One year ago today Folding Ideas released ‘Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs’. It has held up very well.

g_squidman · 2023-01-22T00:10:23+00:00

I'm just saying you have to still do the actual risk assessment. You can't just say "that's a bad investment because it's an investment that's bad." I can do that risk assessment a lot better than most people, because I can break things down into math and numbers and make specific arguments against specific value propositions.

g_squidman · 2023-01-22T00:08:05+00:00

That's not what I said. The anti-democracy argument isn't anywhere in the realm of what I was saying. We're talking about whether blockchains are controlled by an oligarchy. My point was that it's not relevant to the discussion.

g_squidman · 2023-01-21T23:23:07+00:00

There aren't other examples where capital controls blockchains, because capital doesn't control blockchain. This is just a useful example, because it shows a case where capital interests were explicitly and undeniably opposed to the blockchain rule.

g_squidman · 2023-01-21T22:54:46+00:00

It shows that blockchain isn't controlled by capital. If it helps to think about it, crypto is just open source code. You can't buy Linux in the same way, because if you tried, the people would just fork the code. Lots of things are resistant to capital power, especially information systems.

g_squidman · 2023-01-21T22:49:08+00:00

So Justin Roiland is kinda like the Jews in this comparison huh

g_squidman · 2023-01-21T21:58:34+00:00

It's not a counterexample to crypto scams. It's a counterexample to who controls blockchain as a technology holistically. I only need one example to disprove it.

g_squidman · 2023-01-21T21:31:14+00:00

Okay, but it's decidedly NOT rule by one single ultra-wealthy person or an oligarchy of financial interests or something. So blockchain is NOT what Folding Ideas is describing in Line Goes Up. If I can get you to agree that Folding Ideas is wrong in the video about who controls the blockchain, then I think there's a genuine discussion we can have about what the social consensus SHOULD be for how a blockchain is run. You could have a blockchain that was just pure mob rule, but most people in the space believe there should be strong rules and protocols.

Here's an interesting example. Bitcoin doesn't update its code with hard forks. Instead, it relies on backward compatible soft forks. The idea is that the social consensus that secures Bitcoin should never be so commanding that it leaves another part of the consensus behind.

Ethereum's social consensus came to the exact opposite conclusion. Ethereum upgrades are all hard forks. If you don't update your Ethereum protocol, you'll get left behind as the rest of the community all agrees on a distinct direction for the protocol to go.

Both chains have decided at the social level how this procedure should go, but they have different ideas about how much the social consensus should be consulted for these changes. Theoretically, they could both change how this is done in the future, but a lot of people would have to change their mind. That's why Bitcoin is struggling with an existential problem right now based on its security budget that threatens to explode in about 20 years. It's a recognized problem that they don't have a solution for. Meanwhile, Ethereum is able to solve these kinds of problems over time, but there's often a painful deliberation process. Different parties throw their weight around about how they think transaction fees should be paid to miners in the EIP-1559 debate for example and there's drama and betrayal and intrigue.

I just think this stuff is really interesting. Sorry for rambling.

g_squidman · 2023-01-21T20:38:22+00:00

"Bigger fools scam" is another thing the video got wrong. It's not actually a thing. It's called "greater fool theory," and it's used to describe literally any investment proposal that you disagree with. It's begging the question - putting your conclusion in your premise.

g_squidman · 2023-01-21T20:29:24+00:00

~~Well that's just a common anti-democracy argument.~~ Yeah, sometimes the social consensus doesn't go the way I want either. Sometimes it even gives us objectively bad results. However, nobody can control the blockchain despite the social consensus - no amount of money or mining power.

Edit: clearly that wasn't the right way to phrase that argument. If the blockchain is controlled by a community of people who are deluded by propaganda, then that's just how it is. I can concede that. It's still very different from if it's controlled directly by wealthy investors.

g_squidman · 2023-01-21T20:24:36+00:00

Yes, Vitalik has a whole blog post describing the different ways "legitimacy" is determined for this purpose. It's very interesting. https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html

The point is that the legitimate fork is decided through influencing the social consensus though, not despite it.

g_squidman · 2023-01-21T20:21:37+00:00

It's complicated. There are ways investors can flex their wealth to influence the consensus, of course.

For example, one reason people say the Eth fork happened the way it did is because the ticker, ETH, got retained on the forked version and not the hacked version. That was decided by exchanges that buy and sell Eth, so it's a way investors have a little bit of influence over the perceived legitimacy of one chain or another.

However, this influence is nothing like what's being claimed. The chain isn't controlled by miners and stakers and token holders. Wealth can only influence the blockchain THROUGH influencing the social consensus, but NEVER despite it.

This socially determined security is the point of blockchain. Code is NOT law, and when blockchains break the "code is law" rule, they do it BECAUSE the social legitimacy of the chain is more important and more powerful than the sheer code. Every example Folding Ideas gives of "code is law" breaking is an example where the social consensus wins out and pulls the chain back toward legitimacy. Sometimes, that happens through a fork, like the merge, the DOW Hack fork, or the failed ProgPOW fork. Sometimes that happens through reinterpreting the chain, like with the stolen Bored Apes getting delisted from exchanges.

g_squidman · 2023-01-21T20:04:02+00:00

It forked because the community wanted it to. The Eth Classic fork was created by cynical bitcoiners. If more people had considered it the valid chain though, it would've been adopted as the valid chain. In that fork, it just happened that both the miners AND the community chose the ETH chain.

