Talk:Ethereum/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Proposal for section re-structuring

@N2e: - The Groundwork section was to provide an overview of the preliminary work that has gone into the formation and planning of the Ethereum project. Logically, this content should be at the top to provide context for the technical underpinnings of the architecture and ecosystem sections. The historical aspect is relevant, but not as relevant as the engineering aspect. There are many other contingent historical details that could be included to this section, which would extend its length considerably. This will force the article out of focus and promote a digression from the more notable technical content. I recommend we remove the history section entirely and rework the historical details into the relevant section content, e.g. I think the DAO hard fork should go under "Politics".

For clarification, this is the section structure I have in mind:

• Groundwork, e.g. etymology, inception, milestones, principles.
• Architecture, e.g. blockchain design, consensus mechanics, protocol economics, the virtual machine, base-layer services, smart contract model, programming interfaces, formal verification.
• Development, e.g. methodology, frameworks, programming languages, design principles, constructs, interface design.
• Ecosystem, e.g. Web3 interfaces, blockchain analytics, scaling solutions, privacy solutions, storage solutions, database solutions, computing solutions, information sources, recognition / identity systems, financial processes, business processes, primary industries, service industries, culture industries, Internet of Things, social networks.
• Community, e.g. the Ethereum Foundation, the EthDev consortium, institutional uptake, contributor diversity, stakeholders, user adoption.
• Economics, e.g. classification / regulatory status, supply / distribution, in-protocol cryptocurrencies, exchange infrastructure, miner infrastructure, investment and trading, price and volatility, market penetration.
• Politics, e.g. schools of thought, governance / decision-making processes, the DAO hard fork, contentions / controversies.
• Security, e.g. third-party platform audits, vulnerabilities, security research / criticism, security guarantees, security-related forks.
• Impact, e.g. in popular media, in academia, in the arts, in business, in government.

These are only examples, of course. I'm not wedded to this particular section structure or its details. That said, I do think the present article could use some work. The content at this point is largely inadequate / disorganized in my opinion. There are many notable inconsistencies that require attention. It would be beneficial for us to discuss the section titles and their ordering before moving on to the specifics. If the other editors care to weigh in with their opinions on this matter that would be a good start. I'll refrain from making any further alterations until I can get a better sense of everyone's concerns, objections, and preferences; or lack thereof.

- Aliensyntax (talk) 15:48, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

I like the broad thinking about how to organize an article, and hope others will weigh in. Yes, this article can definitely use some work to be improved.

I'll just leave a bit of initial feedback here. I don't think "Groundwork" really works, at least not for that mix of topics you specified. You could have a section on etymology (but not sure how encyclopedic that is, since this is not Wiktionary), etc. I think the historical stuff (inception, and milestones as claimed by any organization at some point in time) are plain and simple history, and thus belong in the History section. History is always, of course, messy. For example, the Ethereum Foundation might, as of some date, publish it's milestones (that is an historical statement, and if sourced, should be fine in the article); but those cannot ever and always be the actual milestones of a project. In this case, I read sources in early 2016 that the Metropolis release was anticipated by the EF sometime in 2016; but reality intervenes. There was that whole June/July 2016 hack of The DAO (even though just an application, ... a hard fork ensued), then spam attacks on the network in Sep/Oct 2016 (two hard forks ensued), then who knows what else. But in short, like all software development projects I've ever been associated with, projects have trouble achieving their "planned" milestones; reality happens, not necessarily the plan. What some editor has labeled "Milestones" at present is more of an early release plan or roadmap of the EF, but missing the dates that were originally forecast. We explicate knowledge here, and they aren't milestones for us until they are achieved.

Our job as editors trying to improve the article is to explicate the sourced set of knowledge about a topic in a way that makes it readable and informative to our readers. I think over-reliance on the foundation developer's "milestone's" plan from early 2016, is missing a lot of the real action. It is all history, however. The foundation did claim xyz were their milestones on such and such a date, the hacks and attacks did happen, as did the (extra, unplanned) hard forks of their code base. N2e (talk) 22:33, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

I appreciate your feedback. There's clearly an issue with the labelling and content of the top-level section. I'm prepared to work around the term "Groundwork" if you find it ambiguous, although I still disagree with the use of "History" to frame the content of this section. Admittedly, "Groundwork" is a rather arcane / philosophical term. It's meant to describe content that is preliminary and/or foundational in nature. As such, the term seems broad enough to include logical as well as historical precedence but narrow enough to exclude the convoluted historical details. While the set of topics I specified do have this property, I can recognize why that might not be immediately obvious. Perhaps it would be better to redesign the section to emphasize a more conceptual ordering? For instance:

— Background

—— Precursors

—— White Paper

—— Yellow Paper

—— The Crowdsale

—— The Foundation

—— The Web3 vision

—— Design rationale

—— Proofs-of-concept

—— Platform roadmap

There's no reason to delve into the excessive development details regarding the different releases of the Ethereum protocol. The platform roadmap (milestones) are distinct from the history of soft and hard-forks. They refer to the dynasties, epochs, or phases of the network. Their significance level in terms of software versioning is much greater than the individual releases, i.e. Frontier is version 1.0, Homestead is version 2.0, Metropolis is version 3.0, and so on. Each version can include a subset of additional minor features or significant fixes as part of the revision history.

For example, in terms of the Geth client history, The DAO hard-fork implementation ("Return of the ETH") is the 13th release of the Homestead dynasty. It's a standard practice to separate releases by affixing their versioning number with a punctuated suffix such as 2.1.0, 2.3.9, 2.6.7, 2.8.8, 2.9.4, and so on. Ethereum didn't suddenly break off from the Homestead branch when the DAO hard-fork happened. The DAO hard-fork was simply included as an unanticipated protocol upgrade in Homestead's development. What I recommend we do is re-assign the more notable fork details to their proper section, e.g. consensus-related forks go under "Consensus Mechanics", security-related forks go under "Security", contentious forks go under "Politics", etc. In this way, we can explicate the forks in their most logical and intelligible contexts and resolve the issue of overloading the top-level section.

- Aliensyntax (talk) 01:45, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Aliensyntax, I suggest you do sections and the content in your sandbox, we used this approach previously on other articles. Then we can comment on it. In general, I think this wikipedia page is meant to be a good overview of what has received coverage in the press, at least things such as history (both of your suggestions on re-org omit history) as well as controversy, products running on it, etc. Basically you can use a standard section layout from another article like Bitcoin, Microsoft, etc. Also relating to sections on whitepaper, yellowpaper, etc, I can't imagine are going to get developed into full sections, as we won't have RS on it. WP:CRYSTALBALL could apply to the following proposed sections ( White Paper, Yellow Paper, The Web3 vision, Design rationale, Proofs-of-concept, Platform roadmap.)" Jtbobwaysf (talk) 12:07, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Tag DAO Section

I have tagged the DAO section for cleanup. Multiple issues, WP:NPOV, WP:OVERTAG and WP:PRIMARY are the main ones. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 19:13, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Jtbobwaysf - Reverting your edit because:

1. I've already explained to you why WP:PRIMARY is non-applicable.

2. You can't claim WP:OVERTAG when there are no tags in the section.

3. You haven't provided sufficient reasoning to justify the use of WP:NPV.

Do you understand the guidelines? - Aliensyntax (talk) 13:18, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

I have re-added the section tag deleted by Aliensyntax. Yes, you are correct, WP:OVERTAG was a brainfart, I meant to tag WP:OVERKILL. Look at the citations. This section does not comply with WP:MOS, specifically it needs WP:BUNDLING.

About NPOV there are multiple NPOV issues relating to the discussion of Ethereum and Ethereum classic in this section, some of the citations are WP:PRIMARY, and the WP:OVERKILL is possibly a result of earlier edit warring on this page.

Last, Aliensyntax it is not up to you to decide the content on this article. our previous discussion about classic. This section requires cleanup. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 05:47, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't claim to know which WP:XYZ tag is appropriate for this section so I haven't changed anything, but it seems obvious to me that there is too much stuff in the section. For example, "Various critics of Ethereum Classic have denounced it as a scam[45][46] and a potential theft of intellectual property,[47] with similar controversial remarks being made on behalf of the opposing camp.". A similar statement could be made of many topics, because people tend to publish over-the-top attacks on things they don't agree with nowadays. If it's appropriate here, it's appropriate in several million other Wikipedia articles. I think it should be dropped. Sayitclearly (talk) 07:48, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I came to this article looking to learn something about Etherium, which has been in the news lately, and I found the DAO section reasonably neutral and not over cited. I got the impression that both sides had principled reasons for their stances that were not reconcilable. A brief summary of the controversy, such as the "Various critics..." sentence, is totally appropriate here, though I'd like a source or two for the second half of the sentence. Yes, a "similar statement could be made of many topics," and often is, preferably with cites so readers who want to know more about the controversy can delve further. I think I got a good neutral sense of what happened, which is what I expect from a Wikipedia article. WP:OVERKILL is talking about situations far more egregious that the DAO section, see the examples in that essay.--agr (talk) 10:30, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Absent additional justification, I've removed the tag.--agr (talk) 23:26, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Buzzwords tag

What are the buzzwords that concern you? Please do not tag without actually trying to explain the issues. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 05:29, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I am not sure, I didn't add the buzzwords tag. I re-added the tag today, thinking maybe a discussion this talk page might like to involve whoever added the tag. If the tag is incorrect, feel free to delete it again, won't bother me. @AtlasDuane: please add some explanation to the buzzwords tag you added, otherwise other editors here on this page want to delete it. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 05:47, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Since it looks like no discussion has ensued, I will delete the tag. If that annoys anyone, please feel free to let me know :-) Jtbobwaysf (talk) 15:46, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

IOTA

Has nothing that I know to do with Ethereum, but there is a new article going through its normal growing pains with NPOV and edit warring. Crypto lovers and others might want to have a look at IOTA (Distributed Ledger Technology) Certainly the article could use a few more eyeballs on it... Happy editing... Jtbobwaysf (talk) 17:25, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

users

@David Gerard:, the claim you reverted today about the number of users being different between classic and regular ethereum is not supported in that source. No mention in that source of users when I looked today. Furthermore, that source is a long set of what looks like two people be quoted, that is not an RS. Did you revert it thinking the claim was supported, or was it because I broke a link later in the article (I just noticed that now as i comment). Jtbobwaysf (talk) 17:58, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Spam deletion of Supported Wallets section

The classic ethereum page has been in a lengthy discussion regarding the presence of our supported wallet section. It has been repeated many times that the section equates to spam. The supported wallets section has been deleted on the ETC page, also on Bitcoin (dedicated page submitted for deletion). This is the official notice that this section here will be deleted. Moderators wishing to voice their opinions please feel free. Bobbtheman (talk) 23:40, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

A common definition of Spam is that it is unsolicited or undesired messages. In this case, information about wallets is not a message. It is a common question of interest on what wallet to use. So I claim it is not undesired. Therefore, the section is not equating to Spam. It is not a proper motivation for removal. Of course, there still need to be a proper source. If the section eventually becomes lengthy and too big for the article, it can be moved to a page of its own. LarsPensjo (talk) 21:54, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Agree with Lars, this section has a short list of wallets and appears to be properly cited. This content is not controversial. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 02:19, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

RFC on lede paragraph

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Due to the multiplicity of options, of which only Option C received no support, this discussion has not resulted in any clarity for any one option. Options A and A2, Options B and B2 and Option D have all attracted nearly the same level of support. While evaluating consensus is not merely counting noses, there is no reason to reject any significant amount of discussion below as irrelevant or against policy. There is no consensus for any one of the presented options. A new RfC with more-strictly defined options and greater participation may achieve better clarity. (non-admin closure) Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 04:33, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

---

Which of the following should be used in the lede paragraph of the article? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:47, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Options

A. The hack of The DAO in July 2016 led to a hard fork in the blockchain to reverse the hack, with a separate blockchain, Ethereum Classic, for those who rejected the DAO fork.

A(2) The hack of The DAO in July 2016 led to a hard fork in the blockchain to reverse the hack, with those who rejected the fork renaming the existing chain Ethereum Classic. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 10:35, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

B. In 2016, Ethereum was "hard forked" disproportionately into two blockchains, as a result of the collapse of The DAO project. A faction of the network continued their support of the pre-fork version of the Ethereum blockchain and dubbed it Ethereum Classic, while the vast majority chose to move onward with the official post-fork Ethereum blockchain (the subject of this article).

B(2) In 2016, Ethereum was "hard forked" into two blockchains, as a result of the collapse of The DAO project. A faction of the network continued their support of the pre-fork version of the Ethereum blockchain and dubbed it Ethereum Classic, while the vast majority chose to accept the post-fork Ethereum blockchain (the subject of this article). Hedgepigdaniel 02:04, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

C. In the summer of 2016, the Ethereum community decided to hard fork the Ethereum blockchain as a result of the hacking of The DAO project. A small minority portion of the community did not support the hard fork on ideological grounds and has continued the pre-forked chain, which acquired the name Ethereum Classic with the ticker symbol (ETC). Since the hard fork, Ethereum has consistently maintained a significantly higher price and hash rate than Ethereum Classic.

