@ameensol: a raw critique of ethereum's idealistic manifesto

Okay so I’m drunk, bored and on a plane, so I’m going to address this point by point. I’m doing this because I despise the part of the Ethereum religion that promotes euphemisms over reality, as in my view it gets in the way of real progress. Why do you think I named it MolochDAO? 👹 I wanted everyone to read the meditations on Moloch blog post and understand that we as a community are at war, and our so-called values are at stake. We either win or Ethereum is irrelevant, and Ethereum preachers attempting to divorce us from reality with estranged polemics do nothing to help us. For context, my interactions with Justin have been limited. Our first in-person interaction was him chiding me for the MolochDAO “State of Ethereum 2.0” report which was the first ever MolochDAO grant, and resulted in identifying Danny Ryan as the lead coordinator for the ETH 2.0 effort. His reaction was: “you’re just stirring shit up to satisfy your own ego and nothing will result from this.” Thanks Justin. Our second (online) interaction was when we argued about the Ethereum value proposition. His position was “ETH price doesn’t matter and we shouldn’t pay any attention to it”. My argument was basically: “well, if ETH goes to 0, what is the security budget for Ethereum?” And then he became the “ultrasound money” guy, which I was OK with. Yay. Fast forward to today, and we have a post by Justin, one of the Ethereum high priests and RTed by Vitalik talking some absolute fucking nonsense that is emblematic of our retarded Ethereum religion of living in fucking lala land ivory towers and valuing our utopian bullshit over dealing with and improving upon practical reality. Let’s begin: Actually before we get into it, one must remember one thing: Justin is French. Okay. I wish that wasn’t relevant but you can be your own judge: > We're building the future of finance—internet finance. On this point I agree. The greatest success of Ethereum to date has been extending US dollar dominance around the globe. Yay Tether and yay USDC. > Unstoppable global free trade, not trade wars. Okay now the politicization starts. This is not about Ethereum, this is about Trump, and his proposals to raise tariffs, making him & the US look like the bad guy. > Credible neutrality, not entrenched interests. The credible neutrality of Ethereum is a meme at best and a psyop at worst. I’ve written about this here: https://x.com/ameensol/status/1891704473… We basically never talk about how the stablecoin issuers could take over Ethereum fork choice if they felt so compelled. Lyn Alden, one of the smartest Bitcoiners, makes the same point here: https://www.lynalden.com/proof-of-stake/… > Permissionless innovation, not bureaucracy. Permissionless innovation is great in theory. In practice it looks like anti-trust laws, and in the worst case it looks like Tornado Cash accidentally facilitating privacy transactions for North Korea. Woops. > Undebasable money, not money printers. I agree! All ETH nerds who also agree should take out massive RAI and LUSD debt to power the ETH economy instead of fiat. Oh wait, Tether and USDC are 1000x bigger. The revealed preferences are that ETH whales don’t give a shit. Even Vitalik only minted just enough RAI to be profitable and help us advertise. If he really wanted to, he would have simply become the ultimate RAI market maker with a chunk of the half a billion dollars of ETH he still has. But it’s too late anyways, we’re shutting RAI down next month. Thanks for playing. > Sovereign individuals, not intermediaries. Sure, but if we’re being honest Aave is just replacing the other intermediaries (who I would need to call) with a program which acts as the intermediary money market fund so I can get my juicy 4%ish yield without having to talk to humans. My money is at least somewhat more secure in this setup, but it's silly not to consider Aave an intermediary as well. > A multi-decade vision, not 4-year cycles. Is this about crypto or about the US or about how long it takes Justin to get laid? Hard to say. > The internet, not imperial superpowers. Ah yes because somehow the internet is going to replace the powers that be. The internet only claims power if it can act as a deterrent to violence, which it can only do if it can harness violence. Maybe Justin is more based than I thought: hey Justin, was this a reference to assassination politics by Jim Bell? How else could we even contemplate taking on imperial superpowers? https://cryptome.org/ap.htm > Positive-sum games, not rent-seeking. This part I vaguely agree with, except that these concepts aren’t even contradictory, so putting the “not” in between them doesn’t make sense. The ultimate capitalistic manifestation of a business is to become a monopoly, and so the positive sum games will be evaluated to the degree that they complement the business's interests, thus the positive sum games would likely also simply be rent-seeking businesses working with other rent-seeking businesses in different verticals. Yay. > Peaceful