Jimmy Song Questions Buterin's Claims Regarding Ethereum's Progress

[Mercury]

Prominent Bitcoin (BTC) developer Jimmy Song recently questioned Vitalik Buterin’s claims that the Ethereum (ETH) project made the “research breakthroughs” required in order to launch the set of upgrades associated with Ethereum 2.0.

Recently, the Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on supporting the ongoing development of Ethereum, the world’s largest smart contract-enabled platform for deploying decentralized applications (dApps), revealed its plans regarding how it intends to spend the allocated $30 million to support the ETH ecosystem.

“Can Money Buy Scientific Breakthroughs?”
In response to the Foundation’s report, well-known crypto influencer Tuur Demeester stated via Twitter:

Can money buy a scientific breakthrough? We'll find out. https://t.co/pphcN10pVP

— Tuur Demeester (@TuurDemeester) May 21, 2019
Responding to Demeester’s comments, Buterin explained that adequate research had already been carried out in order to successfully transition from Ethereum’s current proof-of-work (PoW)-based consensus model to proof-of-stake (PoS). The Russian-Canadian programmer also mentioned that the blockchain network’s developers carefully drafted the specifications for the major upcoming Ethereum 2.0 upgrade.

We've actually already had all the research breakthroughs we need for a full implementation of eth2. This has been the case for about a year now.

— Vitalik Non-giver of Ether (@VitalikButerin) May 22, 2019
Promising Innovation For Years, Not Delivering
However, blockchain educator Song claimed that Ethereum’s developers had been promising innovation for the past five years. The University of Michigan computer science graduate added that it would be quite challenging to implement, or code, the research and specifications for Ethereum.

ETH, promising innovation for over 5 years. Funny how the innovation is always a few years away. Like many "ideas" people, Vitalik thinks that execution is just a matter of implementing what's been researched.

Here's some news for you: execution is the hard part. https://t.co/9tPlsh8xfc

— Jimmy Song (송재준) (@jimmysong) May 22, 2019
In May 2018, renowned economist Dr. Nouriel Roubini, one of the most vocal critics of cryptocurrencies, also argued that Ethereum’s creators had been promising groundbreaking innovations for over five years. Expressing views somewhat similar to Bitcoin developer Song, Roubini said that Ethereum would not be able to scale effectively and that distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based systems would eventually fail.

Roubini, whose comments came during a live debate with Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, also previously accused Buterin of engaging in criminal behavior by “premining” large amounts of ETH.

$500 Million DeFi Ecosystem Built Mostly On Ethereum
However, Buterin clarified that premining was not a crime and that he never held more than 1% of ether’s overall supply at any point. He also revealed his cryptocurrency holdings (at that time) and noted that he no longer holds 1% of the cryptocurrency's circulating supply. Furthermore, he confirmed that at no point did his net worth come close to $1 billion (a claim Roubini made).

Despite the recent criticisms of Ethereum’s ongoing development, there have been a relatively large number of useful dApps launched on the smart contract platform. In fact, nearly the entire half a billion dollar decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem has been created on Ethereum’s technological infrastructure.

Notably, Uniswap, an Ethereum-based peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange protocol, recently processed over $20 million in trades and contracts in the past week. This, only after being launched just six months ago.

A permissionless exchange protocol developed by a single developer generated $20m in trade volume last week

It launched less than 6 months ago

These are the trends you should be paying attention to

Not new coins, new economies pic.twitter.com/nrIno0VH9d

— Ryan Sean Adams (@RyanSAdams) May 21, 2019

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