Bitcoin and Ethereum both have deeply dedicated communities and developers working to advance the peer-to-peer networks. Whatever the technological differences separate the two largest crypto protocols, both also have a strong cultural and psychological divide – and remarkable similarities. These different ecosystems and different aims have an impact on how the networks progress.
This year, Ethereum transitioned from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. Last year, Bitcoin introduced Taproot. Both processes relied on a few common tools: Git merge requests and comments, live chat and mailing lists. Both projects also have relatively small groups of core developers (counted in the dozens) making decisions, (in the case of Bitcoin Core, only a few have commit access). Both projects utilize “rough consensus,” have long periods to scrutinize proposals (i.e., BIPs and EIPs, or Bitcoin or Ethereum Improvement Proposals) and make minor changes quite regularly.
Both have also had to address major bugs. For Bitcoin: On Aug. 15, 2010, a hacker created over 184 billion BTC due to a number overflow error – despite its 21 million coin cap. The issue was spotted within an hour and a half, and Satoshi implemented a fix along with Jeff Garzik. Meanwhile, in 2016, Ethereum’s first DAO was exploited after raising $150 million worth of ETH in a token sale. The blockchain was eventually hard forked to restore the stolen funds.
Some see this moment as Ethereum’s cardinal sin (resulting also in the doomed Ethereum Classic fork), and a sign that Ethereum developers put their own interests above the network. While others see it as Ethereum’s ability to coordinate and judge situations pragmatically. At the most basic level, Ethereum doesn't work like Bitcoin in that it doesn't have a single reference implementation. Each implementation has committers (e.g., Go-Ethereum, Nethermind, Besu, Erigon) but none of them is sufficient to change the entire protocol.
“In many ways, our development process is more decentralized,” Ethereum dev Tim Beiko said. No one person in Ethereum can “unilaterally force a change.”
Bitcoiners typically resist “consensus changes” that create forks. “Standardness rules,” however, are more flexible due to not being consensus critical. Soft forks are a strict subset of the previous rules. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin wrote about the issue.
“Things moving slowly ensures that things are done safely with plenty of discussion, review and testing…In this way, the psychology of the Bitcoin community is a big part of its decentralization,” former Bitcoin Core dev Samuel Dobson said. But the idea that Bitcoin will never change is false.
Perhaps Erik Voorhees said it best, crypto exists on a “spectrum of decentralization” and both Bitcoin and Ethereum have weaknesses and strengths. Though, as long as they’re technically decentralized to survive attacks – that’s what matters most.
– Bill Ottman, founder and CEO of decentralized social media platform Minds.com