D. (None, no mention of Ethereum Classic in the lead) Hedgepigdaniel 01:51, 27 May 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hedgepigdaniel (talk • contribs)

I would support D over B, obviously. I'm still very much opposed to the lead mention. Aliensyntax (talk) 05:34, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Instructions

Please provide your opinions, with a very brief justification, in the Survey. Do not reply to opinions in the Survey. You may provide a fourth option in the Survey, but do not engage in back-and-forth discussion. You may engage in back-and-forth discussion in Threaded Discussion. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:47, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Survey

1. A. (Which I wrote.) It's as absolutely concise as possible, and notes the events for the lede, which is all that's needed there IMO - David Gerard (talk) 18:15, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

   A2 is fine by me too - David Gerard (talk) 14:28, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

2. A. It's supported by all the sources I have read, leaves all the topics that need more nuanced discussion and consideration to later where they belong and avoids synthesis/POV/OR. it is also concise in the way a lede demands. ClareTheSharer (talk) 18:58, 21 May 2017 (UTC) → Updating to say I like A2 as well and am happy with whichever option is preferred. ClareTheSharer (talk) 13:01, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
3. D-B-C. I wrote the description for B on account of the disagreement expressed by a few editors concerning the proposed exclusion of the lead mention (option D). As this sentiment seems to be shifting, I must reaffirm my original support for D over the other alternatives (currently 4 in favor of D at this time). If that option is deemed unacceptable, I reluctantly opt for B more strongly than C (which makes a similar, but slightly less relevant point). The description for B is widely covered by reliable sources and heavily supported in the article body. It seeks to provide a partial disclosure of the profound and highly misleading differences between the so-called "pre-fork" and "post-fork" versions of Ethereum. It has been offered as a minimal solution to redress the false equivalence / NPV violation that would be created by the negligent omission of this difference, i.e. option A. I consider this issue to be deserving of special attention because there are serious biases, conflicts of interest, and perverse incentives involved in this case to promote the interests of an adversarial, financially-motivated, and largely tangential project called Ethereum Classic. I've presented my arguments on this matter at length on the article talk page and dispute resolution noticeboard and have chosen this rather simplistic description to inoculate the article against this special case of prejudice and contentious editing. Aliensyntax (talk) 00:05, 22 May 2017 (UTC) updated preferences Aliensyntax (talk) 01:16, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
4. B-C - I know nothing about the topic of this article, and A was too concise for me. Seraphim System ^(talk) 02:55, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
5. C While #A may be concise, it is not accurate. Ethereum Classic did not form a separate blockchain. The Ethereum community hard forked off the blockchain which became known as Ethereum Classic. I would be fine with a version of A that reflected this. --The 13th 4postle (talk) 17:07, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
6. A, noting I think A2 is slightly better, as it makes it clear that Classic did not fork. Making this change hoping that @The 13th 4postle: will join A votes with that tweak, as to my understanding Classic is the remainder of the users that were opposed to the hard fork, thus Classic didn't fork. A wording can be adjusted in some other way as well. If I have committed a foul by adding a tweak to the options above, apologize in advance Jtbobwaysf (talk) 10:43, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
7. B. ETC and ETH both contain the original blockchain; ETH went back a few blocks and continued from there on with the sole intention to restore the stolen funds from the DAO leakage while ETC supporters found that action illegitimate and continued regardless of the fraud. Formally ETH forked off the ETC blockchain, but don't get too emotional on this! I would put things as nuanced as possible as long as a proper verification is available. Liechtenstein96 (talk) 13:03, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
8. I change my vote to A2 then. ETH did not go back a few blocks either. It was a state change. They basically added one (unnatural) transaction where they took the funds in control of the DAO hacker and moved into a smart contract for distribution. --The 13th 4postle (talk) 00:03, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
9. There should be no mention of Ethereum Classic in the lead. It has its own name and article. The fact that Ethereum and Ethereum Classic share the same ancestor chain is a historical detail for Ethereum and can be discussed elsewhere in the article. If there must be such a sentence in the lead, I would favour B2 Since it is accurate and does not exaggerate the notability of Ethereum Classic or contain any charged language. A (in the context of the lead) exaggerates the significant of Ethereum Classic (which has a very low level of support amongst users) to Ethereum (the subject of the article). The DAO hack and Ethereum Classic arose from Ethereum but neither is a primary aspect of what Ethereum is. Hedgepigdaniel 02:18, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
10. Neither - I like the way it is now. Summoned by bot, and not expert, but any reason that can't be an option? It seems simple and concise, and non-judgemental. I do think that Ethereum Classic needs to be mentioned in the lede since it's an important part of Ethereum's history, and the similar names might lead to confusion otherwise. Timtempleton (talk) 21:26, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
11. Option D, with no mention in the lede of any of the Ethereum forks, seems the best to me. Rationale: Ethereum seems to have had at least four hard forks, and has another one planned for 2017 Seems low-level detail to mention in the lede, and especially mentioning only one of those seems to violate WP:POV. Cheers. N2e (talk) 23:11, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
12. D - (randomly invited by a bot, only now learning about ethereum) I understand that those in the throes of the controversy may view this as a critical topic of the project. However as an uninvolved outsider, I think this hack and its repercussions in the likely long life of the project are subject to WP:UNDUE. The matter is well covered in the body and if folks feel it needs emphasis then use headings in the body for that. Jojalozzo (talk) 20:02, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Threaded Discussion

Why are users from the dispute resolution thread commenting on this RfC? The comments should be coming from neutral parties with an understanding of the context of the dispute, not the disputants themselves. David Gerard and ClareTheSharer, you've both already expressed your views on this issue. Why are you interfering here? The entire point of this RfC is to get an outside opinion, not to front-load the results in your favor. Aliensyntax (talk) 20:12, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

User:Aliensyntax - They had expressed their opinions at the dispute resolution noticeboard, which is not part of this RFC, although it originated the RFC. The purpose of this RFC is to obtain the views of the Wikipedia community, and they are members of the Wikipedia community, as are you and I. When this RFC is closed in 30 days by a neutral closer, consensus will be determined by this RFC, not by a combination of this RFC and opinions expressed in other forums also. They are not interfering, but are contributing properly to the RFC. If you have any complaints about the conduct of the RFC, please first read the boomerang essay and then take your concerns to WP:AN or WP:ANI. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:07, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Decentralized applications

This needs working through and sorting what are actual products/services and things in development. It is a mash of both now. Jytdog (talk) 18:50, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

I agree, lots of dubious notability Jtbobwaysf (talk) 16:19, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Can cite Medium articles?

Like this https://medium.com/d/9e5dc29e33ce

It is about "A hacker stole $31M of Ether" and is a didactic explanation of "how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum"... This article need some didactics. Krauss (talk) 08:44, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

What does the reliable sources guideline suggest? I think your question is answered in our sourcing guidelines - David Gerard (talk) 10:44, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

/* Criticism */

The section currently reads: "The main Ethereum public blockchain and the "ether" cryptocurrency have been criticized for enabling ponzi schemes". This statement does not make sense. It is similar to saying that dollar enables Ponzi schemes, or cars enable robberies. Definition from WP: "A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation where the operator generates returns for older investors through revenue paid by new investors, rather than from legitimate business activities". What does this have to do with Ehereum or any other currency or exchange mechanisms? Retimuko (talk) 07:42, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

That the Securities and Exchange Commission wrote a report on an illegal investment operation that the Ethereum blockchain and community enabled. See here. Flibber2388 (talk) 16:18, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Why did you restore the unsupported claim about Ponzi schemes? There is nothing about Ponzi schemes in the SEC report, so that claim remains unsupported. The added language about SEC report is about The Dao and requirements for such organizations to register and follow the rules about securities. There is no criticism of Ethereum platform there. You also added: "The SEC's report made extensive reference to the Ethereum Blockchain." Yes, the word Ethereum and the phrase "Ethereum Blockchain" are mentioned many times, but in purely technical and descriptive sense like: "The DAO offered and sold approximately 1.15 billion DAO Tokens in exchange for a total of approximately 12 million Ether (“ETH”), virtual currency used on the Ethereum Blockchain". Your added phrase is correct, and, perhaps, belongs to some historical section describing facts about Ethereum, but it doesn't belong to the Criticism section. Retimuko (talk) 19:10, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Ponzi schemes and unregistered offerings are both types of investment fraud. The "ponzi scheme" claims are supported by the FT piece "it's not a Ponzi, it's a smart Ponzi" and the Atlantic Monthly piece "The Rise of Cryptocurrency Ponzi Schemes." Both of which are included as references in the article and make explicit reference to Ethereum as an enabling platform. I have also added a journal article from the University of Caligari which provides a data-driven analysis which concludes 10%+ of smart contracts on the Ethereum network are ponzi contracts. Flibber2388 (talk) 22:25, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

The article in Atlantic is about ICOs, so it is irrelevant. The research paper from University of Calgaryi which is also the basis for the article in Alphaville, doesn't criticize Ethereum, but analyzes a phenomenon, which happens to use Ethereum. It is necessary to have some medium of exchange to run any financial scheme. Let's criticize dollars for enabling all sorts of criminal activity. Regarding your new sentence "Academic sources place the number of Ethereum smart contracts which facilitate Ponzi schemes as nearly 10% of the total number of smart contracts on the Ethereum network". First, it is an overstatement suggesting many academic sources. There is only one. And it is original research. Second, it seems to be cherry-picking the quote. The full sentence from the paper is "∼10% of the 1384 contracts with verified source code on etherscan.io are Ponzi schemes. However, the impact of these experiments is still limited, as only ∼0.05% of the transactions on the Ethereum blockchain are related to Ponzi schemes". The paragraph about SEC is irrelevant. It is about The DAO and ICOs. References to Ethereum are incidental. I believe that this criticism is highly controversial and is against the neutral point of view policy. I propose to remove the section. Retimuko (talk) 18:00, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

WP:NPOV doesn't state that criticism is barred, it states that "neutral point of view (NPOV)... means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." Atlantic Monthly and the FT are reliable sources, as is the U-Calgary paper. I think a change where we might be able to find consensus would be to amend the section header from "Criticism" to "Ponzi Schemes." Flibber2388 (talk) 00:51, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

First, let me get this Atlantic article out of the way. The article is about Gnosis and OneCoin in particular and ICOs in general, and the lack of regulation. Ethereum is mentioned there in passing. This article has nothing to do with the claim that "Ethereum enables Ponzi schemes". I propose to remove this reference. Now regarding the article by Izabella Kaminska of FT Alphaville. Alphaville is a financial news blog owned by FT. I agree that in general we can consider it a reliable source. However, such sources (blogs and news sources in general) can contain both factual content and opinion content. We consider them reliable for statements of fact. And whether a specific news story is reliable should be examined on a case-by-case basis according to WP:RS. The statement of fact was that there exists a paper by a group of researches. This was an isolated study, perhaps, not peer reviewed, not replicated, not published in a peer-reviewed journal, perhaps, not representing a scientific consensus on the matter. The study concluded (abridged): "Overall, we have observed that, in these first 2 years of life of Ethereum, there have been a multitude of experiments to implement Ponzi schemes as smart contracts: indeed, ∼10% of the 1384 contracts with verified source code on etherscan.io are Ponzi schemes. However, the impact of these experiments is still limited, as only ∼0.05% of the transactions on the Ethereum blockchain are related to Ponzi schemes... Still, it is foreseeable that, as Ethereum consolidates its position as a platform for smart contracts and as a cryptocurrency, criminals will exploit it to host their scams... Our analysis suggests that there is still time to devise suitable policy interventions, and provides a first understanding of the issues that must be tackled in this direction." There is no criticism, besides the lack of regulation. Next, In the Alphaville article we have statements of Kaminska's opinion, allegedly based on the paper, with very sloppy use of terms: "blockchain’s tendency to incubate Ponzi schemes", "Ethereum has managed to generate an unholy amount of Ponzi schemes in its mere 1.5 years of existence" (note 1.5 years, not 2 years in the paper), and rhetorical dismissal of the whole decentralization idea: "What sort of legitimate organisation really benefits from a decentralised or headless state?". The research paper did not suggest anything like this. It is like saying that TCP/IP protocol has tendency to incubate spam. It is precisely the other way around: criminals have tendency to use new technologies as they become available, especially ones with no regulation yet. Therefore I believe that Kaminska does not express an accepted majority view or even a significant minority view. What is our goal here? Describe an accepted view or describe the fact that Kaminska holds this unsupported view? If the former, I believe that we should remove this controversial claim. If the latter, we should rephrase the claim accordingly. I am not sure yet about renaming the section. My current position is that we should remove the claim, which is the only content in the section. Retimuko (talk) 22:43, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Good point. Maybe an NPOV issue. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 11:26, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

The source link to FT Alphaville leads to log-in page, but I found a slightly different link, which leads to the article (not anymore, log-in again, go figure...): https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/06/01/2189634/its-not-just-a-ponzi-its-a-smart-ponzi/ I read the article, and my impression is that there is no criticism of Ethereum or blockchain technology. The article is referring to a paper by a group of researchers at University of Calgari called "Dissecting Ponzi schemes on Ethereum: identification, analysis, and impact". So the article is about researchers looking at a phenomenon. Issues with ICOs are discussed. Benefits of decentralization are questioned. Lack of action by SEC is mentioned. But where is criticism of Ethereum? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Retimuko (talk • contribs) 18:34, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

The article states: "Thanks to Matt Levine of Bloomberg for drawing our attention to this paper from a bunch of academics at the University of Cagliari in Italy examining the Ethereum blockchain’s tendency to incubate Ponzi schemes. As a whole, they note, Ethereum has managed to generate an unholy amount of Ponzi schemes in its mere 1.5 years of existence. Moreover, the paper doesn’t even account for the recent spell of ICO madness. (Current market cap of the cryptocurrency sector: $85bn, btw.)... What sort of legitimate organisation really benefits from a decentralised or headless state? Also, what sort of company benefits from decentralised funding options or from providing decentralised services? The answer is almost none." ...if that's not criticism I'm not sure what is. Flibber2388 (talk) 22:29, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Please see my response above. Retimuko (talk) 21:33, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

This citation requires a login and I cant read it. I suggest this be treated as uncited content, and deleted. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 08:57, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

That's not a valid reason to remove a cite on Wikipedia - there's no requirement at all for all cites to be open access - David Gerard (talk) 13:02, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't think you've made a compelling argument against Flibber2388's concerns and neither has anyone else. I don't think you have any reason to claim consensus just because people don't want to reply to your 500 word essay within a week, chances are they still don't agree with you. If you'd flip the situation around: people have had months to say they do agree with you, but no one really has. If it turns out that someone does agree with you (and provides a clear argument) then make a case that consensus has been reached reached and delete it. But please don't revert reverts of your non-consensus conclusion. Erik.Bjareholt (talk) 22:20, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps, I didn't quite follow the proper procedure. I apologize. I am learning. From your starting phrase it seems that you also have an opinion about the content being discussed here, not only about the procedure. Is this so? Could you clarify please what exactly you find not compelling against what concerns? In my view, I expressed a concern, not Flibber2388. I am concerned that we currently have in the article as a general criticism a fringe opinion of one particular blogger based on, what seems to be, a mistaken interpretation of an isolated study. Please see my arguments above. I propose either to remove the claim or rephrase as a view of a particular person. Thank you. Retimuko (talk) 23:32, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree with deleting the section, as I think that it gives undue weight to one source that I can't check (content requires login). Maybe if there isn't the will to delete the content, then maybe rather we can add some content and sources to this section. Maybe there are few other sources that are also talking the same story, then at least we are based upon a few sources. It is an interesting take on the subject of this article. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 08:51, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Alright, I think we can reach an agreement here. A specific issue with this article is that there has been an unusual interest in removing Ethereum-critical content (see notices on this Talk page) and that has lead to a very pro-Ethereum article which could hardly be considered to represent the NPOV as of writing. It should be unusual to find such one sided articles for such a controversial idea as the cryptoanarchy that Ethereum contracts enable.

