ETH hardfork incoming.

[Kewatia]

After the hard fork, will anyone continue to mine the old ETH chain for ideological reasons?

Most miners will continue to mine if there is no other profitable coin to mine. Most miners invest to make profit.

That's a bit cryptic. I think that's a 'no' for you?

If there is profit to be made, why not mine the Ethererm? But if the Ethereum is dead, nobody will mine it.

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[SolomonRising]

If they fork nobody will trust Ethereum ever again.  Curious to see how they'll resolve the hack.

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

After the hard fork, will anyone continue to mine the old ETH chain for ideological reasons?

Most miners will continue to mine if there is no other profitable coin to mine. Most miners invest to make profit.

That's a bit cryptic. I think that's a 'no' for you?

If there is profit to be made, why not mine the Ethererm? But if the Ethereum is dead, nobody will mine it.

Please reread the question.

[Docnaster]

If they fork nobody will trust Ethereum ever again.  Curious to see how they'll resolve the hack.

this is very special occasion. That shows the support of the community to alleviate the loss caused by a big theft.

[haendehochueberfall]

No forks!

Charles, I don't think you sufficiently emphasized Bruce Fenton's points. You provided a link that seems lost in a sea of the mix of historical storytelling with a smidgen of your self-aggrandizing verbiage, so I doubt most readers even read what Bruce wrote.

Crypto is Not Politics

I keep reading arguments about how The Will of The People should decide. And how this is the only fair and equitable way. And I am here to say this is 100% retarded bullshit and any one who repeats it (and nonchalantly dismisses this!), is retarded.

What distinguishes the intention of Satoshi's block chain invention from the world we had before it, is that it eliminates politics. The technical reason is because due to the Nash equilibrium, then no one (not even mining nodes) have any fucking control.

If we destroy the Nash equilibrium with a 51% attack (aka fork) by not honoring the decentralized protocol, then we fall into a no-man's land of ambiguous interpretation and the brutality of the majority.

It is as simple as that. Either we choose to honor the code and protocol, or we go back to the depressing clusterfucked world we have before Satoshi.

Now the other problem is that BitCON is also becoming centralized because of economies-of-scale in mining. We haven't yet perfected Satoshi's invention. But that should not deter us from our ideals.

If you support forks, you violate everything Satoshi tried to do for the world.

No forks! No Blockstream forks either! Offer proof-of-burn if you want to propose new features on a new block chain, so that people are autonomous with their money.

And any arguments about empathy and intent in contract law are up against moral hazard which leads to the aforementioned clusterfuck of brutality. Don't reward retarded speculators for not doing due diligence and their derelict incapable developer idols, because they carry the mental affliction of those who want the clusterfucked world that existed prior to Satoshi's invention.

Nash equilibrium is interesting stuff. As always ignorance and greed is the biggest dangers.  

Vitalik is a fool, really. He's good with maths but has no capabilities in bordering fields.
The whole eth-team is youngsters who haven't the slighhtest clue wtf they're doing.

[haendehochueberfall]

eth is out the window already with the SF:

I  recently came across these little facts:

ETH foundation is located in swizerland. In Swiss the law allows computer code to be a legally binding contract so the "hacker" did really not steal a thing and is even entitled to his bugbounty. ETH code is legally binding contract under swiss law.

So the SF already was an illegal confiscation of funds under swiss law while the hacker just executed a contract they offered. So basically Vitalik and his friends are the thiefs, not the one executing their code.

[DrkLvr_]

The whole eth-team is youngsters who haven't the slighhtest clue wtf they're doing.

This is 100% accurate

[Juhagic]

eth is out the window already with the SF:

I  recently came across these little facts:

ETH foundation is located in swizerland. In Swiss the law allows computer code to be a legally binding contract so the "hacker" did really not steal a thing and is even entitled to his bugbounty. ETH code is legally binding contract under swiss law.

So the SF already was an illegal confiscation of funds under swiss law while the hacker just executed a contract they offered. So basically Vitalik and his friends are the thiefs, not the one executing their code.

But is the hacker from Swizerland as well? How about the DAO owner who have their coins stolen by the hackers?

[AlphaSun]

After the hard fork, will anyone continue to mine the old ETH chain for ideological reasons?