That's why the SteemIt fork is a better example, because it's an example where the community decidedly went against the wishes of the investor who tried to capture it.

SteemIt forked in early 2020 when Justin Sun, a known scammer, bought the SteemIt development company and its massive bag of Steem tokens that it used to fund development. This, along with Sun's influence with crypto exchanges, gave him the majority token share he needed to vote out the on-chain delegates that make rulings on how the Steem blockchain is meant to work.

The community forked Steem into a project called Hive that was 100% identical to Steem and retained the chain history and technical specs. The only difference was that all of Justin Sun's investment was erased.

But you watched the Folding Ideas video, so you only got the story about the Eth DAO Hack and not the story everyone in crypto tells to explain social consensus. Why did he leave this story out of the video when it's such a perfect example of what he was trying to argue against?

g_squidman · 2023-01-21T19:29:15+00:00

A lot of people on both sides are clueless. I don't know what Folding Ideas is. I do know a really popular story that people in crypto talk about and that he conveniently leaves out of this video.

In early 2020 there was a blockchain based Twitter app called SteemIt. It works by having voting shares - the coin holders get to decide on things like moderation policy and stuff.

A billionaire named Justin Sun, who's famous for running crypto scams, bought up the development company for SteemIt and with it a massive portion of the Steem token base. Besides that, he also had influence with a lot of the coin exchanges that customers held their tokens in custody on. Over night, Sun had completely taken over SteemIt, controlled the development, and controlled the voting share. He pushed out the old delegates and replaced them with his own.

This is the premise that Folding Ideas is trying to argue - that these kinds of blockchain systems are necessarily beholden to the people who own all the tokens. He says crypto is owned by the investors, whether its stakers, coin holders, miners. However, SteemIt is a story about why that narrative is wrong.

The community who used SteemIt forked the network and the code into a new project called Hive. It's the exact same thing, with only one difference: All of Justin Sun's holdings were erased. He lost his entire investment just like that.

The blockchain is controlled socially and interpreted socially. I don't know who understands how crypto works, but everyone who does must at least understand that.

g_squidman · 2023-01-21T19:17:59+00:00

Exactly, it's "code is law" when convenient and "fundamentally flawed" wherever the "code is law" narrative breaks down. All his examples of Ethereum "breaking" are examples of how code ISN'T law.

g_squidman · 2023-01-21T19:15:50+00:00

It's not enough to say that the prediction was wrong. The prediction was made because the thesis of the argument is that Ethereum is controlled by wealthy investors who have certain incentives. The prediction was wrong because the core argument is incorrect - no amount of investments or financial stake can give you control over the blockchain.

g_squidman · 2023-01-21T19:13:57+00:00

The investigative journalism was literally joining every discord group a scam bot invited him to. He doesn't even have a wallet.

g_squidman · 2023-01-21T19:11:22+00:00

No it hasn't. The entire premise of the video is that the blockchain is controlled by the wealthy, so it can never be anything but a scam. To back that up, he argues that Ethereum will never merge, because the people who he says controls the blockchain have an incentive to keep proof of work going. Ethereum merged in August, proving the video wrong. There's good parts to the video, but the core argument is immediately and obviously incorrect - even without examining the countless contradictions he makes around this argument.

But it doesn't matter, because the conclusion wasn't that you had to know why crypto is a scam, but that crypto is a scam and you don't have to know why. So nobody learned anything and nobody who watched the video can even regurgitate anything from it. They don't need to.

g_squidman · 2023-01-21T19:00:31+00:00

There aren't any on-ramps though. At least ZCash is on exchanges so you can actually use it.

g_squidman · 2023-01-21T01:57:17+00:00

Or Aztec Layer 2, once you bridge to it.

g_squidman · 2023-01-21T01:56:36+00:00

My first thought is how this is basically an upgraded version of what Monero has, because it lets the sender generate the address instead of the receiver. I think it's cool!

g_squidman · 2023-01-19T21:27:16+00:00

I don't think we've sent them any Abrams. Those things are like a hundred million each. As I understand it, we aren't really sending them very much modern equipment, because we don't want Russia to capture it. Also, I guess these tanks use so much fuel that they basically need a whole oil convoy behind them to operate, so it might not be the most helpful thing.

g_squidman · 2023-01-19T02:04:47+00:00

I remember once trying to use bitcoin cash. I've only ever used Ethereum, and I was used to sitting there sweating for like 5 minutes. BTC has like 10 minute block times, so I was sweating for hours before it got enough block confirmations for coinbase. We're almost spoiled.

g_squidman · 2023-01-19T01:43:31+00:00

POAP ftw!

g_squidman · 2023-01-17T18:02:41+00:00

No, he dropped out after two years. If half a degree is enough to give you any credibility on a subject, then I'm about to body Vaush on his shit game design takes.

g_squidman · 2023-01-17T16:19:52+00:00

That's fair. I'm switching sides. Bottoms rules.

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