First off Jtbobwaysf: That the ref is behind a login is irrelevant (as David Gerard has already said). As long as it can be accessed somehow, inconvenience of access does not disqualify sources. Generally speaking: Don't remove a source just because of pay/login-walls, but it's okay to remove it if you have a replacement source.

> Retimuko: "I propose either to remove the claim or rephrase as a view of a particular person."

Rephrasing what as a view? There is considerable ponzi activity on the network, the paper backs that up and I'm pretty sure that the paper authors concerns should be considered valid criticism. I'd be in favor of adding some of the numbers from the paper if anyone else thinks that adds some objectivity to the criticism.

> The paper: "Our analysis suggests that there is still time to devise suitable policy interventions, and provides a first understanding of the issues that must be tackled in this direction."

Such statements usually count as criticism, it's just the constructive variety (the kind you'd expect from an academic paper).

I would be in favor of citing https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.03779 directly but strongly oppose removing every mention of the ponzi problem given that it has both received coverage and there is clear ponzi activity on the network.

– Erik.Bjareholt (talk) 23:25, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

There's certainly more criticism to add. Solidity is a disaster of a language in all manner of ways, there should be an RS on that. (And no, it reflects strongly on Ethereum, since it's overwhelmingly the language used on Ethereum, and not shoved off to the Solidity article [which arguably should be part of this article].) - David Gerard (talk) 23:56, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps, there is some other criticism out there. Perhaps, Solidity "is a disaster of a language". Let's find reliable secondary sources criticizing technical aspects of Solidity. But this is a completely different topic. Are you trying to change the subject? Retimuko (talk) 09:07, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

> Erik.Bjareholt: "there has been an unusual interest in removing Ethereum-critical content"

If you are talking about me, I am afraid that you misconstrued my motivation. And I would ask not to engage in mind reading, but focus on the content and policies. I am a strong believer in the five pillars, and, for example, I could not agree more with WP:MERDS. Could we apply just a fraction of that rigor here please? Like medicine, modern cryptography is a complicated subject, as well as its applications in crypto-currencies and related fields of software engineering and computer networks. There are misconceptions and misunderstandings everywhere. Understanding of some technicalities is needed to evaluate sources. Protocols are designed in more or less independent layers to better manage complexity. Consider network protocols: There is physical level of copper wires or fiber-optic cables. Then there is logical level of zeros and ones, which doesn't care if the level below represents them as pulses of current in copper or pulses of light in fiber-optic. Then there are layers of sockets, TCP/IP, HTTP and, ultimately, say, a web store. If that web store is running some sort of a fraud, blaming TCP/IP or fiber-optic cables for "enabling" or for "having a tendency to generate" fraud wouldn't make sense. The same thing happens in crypto-currency protocols. There is a layer supporting some sort of distributed consensus about history of transactions, then a language to formulate conditions and transactions, then libraries of functions like "compute balance" and "send payment" on top of that, then contracts built from such blocks, and, ultimately, organizations offering financial products. The latter is the level of ICOs, and Ponzi schemes. With this understanding, let's evaluate the sources in question. We have a primary source (not peer-reviewed, not published in a reputable magazine and such, just to keep in mind). I don't disagree with their findings. Essentially they are saying that they see signs of potentially criminal use of this new technology (as it often happens with new technologies), and they are suggesting to think about some policies (read: of regulating organizations offering products). Nothing remotely like "Ethereum generates Ponzi schemes". They are scientists, so they must know that these are completely different levels. And they also suggested that those contracts they identified are largely inactive: only ~0.05% of transactions can be attributed to them. So I wouldn't call that a "considerable activity". And next, we have one secondary source, which we would, perhaps, agree to consider reliable for statements of fact, but, sorry, not opinion. Especially a misguided one. Kaminska mixes "ICO madness" with Ethereum platform. If, for some reason, we think that this fringe view is important to mention (which I doubt), I believe that we must phrase it as a personal view, not as general criticism as if it is widely accepted. Something like "Izabella Kaminska of FT Alphaville said in her blog ..." It would be also great to somehow mention that the primary source doesn't support her conclusion, but I am not sure how to go about that in a neutral way. I strongly believe that both sources don't belong in Wikipedia. I am not against criticism. Find reliable secondary sources please. Retimuko (talk) 09:07, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I did not talk about you, I have no reason to suspect you of anything (WP:AGF). I too would suggest not to have confidence in any mind reading abilities :)

WP:MEDRS applies exclusively to articles concerning medicine for good reason. There's generally nothing wrong about using primary sources in criticism sections when the publisher is reputable (WP:PRIMARY). If you are trying to argue that something similar to WP:MEDRS should apply because there are "misconceptions and misunderstandings everywhere", then feel free to argue for a policy change elsewhere, but not here.

Also, please make your replies shorter. you don't need all those examples when arguing about wording and sources, it just makes it hard to understand your point. The current source is fine, no policy I know of says otherwise.

I edited the article to make it clear that it was the opinion of one author based on the paper and included both the percent of contract figure as well as the percent of transactions figure. Hopefully this is an agreeable compromise.

– Erik.Bjareholt (talk) 13:14, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

This is a bit better. I corrected the factual statement. The paper did not say 10% of all contracts on the network, but of 1384 they could find the source code for. Regarding the Alphaville blog: according to WP:RS "News sources often contain both factual content and opinion content. "News reporting" from well-established news outlets is generally considered to be reliable for statements of fact... Editorial commentary, analysis and opinion pieces, whether written by the editors of the publication (editorials) or outside authors (op-eds) are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact." I believe this means it is not really a secondary source about the subject, but a primary source about the fact that Kaminska made some statements. Why do you think this fact is notable enough for Wikipedia? It doesn't seem to be even a significant minority view. The reason I mentioned a lot of technicalities above was to show how technically incorrect her statement was and how far it was from the conclusion of the scientists. I strongly believe that we are giving undue weight to a confused editorial commentary, and making a wrong impression that it is backed up by research, which is also a poor source since it is an isolated and unproven study. Retimuko (talk) 20:05, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm happy that we reached a partial agreement, your corrections were certainly helpful. I can see your point to some extent but I maintain that this is a significant minority view. Within the developer community, the Ponzi contract is a well known example which has been made fun of by https://ponzico.win/ among others. In this case, we are not citing her as fact, we're merely presenting her concerns and the basis for her argument. I don't think it's fair to dismiss it as "confused editorial commentary". I get your "don't blame the protocol" sentiment, but I don't think that disqualifies the criticism from inclusion. Erik.Bjareholt (talk) 17:40, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

And Izabella Kaminska is a journalist who's covered this area for years; even the newsblogs would count as expert material, just as with previous arguments on this talk page concerning Nathaniel Popper's expert newsblogging on cryptos - David Gerard (talk) 17:54, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

I am afraid that her tenure doesn't mean that this is a reliable secondary source. It would be, if she stated facts. But she gave editorial opinion, and that is not a reliable secondary source.

> Erik.Bjareholt "I maintain that this is a significant minority view"

If this is a significant minority view, then it must be easy to find reliable secondary sources. Could you cite one? Kaminska's blog is a primary source about the fact that Kaminska made those statements. I am afraid that your alleged "well known example" of PonzICO is not about Ethereum again, but about ICOs. Kaminska's criticism should have been directed at ICOs as well, and, perhaps, rightly so. She was just confused enough to blame a layer below. Let me quote the WP:NPOV: "If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents ... If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, it does not belong on Wikipedia". And more than that, I maintain that the current wording in the article gives wrong impression that the research paper supports her view, which it does not. My opinion is that we are giving undue weight, and the best course of action would be to exclude this material altogether. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Retimuko (talk • contribs) 20:06, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

I think the main difference in practice is that Popper's ref was perceived by advocates as Good For Ethereum, whereas Kaminska's is perceived as Bad For Ethereum.

Literally everything about Ethereum is an "extremely small minority" - David Gerard (talk) 21:15, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

This seems to be mind reading and changing the subject. I don't know what Popper's ref you are talking about. I am advocating to follow the rules about neutral point of view and reliable sources, and to exercise critical thinking evaluating the sources. Retimuko (talk) 22:05, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

I didn't say that PonzICO was a well known example. I said that Ponzi contracts were well known examples of contracts, made fun of by PonzICO. PonzICO is certainly not just about ICOs, but also about Ethereum and how it has has enabled them to run wild just like it has with Ponzis (which is clear from their "whitepaper"). I think it's pretty easy to name prominent adherents, as I've already named a few. Even Vitalik has tweeted about them back in 2015 (although he seems to view them as experiments in behavioral economics rather than fraud): https://twitter.com/vitalikbuterin/status/629819371947298816

If you want more sources, here's another article that was posted just an hour ago by CoinTelegraph. It's arguably taking a more objective stance than Kaminska and is probably a pretty good source for improving the Criticism section: https://cointelegraph.com/news/exploits-hacks-phishing-ponzi-are-on-the-rise-on-ethereum

I'm really not convinced about your remaining arguments, so unless you have a different argument entirely I'd like to end this discussion here. Erik.Bjareholt (talk) 16:10, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

> Erik.Bjareholt "PonzICO is certainly not just about ICOs, but also about Ethereum and how it has has enabled them to run wild"

Certainly? Do I understand correctly that you don't see any difference between these statements (and implications to NPOV): "criminals use X" and "X enables (or even generates) criminal activity"?

> Erik.Bjareholt "I think it's pretty easy to name prominent adherents, as I've already named a few."

No, you have not. Where? What reliable source said "Ethereum generates Ponzi schemes"?

> Erik.Bjareholt "If you want more sources, here's another article that was posted just an hour ago by CoinTelegraph"

Is CoinTelegraph considered a reliable source? Anyone can start a web site with a name, which resembles a reputable newspaper. Anyway, this article is of the "criminals use Ethereum" kind. Again. So it is not a criticism at all. Perhaps, we should have a section called "Criminal activity" (like in Bitcoin article) for such information. I still believe, that Kaminska's opinion should be excluded for reasons I stated.

> Erik.Bjareholt "I'm really not convinced about your remaining arguments"

What remaining arguments? It seems like you are evading the main points:

It is not a reliable secondary source, but a primary one about Kaminska having made some statements. Do you agree?

It is not a significant minority view. You said you disagree. Please name prominent adherents.

It does not follow from the research it is referring to. Do you agree? Retimuko (talk) 00:15, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Please add section "Academic and Professional Reception"

Please add a section discussing how Ethereum has been received in academic and professional computer science. -- Newagelink (talk) 09:46, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

@Newagelink: I have created the section per your request Ethereum#Academic_and_Professional_Reception. Please feel free to add more content, it is quite bare of content today, but should be enough to be considered a notable start. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 10:32, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. That is a good start. -- Newagelink (talk) 11:40, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

This section was later blanked by jytdog (talk · contribs). Feel free to comment here if you like. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 10:46, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

New template suggestion: Infobox cryptocurrency

@Kjerish: I propose that the template for this article be changed to Template:Infobox cryptocurrency which is now also being used over at Bitcoin Jtbobwaysf (talk) 10:46, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

I support this change. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 13:23, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Kjerish (creator of the template) suggested that we wait a month to get feedback on the template's launch over at Bitcoin before we deploy at other places. Seems logical to me, so I withdraw this suggestion for a month or so. We welcome your feedback on the template here Template talk:Infobox cryptocurrency Thank you Jtbobwaysf (talk) 17:22, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Sourcing of etymology

Please see Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Ethereum. Way too much of this kind of garbage sourcing on this article and related ones. Jytdog (talk) 22:53, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Proposed uses

Proposed uses are really not required for the article, proposal change all the time, and there are enough examples of ready available products already. This sub-section should be removed. prokaryotes (talk) 19:23, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

there has been a ton of hype and many of these had been added as actual uses. The section should probably be renamed to something like "Impractical proposed uses" and expanded. The section of uses needs to be weeded to give only actual uses and take out other hype. Jytdog (talk) 22:57, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

yeah, it's extruded hype product. We've been around this one on this page before - hypotheticals in the blockchain space are so common as to be worthless, and the bitcoin blogs routinely run articles on things that are completely hypothetical, don't exist at all and never eventuate. I'd cut anything without evidence of actually existing - David Gerard (talk) 11:55, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Decentralized applications and the question of spam

The section "Decentralized applications" currently lists a number of application types, with links to examples. These examples are by name, and the question is if this is to be considered as spam. The purpose of these names isn't to advertise businesses, it is to prove the point by providing links to real applications. I added a link to Etherdelta, which was removed because of being seen as spammy. Either Etherdelta should be allowed, or all other named applications should be removed. What would be the best here? At some point in the future, it is possible the number of applications will be too big to list here, but I don't think that is the case yet. LarsPensjo (talk) 17:05, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

