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.