Co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin has taken to Twitter to respond to allegations that a “secret meeting” occurred in Toronto this week which looked to establish a “plutocratic government” over the Ethereum blockchain.
Last week a Coinbase article described a two day private meeting with “top researchers” gathering to “discuss how decisions should be made on ethereum”. Called “EIP:0”, present were representatives of “Parity Technologies, the Web3 Foundation, the Ethereum Foundation, Giveth, Aragon, Consensys, MetaMask and others”.
The agenda focused on various thorny issues for the platform, including how frozen funds could be returned, whether ether issuance should be limited and how to keep the blockchain decentralized when faced with constant advances in mining technology.
The forum was characterised by Catallaxy co-founder Francis Pouliot as a “secret meeting” in which “blockchain governance rules” were “decided by the stakeholders”. Describing it as “insane” he suggested that it amounted to the establishing of a “plutocratic government” for Ethereum, i.e. control was being centralised in the hands of the very wealthy.
Secret meeting of Ethereum management committee occured in Toronto where blockchain governance rules were decided by the stakeholders.
This is insane. They are establishing a plutocratic government.
This has provably failed with Bitcoin (UASF/NO2X).
Does anybody even care? pic.twitter.com/fRIz1OUnV0
— Francis Pouliot ⚡ (@francispouliot_) 7 May 2018
Pouliot’s tweet suffered a substantial backlash with many pointing out that much of the “secret” meeting had been publicly livestreamed. The author of the original article, Rachel-Rose O’Leary, said that in her view “there was nothing sinister about this meeting”, while Lane Rettig, who was present for the discussions, pointed out that no rules were established and that there was no such thing as the “ethereum management committee”.
The event was not secret, in fact we livestreamed a lot of it. We also did a public AMA. There is no “Ethereum management committee” and no rules were made. Please get your facts right. Your message is intellectually dishonest.
— Lane Rettig (@lrettig) 7 May 2018
Nevertheless, Buterin decided to address the issue, saying that he was not present at the meeting and it had nothing to do with him.
Fun fact for @_Kevin_Pham: I was not at this meeting, it was organized without my permission or even involvement, and I honestly don’t really know much about what happened there. https://t.co/T6Ex1zJPXZ
— Vitalik “Not giving away ETH” Buterin (@VitalikButerin) 8 May 2018
In an ironic touch seemingly designed to fuel Bitcoin maximalists’ claims of a “Buterin cult” in the Ethereum community, he noted that the event had been put together “without my permission”.
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