Why Ethereum Classic Must End

Baozou Commentary : Blockchain technology is a technology that uses a decentralized consensus mechanism to maintain a complete, distributed, and tamper-proof ledger database. It can be seen that consensus is crucial to this technology. The DAO crisis led to the fork of the Ethereum blockchain, which made many people who firmly believe in the immutability of blockchain angry and confused. Ethereum is in an awkward situation now. The coexistence of ETC and ETH chains has brought trouble to the developer community and applications. Therefore, for the development of Ethereum, we should make a choice.

Translation: Annie_Xu

The farce of Ethereum Classic (the Ethereum blockchain before the fork) is another mockery of cryptocurrency; the technology that was originally intended to achieve a certain consensus mechanism has been repeatedly stranded due to the community’s inability to act.

Now that there is a fork, the community should make a wise decision between the two branches. But more importantly, the community should focus its strength on one branch.

There are now two competing versions of Ethereum, ETH (ethereum) and ETC (ethereum classic); in such a situation, disagreement is more dangerous than choosing a worse fork.

There are only two possible realistic outcomes for Ethereum right now: forked projects, confused users and developers, or converging on the ETH chain.

Do you want to perform a fork?

In the previous debate on whether to execute the fork, both sides had reasonable arguments, but no one had the key evidence. I did not invest in The DAO myself, because I saw its end from the beginning, and there was no need to save other supporters. Letting hackers control 4.5% of the ether is not what we want, but it will not seriously harm the Ethereum network.

The most common argument against forking is that tampering with the ledger will set a bad precedent. This is undeniable, but how big of a harm is it? Of course, it does not mean that once a fork occurs, our future will definitely be subject to government intervention or that system administrators will definitely lose a few ethers.

No matter which branch wins, people's wavering attitudes are bound to make the situation messy.

On this point, I agree with the views of Cornell University researcher Emin Gün Sirer and others. Ethereum is still too young and is still in the stage of dress rehearsal. Even if you want cars to be fully autonomous in the future, you must at least go through the stage of occasional manual driving.

Many people questioned the financial motivations of members of the Ethereum Foundation, who also bought tokens issued by The DAO. However, Ethereum Foundation developer Alex Van de Sande wrote that they had a higher interest in Ethereum's success than The DAO. And surprisingly, almost no one mentioned that the hacker could get $60 million in equity if the fork was blocked.

Even now, the hacker still has $7 million in equity in Ethereum before the fork, but none in the fork. It would be surprising if they were not behind the ETC.

So you can say that Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin forced the fork, or that ETC is a scam led by hackers. These are conspiracy theories often said by some media.

The reality is that both sides of the Ethereum fork debate are sincere and intelligent, and neither side has an overwhelming advantage.

Are Hard Forks Harmful?

Others think that Ethereum’s fork in July is a good example.

I don’t think anyone thinks more hard forks are needed, either for Ethereum or Bitcoin; since the risk is not high at the moment, it’s better to learn more about them.

As for those who think "just improve the technology, stop hacking", I doubt their imagination.

Imagine if The DAO had amassed 60% of all ether instead of 15%; and the hacker stole all of it instead of a third. Imagine if malware spread widely among wallets or miners, allowing hackers to take more than half of the ether. Imagine if the massive theft was not caused by a vulnerability in Ethereum itself, but in underlying third-party software, such as operating system or compiler vulnerabilities. Of course, strengthening the network's ability to resist hacker attacks is one solution. In addition, we all know that bad things happen from time to time, and when the orthodox attitude towards hard forks backfires, some unexpected situations may occur. The bar for non-technical hard forks should be set higher, but hard forks are here to stay.

Bitcoiners shouldn’t gloat over this either. Obviously forks are messy, but not because of the difference between soft forks and hard forks. We can be sure that soft forks, once widely adopted, would have prevented this kind of bifurcation: nodes refused to upgrade, and the Ethereum blockchain refused to recognize their blocks; instead of forking off independent branches. But soft forks that were not widely adopted could also result in forked blockchains. The reason this doesn’t happen often is not technical, but simply “why choose to mine and transact on a blockchain that only a few people use?”

Of course, it is impossible to conclude here that hard forks are dangerous, especially because Bitcoin's hard forks could be completely different.

First, if Bitcoin hard forks, there will be months of notice in advance, not just a few days (for example, Poloniex will not list ETC for no apparent reason). Second, Bitcoin miners are likely to collectively choose a certain chain.

The real risk is that the community becomes significantly divided because of a fork, whether hard or soft. If some emergency situation requires the community to make a decision before reaching consensus, the solution should not be to avoid the fork (the scale of the disagreement makes this inevitable), but to allow the community to quickly discuss, listen to everyone's opinions, and unify on the chain supported by the majority.