It was spammy b/c of the ref. Bring a nonblog ref and and it would be fine. Jytdog (talk) 12:21, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Infobox

This article currently uses {{Infobox cryptocurrency}} in the lead, which is not appropriate as Ethereum is not a cryptocurrency. The change to the infobox should be reverted back to the old {{Infobox software}}, which makes more sense. The cryptocurrency-specific infobox should be moved to a subsection dedicated to Ether, which is a cryptocurrency. Laurencedeclan (talk) 11:42, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

For the common usage/naming see Coinmarketcap.com, or any other crypto exchange which refers to Ethereum or ETH in relation to this cryptocurrency. Ether is the correct terminology but everybody usually refers to it as the Ethereum cryptocurrency. The infobox layout and info makes the distinction clear enough to me. prokaryotes (talk) 10:21, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Yep. Nobody would be interested in this thing except number go up, and said number being ETH - David Gerard (talk) 23:52, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Even if that is true – and I believe it is for the vast majority of people – it is not in any way a justification to have factually incorrect information in our articles. Laurencedeclan (talk) 08:13, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

The terminology on "coinmarketcap.com" is irrelevant. It is not a WP:RS. Wikipedia should present topics correctly, not perpetuate misconceptions. Laurencedeclan (talk) 08:13, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

I concur. I originally edited the infobox to be placed in the Ether subsection. --TheExceptionCloaker (talk) 01:09, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Good idea. It should be moved back there, and the software infobox readded to the lead. Laurencedeclan (talk) 08:13, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Article Split-Ether

@Mikael Häggström: created a new article today Ether (currency). I am am undecided if it is helpful but happy to see how it plays out. If the split article format survives, I think we hould have a discussion of what will stay on the Ethereum article and what will move to the Ether article. Seems like we would move price, and other related concerns to Ether and focus on the technology and history on Ethereum. Anyone else have suggestions and thoughts? Jtbobwaysf (talk) 19:29, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

As I mentioned in that edit history, just the wp:article size here is enough to motivate a split. Also, although the Etherium network handles the blockchain of Ether, there are other entities that deal with this currency, such as cryptocurrency exchanges. I'm willing to further expand the Ether article in a near future. Mikael Häggström (talk) 21:16, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

I do not support that split. The body of this article is only about 2000 words and per WP:SPLIT, the reasonable time to split is when it 6K - 10K. This article is not too long, and the other is just a second place we have to watch for promotional cyptocurrency spammers etc. Per WP:PROSPLIT there should have been a discussion first, as this was not a clearcut case. Jytdog (talk) 21:33, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree with jytdog. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 07:18, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Very well, I've now merged Ether back into this one. Still, I do think it needs a top-header, because the scope of the currency is also beyond the architecture of Ethereum. Mikael Häggström (talk) 18:11, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

What type of top header do you suggest? Next, can someone please fix the size of the infobox and logo, its too big. I dont know how to fix it myself. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 19:33, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

The "Infobox Cryptocurrency" should be placed in that section, I can retrieve that from history if deemed necessary. TheExceptionCloaker (talk) 13:36, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Virtual machine

Having re-read the following sentence a few times it doesn't seem to make sense to me: "It is a 256-bit register stack, designed to run the same code exactly as intended." I wonder if the sentence is incomplete or has lost something in translation, specifically:

- same as what?
- as intended by whom or what point of reference?

Regards, Ianactually (talk) 13:48, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps this should be edited to "... designed to run the same state transitions exactly as intended, across a distributed network." The point of reference is that of a typical Ethereum node (one that is not an adversary), that propagates state transitions and blocks with other peers to achieve consensus about canonical network state. TheExceptionCloaker (talk) 23:31, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Citation Criteria and Dispute Resolution

For recent edits made that were reverted by user Jytdog, I am leaving a talk section for discussion on criteria for credible citations, and any other concerns with recent edits. Wikipedia makes no canonical reference I can find to COI in citations pertinent to the situation. I may have missed something important. If found, please direct me to a reference. I also advise that reverting entire edits should not be done (except in the case of uncaught vandalism), and instead constructive rewording be done, or placing details in talk sections before reverting entire revisions. Hopefully we may reach consensus on recent edits. TheExceptionCloaker (talk) 23:26, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Will you please just:

a) use high quality sources - by this we mean i) independent and ii) secondary. (so not self-published stuff on github, not stuff published by ethereum). Independent people, indpendently published, looking at the field of play.

b) summarize what those sources say. Nothing else.

That is this how a community of pseudonymous editors can build and maintain an encyclopedia. Sources are authoritative, not us. We just summarize them. We find high quality sources to summarize. Jytdog (talk) 23:44, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Collaborative applications (trash section)

@VL innovateurs: I blanked this section yesterday and an you re-added it. I will blank it again, anyone who wants to re-add it needs to fix the sources issue. Right now the sources are all trash. Even if you can find sources for a couple of these non-notable projects, WP:INDISCRIMINATE applies. We aren't going to do a list of every project on Ethereum. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 15:58, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Performance - contradictory statements

The wiki reads:

   As of January 2016, the Ethereum protocol could process 25 transactions per second.[133]
   On 19 December 2016, Ethereum exceeded one million transactions in a single day for the first time.[134]

But 25 transactions per second is over 2 million a day (25 * 24 * 60 * 60 = 2160000). So what's up with that?

A pure transaction costs much less gas than some contract invocations. If Ethereum was used only for transactions, it could probably do 2 million per day. I think it was for that during the Olympic beta phase. LarsPensjo (talk) 13:10, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 February 2018

Request to reapply my revision 826805893 and 826812316 as Jytdog's concerns have been addressed in my talk page. Tasdienes (talk) 20:26, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Please make your request here and provide sources here. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 20:45, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Clarificaiton: request to replace the content of the Milestones section with the content below. Tasdienes (talk) 02:56, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Several codenamed prototypes of the Ethereum platform were developed by the Foundation, as part of their Proof-of-Concept series, prior to the official launch of the Frontier network. "Olympic" was the last of these prototypes, and public beta pre-release. The Olympic network provided users with a bug bounty of 25,000 ether for stress testing the limits of the Ethereum blockchain. "Frontier" marked the tentative experimental release of the Ethereum platform in July 2015.

"Homestead" was the first to be considered stable. It includes improvements to transaction processing, gas pricing, and security. Since the initial launch, Ethereum has undergone several planned protocol upgrades, which are important changes affecting the underlying functionality and/or incentive structures of the platform.

"Metropolis Part 1: Byzantium" was launched on October 16, 2017, and included changes to reduce the complexity of the EVM and provide more flexibility for smart contract developers. Byzantium also adds supports for zk-SNARKs (from Zcash); with the first zk-SNARK transaction occurring on testnet on September 19, 2017.

There are at least two other protocol upgrades planned in the future: "Metropolis Part 2: Constantinople" will lay the foundations for the transition to proof-of-work (Casper), make adjustments to the difficulty time bomb, and add support for account abstraction.

"Serenity" should include a fundamental change to Ethereum's consensus algorithm to enable a basic transition from hardware mining (proof-of-work) to virtual mining (proof-of-stake). Improvements to scalability, specifically sharding, are also said to be a key objective on the development roadmap.

These appear to be all forward looking statements. We dont do product roadmaps per WP:CRYSTALBALL. Thanks. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 14:23, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi Jtbobwaysf. As I mentioned to Jytdog before (on my talk page), I am simply attempting to update an existing but outdated and incorrect section of this article which refers to things that have already occurred in the future tense. I did not create this section. I can understand if you would prefer to remove the entire section, as that would be consistent with your statement, but I cannot understand leaving the section in its current, inaccurate state. And I cannot understand how you could accept what is already there, but object to my update.

Would you prefer that:

1. The article be left alone (though inaccurate)
2. The article be brought up to date
3. The entire Milestones section be removed

Tasdienes (talk) 03:36, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: According to the page's protection level you should be able to edit the page yourself. If you seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. — MRD2014 ^Talk 13:44, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

References

Semi-protected edit request on 10 March 2018

Please change:

Royal Bank of Scotland has announced that it has built a Clearing and Settlement Mechanism (CSM) based on the Ethereum distributed ledger and smart contract platform

to:

Royal Bank of Scotland built and released Emerald, a Clearing and Settlement Mechanism (CSM), based on Ethereum. Emerald showed that distributed ledger technology is a credible alternative to the incumbent CSM infrastructure and allowed partner banks to pilot payments in Republic of Ireland. This pilot led to the development of the Emerald Benchmark, which aims to define a common performance test for distributed ledger technologies seeking to prove their latency, performance and scalability.

In addition to the reliable sources that have already been included in the original article the following are the reliable sources the new text speaks to: https://gitlab.com/emerald-platform/emerald https://gitlab.com/emerald-platform/emerald/wikis/emerald%20benchmark

Hopefully the readers will find this more informative. Rickcrook (talk) 15:12, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 00:28, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Please read Identifying Reliable Sources. Gitlab is a place anyone can put anything they want and not reliable for the type of claims made above. All Gitlab references demonstrate is that software has been placed in a publicly-accessible location, not that the software has any significance or notability. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 17:00, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Could we add the IPA pronunciation for Ethereum? 194.126.144.2 (talk) 11:41, 14 March 2018 (UTC) LJ

Viper language was renamed to Vyper

In order to avoid confusion with http://www.pm.inf.ethz.ch/research/viper.html, see https://github.com/ethereum/vyper/issues/501. Ghostonthewire (talk) 12:10, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 July 2018

In doing some research, I found that the reference throughout the page for the first appearance of the ETH whitepaper wasn't clarified nor linked properly.

It was initially published on Vitalik's personal website Dec 18, 2013. http://web.archive.org/web/20131228111141/http://vbuterin.com/ethereum.html

That is all! Roger-wilco-2015 (talk) 18:31, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: @Roger-wilco-2015: The Al Jazeera America article cited in the article states that the white paper was released in November. While the link you provided shows that Buterin's white paper was first indexed by the Internet Archive on December 28, the paper could have still been published earlier. — Newslinger talk 07:14, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Revamp history section to include all co-founders

Hello, I would like to add to the history section of the page the following //Note, I have ties to both Ethereum as I work on a project built on top of the platform (Golem) and I have worked for Dr.Gavin Wood in the past at Web3 Foundation, hence I was able to understand more about the history of the project by it's own founders and found good documentation which I believe is neutral:

History

Ethereum was initially described in a white paper by Vitalik Buterin, a programmer involved with Bitcoin Magazine, in late 2013 with a goal of building decentralized applications. Buterin had argued that Bitcoin needed a scripting language for application development. Failing to gain agreement, he proposed development of a new platform with a more general scripting language.

Back at the beginning of 2014, when the public announcement of Ethereum took place, the founding team was formed by  Vitalik Buterin, Mihai Alisie, Anthony Di Iorio, Charles Hoskinson, Gavin Wood and Joseph Lubin. From the white paper inception to the time of the public sale, however, Ethereum went through major changes, in part thanks to the creator of the Yellow Paper (technical specification of the protocol), and POC-1 (first prototype), Dr. Gavin Wood, who took Buterin’s initial whitepaper ideas and evolved them into the dApp (decentralized applications) platform that is Ethereum up to date, including the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) runtime environment. The development of the Ethereum software project began in early 2014 through a Swiss company, Ethereum Switzerland GmbH (EthSuisse).^[18][19] Subsequently, a Swiss non-profit foundation, the Ethereum Foundation (Stiftung Ethereum), was created as well. Development was funded by an online public crowdsale during July–August 2014, with the participants buying the Ethereum value token (ether) with another digital currency, bitcoin.^[6] While there was early praise for the technical innovations of Ethereum, questions we re also raised about its security and scalability.^[14]

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Old text:

Ethereum was initially described in a white paper by Vitalik Buterin, a programmer involved with Bitcoin Magazine, in late 2013 with a goal of building decentralized applications. Buterin had argued that Bitcoin needed a scripting language for application development. Failing to gain agreement, he proposed development of a new platform with a more general scripting language.

At the time of public announcement in January 2014, the core Ethereum team was Vitalik Buterin, Mihai Alisie, Anthony Di Iorio, and Charles Hoskinson. Formal development of the Ethereum software project began in early 2014 through a Swiss company, Ethereum Switzerland GmbH (EthSuisse). Subsequently, a Swiss non-profit foundation, the Ethereum Foundation (Stiftung Ethereum), was created as well. Development was funded by an online public crowdsale during July–August 2014, with the participants buying the Ethereum value token (ether) with another digital currency, bitcoin. While there was early praise for the technical innovations of Ethereum, questions were also raised about its security and scalability.

References

mariapaulafn 12:18, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

@Mariapaulafn: looks like you forgot to sign your comments. It appears that this edit seeks to downplay Buterin's impact. Or at least changing the first sentence in the way you proposed has that result. My undrestanding is that Buterin was the creator of this and announced the idea at a bitcoin confernece in Florida. Let's first iron out the timeline and then seek to follow that. Note I could be totally wrong on my understanding, this is all going from memory of what i have read. In your responses, please remember to sign Wikipedia:FOURTILDES, you can read about it there. Thanks Jtbobwaysf (talk) 12:12, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

@Jtbobwaysf: apologies for forgetting to sign, firstly. In second place, in no way I am trying to downplay Vitalik Buterin's impact. If you check the blogpost I cited, authored by him, he does state what I am saying here. I am happy to collaborate with you towards offering more clarity. A suggested edit around the fact that he announced it at the time you mention, and then use my paragraph would work. I edited again, since I wrote that paragraph on a text editor and did not copy the first bit, you are correct, it was never my intention to delete the first comment. Hope now it's clearer, and as mentioned, happy to provide all my research to iron out timeline. Thank you for the feedback mariapaulafn mariapaulafn 12:24, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

@Mariapaulafn: when you sign you use this tilde symbol ~ four times consequetively. That will create the signature. You can read about that here Wikipedia:FOURTILDES. You also have a sandbox and you can play around with and test signing (and editing) there, it is helpful for all editors, new and old. You will find your sandbox in the top navigation of wikipedia. Now about the content, adding the first paragraph that you initially omitted, is much better. Let's see what other editors have to say. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 12:30, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Why was discussion of academic reception removed?

