I can understand that there are people preferring to work on a "vote" platform rather than on a "rights" platform because that gives the impression that the "majority" (the mob ?) is in control, and that there are no hard rules (rights) that are "above all". People never really liked the idea of "nothing above the law" because we like, in the end, to negotiate and cheat a bit. The idea that there would be hard rules that are there for everyone without exception, is probably shocking.
But what is extremely ironic in this affair is that "hard rules are above everyone" was exactly the essential value proposition of ethereum ! Unstoppable code, the code is the law. Without that, you have a very doubtful system, where the code is law, unless it isn't. But, as I said, many people like this ambiguity of being able to claim consistency, while knowing that there are always back doors to go and negotiate/cheat in the end.
Ethereum is now a strange beast. It isn't really a block chain any more as its immutability has been broken, but it still looks much like it, and many people are still pretending that it is. And as "many people pretending" is the only thing that gives value with purely speculative tokens, the price of it can go anywhere.
However, real usage is another affair. My idea is that ethereum is fundamentally flawed for reasons I explained already a few times: it has been designed as a software platform, and not as a secure failsafe system. It has been designed like a tool for designing web sites, and not as a tool for designing security systems of nuclear power plants. So whatever you will design with it, will have the reliability of a web site, and not of a security system ; except that when bugs/exploits happen, YOU CANNOT PUSH A SECURITY UPDATE and the implications are huge. So it is even worse than the security system of a nuclear power plant: if one incident happens with a power plant safety controller, due to a bug/exploit, you can update it. With ethereum, you can't even do that, because the code is unstoppable, even if you know that there's a bug/exploit.
So my idea is that ethereum is not usable, except for VERY SMALL contracts.
As long as it isn't used, however, it can live its happy life as a betting token. When it will be used again, if ever it is, chances are it will have the same fate as the DAO.
So this brings us to the hard fork, which opens the question: given that almost every "serious" application on ethereum will suffer exploits like the DAO, why did one fork over the first one ? Because it was the first one ? Or will one fork every time ? Or sometimes, one doesn't know when or how, depending on the mood of the mob or the number of important people affected ? Was this first hard fork a cover-up of the essential problems with ethereum, making people believe that this was just a small beginner's error which will not be repeated ? Or is this now how ethereum will be running: at major exploits, we fork if the mob wants to ?
Hard fork happened because people like me voted for it and decided that it was better than not hard forking it, simple. "Immutability", a word thrown around so often lately, was never sacrificed with hard fork, since only the tumor was removed, no other transaction. I bet people / developers wished having the option to do HF's like this, with no other transaction being rolled, but this was a special case, ETH was locked away.
How many "special cases" will there be ?
And these ETC supporters, they like to use "immutability" as a reason for supporting ETC because for most of them, ETC is speculation. They missed early ETH days so they now simply bet on ETC, like barry shilbert. Im curious, do you really believe that guy didnt dump his bag yet ? Has he shown any proof of what he has ? Did he respond to
https://twitter.com/barrysilbert/status/762312144411058177 ? Ofc he didnt, he's just using his influence to speculate.
Pro tip:
whatever these "influencial" people tell everyone they do, DON'T do the same, you're either
already late or they're doing the
opposite they say. Just like chandler guo, that guy doesn't give shit about ETC.
Well, ETC is for sure in trouble, but it has the merit of keeping a block chain as it was intended. It is in trouble, because ETC also is ethereum, which is a platform for making buggy and exploitable contracts which are then supposed to run unaltered and unpatched, and moreover, ETC has the intention to let them run as intended. ETH is not a block chain any more, but a not-yet-clearly defined kind of thing (a vote-chain ?) where anything can happen, but most of the time, it will look like a block chain, except when it doesn't. Maybe you're right in the end, and with a platform on which one makes exploitable contracts, one shouldn't use an unstoppable block chain. This is maybe what was the "wisdom of the crowd" when they colluded to break the ETH block chain: no serious person would want REALLY unstoppable code on such a platform, so the doubt has to be instilled that, if one (who?) really wants to, one can stop the unstoppable code.
The only thing is: we already have that. It is called a normal contract, and court.
