Interview | Description | Timestamps | Show Notes

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Location: New York
Date: Sunday 19th September
Project: Ethereum
Role: Core Developer

Ethereum was created to build upon Bitcoin's innovations and offer more functionality, and in 2015, Ethereum developers launched an ICO selling millions of ETH tokens, at the time worth over $18 million.

Some of those funds, now worth nearly $1 billion, went to the Ethereum Foundation, which oversees the ongoing development and promotion of the Ethereum project. The foundation is a central entity that issues grants for relevant projects and employs core developers to work on the protocol.

While the Ethereum ecosystem is thriving, questions remain about the technical roadmap, scalability, decentralisation of the network, and governance of the project itself.

From changes in supply schedule and frequent hard forks, Ethereum governance is in stark contrast to the conservative, slow-moving and consistent nature of Bitcoin.

So will the Ethereum project overcome the hurdles that lie ahead? Or is it doomed to fail?

In this interview, I talk to Ethereum Core Developer Lane Rettig. We discuss the Ethereum foundation, why Lane quit, ethics, hypocrisy, decentralisation vs scalability, and building better institutions.

00:05:23: Introductions
00:12:13: Different perspectives
00:16:14: Ethereum projects
00:18:30: NFTs
00:22:49: DAOs and The Dao hack
00:30:54: Forking Ethereum
00:34:42: The Ethereum Foundation
00:39:28: If Ethereum were a company…
00:45:18: Where it went wrong
00:49:42: Lane's tweet and the subsequent backlash
00:57:54: Ethereum governance and the Tyranny of Structurelessness
01:09:39: Why the governance failed
01:12:34: Ethics, decisions and accountability
01:25:04: The Ethereum monetary policy and conflicts of interest
01:30:11: The difficulty bomb mechanism
01:34:35: Incentives and influence
01:40:48: Ethereum governance needs to be removed and rethought
01:46:23: Credible commitments
01:48:39: Naivety
01:51:38: Spacemesh
01:54:18: Eth2
01:59:33: Sacrificing decentralisation
02:03:15: Stop the vitriol
02:09:17: Final comments

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Mentioned in the interview:

• Nick Szabo (@NickSzabo4)

• Thoughts on The DAO Hack - Emin Gün Sirer

• Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin)

• Ethereum Foundation

• The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-hackers Is Building the Next Internet with Ethereum

• Joseph Lubin (@ethereumJoseph)

• Vitalik Buterin on Twitter: “etherscan.io/address/0xab5801a7... Though that doesn't just include sales, it also includes some gifts and charity donations."

• Lane Rettig on Twitter: “Ethereum governance has failed. We are a de facto technocracy, where a small group of technocrats, the core devs, have final say over what goes into the protocol.”

• How open is too open? - Lane Rettig

• Online Advertising Doesn’t Work - Peter McCormack

• The Tyranny of Structurelessness - Jo Freeman

• A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System - Bitcoin.org

• Ethereum Whitepaper

• Jonas Schnelli (@_jonasschnelli_)

• Matt Corallo (@TheBlueMatt)

• Bitcoin-Dev Mailing List Archives

• Hudson Jameson Resign From Ethereum Core Developers

• What Is Ethereum's "Difficulty Bomb"? - Investopedia

• Space Mesh

• Marty Bent on Twitter: “The continued wait for ETH's transition to PoS reminds me of this passage from @nntaleb's The Black Swan.”

• Firebase

• Udiverse (@udiWertheimer)

Other Relevant WBD Podcasts:

• WBD399: The Embedded Growth Problem with Rob Hamilton

• WBD395: Tokenised Securities & NFTs on Bitcoin with Adam Back & Samson Mow

• WBD380: Bitcoin & The Decentralised Future with Michael Casey

• WBD369: Why Altcoins are Technically Flawed with Nadav Kohen

• WBD383: Fighting Regulation with Decentralisation with Erik Voorhees & Udi Wertheimer

• WBD258: BTC vs ETH Technicals with Andrew Poelstra, Tadge Dryja, Vitalik Buterin & Patrick McCorry

• WBD255: BTC Vs ETH Episode Review with Udi Wertheimer

• WBD251: Bitcoin Vs Ethereum with Samson Mow & Vitalik Buterin

• WBD113: Jimmy Song on The Blockchain Revolution Myth