
The case for Ethereum maximalism - kimsk112
https://blog.elidourado.com/the-case-for-ethereum-maximalism-e6ec5dc7f7b2
======
devereaux
Everyone seems to be shilling the crypto they hold.

ETH is interesting, but BTC has worked since almost 10 years.

The investment made in ASIC miners give a good reason to a lot of people to
prefer BTC to ETH. They would certainly jump being BCH if BTC had some serious
issues.

ETH certainly has a place, but it seems to be the #2 place because of the
choice of algorithms.

~~~
andirk
It has worked for almost 10 years, but new foes arise every day. BTC and ETH
both have amazing potential as long as these enormous communities keep them
running and innovating.

------
freejulian
The author seems to gloss over the immense scaling issues Ethereum is facing.
Furthermore, his dismissal of Bitcoin makes it clear he’s naive on its
roadmap.

First, Bitcoin has smart contracts. Not providing a Turing complete scripting
language was an intentional choice to improve security and scalability.

Second, Bitcoin offers Ethereum compatible smart contracts in the form of a
layer 2 solution — rootstock. What happens if you want to have a “world
computer” with GPU support? That’s not something Ethereum can add without
greatly impacting decentralization (for a coin which is already hugely
centralized). With Bitcoin, you can define a new second layer network to add
that functionality.

Third, he brings up Ethereum’s confirmation times as if changing a constant is
beyond Bitcoin’s reach. Bitcoin chose their parameters (1mb blocks, 10min
block times) to optimize decentralization. This is a feature. Ethereum doesn’t
care for decentralization to the same degree. If Ethereum had the same level
of decentraliation as Bitcoin did, they wouldn’t have been able to invoke
their VIP function.

Second layer solutions are the technologies which have the full backing of the
Bitcoin community. Sure, Ethereum could maybe add second layer solutions as
well, but they aren’t fully embraced by the community. Ethereum wants
everything and the kitchen sink to be on layer 1. With Bitcoin, layer 2
solutions are the solutions preferred and embraced by the community.

Ethereum is already imploding under its own weight. Syncing a full node,
today, requires a very beefy PC with an SSD. Bitcoin can sync with a raspberry
pi.

~~~
mhluongo
Recovering Bitcoin maximalist here. Recall Ethereum has second layer solutions
as well.

~~~
freejulian
I never denied that. However, second layer solutions are an afterthought in
the Ethereum community. The Bitcoin community has been very vocal about
solutions such as rootstock and Lightning Network being the _preferred_
methods of scaling Bitcoin and adding new functionality.

~~~
skilesare
I don't think you're up to speed. Ethereum's 'gpu support' on a second layer
is called truebit and is supported by the end. It is well into development.

Further, ethereum's lightning already has a minimum viable plasma
implementation (one of the lightning founders is leading the project)

