Ethereum

anyone watched the Ameen's talk? 

it sparked an interesting discussion on Kiwi 

(link below)

I figured out the rift in the Ethereum community. There are two groups who can't relate to each other:

1. Collectivists who see themselves as peers with people like Vitalik and the EF. As labour, they collaborate on equal terms with each other and embrace a plurality of interests.

2. Corporatists who see a hierarchy with themselves as shareholders, the EF as a board of directors, and Vitalik as the CEO. As capital, they expect the interests of the shareholders to be prioritized and feel entitled to make demands.

While most of us are both, labour (contributing to the ecosystem) and capital (holding ETH), we primarily identify from the perspective of one.

It's not a disagreement about management or roadmap, but a disconnect in how we perceive social structures, our entitlements, and others' responsibilities.

Building @kiwi 
Writing @ https://kanfa.macbudkowski.com/

I think this has more explanatory power: https://warpcast.com/shazow.eth/0x21a5d07c

A doodler and computerer. I like permissive/permissionless open source, smart contracts, p2p systems, room-scale VR, and NixOS.

shazow.net

Currently: WhatsABI

interesting perspective. i think Ameen sees himself as a peer with Vitalik, they even wrote papers together :) my impression is that Vitalik (and EF in general) strive for credible neutrality, which is generally good. 

but there are areas where they do have control, e.g., how they run the EF, who gets the grant, how they influence the roadmap etc. and they should be held accountable for that. since they don't have shareholders or investors, the only people who can do it are the community members.

good thing is that in the last few months i saw a lot of great activity at EF that leans into that direction :)

If we stop believing in soft power, it goes away.

If we stop believing in hard power, it only gets stronger.

I don't think Ameen does, despite wanting that to be true. He sees and assumes hierarchies everywhere.

I see EF as a minor player and peer at this point, their internal funding and the funding they provide is a tiny fraction of other players like Paradigm/Coinbase/etc. Sure, everyone should be accountable, no disagreement there.

Some people choose to attribute absurd amounts of soft power to individuals and companies who have no real hard power, and it's important to remember this:

I don't think Ameen does, despite wanting that to be true. He sees and assumes hierarchies everywhere.

I see EF as a minor player and peer at this point, their internal funding and the funding they provide is a tiny fraction of other players like Paradigm/Coinbase/etc. Sure, everyone should be accountable, no disagreement there.

Some people choose to attribute absurd amounts of soft power to individuals and companies who have no real hard power, and it's important to remember this: https://warpcast.com/shazow.eth/0xa8ee491c

Could be, I spoke with Ameen maybe twice in my life, so I can't reliably evaluate what does he think.

I agree that Vitalik and EF have much less capital than, e.g., Coinbase, but Vitalik still has way more soft power than Jesse Pollak. 

In my opinion, it's a hard-earned soft power based on merit, but there are areas where V&EF are more competent and areas where they're less. 

Since we as humans are prone to halo effects, it's important to counter steer and try to always evaluate what people say based on merit, and challenge their POV when it makes sense.

Which brings us back to my original point: I don't see Vitalik as actually having more soft power than Jesse. Jesse exercises his power all the time, whereas I can't remember when I've last seen Vitalik exercise his alleged power.

But again, you can assign whatever soft power to Vitalik you want, and I don't have to agree -- that's the thing about soft power and how we perceive peers/hierarchies.

The warning is this: Do what you please with your allocation of soft power, but ignore hard power at great peril. We spend too much time quibbling about soft power, but it's hard power that needs to be actively managed.

Soft power is something we can give to a person and we can take it away just as easily. We can give soft power to anyone or anything (even tea leaves!), and we can't be stopped from doing so.

Hard power is something that is held over us. It is granted without our consent. We can design social constructs, like our legal system or decentralized technologies, to democratize and restrict hard power of any one group over another.

This is the difference between me asking you for advice and choosing to listen to you, versus you holding a gun to my head and telling me what to do. They are not the same thing, and we should not conflate them.

A lot of people choosing to listen to a person they consider worthy of their trust is not the same thing as that person having hard power.

Hard power vs soft power: https://warpcast.com/shazow.eth/0x915be27b

Ethereum roadmap over what timescale? From the beginning? Obviously a lot. Last several years? On par with dozens of other people. Vitalik is a great communicator and writes really good blog posts that aggregate discussions that have been happening with many people over many months. I think some people interpret this as a mandate from above, but that's just silly. It has been forever since has participated in ACD regularly.

He still continues to exist, he continues to talk to people, he continues to aggregate takes and share them, he continues to drop random funding for the Tornado Cash founders, stuff like that. But lots of good people do this.

I don't think that soft power is bad, just that it's different from hard power and hard power is much more important/dangerous to play with.

So how much impact on Ethereum roadmap do you think Vitalik has had compared to Jesse? As I said, I think Vitalik's impact is hard-earned, but it's undeniable.

BTW I don't think soft power is bad, and I got the impression from your replies that this is how you interpret it? 

Also, what do you mean by hard power here?