In December 2017 I asked for a section discussing how academics and professional computer scientists regarded Ethereum. This was added in December 2017 but now it is missing. What happened? Why was it removed? Please add it. It is an important consideration for the general public which clarifies whether this is a hobby in its genesis stages (that might fail and vanish entirely, like some Linux distribution many have never heard of) or well-established, recognized technology (like, say, TCP/IP protocol or SMTP). It is also important to note who and what sorts of people are developing this technology. -- Newagelink (talk) 09:35, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

Note

There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#RfC_on_use_of_CoinDesk which may be of interest to people watching this page. — Frayæ (Talk/Spjall) 14:09, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

COI Edit

I made a very small change where I added a source on the DAO hack, where Ethereum forked into both Ethereum and Ethereum classic, since it was unsupported before. I own a very small amount of both ETH and ETC, but not enough to really care about or influence my editing on the subject. Dr-Bracket (talk) 02:05, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

History updates

Hi, I'm Alex, from campaign consulting firm Kivvit, here on behalf of Parity Technologies. Since I have a financial conflict of interest, I am posting on discussion pages rather than making direct edits.

This sentence in History is unsourced: "At the time of public announcement in January 2014, the core Ethereum team was Vitalik Buterin, Mihai Alisie, Anthony Di Iorio, and Charles Hoskinson." Based on reliable sources, I put together material to replace that sentence, adding several sources and identifying others also credited with helping found Ethereum (including Gavin Wood, who co-founded my client, Parity Technologies).

• Ethereum was officially announced in 2014. Its founders include Vitalik Buterin, Mihai Alisie, Anthony Di Iorio, Charles Hoskinson, Gavin Wood (who wrote the Ethereum Yellow Paper and served as Ethereum's first chief technology officer), Joseph Lubin, and Jeffrey Wilcke.

References

Are there any editors willing to include this update in the History section? Thanks! AlexLewis13 (talk) 19:22, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Can you find a better source for your 2014 announcement? If not I'm sure it could easily be dug up. The Bitcoin Magazine does not have strong consensus on being a reliable source here. Dr-Bracket (talk) 21:30, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

@AlexLewis13: Thanks, these are excellent references and should certainly be integrated into the article. The Bitcoin Magazine article says "Ethereum was officially announced on the Bitcointalk forum in 2014. In addition to Buterin, Ethereum was co-founded by Mihai Alisie, Anthony Di Iorio and Charles Hoskinson. Buterin also announced that he was working with developer Dr. Gavin Wood and Joseph Lubin" - talking of Wood and Lubin as "working with" rather than cofounders - since that magazine was created by Buterin & Alisie, shouldn't it be considered definitive? Or is there another source that could better be described as definitive? I agree that the Yellow Paper should be included in the History section, but I think not in the list of founders. — Charles Stewart (talk) 21:35, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

From Reddit Anthony Di Iorio (https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5clffg/why_did_gavin_leave_the_ethereum_team/d9xpjiv/): "There was no "co-creator" of Ethereum. Ethereum was founded by Vitalik Buterin, Myself, Charles Hoskinson, Mihai Alisie, & Amir Chetrit (the initial 5) in December 2013. Joseph Lubin, Gavin Wood, & Jeffrey Wilke were added in early 2014 as founders. Of the eight, only Vitalik and Jeffrey remain part of Ethereum proper." — Charles Stewart (talk) 21:38, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

This is why we need reputable sources. We shouldn't have to compare sources that have no talk in WP:RSN to Reddit comments when determining what to write in the History section. Dr-Bracket (talk) 23:42, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

I treat Bitcoin Magazine as a WP:RS because its editorial policy - as described on https://bitcoinmagazine.com/about/ - seems sound, with a proper editorial staff and anti-bias measures. Reddit comments certainly aren't RSs by WP standards, but in this case I would guess the Reddit comment is more accurate. Shame we can't use it in the article. — Charles Stewart (talk) 01:09, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

@AlexLewis13 and Dr-Bracket: I decided that, while the Reddit comment couldn't be used directly to state who the founders were, it was adequate to quote what Di Iorio said about who the founders were. On that basis, I've rewritten this paragraph to include all of Alex's information. — Charles Stewart (talk) 19:43, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Charles Stewart, for updating the History section! I'll consider this request complete. Also, thanks to all editors for the discussion on sourcing. I'll keep these points in mind while looking at sources to use on Wikipedia. Thanks again! AlexLewis13 (talk) 18:24, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Can we use Bitcoin Magazine as a reliable source

@Dr-Bracket: The question of whether the magazine was a WP:RS was raised at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Bitcoin_Magazine and several there said it was reliable while there were no serious concerns that as of 2017 it wasn't.

The key concerns I see with using a trade magazine as a reliable source are (i) that the editorial policy is opaque, and (ii) that the articles have a high risk of suffering conflicts of interest, such as being PR, serving the interest of the publisher, or authors being influenced by 3rd party payments. The editorial policies described on https://bitcoinmagazine.com/about/ give what I regard as credible arguments against all these concerns. Am I missing something? I'll point to this discussion on Talk:Bitcoin Magazine. — Charles Stewart (talk) 08:44, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

This is a perennial topic at the WP:RSN. Basically: crypto blogs aren't acceptable sources for Wikipedia purposes, as they tend overwhelmingly promotional in nature - and that includes the "good" ones like Coindesk or Bitcoin Magazine. Crypto coverage needs to be actually mainstream RSes. If something isn't in an RS, it's probably not notable and doesn't belong in Wikipedia - David Gerard (talk) 09:15, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Charles, I think it was wildly inappropriate to make that edit. You've been an editor for a substantial amount of time, but I would just like to bring light how many new users would be added to the General sanctions for Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies page for what you just did. We need to have reliable sources in this area, period. Dr-Bracket (talk) 21:05, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Mmm, I thought the Reddit post was WP:SELFSOURCE, but I see it clearly fails criteria #2, mea culpa. But what to do about the list of founders?

That the history section did not mention the Yellow Paper is an absurd omission, and there are not grounds for reasonable doubt that Wood was the author. For the reasons I gave above, I thought that Bitcoin Magazine served as a reliable source for this claim. I can see that Bitcoin Magazine should often be treated with suspicion, but the above considerations should make it a credible source in cases like this where (i) it is used to justify simple facts that can't be POV and (ii) the article considered as a whole does not push an agenda with respect to the part used as a source. I see no way in which this use violates any of the rules concerning questionable sourcing.

I'll not edit this section before the issues are fixed, but please can someone mention the yellow paper? — Charles Stewart (talk) 21:57, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Yellow Papers are certainly more of a grey area, but I've seen it used in many other crypto articles so I don't see why not here. Just be careful about anything less than that - you should be fine adding it yourself though. Dr-Bracket (talk) 03:55, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

I think the yellow paper is ok to cite, and should be included in the article. Bitcoin Magazine is not an RS on this article. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 16:37, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Ether or ether?

The article is not consistent on the casing of ether. Is Ξ typed as ether or Ether? 84percent (talk) 01:38, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

I've noticed most good WP:RS articles, such as this one, seem to use "ether". I'm going to go ahead and change all instances to the lowercase ether. Speak up if you disagree. 84percent (talk) 07:37, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

I see arguments either way; consistency is what's most important, so I am happy with your change. Just a note: the New Yorker's house style is famously controversial among types who obsess over these things (e.g., https://www.latimes.com/socal/burbank-leader/opinion/tn-gnp-me-aword-20170725-story.html). — Charles Stewart (talk) 10:24, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

References

Virtual Machine update

Hi, Alex here again, from campaign consulting firm Kivvit, here on behalf of Parity Technologies. As always, since I have a financial conflict of interest, I am posting on discussion pages rather than making direct edits. I'm back with another suggestion for this article. This time I'm asking if editors can add a quote from Gavin Wood to Virtual Machine in the Platform section.

Based on reliable sources, I wrote a sentence that can follow the current sentence, "The formal definition of the EVM is specified in the Ethereum Yellow Paper":

• Wood, the Yellow Paper's author, has called Ethereum "a computer at the center of the world".

Are there any editors willing to include this update in Virtual Machine under the Platform section? Thanks! AlexLewis13 (talk) 17:19, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Charles Stewart: Would you be willing to look over this request, too? Thanks again! AlexLewis13 (talk) 14:56, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

The New Yorker certainly counts as an RS. I could imagine that some editors regard selecting that quote as promotional, though. I'll look at the article. — Charles Stewart (talk) 15:52, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Charles Stewart: Thanks for checking in. Let me know how you feel about adding the quote. It's an interesting description from the Yellow Paper's author, so I figured it might be appropriate for this article. This is what The New Yorker wrote: "Wood, at a meet-up in New York, called it 'a computer at the center of the world,' like a sixties-era mainframe that everyone everywhere can use." Thanks again! AlexLewis13 (talk) 15:25, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

References

Reference for Etymology

Hi, I'm Alex from campaign consulting firm Kivvit. One of my clients, Parity Technologies, has asked me to work with Wikipedia's dedicated volunteer editors to update this page. The first thing that struck me is Etymology has no citation. "The Prophets of Cryptocurrency Survey the Boom and Bust" (The New Yorker, October 22, 2018) verifies this section. The only part of the quote not included in The New Yorker article is "I immediately realized that I liked it better than all of the other alternatives that I had seen".

The New Yorker includes this quote about the origin of the name Ethereum: "'I was browsing a list of elements from science fiction on Wikipedia when I came across the name,' he said then. 'I suppose it was the fact that [it] sounded nice and it had the word 'ether,' referring to the hypothetical invisible medium that permeates the universe and allows light to travel.'"

To comply with Wikipedia's policy on verifiability, this should cite a reference. Do editors find The New Yorker article an appropriate source for verification? Because I'm here for Parity Technologies through Kivvit and have a financial conflict of interest, I'll keep my activity on talk pages rather than directly edit the article. AlexLewis13 (talk) 22:03, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

References

Hi, circling back here to see if there are any editors willing to take a look at this request. I noted that User:N2e and User:Jtbobwaysf are among the top editors on the page by text. Would either of you be interested in assisting me to improve the article's sourcing? Thanks! AlexLewis13 (talk) 19:17, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi Alex, these crypto articles have had a lot of sources stripped out, as we removed most of the cryptorag sources, where most of this content comes from. I think you are referring to the quote where Vitalik says he got the idea for Ethereum. Is that correct? Could you also explain more clearly what your asking, as I read your note a couple of time and I still dont understand... Please feel free to ping me again when you respond, as I dont always monitor this page Jtbobwaysf (talk) 06:02, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi, User:Jtbobwaysf. Let me clarify since I was not clear before. The section titled Etymology is currently unsourced; the primary source had been stripped out, as you mentioned. My question: Can editors add "The Prophets of Cryptocurrency Survey the Boom and Bust" (The New Yorker, October 22, 2018) as a reference? A potential issue is this: The New Yorker article does not include the entire quote that is currently used in Etymology on this Wikipedia entry, but it captures most of it.

Perhaps Etymology could be tweaked slightly to match The New Yorker source:

• Vitalik Buterin picked the name Ethereum after browsing Wikipedia articles about elements and science fiction, when he found the name, noting, "I suppose it was the fact that [it] sounded nice and it had the word 'ether', referring to the hypothetical invisible medium that permeates the universe and allows light to travel.")

In a nutshell, I am trying to source information that is not sourced in the live article, and I think The New Yorker magazine is a reliable source to accomplish that. Thanks! AlexLewis13 (talk) 18:19, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Wonderful & indeed reliable source, and a great quote for how Buterin named it. @N2e: have you read it, a very good read indeed. First time I read it was just now. :-) Jtbobwaysf (talk) 08:56, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks User:Jtbobwaysf!. Would you be able to add the reference as an inline citation to the live article? Although it's a small fix, I prefer not to add it myself because of my conflict of interest. AlexLewis13 (talk) 14:55, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I have added it just now. Thanks for the ping. Again, a wonderful source. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 06:06, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the inline citation! AlexLewis13 (talk) 15:26, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

References

The DOA event

There is an unsourced statement that "After the hard fork related to The DAO, Ethereum subsequently forked twice in the fourth quarter of 2016 to deal with other attacks." Is there a source for this? 71.3.195.32 (talk) 20:37, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

TCP/IP ports

Bitcoin and Litecoin both have their commonly used ports marked on Wikipedia's List of TCP and UDP port numbers article. Ethereum doesn't. I was going to edit that article to add Ethereum's ports and came here to find good sources for the list. I see that the article at present does not handle the issue either. TCP 30303, UDP 30301, and TCP 8545 seem to be the go to ports. Should that be included in this article? TMLutas (talk) 13:07, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Infobox sw version

Seems we should be using the cryptocurrency infobox on this article, not software. Any objections? Cryptocurrency has some nice features such as the software version, which this one we are using now doesnt have. Or should we just edit the current software infox to add it? Is it appropriate to add the sw version to this article? Jtbobwaysf (talk) 04:50, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Undo recent reversion?

I was looking through the edit history of this page and I noticed a pretty large reversion a few weeks ago by David Gerard. In the comment he states, "needs mainstream RSes - crypto sites are not RSes" but there is no general sanction against using crypto sources and there is no reference to them (generally; there are some specific instances) on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources. After engaging in other discussions on this topic on other article talk pages, I believe reverting due to "crypto sites are not RSes" is not actually an appropriate response to edits like this for numerous reasons including WP:PRIMARYNOTBAD, WP:DONTREVERT, WP:CONTEXTMATTERS, WP:SELFSOURCE, WP:CHALLENGE, WP:RS, and Challenging another user's edits. Does anyone here want to make a stronger argument in favor of that reversion than "crypto sites are not RSes"? If not (lets wait a few days for comments since we know at least one person disagrees with the edit), I would like to propose that someone re-apply the edit in question. Note: There were some formatting problems with the reverted copy, if we end up re-applying those changes I would prefer to see a new copy with the formatting issues addressed, though they can also be addressed separately in a follow-up PR if necessary.

