37404
 Click "Unitimes" above to subscribe! unitimes.io  Global perspective, unique insights  Yesterday, Reddit user u/huntingisland posted an article in the r/ethereum community titled Why Ethereum matters, why we should root for Ethereum over almost all competing smart contract platforms The post discussed the importance of Ethereum among many competing platforms, which attracted the attention of many Ethereum community members. Let’s first look at the main content of the post, and then share some community members’ views and insights. . . . The following is the original translation of the post: Bitcoin’s start was fair enough. At that time, anyone who knew about Bitcoin and owned a PC could start mining from the first day of release. Mining becomes increasingly difficult over time, but one can easily buy BTC on different exchanges or from other holders. You don’t need to be part of a privileged class to get into Bitcoin. The start of Ethereum’s launch was also fair. But unlike Bitcoin, the ambition of the Ethereum project prevents some of the project’s founders from spending their own money to help develop the project. Therefore, they started a public crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for the development of Ethereum. Anyone who had heard of Ethereum could participate in the crowdsale, which was selling for about 30 cents per ETH at the time. After the launch of the Ethereum blockchain, ETH mining will also be available to anyone with a modern graphics card. But some founders on the Ethereum team don't like this financing model of Ethereum. They want Ethereum to be funded by internal personnel and venture capital companies, and they hope that Ethereum will remain private for a long time. Some founders even left the project because of differences in vision between an open, non-profit community project and a for-profit organization controlled by VCs. Of course, both Bitcoin and Ethereum are open source projects, and both encourage copying, modifying, and reusing the project's code. There are currently many self-proclaimed "killers" of Ethereum, "killers" of ETH 2.0 and competitors of ETH that are launching or planning to launch. For the most part, many of these platforms do not adhere to the open participation model of Bitcoin or Ethereum. Some projects are even copyrighted closed source projects. Almost all of these projects are funded by venture capital or wealthy individuals through SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens), usually through secret transactions without disclosing the price and quantity of the tokens. Public participation is generally not allowed until the price of the token is listed on the exchange and the price of the token has increased 5 times, 10 times or even 100 times. So what ends up happening is that the vast majority of tokens are held by only a small group of already very wealthy people. But these new so-called “Ethereum killer” projects don’t just bring about a token distribution that is anything but fair, they are almost to the end designed around plutocracy. In other words, if you are one of those VCs, insiders, or wealthy individuals who are allowed to participate before the market goes public, you will be able to hold a larger number of tokens than ordinary people, and thus you will have greater control over future rule changes on the blockchain platform. Some even view this governance model as a feature and a good thing, the author begs to differ! Ethereum is an open, community-supported, non-profit project. Today, it is an open, community-involved project. Apart from gas fees, you don’t have to pay anything to build applications on Ethereum. The blockchain platform is permissionless and no plutocrats can vote you off the platform. Ethereum is not run by wealthy VCs or “accredited investors” who might have jumped in first. There are huge differences between Ethereum, an open community project, and almost every competing platform founded since. The author does not hope that the future of our financial Internet will be based on plutocracy, because if that is the case, how is it different from the existing financial system?  What do some community members think about this? FreeFactoid: Ethereum is also one of the few blockchains to have a built-in bank, which is implemented through smart contracts. In the past, when whales (top cryptocurrency holders with the potential to have outsized influence on the network) converted a cryptocurrency into cash, its price dropped, sometimes significantly. This should no longer be a big issue on Ethereum, as whales can simply deposit their ETH into a smart contract (such as MakerDAO) and receive the equivalent USD value for spending. Basically, investors in ETH can also get a piece of future earnings by retaining ETH (since ETH will increase in value due to adoption), and unlock the value of ETH for immediate consumption. e3ee3: In my opinion, Ethereum faces no real threat. Most competitors care about perpetuating the illusion (i.e., creating the illusion of a threat to Ethereum) for a while and making more profits from it than the sustainable product they actually deliver. From EOS to Cardano, all of these products will eventually lose market share to the new EOS and Cardano as the hype and promise fade away. What’s interesting is that their investors realize these projects are a money grab but still want a piece of the action. perfekt_disguize: It would be unwise not to avoid the risks posed by smart contract platforms such as Cardano. Of course, we support Ethereum, but you can't ignore similar competitors that