The Failure of Ethereum Governance with Lane Rettig - WBD404

Location: New York Date: Sunday 19th September Project: Ethereum Role: Core Developer

Ethereum was created to build upon Bitcoin's innovations and offer more functionality, and in 2015, Ethereum developers launched an ICO selling millions of ETH tokens, at the time worth over $18 million.

Some of those funds, now worth nearly $1 billion, went to the Ethereum Foundation, which oversees the ongoing development and promotion of the Ethereum project. The foundation is a central entity that issues grants for relevant projects and employs core developers to work on the protocol.

While the Ethereum ecosystem is thriving, questions remain about the technical roadmap, scalability, decentralisation of the network, and governance of the project itself.

From changes in supply schedule and frequent hard forks, Ethereum governance is in stark contrast to the conservative, slow-moving and consistent nature of Bitcoin.

So will the Ethereum project overcome the hurdles that lie ahead? Or is it doomed to fail?

In this interview, I talk to Ethereum Core Developer Lane Rettig. We discuss the Ethereum foundation, why Lane quit, ethics, hypocrisy, decentralisation vs scalability, and building better institutions.