Vitalik Buterin takes to Twitter to defend Ethereum’s movement to proof of effort.
The Ethereum co-founder took a shot at Swan Bitcoin’s CEO Nick Payton, who on Thursday claimed that any cryptocurrency that operates a proof of effort blockchain– which uses validators with pledged or “deposited” assets to confirm transactions – is a security.
“The fact that you can vote on something to change the properties is proof that it is a security,” Payton said. The insult hits a sore spot for a crypto industry that has fought for years with the Securities and Exchange Commission – and one that is particularly sensitive to Ethereum investors, since the question of whether or not ETH should be considered a security remains an open question.
Early Friday morning, Buterin called Payton’s claim a “bare-face lie.”
‘It’s amazing how someone [proof-of-work] Proponents just keep repeating the relentless bare-faced lie that [proof-of-stake] includes voting on protocol parameters (it does not, just like [proof-of-work] not), and this often goes unchallenged, “he said, adding:” Nodes reject invalid blocks, in [proof-of-stake] and in [proof-of-work]. It’s not hard.”
Proof of workinvolving the participation of “miners” who use large amounts of computing power to solve complex mathematical problems, is currently how both Bitcoin and Ethereum validate transactions and secure their networks. However, Ethereum is in the process of moving to proof of effort through a long-awaited update now known as the “merger.”
In his defense of the evidence of the effort, Buterin took the line a step further with a “grammar” correction for the editor.
“In English, when we talk about things like proof of effort, we do not say ‘It is a certainty,’ we say ‘it is certain.’ I know these suffixes are difficult, so I forgive the mistake, ‘” Buterin said.
While Bankless founder Ryan Sean Adams called the line “it most spicy Vitalik tweet I’ve ever read, “this is far from the first time Buterin has gotten into an argument with anti-Ethereum Bitcoiners online.
Earlier this month, Buterin responded to Bitcoin maximist Jimmy Song, who argued that evidence of action “does not provide decentralized consensus” because it does not, in Song’s view, solve The Byzantine Generals Problem. Song referred to the problem of reaching consensus without dome centralization through a reliable individual. Consensus in crypto is achieved when several devices are all able to agree on the same data without interference from a central authority – this enables blockchain transactions.
But for Vitalik, Songs’ argument depends on a “technical”.
“If there’s a long established tradition for people discussing A vs B based on deep arguments that touch on mathematics, economics and moral philosophy, and you come up with and say ‘B is stupid because of a one-line technique that involves definitions,’ you are probably wrong, “Buterin said.
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