The Failure of Ethereum Governance with Lane Rettig

“Anytime you have a centralisation of power and wealth and influence in the hands of a small number of people…it’s so easy to delude yourself either as an individual or as an organization into thinking, just a few more years.”— Lane RettigLocation: New YorkDate: Sunday 19th SeptemberProject: EthereumRole: Core DeveloperEthereum 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.This episode’s sponsors:Gemini - Buy Bitcoin instantlyBlockFi - The future of Bitcoin financial servicesSportsbet.io - Online sportsbook & casino that accepts BitcoinCasa - The leading provider of Bitcoin multisig key security.Exodus - The world's leading Desktop, Mobile and Hardware crypto wallets.Ledger - State of the art Bitcoin hardware walletCompass Mining - Bitcoin mining & hosting-----WBD404 - Show Notes-----If you enjoy The What Bitcoin Did Podcast you can help support the show by doing the following:Become a Patron and get access to shows early or help contributeMake a tip:Bitcoin: 3FiC6w7eb3dkcaNHMAnj39ANTAkv8Ufi2SQR Codes: BitcoinIf you do send a tip then please email me so that I can say thank youSubscribe on iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | Deezer | TuneIn | RSS FeedLeave a review on iTunesShare the show and episodes with your friends and familySubscribe to the newsletter on my websiteFollow me on Twitter Personal | Twitter Podcast | Instagram | Medium | YouTubeIf you are interested in sponsoring the show, you can read more about that here or please feel free to drop me an email to discuss options.