- Joined
- Dec 3, 2020
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Public blockchains will probably fail due to a lack of decentralization in decision making in governance as well as other technical reasons such as an inability to scale to mass adoption.
A blockchain isn’t decentralized if it still has a few people at the top. That is, the technical and the human elements both require decentralization. In an era of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), the missing link is often how managers and developers are organized. Let’s take Ethereum as an example here.
Ethereum has been faulted for having only a few core developers determining what happens on the network.
While Vitalik Buturin and Joseph Lubin talk a good game, the truth is of course the developers who make key decisions are very limited. This is highly problematic for a company that’s basically the post-child for what decentralization might be. Here’s where the story starts to get serious.
A core dev Lane Rettig said the small group has the final say on what goes into the protocol, a situation that has led to several concerns because emerging issues with the network are non-technical.
Etheruem Governance is Tested in 2019
The recent controversy around Afri Schoedon also points to this. Developers are just people at the end of the day and the bias is usually towards young males.
So this criticism isn’t just from crypto journalists like myself, but from the actual developers working on Etheruem. Following the departure of core developer Afri Schoedon from the open-source project in late February, Etheruem needs a new hard-fork coordinator. Why he actually rage quit is important.
There are some signs something is not quite right here internally in Etheruem’s loose idea that there is no hierarchy.
You can pretend your governance is decentralized, it doesn’t mean it’s actually true.
Lane has essentially suggested Ethereum’s Governance model has failed. He has added that Ethereum has only a few options to choose from, one of which is to give up on governance completely “and be like Bitcoin”. Another viable option proposed by him is to all
A blockchain isn’t decentralized if it still has a few people at the top. That is, the technical and the human elements both require decentralization. In an era of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), the missing link is often how managers and developers are organized. Let’s take Ethereum as an example here.
Ethereum has been faulted for having only a few core developers determining what happens on the network.
While Vitalik Buturin and Joseph Lubin talk a good game, the truth is of course the developers who make key decisions are very limited. This is highly problematic for a company that’s basically the post-child for what decentralization might be. Here’s where the story starts to get serious.
A core dev Lane Rettig said the small group has the final say on what goes into the protocol, a situation that has led to several concerns because emerging issues with the network are non-technical.
Etheruem Governance is Tested in 2019
The recent controversy around Afri Schoedon also points to this. Developers are just people at the end of the day and the bias is usually towards young males.
So this criticism isn’t just from crypto journalists like myself, but from the actual developers working on Etheruem. Following the departure of core developer Afri Schoedon from the open-source project in late February, Etheruem needs a new hard-fork coordinator. Why he actually rage quit is important.
There are some signs something is not quite right here internally in Etheruem’s loose idea that there is no hierarchy.
You can pretend your governance is decentralized, it doesn’t mean it’s actually true.
Lane has essentially suggested Ethereum’s Governance model has failed. He has added that Ethereum has only a few options to choose from, one of which is to give up on governance completely “and be like Bitcoin”. Another viable option proposed by him is to all
