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RE: The Fundamental Underpinning of Blockchain Consensus
Code is Law
Well, code is law on a particular fork because, after all, the computer will always do exactly what the code says, no more and no less. But as you say you are free to leave it and join another one.
Yes, but from what I've read by most "Code is Law" advocates, it seems to be more of a philosophical belief that participants in a network should abide by the results of the code, and any retroactive change should not be allowed via a hardfork.
I guess the most notable case of this was the arguments for "Ethereum Classic", where a hacker exploited a weakness in the code to obtain funds from the DAO in an unexpected way. The majority community response was to hardfork and revert this exploit. But a vocal minority argued that this reversion was morally wrong because "Code is Law" and so we got two Ethereum forks.
I guess. But in the end, both communities picked the code and law they want.
Yes, they both had to abide by what I'm calling the true law of consensus, which will hold as long as we're allowed to choose what software we run on our computers.
But a philosophical difference did emerge between the two groups as to what types of changes are morally right. This just becomes another argument that can be used when users are choosing what rule changes they consider valid and willing to accept/operate under.
Sure there is a moral argument, but where does that ultimately end up? One group claims it is moral and the other group is not, and the other group claims the exact same thing.
Live and let live works for me. Neither is taking any sort of violent action against anyone.
Yes, I agree.
When I say that I consider "Code is Law" nonsense, it's mostly from my perspective that bugs in software are common, and rigidly obeying the results of a bug just seems like a terrible idea to me. Others are more than welcome to operate under such rules if they wish, however, and I consider this the greatest idea that has emerged from cryptocurrency networks: the ability to voluntarily associate and disassociate.
Of course, I don't mean that this idea of voluntary association hasn't existed before, but cryptocurrency has shined new light on methods for doing it and points to other possible uses for consensus-via-computer in the future.
Is the shutdown of your witness due to in disagreement to the softfork? Is this your "free to leave and join another" put into practice?
Again, similarly to what I said in the comment to BT above, your actions and voice carry weight here too.
No. I support the soft fork, I'm voting for witnesses running it, unvoting witnesses who aren't, and I think it, at least, should have been done long ago. In fact I worked to get the community behind taking firm action a year ago when Ned's 'mismanagement' of the stake was clear (an overly favorable characterization, in hindsight), only to find too many people peeling off and preferring to be opportunists (or, maybe, just naive in) trying to gain personal advantage from being first accept and support more of Ned's empty promises.
I was aware of the discussion of the fork, of course, and saw it contributing yet more workload that I'm not well positioned to take on, nor particularly interested in repeating the effort I undertook a year ago to try to accomplish some sort of healthy ecosystem realignment. I do wish the best to the witnesses taking it on now and hope they are successful.
It is going to set up some interesting discussions around the philosophy of the chain, but I think it is best to get the ducks in a row earlier, rather than later.
A little positive drama that questions fundamentals might be good for the community.
Thanks again for all you have done over the years.
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