revolutions, not warmongers. Okay thanks Justin how do you propose Iranians topple the Islamic Republic of Iran? Vibes? Papers? Essays? Iranians did the whole “woman life freedom” thing and thousands of protestors got executed. Now what? The reality is that might makes right, and without might, you can’t protect anyone’s rights. > Cryptography, not aircraft carriers. Ah yes, the “Yemen yemen make us proud, turn another ship around” Houthis who attack US ships and threaten all Western trade through the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb are far more afraid of cryptography than airstrikes. I think if we add Groth16 precompiles to Ethereum they would simply give up and we would have world peace. I’ll take my chances with the three US aircraft carrier groups that just pulled up and started blowing shit up. > Network effects, not isolationism. If you believe in sovereignty, then you have to respect consent, and that includes the ability to withdraw your consent from trade agreements you no longer believe favor you. In the case of the US, our companies have been getting their IP stolen from and copied by China for decades with no recourse - does that count as “network effects?” Maybe when the US decides to once again act in its own self-interest, re-onshore manufacturing for resilience purposes, it’s a good idea to take stock of who finds this “isolationist” and who simply respects the US for being able to protect its own interests as part of a “multi-decade vision”. > Fairness by design, not cronyism. Yes, but fairness not cronyism implies the ability to impose fair rules on would-be cronies, and so implies a degree of (violent) power that must be harnessed for that purpose. Those who stand against aircraft carriers wouldn’t get it. > Open competition, not oligopoly. How open? Do we abdicate sovereignty in the name of letting foreign businesses outcompete our local businesses and make us dependent on foreign products? Does that increase our resilience as a people? Maybe a local oligopoly is better than the alternative of a foreign monopoly? > Network states, not nationalism. All network states today are a fucking joke, and nationalism is actually a good thing. Without nationalism, your people don’t have a national identity. Even network states—if you read the book by Balaji which I’m sure Justin hasn't—are constructed around a core ideology, which unifies the people and can be thought of as the central “national myth”. Nationalism 2.0. > Frictionless markets, not tariffs. Once again, this is about Trump. It is part of the sovereignty of every country to be able to tariff whatever imports they want, and advocating for “frictionless markets” is essentially facilitating the globalist agenda without caring about the interest of any particular country, including your own. > Innovators, not lobbyists. So as long there are rules in a democracy, legislators need to write them. One of the most important things Ethereum has been able to do has been to help promote laws that promote privacy, self-custody wallets, access to DeFi, staking, etc… Why did Vitalik organize several week-long think tank meetings including with the Prime Minister of Montenegro if lobbying was bad? Innovators and lobbyists need eachother. > Builders, not lawyers. God fucking dammit Justin you fucking retard. Clearly you don’t give a fuck about either Roman or Alexey who are facing prison, or the small contingent of elite lawyers who are the only thing that give any of us hope that Roman & Alexey might achieve their freedom? Three different lobbying groups of lawyers have filed amicus briefs in the Roman Storm case in the US, attempting to support his arguments that developers should not be held liable for the crimes of their users. Roman faces 45 years in prison on 3 different charges: Conspiracy to violate international sanctions (20 years), money laundering (20 years), and running an unlicensed money services business (5 years). Without the efforts of the lawyers supporting him, he would already be in prison for essentially the rest of his life. > Devs, not politicians. You insufferable french twat, you probably don’t even realize that you yourself are more politician than dev. Please continue grandstanding about the fucking beam chain or whatever, because that will surely solve Ethereum’s problems. In reality, working with politicians has been a great success story. Bitcoiners gave Trump a bunch of money, so now he's a "pro-crypto" president (far more than he was in his first term). And this is now the first time that I personally am not worried about potentially going to prison for my involvement in Tornado Cash, and also hopeful that Roman & Alexey could see freedom. Politics is part of life, and so are politicians. Grow up. *** That all said, I still have hope for Justin. Last time I argued with him, he understood that ETH price is important and became the ultrasound money guy. Maybe this time he’ll become a realist. One can dream :) Do I have hope for Vitalik? He seems like a smart guy, maybe he'll figure it out. 🤷‍♀️