Given the quibbles among bitcoin supporters over scaling, the hard fork would be considered a success if ethereum can overcome its current split by December.

Should we remain divided as we are now?

Some say, why not just maintain two chains? Choice and diversity! I strongly disagree with this opinion, and I’m sure every active developer on an Ethereum-based project knows why. It’s like choosing between Blu-Ray and HD DVD.

Of course, there are benefits to using different technologies with different approaches, like the relationship between Bitcoin and Ethereum. But having to choose between different implementations of the same technology can seriously hinder community development.

If every website, service, user, and developer had to figure out which variant to use, the Bitcoin community would be miserable. It would be even worse for Ethereum, since its purpose is to build a truly interactive and stateful smart contract ecosystem.

The biggest worry about cryptocurrencies is that competition between different implementations of the technology will lead to fragmented uses. Just like the chat protocols of the past 20 years, IRC, ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger, Gchat, WhatsApp, Viber, etc., it's a complex mess. Anyone who has tried to organize all the chat records in one place has encountered frustration from the maddening diversity. The biggest contrast to this situation is the only real email protocol, SMTP.

Imagine if email had the same maddening variety as chat. It would be a cryptocurrency nightmare.

So you could say, “The principles underlying ETC outweigh the pain of maintaining two Ethereum blockchains.” But honestly, anyone who says “having two chains coexisting isn’t that painful” is not a responsible engineer.

So how painful is this? What is your goal? If you are a technology enthusiast, you will definitely like to have many chains, because then you can pick a chain that meets all your ideas. If you are just looking at its short-term gains, two chains may represent opportunities. And for those idle onlookers, the more Ethereum splits, the better.

My goal is different: I want technology that is not only decentralized and censorship-free, but also widely applicable and can be widely promoted. For this goal, two chains are too confusing.

Linus Torvalds

As Linus Torvalds said:

"We're not just messing around with some research project. It's never been that casual. Even the early Linux was designed to provide a useful system. So there's no crazy drug-induced microkernel or other random crazy inventions."

Beyond the two chains

Our focus then shifted from technology to community dynamics.

I hope the informal vote will be better and announced as soon as possible; but the reality is that there is pressure everywhere. If most people were against the hard fork, I think I would definitely stand with them. But the reality is that most people support the fork; even ETC supporter Arvicco admitted it.

Since ETH has the support of the majority of the community, the chief developer, and more than 80% of the market value and computing power, it is impossible for ETC to become dominant.

Now it seems that the more realistic scenario is that the two chains continue to coexist, causing inconvenience to users and developers; or ETC's share drops below 5%, and we are happy to accept it. The only question is how long this situation will last.

Technologists tend to overestimate the importance of pure technological advantage. The biggest technology projects, including the moon landing, the Internet, C, and Linux, have transcended all pragmatic, human collaboration. In particular, the IETF, which brought us the Internet, has always believed in what they call the creed of preliminary consensus: "Strong objections must be rebutted until most people sincerely realize that their objections are wrong."

Some ideological and technical objections are worth fighting for, but most are not. Infighting has become the biggest obstacle to the development of Bitcoin and Ethereum, and even the entire cryptocurrency field; not scammers, not governments, not satisfactory scalability. It's like a well-intentioned, but unyielding black-and-white dispute.

The real question now is whether the main incentive to keep the fork (being a minority fork) outweighs the practical drawbacks of forcing developers and users to deal with two parallel worlds. I have no doubt what the IETF, the Unix founders, or other engineering role models would do in this situation.

Unfortunately, consensus in the cryptocurrency community just doesn’t come so naturally.

I am well aware that some people believe that forking is contrary to the meaning of Ethereum, and I can't wait to understand their thoughts and constructive comments. I respect their opinions, but I look forward to convincing them.

I’m talking to the majority of people who think there are valid arguments for both chains, regardless of which fork they choose, and I say to them that the future of Ethereum is ETH, so please invest your money and computing power to help Ethereum continue to grow.

It’s just a matter of time

What will happen in the future? The most likely scenario is that ETC will continue to fluctuate within the price range of 5% to 30% of ETH; while the project continues on the ETH chain, ETC will naturally disappear in the next three to six months.

That's exactly what I hope for, without any hostility developing.

If the ETH/ETC split continues, it will certainly drag down Ethereum, but it is unlikely to be fatal; but there will definitely be greater risks. If we continue to fail to reach a preliminary consensus like the IETF and make concessions to each other, then the technology we love will not be able to reach a wider audience.

We would have Plan 9 (Bell Labs' conceptual network operating system) instead of Linux. And the problem is not the "centralists" or the "traditional fiat currency system", but because we can't work together.