"Encouraging to watch": Vitalik on the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) war
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has shared some of his thoughts on the recent Bitcoin Cash (BCH) split. In a tweet, he appeared to approve of the victory of BCH ABC over Craig Wright's SV fork, describing the way it played out as "encouraging to watch".
Read more: Craig Wright's BCH fork is shaping up to be a losing battle over crypto ideology; BCHABC wins by a neck, BCH will be split permanently moving forward
Vitalik was replying to another tweet by blockchain expert Emin Gun Sirer. Sirer was addressing a point raised about the way Bitcoin Cash schedules hardforks every 6 months, and how this may be having a negative impact on the crypto.
The BCH split was political and could not have been prevented. It's a schism over following science (within the pow context) versus a cult of personality. The creepy personality would have found any other reason to split.
— Emin Gün Sirer (@el33th4xor) November 18, 2018
Regularly scheduled hard forks are an effective strategy. https://t.co/QJx5nAYags
According to Sirer, despite the price instability and community splits they bring about, the hardforks are an effective strategy. In this case, the force of Craig S. Wright as a personality was enough to create a major political issue out of what should have been a technical update, but it proved to be a necessary development in order to further limit his influence.
The rapid purging of miner-supremacist ideology from the community has been very encouraging to watch. After this I expect things to be more peaceful.
— Vitalik Non-giver of Ether (@VitalikButerin) November 18, 2018
Vitalik backed up Sirer's argument, decrying the "miner-supremacist ideology" that he believes was negatively affecting the community, and predicting more peaceful times ahead. It's unclear whether he believes that this ideology is the logical outcome of proof-of-work (PoW) mining-based systems or just something that happened with BCH, but there are plans to pivot Ethereum towards a proof-of-stake (PoS) system in the future.
Read more: Ethereum's new 1000x Serenity upgrade coming soon, says Vitalik
Some observers agreed with Vitalik's perspective, but others suggested that the peace he predicted is unlikely to happen when there's still so much financial value at stake. Others also reiterated the criticisms of regular hardforks.
It's naive to suspect things will be peaceful going forward considering how much money is on the line.
— Xpud (@rootvegetable3) November 18, 2018
Hardforks create inflationary supply, plus undermine security of a network. might as well go back to fiat and let the feds handle it.
— Zen Dawg (@work4urselfes) November 18, 2018
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