Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin Praises 'Bitcoin Maximalism' (Maybe)
Ethereum mastermind and co-founder Vitalik Buterin Friday morning published a blog post that, with compelling logic and detail, defended “Bitcoin maximalism.” The post seems largely serious, though its publication on April Fools’ Day introduces all sorts of questions about his real intentions.
The maximalist ethos broadly resists change to Bitcoin itself, while also arguing that more complex blockchain systems have inherent and inevitably fatal flaws. Buterin’s praise for maximalists is shocking because Ethereum itself is the most consistent and high-profile target of maximalist criticism, substantially because of the fragility introduced by the complexity of its smart contract features.
In his post, Buterin frequently seems to echo these critiques of the system he conceived, including taking shots at Ethereum proposals to print money for developers. He even rhetorically badmouths his own habit of meeting with business and political leaders with questionable morals.
“Some of these people … are actively involved in serious human rights abuses that Vitalik certainly does not support,” writes … Vitalik. “Does Vitalik not realize just how much some of these people are geopolitically at each other's throats?”
While that’s easy to interpret as some sort of ironic troll, what Buterin really seems to be doing here is leveraging the inherent ambiguity of an April Fools’ publication date to highlight the nuance and complexity of the debate over maximalism.
His apparent “attacks” on Ethereum are best interpreted as making the case that the crypto ecosystem encompasses many different approaches, even when he ramps up the rhetoric for April Fools’ trolling purposes. He describes “team ‘blockchain’” – implicitly including many Ethereum folks – as “privileged people in wealthy countries who love to virtue-signal about ‘moving beyond money and capitalism’ and [who] can't help being excited about ‘decentralized governance experimentation’ as a hobby.” By contrast, he describes “Team ‘Bitcoin’” as “a highly diverse group of both rich and poor people … who are actually using the capitalist tool of free self-sovereign money to provide real value to human beings today.”
That seems somewhat tongue-in-cheek, since Buterin himself has endorsed decentralized governance as a useful innovation. But it’s always worth remembering that the creator of Ethereum spent years enthralled with Bitcoin before hitting on a possible improvement.
Read the full article here.
–David Z. Morris