I do not think so. The old Ethreum chain could have very  low hash rate and it is vulnable to be 51% attacked.

[Juhagic]

After the hard fork, will anyone continue to mine the old ETH chain for ideological reasons?

I do not think so. The old Ethreum chain could have very  low hash rate and it is vulnable to be 51% attacked.

I bet when a chain has 60% of the mining power, all the miners will mine that chain. Most miners are for the money.

[Storm_Guardian_N7]

I support a hard fork, but I no longer support ethereum. Their dream and vision was nice but their implementations are flawed for so many reasons. I viewed them as a respectable team, but they don't know what they're doing, they're still learning and trying to figure this out. Even the former CEO of Ethereum said Vitalik had made a 'rookie' mistake, both by backing and hyping this project and then his own reactions to the event. He's new at this. Truth is not all founders are meant to be CEO and being able to write code and create a language doesn't mean you're able to create something good. They'll learn from this, and maybe they'll build better or fall apart. I'm sure there are enough people in the ethereum community who have enough trust and faith in Ethereum for it to slowly be earned back. Whether they build better or not, I don't know. I already have a problem with having to purchase an altcoin in order to send/transact with another altcoin so Ethereum in practice is just a nuisance to me. Plus now every other app including the digixdao is citing possible vulnerabilities as a result of Ethereum's issues. Definitely doesn't look good right now to say, "Built with Ethereum". We'll see when Serenity is released if that changes as they gain more experience.

[AlphaSun]

I support a hard fork, but I no longer support ethereum. Their dream and vision was nice but their implementations are flawed for so many reasons. I viewed them as a respectable team, but they don't know what they're doing, they're still learning and trying to figure this out. Even the former CEO of Ethereum said Vitalik had made a 'rookie' mistake, both by backing and hyping this project and then his own reactions to the event. He's new at this. Truth is not all founders are meant to be CEO and being able to write code and create a language doesn't mean you're able to create something good. They'll learn from this, and maybe they'll build better or fall apart. I'm sure there are enough people in the ethereum community who have enough trust and faith in Ethereum for it to slowly be earned back. Whether they build better or not, I don't know. I already have a problem with having to purchase an altcoin in order to send/transact with another altcoin so Ethereum in practice is just a nuisance to me. Plus now every other app including the digixdao is citing possible vulnerabilities as a result of Ethereum's issues. Definitely doesn't look good right now to say, "Built with Ethereum". We'll see when Serenity is released if that changes as they gain more experience.

I agree with you. We need more decentralised decision making. And the new programs have to be checked properly.

[Azael]

Yes, it's good for the future of Ethereum and acceptable in early stages. Then Factom can anchor into Ethereum and we can all go on with our merry lives.

[Kewatia]

"Geth 1.4.9 is a reversal release to undo the code changes that went into the 1.4.8 "DAO Wars" soft-fork release, as the soft-fork was deemed too vulnerable to DOS attacks, opening up the entire Ethereum network to resource abuse by malicious users."

When are we going to get the soft fork?

[HR]

The whole eth-team is youngsters who haven't the slighhtest clue wtf they're doing.

This is 100% accurate

For anyone still wondering . . .

 

[paratox]

Quote from this article  https://blog.colony.io/why-a-post-hard-fork-ethereum-will-be-more-valuable-abc35bbf6e98#.2jfczxeho

Blockchains are not immutable. If they were, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

(Maybe I misunderstood what immutability of a blockchain means , so please correct me if wrong.)

Doesn't forking an existing blockchain actually create a "new" blockchain with similar past and different future?
The "old" one still exists with unchanged parameters/fundamentals and with enough support from miners it can be kept alive.

So there could be 2 different blockchains running in parallel. Ethereum and NewEthereum.

Can you change a blockchain without effectively creating a new one?

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to say "Peoples/miners choice (on which blockchain to support) is not immutable"?

[GreenBits]

Quote from this article  https://blog.colony.io/why-a-post-hard-fork-ethereum-will-be-more-valuable-abc35bbf6e98#.2jfczxeho

Blockchains are not immutable. If they were, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

(Maybe I misunderstood what immutability of a blockchain means , so please correct me if wrong.)

Doesn't forking an existing blockchain actually create a "new" blockchain with similar past and different future?
The "old" one still exists with unchanged parameters/fundamentals and with enough support from miners it can be kept alive.