The above being said, I do think we can probably find some better sources for some of the information that was proposed. A primary source would be ideal for statements of facts by Ethereum about Ethereum (but not Ethereum wiki!), and I bet we can find a wider variety of sources for some of the other data, and probably can get some news sources for stuff that was proposed as blog sources.

Gah, forgot to sign the above which means my ping to David Gerard didn't go through. I think having him involved in this discussion is important so I'm following up with this message. Sorry for the spam anyone watching this page. Micah Zoltu (talk) 22:15, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

We've been through this literally on this page before, as editors came to realise why it was a good idea to keep the page from decaying into nonsense.

Perhaps you need to take this to WP:RS, if you really want to ensure crypto sources are better regarded - David Gerard (talk) 22:16, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

• @David Gerard:Do you have a link to the discussion where users of this page came to consensus that all crypto sources were deprecated/blacklisted? It appears this talk page has been archived, and I'm not sure how long ago this discussion occurred so it isn't easy for me to find it myself. Micah Zoltu (talk) 22:32, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

All of these crypto articles have the same page limits (mainstream RS only) in place, nothing special about this one. Virtually all the crypto 'news' are not deemed RS. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 03:47, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

• Jtbobwaysf (talk · contribs) Per the discussion over eat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:R3_(company), I don't believe this statement is true. There was general consensus that only MSM sources should be used for the Bitcoin Cash page, but the consensus there explicitly states that the consensus does not apply to all of the crypto/blockchain space. Micah Zoltu (talk) 09:15, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

• For those that are against the proposed change, do you believe that it lowers the encyclopedic value of the page? I think that should be a primary concern here, and it has an impact on WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. Is there a belief that the information presented is incorrect? Is there reason to believe that the cited sources have shown a history of being inaccurate for this type of information? Is there a belief that the information presented is contentious/disputed? Micah Zoltu (talk) 09:30, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Micah, as David stated above you should take this to WP:RSN if you want to push it. Please also ping me when you do. I guess it is very unlikely that you will be able to get promotional content added to this article, or get some change made across the board for the rest of the crypto articles, but why not try if it is important to you. As for me I oppose inclusion of any promotional content. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 09:44, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

• Jtbobwaysf Can you help me understand how the proposed edit was promotional? My interpretation of the change is that it describes the major differences between old versions of the software. This feels like encyclopedic information, not promotional information.
• I'm fairly new here, so I don't fully understand the administration/dispute process, but my limited understanding is that it is not reasonable for a couple of editors to issue a blanket ban on all trade sites for an entire space without discussion. I do not believe that the onus is on me to argue against that, but rather on those who support a blanket ban on all trade articles for all content in this space. More generally, following established Wikipedia guidelines on WP:RS should be the default without any consensus on WP:RSN or an established consensus on the talk page. IIUC, you are suggesting that the default here is to not follow WP:RS for the entire blockchain/cryptocurrency space and editors who want to follow WP:RS need to go to WP:RSN to appeal this unofficial ruling. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MicahZoltu (talk • contribs) 09:56, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

The general sanctions that was deployed on these crypto articles as well as the limitation that was put on bitcoin cash was such as huge majority, I (and I guess others) came under the impression that it applies to everything, and if it didn't, it would be if we asked (and wikipedia is probably better as a whole for it). But as you point out, maybe nobody has questioned it. To me the sanctions has made it a cryptowiki (a pun on cryptotwitter) a better place. I believe we are following RS, we are just following a stricter reading of it. That is my understanding of it. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 10:25, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

• I am of the opinion that the unofficial blacklisting of all trade sites and all primary sources (both of which are allowable by WP:RS when context appropriate) has resulted in the blockchain and cryptocurrency section of Wikipedia being absolutely terrible. The pages are all full of just sensationalist MSM quotable quotes such as who raised how much money or what big name people have endorsed/not endorsed the projects, and what some pundit/talking head said about some project. An encyclopedia should primarily describe what a thing is or how a thing works, but without the ability to use primary sources or trade sources, such information is being blocked from being added to almost all cryptocurrency/blockchain articles. This leaves the only content getting past the unofficial block being information that should be relegated to some footer section of the article. While a lot of cryptocurrency/blockchain projects really don't have anything to them besides marketing hype (e.g., they are just a clone of Bitcoin, or an Ethereum token with nothing actually produced), there are projects that have built unique/novel things that I believe is worthy of getting included in an encyclopedia. Even if ultimately the projects fail over the long run, the information about what they tried is incredibly valuable as a historic record.
• You are correct that there was a huge majority in favor of the general sanctions and the increased strictness on Bitcoin Cash. However, the general sanctions only give administrators additional latitude for dealing with vandalism and Wikipedia policy violations along with the 1RR and the Bitcoin cash block is very targeted and in alignment with dealing with specific articles that are subject to problematic edits. I do not believe that your statement is correct that the broader Wikipedia community would agree that that blocking of all primary sources and trade sources for all of an entire segment of Wikipedia would be appropriate or proportionate. I suspect others who favor such a block agree with this which is why no one followed through with the Village Pump proposal as was suggested.
• What I propose for a path forward is one of two things:

1. Normal Wikipedia guidelines and policies are followed for all blockchain/cryptocurrency pages, which includes allowing WP:PRIMARY and trade sites and encouraging additive edits that enhance the encyclopedic value of articles even when improvements could be made to the added content (edit/educate, don't revert per WP:ETIQ).
2. A Village Pump proposal is started that attempts to block all primary and trade sources across all cryptocurrency/blockchain articles on Wikipedia.

• You have indicated that you think WP:RS is being followed. Are you of the opinion that WP:PRIMARYNOTBAD and WP:CONTEXTMATTERS are being appropriately applied to blockchain/cryptocurrency articles at the moment? I believe there is a plethora of examples where this isn't the case (this case being one such). At the moment the impression I get is that all primary and trade sources are being treated like DEPRECATED sources, where WP:PRIMARYNOTBAD and WP:CONTEXTMATTERS are effectively (if not technically) overridden. Micah Zoltu (talk) 11:15, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

• David Gerard Replying to your comment at 18:20, 29 November 2019 below up here because I really want to keep that part of the discussion focused on the question of "is the encyclopedic value increased". What do you believe it is that I should ask over at WP:RSN? I read over WP:LOCALCONSENSUS and I don't see anything there that indicates I shouldn't be discussing this here on the talk page.

Because you keep asking the same people the same questions over and over with slightly different wording, and it's repetitious and not useful. You also repeatedly try to treat it as a personal dispute when multiple people try to patiently explain Wikipedia sourcing rules, guidelines and practices to you. If you have further questions, please demonstrate a deeper understanding of the answers already given - David Gerard (talk) 19:08, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

• Reading over this discussion again, I feel like we have gotten off into the weeds with technicalities and such (I am partially to blame here). I think fundamentally, we should be asking ourselves if the proposed edit improved the encyclopedic value of this page or not. If possible, I would like to re-focus the discussion around that and try to limit wikilawyering (something I know I can sometimes be a perpetrator of). I believe that the proposed edits improved the encyclopedic value of this page as they provided some history behind major product upgrades, and history is an important part of an encyclopedic article. While the citations may have been from sources that are not ideal (lets try to avoid that discussion for now), I think the sources were good enough (ignoring technicalities about reliable sources) given the non-contentious nature of the edits (just stating facts about history that I don't believe anyone is disputing). Is there disagreement here about the quality of the proposed content outside of its sourcing? — Preceding unsigned comment added by MicahZoltu (talk • contribs) 11:47, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

The proper place for discussion of reliability of sources is not to try to form a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, but to take it to the Reliable Sources Noticeboard, which is literally a board set up for this precise purpose. That's two of us who've suggested this to you now - David Gerard (talk) 18:20, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

As we are both explaining above, there is a consensus in place relating to sourcing, and different policies apply to different articles. Crypto has strict polices, but those are not as strict as WP:MEDRS for example. I think you are confusing the betterment of one or two articles rather than the betterment of wikipedia as a whole. For sure sourcing policies reduce the amount of content in the articles, but overall it makes wikipedia reliable for what it does contain. Wikipedia doesn't have to be complete, its a summary really. But a summary of everything is somewhat complete in itself. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 22:10, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

• I appreciate your patience with me on this issue Jtbobwaysf, you have managed to stay calm and helpful throughout which is calming for me. What is frustrating to me is that you and others keep saying that "there is consensus on the deprecation/blacklisting of all crypto sources and all primary sources across all blockchain/cryptocurrency sites without regard to WP:CONTEXT and WP:PRIMARYNOTBAD" but every time I have asked to see the discussion that lead to such a consensus none is provided. I hope that you can understand why that makes me feel like this is just a handful of editors exercising their own brand of justice, contrary to WP policy? The fact that the only discussion reference anyone has been able to provide explicitly states that it doesn't apply to anything other than bitcoin cash further reinforces this feeling by making me feel like someone told you all to not apply this ruling everywhere but you are anyway. When you say "Crypto has strict policies" but then fail to link be able to link me to these policies so I can read up on them, along with their history and discussion, the frustration is further strengthened. I believe that you are acting in WP:GOODFAITH and I'm hoping that you can help me understand your point of view. The above is me trying to express how I am feeling and how I am perceiving this issue. Micah Zoltu (talk) 22:48, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

• It is fine to use PRIMARY to list ethereum foundation's address, or to list the newest github release. It is just not ok to establish new claims that are in any way controversial, promotional, etc when using only a PRIMARY source. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 08:06, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

• Your statement doesn't align with the policy that is being followed by David and others. In multiple places all over the blockchain/cryptocurrency space David has routinely applied a blacklisting of all primary sources despite WP:PRIMARYNOTBAD , even when they were for things like, "The product was launched on XXX date." (I can get specific links if you like). Micah Zoltu (talk) 12:32, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
• Is your feeling about WP:CONTEXTMATTERS similar, that we should follow Wikipedia policy and allow trade sources when the content is purely factual, unlikely to be contested, and otherwise verifiable (e.g., looking at source code, looking at primary sources, etc.)? Micah Zoltu (talk) 12:32, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Some articles such as Bitcoin Cash & Bitcoin are using github to anchor the current software version. That would be a primary source and I think everyone is ok with it. We are not using primary to anchor anything that could be considered to be promotional or controversial. As you point out in general we are not using primary sources. We cant look at some other source to verify a poor quality source, as that would fall under WP:OR to my understanding. What specifically are you trying to add that is anchored by a primary source? Jtbobwaysf (talk) 04:46, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

At this point this discussion is not about any specific edit I think (I include some examples below though), but about the general practice that a few editors are following throughout the blockchain/crypto-currency space where they are applying a blacklist to trade sources and primary sources without regard to WP:PRIMARYNOTBAD and WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. It takes a lot of time to write up a good section for an article that describes what the thing is or how the thing works, and it is incredibly exhausting/demoralizing to have that removed because it uses trade sources and primary sources even when all it is using the sources for is stating facts about the system (e.g., A happened on B date, C is the algorithm that is used for calculating D in the project, etc.). A simple example (chosen since you are already involved) is over at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=R3_(company)&diff=928409780&oldid=928331429. It uses trade sources, but the diff only presents statements of facts about a release date and a pithy summary of major features in that release. The diff does not include any PoV statements or contested statements. It is incredibly common for Enyclopedia entries on software to include a list of major product releases and their dates so I don't think this is out of line with encyclopedic data. The diff that started this discussion is similar in that it is describing major protocol upgrades that have occurred, giving a pithy explanation of what was included in each. I see one or two sentences within the diff that may be considered PoV like "[the change] thwarted further spam attacks by hackers" (which I would still argue as being a verifiable statement of fact, but I can see the argument against it). Overall though, the diff is not making any point of view claims about Ethereum, it is merely stating what changed in each of the major protocol updates. If you look through the history on just about any page in the blockchain/cryptocurrency space you will find that this blacklisting policy is being applied dogmatically and that is the general problem I seek to rectify. Micah Zoltu (talk) 10:45, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

The edits that you introduced here [1] I would categorize as R3 products (or features) AND promotional. Since these dont have any quality third party coverage, they are deemed (in my opinion) not notable and thus dont qualify for inclusion. Wikipedia doesnt need to cover all of the features of each company that has a wikipedia article, and in the blockchain space we have cut down on that as everyone was promoting their own token and get rich scheme. I guess R3 has no token, and in this case is just being swept along as it is in the blockchain space. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 22:53, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

#Criticisms

Section "Criticisms" cites an article of 2017 said to be based on an article dated 2020 that (in its link) appeared online in August 2019. A knowledgeable user please review. Errantius (talk) 00:01, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

@Errantius: Im not super knowledgeable on this, but I did take a crack at resolving it. It appears to be two different papers at different times. 2017 was the height of the ICO boom, thus likely the percentage was higher that year. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 12:38, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

The FT Alphaville blog piece by Kaminska referred to a paper by a few researchers from the University of Cagliari, Italy. Now I see that the link leads to another version of the paper dated 2019. However, the original paper from 2017 had the following sentence (copied from an archived discussion on this talk page): "∼10% of the 1384 contracts with verified source code on etherscan.io are Ponzi schemes. However, the impact of these experiments is still limited, as only ∼0.05% of the transactions on the Ethereum blockchain are related to Ponzi schemes". Retimuko (talk) 19:07, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Here is the full list of revisions of that paper Kaminska referred to: [2] Retimuko (talk) 19:12, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Many thanks. Now how about skipping Kaminska and instead providing a link to that article in its latest version? Taking account, of course, of any peer-level responses to it. I’ll drop out of this now. All the best. Errantius (talk) 05:51, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

applications

I was wondering if we could link to a few notable applications. There must be some applications that are running on Ethereum that are notable? I understand Tether (cryptocurrency), as well as the Prediction market Augur (software) is. Anything else that has a wiki page? Seems strange we dont have these wikilinked from this article. Or did I just miss them? I have also been reading that there is a large amount of ETH tied up in the makerdao, which doesnt seem to have an article. But all are notable enough to list i guess. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 19:33, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

