Vitalik Buterin, the 23-year old co-founder of Ethereum, recently got in a long Twitter exchange over the future of the blockchain startup Tezos. In case you haven't heard of them yet, here's a quick refresher: Ethereum is the world's first true enterprise blockchain. Tezos is a startup that boasts a type of blockchain that offers a "self-amending" cryptoledger.
Blockchain offers a digital ledger of transactions that's decentralized, and therefore more secure. Tezos wants to give all token holders the ability to make decisions on the blockchain. These decisions could be made transparently and would then be pushed to the network automatically — eliminating what's called as extra-protocol governance. This is the element that Buterin doesn't agree with:
Indeed. Tezos has an official goal of eliminating the need for extra-protocol governance; I personally disagree with this direction.
— Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin) July 10, 2017
Vitalik said that he's not convinced such a "rough consensus" would be a sustainable governance model for blockchain. Tezos, meanwhile, didn't leave the Ethereum co-founder's comment hanging: Tezos replied that it wants to eliminate the need — but not the possibility — of extra-protocol governance.
To be clear: eliminate the need yes, the possibility, no. Hard-forks are valuable failsafes and you make a great case for it.
— Tezos (@tez0s) July 10, 2017
Tezos is currently running what could be the largest Initial Coin Offering (ICO) there is, generating more than $200 million worth of bitcoin and ether, meaning it's likely to remain a competitive member of cryptocurrency's future.
Disclosure: Several members of the Futurism team, including the editors of this piece, are personal investors in cryptocurrency markets. Their personal investment perspectives have no impact on editorial content.
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