Yes sir. See the current dillemma with bitcoin classic/core. Two completely different block chains, hence the collective butthurt of the community as we struggle to pick a side. With that being said, really doesn't matter. The Chinese farms dictate which we will adopt. We lost our early lead on mining and are subsequently at the beck of those that currently control it.

[vuduchyld]

One doesn't even have to read past the first three sentences to know that this guy is clearly talking his book.  He owns DAO and also has a couple of other Ethereum-supported projects. 

It's a well-written piece.  He makes some strong arguments.  He does a good job refuting some of the counter-arguments to a hard fork.  But I think his fundamental argument that it would be MORE valuable is completely unsupported.  Truth is, nobody knows the impact of the loss of trust caused by the sloppy work upfront and the efficacy of the attacks that inhibit the soft fork.  What will the next attack be?  Where will it come from?  Will they roll everything back AGAIN to thwart it? 

His argument that it somehow IMPROVES mainstream perception of Ethereum is, well, not actually an argument.  It's an anecdote followed by an opinion.  I happen to have the opposite opinion. 

Finally, he doesn't address my main concern, which is the precedent of colluding with miners to do the bidding of the Foundation.  This is NOT GOOD for a lot of reasons.  One of those reasons is the precedent it sets of collusion.  What happens if a government wants to intervene and threaten the miners to fork because they THINK there is a homeland security issue?  What happens if they want to roll back just because they feel people aren't paying capital gains taxes?  What happens if MegaCorp sees that they could easily afford the required bribes to do whatever it is that THEY want?  ETH is roughly a billion in market cap.  Apple has $160 billion on hand an Microsoft has $85 billion. 

ETH isn't too big to fail.  On the contrary, it's too small to save. 

Quote from this article  https://blog.colony.io/why-a-post-hard-fork-ethereum-will-be-more-valuable-abc35bbf6e98#.2jfczxeho

Blockchains are not immutable. If they were, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

(Maybe I misunderstood what immutability of a blockchain means , so please correct me if wrong.)

Doesn't forking an existing blockchain actually create a "new" blockchain with similar past and different future?
The "old" one still exists with unchanged parameters/fundamentals and with enough support from miners it can be kept alive.

So there could be 2 different blockchains running in parallel. Ethereum and NewEthereum.

Can you change a blockchain without effectively creating a new one?

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to say "Peoples/miners choice (on which blockchain to support) is not immutable"?

[Nxtblg]

One of those reasons is the precedent it sets of collusion.  What happens if a government wants to intervene and threaten the miners to fork because they THINK there is a homeland security issue?  What happens if they want to roll back just because they feel people aren't paying capital gains taxes? 

That's what I think is going to happen. American regulators don't listen to ideological arguments (except for the ones that squarw with their own ideology) but they do listen to practical/technological arguments. One of the big reasons why they've been kept at bay from the crypto-only sphere, over and above the small-scale nature of this space, is the fact that a blockchain rollback is very messy with Bitcoin's chains of tx outputs.

If the Ethereum folks can show the wold that a "surgical" excision is possible with a blockchain-altering hard fork, that infeasibility argument becomes dubious for the Ethereum system and its likesake.

[a fool and his money ...]

Quote from this article  https://blog.colony.io/why-a-post-hard-fork-ethereum-will-be-more-valuable-abc35bbf6e98#.2jfczxeho

Blockchains are not immutable. If they were, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

(Maybe I misunderstood what immutability of a blockchain means , so please correct me if wrong.)

Doesn't forking an existing blockchain actually create a "new" blockchain with similar past and different future?
The "old" one still exists with unchanged parameters/fundamentals and with enough support from miners it can be kept alive.

So there could be 2 different blockchains running in parallel. Ethereum and NewEthereum.

Can you change a blockchain without effectively creating a new one?

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to say "Peoples/miners choice (on which blockchain to support) is not immutable"?

Normally a chain that matters should only be forked if it is defunct or very close to being defunct - in such circumstances you get an easy consensus on forking it.

One shouldn't expect a consensus for a fork on a chain that isn't defunct.

That's the nature of the thing. The consensus-algo protects the chain from hostile takeovers. It's a feature, not a bug that the chain is hard to change. If no change is necessary, why would you change it?