The DAO and CryptoKitties spring to mind - but I don't think anything else has really made the papers - David Gerard (talk) 11:04, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Tether Fortune. Augur seems to be running something called Alchemy Techcrunch and a TheStreet.com talks about Augur being on Ethereum. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 15:08, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Try this. I'm an ignoramus here, but maybe it's useful. Errantius (talk) 10:32, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

EIP- Primary sourced section

I deleted much of a section Ethereum#Development governance and EIP today that is entirely primary sourced. We are only using mainstream WP:RS on cryptocurrency articles. Please see if you can find some sources for this section, or it might get delted entirely. I guess some book or mainstream news article has talked about EIPs. Let's cover the process, how it works, and any important EIPs that made the press. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 20:25, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Difficulty bomb

In section Ethereum#Difficulty_Bomb/The Ice Age I understand that the difficulty bomb is intended to push ethereum to proof of stake. Maybe it has another intention to keep power in hands of developers. Can someone find a source to support any of these? Must be mainstream or a real book, no crypto junk, investopedia, etc. Also good if the section could have a few more sources. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 20:40, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Controversial edits

In this group of 3 edits [3] you made a very controversial claim that Ethereum is a fork of Ethereum Classic. You also changed the repo link from github and to some ethereumvm website. Your position that Ethereum is a fork of Ethereum Classic is a WP:POV and we are all aware of that. Wikipedia is not a platform for WP:SOAP nor is any ideological WP:BATTLE acceptable. Looping in a couple of admins David Gerard (talk · contribs) and MER-C (talk · contribs) for transparency purposes. Do not do this again. You have been editing Ethereum Classic recently and David and I have also discussed with you there as well in Talk:Ethereum_Classic#Large_addition_of_content. In this case your edits go beyond a new user error in which you crossed the line to add POV content. Use common sense on what is the mainstream and if it isn't do not add it without a talk page discussion first. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 07:39, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Response

1. > "you made a very controversial claim that Ethereum is a fork of Ethereum Classic." - Jtbobwaysf > Please read the material before accusing me of malice (again) and pushing your unsubstantiated version of history into the editing process (where are your sources?). Here is a reputable citation source the meets WP:RS guidelines and aligns with all edits I made: WSJ https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/08/01/the-great-digital-currency-debate-new-ethereum-vs-ethereum-classic/ > Additionally, here is a blog post from Vitalik on the date of the event WP:RSSELF. This completely aligns with the facts I added to the article MOS:PMC. Where is the factual controversy in my edit WP:RSCONTEXT? "Users who are interested only in participating in the fork chain should upgrade their clients to a fork-compatible version if they have not already done so; the upgraded Go client (version 1.4.10) is available here. If any users continue to be interested in following the non-fork chain, they should still update, but run with the --oppose-dao-fork flag enabled, though they should beware of transaction replay attacks and take appropriate steps to guard against them; users with no interest in the non-fork chain do not need to worry about transaction replay attack concerns." Posted by Vitalik Buterin on July 20, 2016 https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/07/20/hard-fork-completed/ 2. "You also changed the repo link from github and to some ethereumvm website." - Jtbobwaysf > Please review the edit history. There is nothing controversial about this edit. I changed a link from a Satoshi Labs BIP-044 list (https://github.com/satoshilabs/slips/blob/master/slip-0044.md) to an EVM list (https://github.com/ethereum-lists/chains). The change was related to where the project is implemented in the infobox; it changed from "Coin Type Index 60" to "EVM 1". Both of these are accurate to ETH, but EVM 1 is a more accurate representation of the implementation of the code itself, as Ethereum's specific Bytecode is live on that Ethereum Virtual Machine Chain ID. Coin Type Index 60 refers to Ethereum's Index ID for HD wallets and is a less accurate for this infobox line item. Additionally, I was fixing my own edit from a month ago to be more accurate. Where is the controversy here? 3. Jtbobwaysf you have been accusing me of malice intentions for a month now WP:GASLIGHTING. You have used your status to threaten me multiple times and followed me through two articles WP:SANCTIONGAMING. At what point does your harassment stop? After reviewing your lengthy edit history on this topic, it's clear you lack a neutral PoV in your editing on the subject matter WP:NPOV. Your claims of malice are easily proven false WP:GASLIGHT. Yet you continue to personally attack me in the editing process, while providing no reputable citations for your edits WP:QUESTIONABLE. Where is the professionalism and friendly nature of Wikipedia? I recommend these other admins have a talk with you about your behavior WP:GAMETYPE, WP:PLAYPOLICY, WP:SANCTIONGAMING. It is off-putting to Wikipedia contributors like myself that are trying to add value to Wikipedia articles. If I need to formally submit a document to stop this harassment, please link me to that resource. I also ask that you revert the changes that you removed WP:TALKDONTREVERT. Example: I renamed these forks to accurate Ethereum (ETH) nomenclature and you reversed those changes with no citation or comment. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ethereum&diff=947430088&oldid=947430064 Thanks! — GitR0n1n (talk 09:10, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

The Vitalik Buterin blog post you listed above is not at WP:RS. We have already addressed the sourcing standards on cryptocurrency articles with you over at the aforementioned Ethereum Classic talk page. Next relating to this WSJBlogs post, can you please send the exact text of the WSJ source that confirms your edits, as I dont have a WSJ subscription. However, the title of the WSJBlogs article does mention this debate over what is the true Ethereum, and this battle is not going to come here to wikipedia. In this edit you remove a github post and link to http://ethereumvm.net/, we do not link websites like that. If Satoshi Labs is also not the correct link as you mentioned, it should be removed too. All of the sources I recall reading seem to support that Ethereum is the main chain and Ethereum Classic is a fork of it, despite the fact that it might have been Ethereum that did the forking during that DAO hack event. This is similar to the Bitcoin and Bitcoin Classic debate in which both camps also want to lay claim to what the original and rightful owner of the brand. Correct me if i am wrong. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 13:22, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Response

"The Vitalik Buterin blog post you listed above is not at WP:RS." >No one presented the Vitalik Buterin blog post as WP:RS in the article, but it is being presented as a WP:RSSELF source in this Talk section as support that your personal citation-less version of history is an inaccurate account of history when compared to the creator of Ethereum's account of history. Again, this just further proof that you are editing is bias and violating Wikipedia WP:NPOV policy. "We have already addressed the sourcing standards" > You conveniently ignore the WSJ WP:NEWSORG source that adheres to Wikipedia WS:RS guidelines and specifically confirms the specific fact you are disputing; Ethereum was "the fork chain", Ethereum Classic was "the non-fork chain MOS:PMC." WP:BIASED "this debate over what is the true Ethereum" >You are inserting this "one true ethereum" debate into the conversation. Nothing I have edited relates to that philosophical claim. This appear to be a straw man argument that you are inserting into the conversation WP:GASLIGHTING. Again, an example of your editorial bias WP:NPOV. "All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." - WP:NPOV policy "All of the sources I recall reading" >Unfortunately this does not adhere to Wikipedia source standards. If you are going to dispute facts that source the founder of Ethereum, you need some very strong sources to support these claims. You have provided no WP:RS sources. These high quality sources do not corroborate with your personal recollection of the subject matter WP:QUESTIONABLE. Your memory of articles that can't be fact checked is not sufficient evidence and any article you cite would likely be inaccurate due to the high quality sources cited for my edits; Vitalik's blog posts on the exact date of the event WP:RSSELF and the WSJ article that reports on the network's event in 2016 WP:NEWSORG. I do not believe you will find a more reputable source than the founder and main operator of the referenced ETH (the fork chain) MOS:PMC and the specific public messages broadcast to the Ethereum network on the dates surrounding the event in question WP:RSCONTEXT. "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications." - WP:RSSELF policy "This is similar to the Bitcoin and Bitcoin Classic debate in which both camps also want to lay claim to what the original and rightful owner of the brand. Correct me if i am wrong." > I am unfamiliar with this debate as I've never heard of Bitcoin Classic. Additionally, this is a second straw man argument that steers this conversation away from the factual content cited in these edits WP:GASLIGHTING. Back onto the topic of factual accuracy of my edits, I believe Vitalik's voice WP:RSSELF holds far more weight on the topic than an editorially bias Wikipedia editor named Jtbobwaysf that is consistently violating WP:NPOV policy and citing WP:QUESTIONABLE sources. Let me add another WP:RSSELF source to my edits that adheres to MOS:PMC standards: "All users who had ETH before block 1920000 now have both ETH (the fork chain) and ETC (the community effort to continue the no-fork chain)." - Vitalik Buterin https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/07/26/onward_from_the_hard_fork/ Also it appears you reverted 3 changes in under 24 hours which is a violation of the WP:GS/Crypto policy apply to all wikipedia editors. Please adhere to Wikipedia policy rules or your account may be blocked. You are far too experienced to consistently be violating these rules and calling out others WP:GAMETYPE. I have reverted one of your edits that appears to have no comment or reason for edit WP:TALKDONTREVERT. Please revert your other changes until you can provide adequate WP:RS to support your account of history. Thanks! — GitR0n1n (talk 14:31, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

This is nonsense. If you want to modify both Ethereum and Ethereum Classic articles to state that Classic is the original and Ethereum is the fork, then you need many more mainstream sources than just the WSJBlogs source you found above. This looks like promotional edits to promote Ethereum Classic. GSCrypto that you mentioned was created precisely to deal with promotional and often WP:COI driven edits. - Jtbobwaysf (talk) 07:41, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Response

Jtbobwaysf (talk) please fulfill the requirements required by Wikipedia to support your factually accurate account of history WP:NPOV. The updates I have provide more than meet the needs of wikipedia sourcing policy WP:RS, including very clear MOS:PMC documentation by the founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin; a major proponent for the ETH chain WP:RSSELF. Please note, you have admitted above that you have not read the sources I have cited for these factual claims and are blindly editing my updates due to your personal recollection of history WP:QUESTIONABLE. Following the WP:TALKDONTREVERT standards, I will be reverting your recent edits as they lack any WP:RS sources that could be more accurate than the very high quality sources I am citing in my factual edits. Let's be very clear, you are disputing and questioning proven facts from a very highly creditable source- the founder of Ethereum and main operator of the ETH chain. Let me cite Wikipedia policy that makes it very hard for you to disprove these cited facts: "Anyone can create a personal web page or publish their own book and claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason, self-published sources are largely not acceptable. Self-published books and newsletters, personal pages on social networking sites, tweets, and posts on Internet forums are all examples of self-published media. Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications." - WP:RS/SPS policy "The reliability of a source depends on context. Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made in the Wikipedia article and is an appropriate source for that content. In general, the more people engaged in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the writing, the more reliable the publication. Information provided in passing by an otherwise reliable source that is not related to the principal topics of the publication may not be reliable; editors should cite sources focused on the topic at hand where possible. Sources should directly support the information as it is presented in the Wikipedia article." - WP:CONTEXTMATTERS policy "In determining consensus, consider the quality of the arguments, the history of how they came about, the objections of those who disagree, and existing policies and guidelines. The quality of an argument is more important than whether it represents a minority or a majority view. The arguments "I just don't like it" and "I just like it" usually carry no weight whatsoever." - WP:TALKDONTREVERT policy Lastly, I suggest you keep your edits to factual topics and refrain from interjecting unrelated philosophical topics via WP:GASLIGHTING editing tactics. These are disruptive editing tactics and can result in your account being blocked/banned WP:GAMETYPE. To third party admins, please review Jtbobwaysf (talk) editing history and observe how the user applies WP:SANCTIONGAMING to push their own personal edits. This forced me to deeply read into Wikipedia WP:GAMETYPE policy. If I need to submit a formal document to prevent harassment from Jtbobwaysf (talk), I'd be very happy to do so. After searching the username, it appears I'm not alone in this user's disruptive editing harassment tactics WP:DE. Thanks! — GitR0n1n (talk 03:33, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

I have also removed the infobox notes that claimed that Ethereum was a fork of Ethereum Classic and some nonsense about merged mining with Ethereum. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 08:05, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Response

It appears you have yet again failed to source any of your changes and reverted 3 of mine in 24 hours. This is the second violation in this discussion. "Limit of one revert per 24 hours restriction when reverting logged-in users on all pages related to blockchains and cryptocurrencies, broadly construed. When in doubt, assume it is related, and don't revert. Editors who violate this restriction may be blocked or otherwise sanctioned without warning by any uninvolved administrator, even on a first offence." - WP:GSCRYPTO I will be following the WP:TALKDONTREVERT policy by removing your reverts until you can source these actions with WP:RS. Additionally you've continued your WP:SANCTIONGAMING tactics and have now posted something on my personal Talk page about violating WP:POV and citing this discussion. Please note that if you continue this form of harassment, I will formall submit a complaint for third-party reviewers to handle this issue. Also please let the edit process note that to date Jtbobwaysf has not provided ONE WP:RS for any of their edits/reverts. They are not above Wikipedia Policy and need to stop violating these policies or be banned. — GitR0n1n (talk 08:27, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

GitR0n1n - I reverted your changes suggesting ETH is a fork of ETC. Forks can be a controversial topic, but in general, we cannot add something like this without a strong consensus and RS claiming the same. It would be hard to provide RS on the other side of argument simply because people don't usually claim ETH to be forked from ETC. The sources that you've posted above do not support your claim. The onus of proof would lie on you. As such, the article should not be edited with this information unless you have the RS to support this position and gotten consensus here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Molochmeditates (talk • contribs) 01:03, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Response

That is fair Molochmeditates. It appears this is more controversial than I initially thought. It seems some people have not read the source documents related to this material. Some education needs to diseminate to the community to form consensus, I understand in crypto projects there is a lot of white washing with marketing. So I will try to present the facts in a historically accurate light using the ETH chain Ethereum Foundation's documents since the contention of facts is coming from the ETH side's POV, rather than a NPOV. The Ethereum Foundation is the main operator of ETH and they were the active core develepment team of the protocol during the time of this fork. Their documents should hold a lot of weight. — GitR0n1n (talk 10:44, 01 April 2020 (UTC)

Ethereum Family Fork Tree Discussion

This topic started as I was digging into the weeds on both the Ethereum and Etherum Classic projects. I found that both of their wikipedia pages contained inaccurate technical information. I joined wikipedia to update those articles. Most of my changes have been met with minimal resistance; outside of citing primary sources in my first update to an article. This topic however has been met with uncited ghost reverts from a concentrated group of individuals. So it appears this will be the first topic I get to work on consensus building! I didn't expect these topics to be challenged factually, but I am happy to present my research and let the public come to their own conclusion on the topic. If I am missing a citation for a fact presented, please ping me and I'll be happy to provide the source for that information.