are also making progress and taking substantial steps toward becoming an open project. Lynx77: You (referring to the author) should not compare ETH with BTC... When Ethereum launched, 12 million ETH had been created for developers and 60 million ETH had been pre-mined for ICO participants to purchase. Given that there are currently 102 million ETH in circulation, this means that 71% of the existing ETH supply was generated through pre-mining during Ethereum's launch. huntingisland: Developers get a few percent of ETH for working on Ethereum for a year before the pre-sale. The Ethereum Foundation uses its ETH holdings to pay salaries (the same purpose the foundation uses to raise Bitcoin during the pre-sale). ETH mined through "pre-mining" is sold to pay for development fees, without which Ethereum and no other smart contract platform would exist. At that time, anyone could participate in the Ethereum crowdsale, and many Bitcoiners (Bitcoiners) also participated in the crowdsale. cisco: Is there any difference between me buying ETH mined through "pre-mining" and me buying a powerful GPU to mine ETH? Finally, you still have to spend your hard-earned money to support the launch of the Ethereum project, and hope that one day this project will succeed. burrrata: In addition, it should be said that there are many venture capital companies that have done a lot for the technology industry and the world as a whole. Of course there are some VCs who turn good projects into hopeless shells. This typically occurs in the later stages of financing in preparation for an acquisition or public sale. Then the founder leaves, hoping for a better world. Anyway, suffice it to say that not all VCs are evil, and often early-stage investing is essential. This is why they are called "angel" investors, because anyone other than VCs who bets on the founders of early-stage projects is considered very stupid. Today, however, this situation has changed. In the context of cryptocurrency economic communities/platforms, it makes no sense to allow VCs to invest in a funding round that is prioritized over regular people. Cryptoeconomic networks are all about community, and if a platform is legitimate, there will be no need to open special funding rounds for special investors. *Everyone* wants to be on this rocket ship. And if special interest groups receive preferential treatment in front of the crowd, it weakens people's incentives to participate, reduces the value of the network, reduces incentives to incentivize investors, reduces incentives to participate, etc... Additionally, the code of these networks can be forked and copied to any other platform. What makes a platform special and unique is the community built around it. Ethereum has something that few other platforms have – community. This is the most valuable asset and other projects want a piece of it. It is necessary for us to recognize this, appreciate the value that community brings, and cultivate this community. DCinvestor: Indeed! Venture capital institutions play a very important role, and I still believe they play an important role in the dapp (decentralized application) and L2 (second layer) fields. But I highly doubt their involvement in L1 (layer one), especially when combined with mechanisms like on-chain governance. Fortunately, Ethereum doesn’t have to worry about this as much as other blockchain platforms. As for how other blockchain platforms will fare in this regard, it will definitely be interesting to see. polezo: Currently, except for Ethereum, I do not hold any currency on any other smart contract platform, but I do not believe that the technocracy born in our informal governance system will be much better than other governance methods. In either case, you still effectively leave governance largely in the hands of a small elite. I'm not saying that I'm sure there is a better solution than Ethereum's governance, I'm just saying that I'm excited that other platforms are experimenting with different forms of governance. On-chain governance doesn’t have to be plutocratic, either. New structures such as quadratic voting and representation, as well as Futarchy, may also potentially alleviate some of its shortcomings. I just think it's too early to assume that Ethereum's governance is superior. I generally agree that, on the surface, many competing platforms have large governance issues that are not easily solvable, but that doesn't mean they won't be possible. I believe that the core Ethereum developers will try to listen to the opinions of Ethereum users on the forum, but in the absence of a formal governance mechanism, the final decisions are still made by a few key Ethereum figures, not Ethereum users. cryptoaccount2: Well said. Additionally, without a formal governance mechanism, any decision could be subject to a sybil attack, just like you can buy support votes on reddit, or retweets on twitter. That doesn't sound like good management to me... "it's up to whoever is the bigger social media queen". What do you want to say about the development of Ethereum amid competition? Welcome to express your opinions in the comment area!
[The copyright of the article belongs to the original author, and its content and opinions do not represent the position of Unitimes. Reprinting articles is only for disseminating more valuable information. For cooperation or authorization, please send an email to editor@unitimes.media or add WeChat unitimes2017]  |
|
|
|
|
|
违法和不良信息举报电话：010-6688xxxx | 举报邮箱：jubao@huoxing.com | 网上有害信息举报
xxx网络有限公司 |
粤公网安备 46902302000xxx号 | ©2021 Discuz Team. Powered by Discuz!
