> In Miami, Buterin’s army was small, but already keenly aware of the importance of beatifying its leader. Joseph Lubin, one of the developers staying at the house, and one of the few people who seemed to understand Ethereum enough to decipher its potential, told me in an endearing, paternal tone that Buterin was a genius alien that had arrived on this planet to deliver the sacrosanct gift of decentralization. Nearby, Buterin was shuffling around on the grass, looking down at the ground, muttering to himself in preparation for a talk he would give to the Bitcoin elite the next day.
Are we writing software or starting a cult?
...but as someone who's deeply involved in this technology (and an unabashed believer in the ethereum technology stack) I personally consider Vitalik's combination of skills in systems architecture design, cryptocurrency protocol coding, and cryptoeconomic analysis to be unmatched by anyone else in the community.
[0] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11031-011-9273-2
The plan is to create an entirely new form of social organization. I'm not making any claims about the likelihood of success, but their vision is wholesale replacement of capitalism and democracy among other things.
There are some cultlike aspects to that. It is a form of abandonment of your friends and family. Since it's not yet realized, it requires some blind faith in Vitalik.
... in some ways every startup is cultlike though.
Solving the scalability problem and moving to proof-of-stake requires some faith in Vitalik, but that's only if you care about the value of ether, Ethereum's currency. I hold ether, but if Ethereum fails to solve these problems, someone else will solve them and I will be glad.
Personally, I have no desire to replace capitalism or democracy. But they are clearly broken. I intend to fix them, and I hope the decentralization community gains enough developers, designers, and economists to make it happen. We need your help.
No committee ever designed and delivered decent software systems. It takes the tall poppy to stick his head above the crop and survey the field before progress can be made.
And, before you downvote, consider the examples. There are many, many positive software cults in our world today.
Care to name some? I don't believe cultivating religious fervor over anything and rejecting information that disconfirms or challenges your beliefs as a positive thing.
A lot of the killer Bitcoin apps (gambling, drugs, etc.) make it too easy for law enforcement or site operators to steal everyone's money due to their centralization. It's a long shot, but if Ethereum gets really big really fast it's going to be much, much harder to shut down these apps.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11896138 and marked it off-topic.
