The most exciting thing to happen in the digital currency space since its invention is the controversial hardfork of Ethereum . Unlike much of what has gone before, the hardfork brings to the forefront an immense power of public blockchains, full freedom for all and free market based choice.
There is, currently, a debate on whether the fork was successful or not. As we are in the mist of it, all we have is opinions. Mine is that the fork was the greatest achievement in this space since the invention of digital currencies. I’m sure, however, some will disagree, not without reason, but not because of any talking point they use. It is a fact as certain as any fact can be that any public blockchain is mutable in that it can be forked by anyone at anytime for any reason whatever with no one able to stop or prevent it. It’s their whole point. However, as I have already highlighted , there was a mistake, not by developers, miners, or the community, but by what I consider to be the third pillar of public blockchain governance, exchanges and businesses.
I believe this mistake is due to an imposition of opinion on how public blockchains work, rather than observation, analysis, or learning from experience. Somehow, a meme arose in this space that miners are judges, jury and executioners. That any decision is fully up to them and the rest should just hope that the miners take into view their account with the assumption being that if they do not there is little that can be done. This belief is so deep that it transcends any divide and is perfectly exemplified by on-chain scaling developers leaving the decision fully and wholly up to miners and not just 51% of them, but […]
