive or not?
The most recent is Solana, with cheap transaction fees and a hundred times faster speed than ETH, which is also predicted to be the killer of ETH. But you see, Sol has outages 9 times this year and will likely continue to happen in the future, I don't believe anyone can replace ETH in the altcoin world.

The moment a coin markets itself as the coin that can destroy another popular coin then you know there is a problem as there is no way to know that with any kind of certainty, as you mention the latest candidate to achieve this was Solana and while it seems like a good project that lack of reliability is never going to allow to surpass ethereum, and even if the developers behind it found a way to solve this would you really trust that something like this will never happen again?

Censorship will not be the end of cryptocurrency and ethereum in particular. Certain external regulation of the circulation of cryptocurrencies by states is inevitable anyway. It will add more order and certainty to the cryptocurrency, reduce the number of hackers and scammers. If someone thinks that states will not pay attention to the alternative, free, uncontrolled movement of capital in cryptocurrency, then he is deeply mistaken. This has never happened and never will. Personal identification will eventually be carried out when the cryptocurrency and the banking system come into contact, that is, when the cryptocurrency is converted to fiat, and there is nothing we can do about it. Decentralization and centralization in cryptocurrency will both oppose and complement each other. You just need to work out the golden mean here.

Bitcoin has much more liquidity and trading volume. Taproot allows you to hide transactions. As long as decentralized ecosystems exist, there will be no problems with the shadow sector. Ethereum has a very low transaction speed, and soon there will be projects where the TPS will reach several hundred thousand, for example https://sui.io

Even Ethereum become the slowest blockchain with a bunch of hacking/scam inside its ecosystem didn't bring down this project on ground so what's more for a censorship from its dapps. Investors will not gonna stop believing on this project due to its established reputation and name in the crypto space. This censorship might be caused for a minor pull back but it's not enough to end one of the biggest blockchain on crypto. It will take more FUD than that to kill Ethereum.