Decisions like these are a pivotal moment in the history of cryptocurrency. Once the hard fork goes into effect, the markets will respond to whatever comes next.
The Ethereum hard fork continues to be a significant topic of debate among cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Many people have voted for this decision, to bail out The DAO and its developers. But some voices raise the concern of how Ethereum developers are forcing the community to make this decision. An exciting time dawns for Ethereum, and this debate seems to be far from over.
Relying on a hard fork of source code to solve a significant problem is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it would resolve the issue related to The DAO, and allow for the funds to be recovered. However, it also sets a precedent as to how anything that negatively affects the Ethereum “wealthy elite’ will lead to turning back on the original code at some point in the future.
Hard Fork Leaves Communities Divided
In the world of cryptocurrency, decentralization should be the top priority at all times. Some people are voicing concerns over how this hard fork is a centralization effort to protect one project running on top of the Ethereum blockchain. From day one, the decision has struck experts as strange, since The DAO’s issue does not reflect on Ethereum itself. Then again, it was a bug in the smart contract code that allowed for US$30m worth of ETH to be sluiced to a child DAO.
It is commendable to see the decision-making process being opened to the Ethereum community. At the same time, there is a concern as to how this voting took place, and whether or not the process was influenced at some point. In the end, the hard fork will go into effect in a few days from now, and it is doubtful anything will be done to prevent it.
Decisions like these are a pivotal moment in the history of cryptocurrency. Once the hard fork goes into effect, the markets will respond to whatever comes next. Deposits and withdrawals will be halted across all exchanges one hour before and after the hard fork switch occurs. Doing so should prevent the Ethereum and DAO prices from collapsing all of a sudden.
While there may remain a lot of disagreement between cryptocurrency communities as to whether or not this is a good idea, the dice have been cast. It is up to individual mining pools to support the hard fork, but the majority of them will do so by the look of things. The next few weeks will be critical for Ethereum; that much is certain.