Vitalik Buterin on ETH & ETC, fragmentation in blockchains

Vitalik Buterin, inventor of Ethereum, posted a "grab bag of thoughts" on reddit today, in which he laid out some of his attitudes toward the recent Ethereum split. First, he addresses fragmentation in blockchain markets, underscoring that his position on fragmentation hasn't changed and that "it's inevitable":

> In reality, however, while more cooperation is certainly useful, and this blog post will later describe how and why, desires for extreme consolidation or winner-take-all are to a large degree exactly wrong – not only is fragmentation not all that bad, but rather it’s inevitable, and arguably the only way that this space can reasonably prosper.

Noting that the sum of ETC and ETH prices have been remarkably stable around a $14.30 price, Vitalik says this "suggests that the value of at least the cryptocurrency component of the ecosystem actually isn't a superlinear function that favors monopoly".

Vitalik also states that "using hard forks as a primary paradigm to resolve thefts or to deal with unethical applications is [not] a long-term viable strategy" because the DAO lockup period established serendipitous conditions for a hard fork-based recovery, but in the future slow recovery mechanisms may not be able to keep up with fast-moving hackers. In that case, solutions would require rollbacks, yet

> Casper will make rollbacks infeasible due to its economic finality mechanism

says Vitalik. He also lists a "serious bug" in the Solidity compiler or accidental Ether lockups due to bugs as candidates for legitimate hard fork recoveries in the future, noting that "both possibilities will recede over time".

Vitalik's post was quickly cross-posted to /r/ethereumclassic.