Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared a set of questions for the people in the crypto universe to answer. The questions related to blockchain and cryptocurrency were shared on a social media (WeChat) group. The group, Mars Finance, was created by Fred Wang and his partner Vivi Lin.
Fred Wang is the founder of Linekong Group which was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2014 after the success of the Three Swords. That year, he also launched Linekong Technology and introduced the first game console in China -- FUZE. Whereas, Vivi Lin who is the General Manager of Mars Finance International Wechat Community is a TV personality, entrepreneur, Blockchain advocate and investor. Lin is the founder of the Vivi Media Group.
[If you have the answers to Vitalik Buterin's questions, drop your views at pinaz.kazi@bcfocus.com. Top ten answers will be sent to Vitalik Buterin]
Vitalik Buterin asked, “Bitmain and affiliated pools now have ~53% of all bitcoin hashpower. Isn't this a really big problem?”
Group member, Zack Yang responded to it by writing, "I don't think it is a problem because, from the perspective of incentives, it will utilize the hashpower to get more coins instead of crashing it."
Another member replied to the question writing, "Agree. In the past, some miner volunteer to change the pool to avoid this issue." While another wrote, " It will be a problem later, when the supply drops and it is optimal for bitmain to destroy bitcoin."
See also: Vitalik Buterin says what is stopping Ethereum from being decentralized?
Vitalik Buterin's next question was, "Why aren't there any useful large-scale applications yet?"
To which, one of the group members commented, "The performance, scalability, privacy issues partially hinders the adoption. Lack of clear regulation is another factor. Top investors only interested in public chain is also another factor." Another member Zack Yang replied to it by writing, "The throughput is the key for large-scale application, need to find the balance between transparency, throughput and security. Once the throughput issue is resolved along with security, it will be adopted to scalable solutions. "
Buterin also asked, "Why are there not yet good solutions to account security? When will the problem of account hacks and thefts be solved?"
One of the members responded to the Ethereum chief's question, saying: "It is hard and solution is still immature. Defense in depth approach is necessary." Another user replied to it and wrote, "Account security is not just a centralized or decentralization problem, it is about finding the balance between user experience and hardness to hack. There is absolute security."
Vitalik Buterin asked the group members, "How can decentralized apps work well even with 5-10 second blockchain latency?"
"There are many types of applications, some of them are delay-tolerant and some of them are not. Finding the niche is important," Yang responded. Another member, Marshal Webb wrote, "Some decentralized apps lend themselves more well to latency than others. In our distributed use-case (network monitoring) a 5 to 10 second latency on reporting results to our centralized service is acceptable. In a decentralized application, it may result in race conditions / consensus problems. A short term mitigation may be data transference through another channel, while retaining the blockchain for validation/discovery of peers."
"PoW is burning billions of dollars per year, even more than all scams and thefts combined," Ethereum's co-founder asked, "Isn't this a big tragedy?"
One of the group members, Huining henry cao agreed to the fact and provided a solution, "This issue can be resolved using Randomized Proof of Work provided each miner has only one account eligible for mining" Another wrote, "I believe the best consensus algorithm is still under development. POW is first try and energy waste is huge issue. But it does has its place in blockchain use cases." While Yang wrote, "Internet is also burning many dollars, it is all about benefit and cost."
The Ethereum co-founder also asked, "What are the centralization risks in proof of stake?"
One of the group members wrote, "DPOS is obviously one. there might be other issues such as large token holders collusion." While Yang wrote, "It leads to centralization by way of a small group of whales, which similar to what happened in bitcoin."
Ethereum CEO's last question was, "Given how EOS governance has turned into an epic fail, doesn't this mean that all on-chain governance including DAOs is fundamentally flawed? How can any DAO deal with bribe attacks, plutocrats and other risks?"
Yang wrote, "EOS is a good example to show that on-chain governance is flawed in some sense, but it doesn't necessary mean on-chain governance is not possible, the risk can be reduced by some verifiable function or randomized verifiable selection, but it is not a pure technology problem."Another member just said that it is too early to say.
Image via Ethereum World News
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