Buterin: Ethereum Can't be Forced to Adopt Code I Write, Merit of Decentralization

At the TechCrunch: Sessions Blockchain 2018 hosted in Zug, Switzerland, Ethereum Creator Vitalik Buterin explained the decentralized nature of the Ethereum blockchain and the merit of eliminating single points of failure.

Unlike Bitcoin, the creators of Ethereum are outspoken, accessible and well known to the cryptocurrency and finance community; figures like Vitalik Buterin, Joseph Lubin, and Charles Hoskinson have become influential developers and entrepreneurs in the blockchain industry.

A common misconception about Ethereum is that the public disclosure of the identities of the creators of the blockchain network opens the Ethereum network vulnerable to single points of failure, and if these individuals are forced with violence to write code and alter the blockchain, the Ethereum network could fall in danger.

As former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said, major digital assets such as bitcoin and ether, the native cryptocurrency of Ethereum, are consensus currencies.

Currently, Ethereum is a proof-of-work network, meaning that miners and nodes have the power to adopt or reject the code of the developers in the Ethereum ecosystem.

If Vitalik Buterin and his team of developers create a hard fork to alter or improve an element of the Ethereum blockchain network, the entire community of miners, users, and node operators will have to be on board, and if consensus is not reached, the software upgrade is rejected and the hard fork either is dismissed or could lead to two chains, as seen in the case of Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.

"The thing with developers is that we are fairly fungible people. One developer goes down and someone else can keep on developing. If someone puts a gun to my head and tells me to write a hard fork patch, I'll definitely write the hard fork patch. I'll write the GitHub issue, I'll write up the code, I'll publish it, and I'll do everything they say. If I do this and publish a hard fork patch to delete a bunch of accounts, how many people will be willing to download the update, install it and switch to that update? This is called decentralization."

The striking merit of decentralization is the non-existence of central authorities and the inability of a centralized group of people to manipulate a network or a protocol.

Ether is a consensus currency based on the Ethereum network that is immutable, transparent, and open-source.

As Buterin emphasized, it is important for individuals, businesses, and developers to be aware of the inefficient nature of blockchain technology as a data processing network, and focus on deploying decentralized applications that really require decentralization to perform optimally.