There’s Nothing Original About Ethereum

There’s Nothing Original About Ethereum

In a controversial statement, one Bitcoin researcher and crypto enthusiast has recently taken to Twitter to air some opinions about Ethereum, namely that Ethereum itself tis not an original project and that Ethereum is simply the result of ‘copied’ ideas taken from an old Bitcointalk forum.

Of course, anyone can claim that any cryptocurrency project is just a mirror or a snippet of what Bitcoin eventually aims to be, but that’s because Bitcoin created the architecture for every cryptocurrency. It’s sort of like saying every house that is made of bricks is the same and is a copy of the first ever house built with bricks - yes, it’s sort of right, but we all know there’s a great deal of context that can help determine how and why the second brick house is different, the same goes for Ethereum.

Paul Sztorc is the researcher in question here, who took to Twitter to state:

“This is just what Ethereum does all day After BTC popularized Lightning, Eth invented Raiden, confidentially the name (if you didn't know) of a video game character that fights with lightning bolts.”

According to AMBCrypto, Sztorc continued to dig his heels in:

“The Bitcoin Researcher went on to state that it was possible that Ethereum had invented nothing at all, further asking whether there was any Ethereum idea that was not previously discussed on Bitcointalk. He remarked that Ethereum was mostly a browser plug-in for bitcointalk.”

Harsh remarks indeed, but of course the creator of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin was quick to respond. Interestingly, Buterin didn’t jump to defence straight off the bat, as a matter of fact, Buterin suggests that he sort of agrees with the idea that all of Bitcoins architecture is possible, but he highlights that this is actually a good thing and of course, it’s a key part of Bitcoins design. Buterin took to Twitter to respond:

“The bitcoin whitepaper itself was arguably a major instance of that. The code quality was apparently quite bad, see thread; but the idea was powerful enough to bring in people who could fix it.”

What Buterin is saying here is that yes, the base idea was copied, but many found errors within Bitcoin, fixing these errors has led to the development of new and exciting cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum. Finally, just to polish off his point, Buterin then goes on to highlight a number of original ideas that have been created and developed by Ethereum developers, according to AMBCrypto:

“This was followed by Buterin listing ideas invented by people working on Ethereum. This included the gas mechanism, Casper FFG, Casper CBC, several concepts in blockchain sharding, Plasma MVP, concepts in state channel design, data availability proofs, and constant product market makers.”

Investment Disclaimer
Related Topics: