On July 20, the Ethereum network successfully completed a hard fork as a result of an irregular state change that transferred nearly 12 million ether from the DAO into the WithdrawDAO recovery contract.
The Ethereum network’s hard fork, which many believed was an operation of risk, was carried out smoothly. “The fork itself took place smoothly, with roughly 85% of miners mining on the fork,” explained Ethereum co-founder Ethereum.
The successful completion of the Ethereum hard fork also led to a surge in the price of ether, as the digital asset spiked by around 6% in 24 hours.
General positivity in the Ethereum community, developers, and users seemed to demonstrate that hard forks, if executed properly, could be viewed as a sophisticated upgrade mechanism, rather than a highly risky overhaul of a network.
Experts in the Bitcoin industry observed the successful hard fork execution of the Ethereum network and commented with optimism regarding the feasibility and practicality of hard forks.
Crypto-enthusiasts and major bitcoin platform operators including David Jerry and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong stated that hard forks should be viewed as an elegant voting mechanism and a freedom-based implementation.
My hope is that we start to see hard forks as an elegant upgrade/voting mechanism, not something to be feared that results in multiple coins
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) July 20, 2016
ETH HF is showing the world that HFs isn’t the majority oppressing the minority. It is freedom to live and let live. To each his own fork!
— David Jerry (@digitsu) July 20, 2016
However, some Bitcoin entrepreneurs and core developers including Greg Maxwell believes that the Ethereum hard fork is a bad idea which will present a negative notion and harm the reputation of cryptocurrency.
I think it’s a bad idea which will harm the reputation of cryptocurrency in general and potentially fuel adverse legal/regulatory intervention,” explained Maxwell.
“It’s also going to create wasted effort for users of Bitcoin do differentiate themselves from the not very decentralized hf-ethereum.,” he added.
Maxwell further emphasized that he urged Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin not to intervene with the issues involving DAO, because its hurts the concept of decentralization of a so-called decentralized platform such as Ethereum.
“When the DAO caught fire and I saw forwards of chatlogs with exchanges talking about hardforking to ‘fix’ it, I was shocked and sent Vitalik email urging them to not do so. In Bitcoin land such a thing would be unthinkable, and I think actually impossible,” concluded Maxwell.
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