Visual Representation

Below is a tree showing the history of Ethereum hard forks. A box represents a network hard fork. Colors were chosen based on the branding of each network. Canceled forks are out of scope of this discussion. Reference links are included with each fork so you can read up on that fork and form your own educated opinion. The DAO fork appears to be the most contentious fork. So please read into that one. I will be citing articles from the people that executed the fork, the core developers from the Etheruem Foundation. I request that if your account of history differs from these sources, you add citations from WP:RS to support your stance. Unsupported claims are not encouraged in this topic. This is about the factual representation of these networks' history.

Frontier

Frontier Thawing / Ice Age

Homestead

ETH (fork chain) DAO fork occurs

ETC (non-fork chain) No fork occurred. Chain was rebranded to ETC.

Tangerine Whistle

Gas Reprice

Spurious Dragon

Die Hard

Byzantium

Gotham

Constantinople

Defuse Bomb

Petersburg

Atlantis

Istanbul

Agharta

Muir Glacier

—GitR0n1n (talk 11:32, 01 April 2020 (UTC)

This is interesting. I also understand that ETC has had some forks, but these forks did not result in a chain split. Maybe Ladislav Mecir (talk · contribs) will join this discussion since he is knowledgeable on this as well. My understanding from previous discussions with Ladislav and the treatment we are using over at Bitcoin is that a hard fork may or may not result in a chain split. Eventually we came to consensus (after an RfC I recall) to call Bitcoin Cash a Fork (software development) of Bitcoin. I recall we felt that Fork (blockchain) was too esoteric and jargon based. It is my opinion that Ethereum Classic is a Fork (software development) of Ethereum. I do like the info-graphic, but it might need to remove the controversial parts about asserting that 'Ethereum classic is the original.' I think it is uncontroversial that Ethereum has had some hardforks, but it is controversial that Ethereum is a fork of Ethereum Classic, since the majority followed the hard fork. This chain split later recognized Ethereum Classic as the fork and lessor important chain, as differentiated by the huge difference in the value of the two networks (as reflected by price). Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 12:44, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Good point about removing the controversial phrase in the info graphic. I will remove to more accurately reflect the cited sources. Thanks! — GitR0n1n (talk) 13:45, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

"it might need to remove the controversial parts about asserting that 'Ethereum classic is the original.'" - That, however, is what the Australian Tax Office says in its Chainsplits guidance, where it also justifies why. For this reason (all taxpayers in Australia are required to respect the guidance, I think), I consider it legitimate and notable. Ladislav Mecir (talk) 15:14, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! Then we should include that Australian note with attribution. Do you have a source for that? Jtbobwaysf (talk) 17:19, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

References

Please consider using language that is neutral and accurate when it comes to these topics. Your original claim was basically "ETH is a fork of ETC". This is not true, since ETC came into existence after that controversial hard fork. There are many nuances to this whole thing in terms of which is the "original" chain but what matters is most RS consider ETH to be the hard-forked chain and ETC to be the non-hard-forked chain from the time they split. Perhaps better wording would simply be to state that ETH was the chain that hard forked after The DAO event, and ETC is the one that did not. They then followed their own paths. --Molochmeditates (talk) 07:50, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree, we need to find a neutral way to position this. This editor is a ETC advocate WP:SPA. Clearly the ETH chain did fork and it is historically significant. Perhaps in a way even more significant than the BTC/BCH split, and it is probably true that ETC is the 'original chain.' But from a wikipedia standpoint our duty is to be neutral and maybe not go off into the weeds so far on this issue in that it might confuse readers. Regardless ETC editor has added some great points, suggestions, and content to the ETC article. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 08:51, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Sources

The hard fork/network upgrades made on the Ethereum chain have always been challenging to cover with so many verifiable sources that tell only a small part of the story. Here is a source that has a comprehensive and contextual description of the forks/upgrades through the 10 millionth Ethereum block, formed and hashed in 2Q2020. link to History of Ethereum Hard Forks by Luit Hollander. Could be useful to improve the article, as an adjunct to the many many individual primary sources above which cover only bits of the historical flow. N2e (talk) 11:07, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that a blog post on medium.com is an acceptable source? I don't see how it can be so. Retimuko (talk) 16:43, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Ethereum 2.0 citations

@Retimuko:I see that you have an issue with the citation in the beginning of the Ethereum 2.0 section. The development of ETH 2.0 is not a controversial issue and the topic is well-cited through the article. The current citation points to an article from a contributor to Forbes. You removed the edit stating it is a 'blog'. It is not. Please provide further explanation or please stop removing citations on the article, otherwise it looks like it is disruptive cite-tagging. HocusPocus00 (talk) 20:10, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Please see WP:FORBESCON. Please revert your revert. Thank you. Retimuko (talk) 20:47, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

@Retimuko: The Forbes article is written by a subject matter expert, so I disagree that it doesn't comply with WP:FORBESCON. If you don't believe the Forbes contributor is a subject matter expert, perhaps we can discuss further or use an alternative source like one of the below:

https://www.wired.com/story/researchers-trying-build-better-blockchain/

https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/22/justin-drake-from-the-ethereum-foundation-is-coming-to-disrupt-berlin/

Again, the development of ETH 2.0 is not controversial and these references are a dime a dozen. I'd like to just pick one and move on so contributors can continue improving the article.

HocusPocus00 (talk) 21:19, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Quote from the policy: "an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications". I don't think this is the case here. I have no problem with Wired or TechCrunch. Retimuko (talk) 22:56, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Changed citation to the TechCrunch article. HocusPocus00 (talk) 23:50, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

To reiterate what Retimuko is saying, we are not using forbes contributor articles for any cryptocurrency articles at this time, regardless the author name or experience. Techcrunch is generally a good source, thank you for changing it. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 16:25, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Ethereum v2

@Aclarke92:, @HocusPocus00:, @Validate67: I see that Ethereum#Ethereum_2.0 has problems with WP:CRYSTALBALL. Please re-write this so doesnt refer to anything that might, is planned to etc happen in the future. If you dont fix it, another editor will largely chop most of it. Please understand that this is policy, and is not flexible. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 17:02, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

WP:CRYSTALBALL states

> Wikipedia is not a collection of unverifiable speculation or presumptions. Wikipedia does not predict the future. All articles about anticipated events must be verifiable, and the subject matter must be of sufficiently wide interest that it would merit an article if the event had already occurred

Eth2.0 is verifiable and is already on the way. Many developers have spoken about it, and it is common knowledge. It's not speculation either.

Validate67 (talk) 01:09, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

@Jtbobwaysf: I agree with Validate67 that this is not WP:CRYSTALBALL. Development of Ethereum 2.0 is not speculation. The code for Ethereum 2.0 is well under development, can be verified on Github, there are Ethereum 2.0 phase 0 test nets currently running and has been the subject of innumerable amounts of news media (as cited in the main article). This section of the article is written very specifically to say that the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade is in development, which it is. HocusPocus00 (talk) 02:59, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, the article includes that section. It is well documented it is coming. Stating what features it might contain when it arrives, or when it might arrive, are crystal. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 16:27, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

References

some noticable contract address

For example, 0xdAC17F958D2ee523a2206206994597C13D831ec7 is the contract address for ERC20 USDT. Jackzhp (talk) 10:07, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Upgraded to B class

I upgraded this article from C-class to B-class as I think it now at least fits the criteria of WP:BCLASS, if not better. Let me know if anyone disagrees. HocusPocus00 (talk) 02:24, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

I am not sure. This article often has rather large issues with unsourced content (sometimes I myself remove bad sources leaving the content hoping someone else will find a source), crystal ball, and the excess about ETH2.0. For me all of this would tend to lead against an upgrade. @David Gerard: thoughts? If we are strict on the article (as I think we should, given WP:GS/Crypto then the article is probably missing a lot of info). But if we are not strict, then the article has the sufficient info necessary to be a B. I suggest we follow GSCrypto and leave the article wanting for info, as there is so much info on the public web about this subject. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 09:23, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure it matters? But it's eternally plagued with dubious sourcing, and another wave just got added as you note - David Gerard (talk) 10:24, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Agree it is not too important. I just thought that the article probably should not be promoted as a good (or even ok) article given the issues we have with sourcing. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 20:41, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Some typical addresses

For example, 0xdAC17F958D2ee523a2206206994597C13D831ec7 is the contract address for ERC20 USDT. Jackzhp (talk) 09:07, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

I dont think we should be adding contract addresses to this article as someone might mistake something and interact with it. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 09:29, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Agree HocusPocus00 (talk) 07:36, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Removal of Ernst & Young citation

@David Gerard: You have been removing the following citation:

"In September 2020, Ernst and Young announced that it was launching a platform which would allow companies to run end-to-end procurement activities on the Ethereum blockchain."

You first removed it because it because it was a primary source. Once the policies of WP:PRIMARYCARE and WP:PRIMARYNOTBAD were raised, you removed the citation again because it is a press release. Ernst and Young is one of the largest companies in the world. Their blockchain product can be verifiable. Not sure why this primary source citation is controversial, for stating exactly what it is-- that they announced this product release. HocusPocus00 (talk) 13:52, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

There is no reason to note this purely promotional information in a crypto article, unless and until an independent WP:RS writes about it. Crypto articles are under extremely harsh restrictions precisely because of a tidal wave of ill-sourced promotional nonsense. Unlike the guidelines you just named, WP:NOTBROCHURE is policy - David Gerard (talk) 21:53, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

@David Gerard: I'm struggling to understand how this is at odds with WP:NOTBROCHURE. What exactly is being promoted here? Ethereum or Ernst & Young? This was being added to the article because it is notable that a Big Four accounting firm is now launching a blockchain. E&Y's work has already been referenced and cited here HocusPocus00 (talk) 03:22, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

It's not notable unless and until it's been noted - David Gerard (talk) 07:25, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

@David Gerard: Its been posted on the website of a company with 250,000+ employees (E&Y). I guess we're back to whether a primary source is appropriate or not. Not whether it's promotional? A primary source is fine in certain circumstances. Again, WP:PRIMARYCARE states that an organization's own website is an acceptable (although possibly incomplete) primary source for information about what the company says about itself and for most basic facts about its products. I'm not sure why this is being fought so hard. Neither Ethereum or Ernst and Young are small entities-- we're not talking about RandomCoin or John's Random Company here. HocusPocus00 (talk) 13:29, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

A primary source is not ok for this genre of articles (crypto). Jtbobwaysf (talk) 20:40, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

References

Is there a Wiki policy that explains what cites are okay under normal circumstances are not okay for crypto articles? Just want to know for future reference. Thanks. HocusPocus00 (talk) 21:21, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Ethereum networks

In the Opera web browser Crypto Wallet FAQ, the question "Which Ethereum networks do you support ?" has as answer "Mainnet, Rinkeby, Kovan, Ropsten. You can also set your custom network, but then some features (such as notifications) will not be supported." I am not finding anything about various networks for Ethereum in here. I've only located "the Ethereum Foundation's Ropsten test network" in the Ethash article. —Jerome Potts (talk) 03:58, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Those are Ethereum test networks (beside Mainnet). I'm not sure that technical info is notable enough put in the main article here. HocusPocus00 (talk) 04:42, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

The names of the various testnets would be encyclopedic if we can find RS for it. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 08:53, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Ethereum and its many forks

This is a very good overview of the various hard forks/network upgrades of the Ethereum network over its first five years. Might be useful to improve the article. History of Ethereum hard forks, Luit Hollander, 4 May 2020. N2e (talk) 11:52, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Lede

@HocusPocus00: I did a rollback on your edits, seemed a bit too broad and straying from long time text. That Vitalik proposed Ethereum in 2013 is historical and encyclopedic. Also the crowdsale wikilink is quite relevant as well, given it was maybe the first crowd sale for a cryptocurrency (apologies in advance if I am wrong about my history here). Please make changes more slowly especially to longstanding content. Please try to keep the relevant wikilink content where possible. My recollection Vitalik was mobbed after he proposed ethereum at a conference, and this is certainly a notable milestone in the industry. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 20:44, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

@Jtbobwaysf: I agree that these are all notable issues and they are all discussed in the body of the article. Do they need to be in the introductory paragraph? Right now, as written, the introductory language seems overly dense and technical. MOS:INTRO. The intro paragraph should be written to provide an accessible overview and generally why it's notable. I don't think it does that right now. I think this article would be much better served for an average reader if the introduction was simplified a bit, similar to Bitcoin (ie. it's a blockchain, it has smart contract functionality, it's the second biggest, who its founder is). If the reader wants to move on past that to learn about specifics about the history of ETH, they can do that. HocusPocus00 (talk) 21:00, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

@HocusPocus00: I merged a bit just now. Is it better? I am not sure people are coming to the Ethereum article for simplicity and they would rather want to read how it is different from bitcoin. I disagree that the crowdsale (novel in itself), it being proposed by its now superstar bitcoin related founder, and whatever other history summary we have is probably the most notable parts to me and needing to be summarized. I removed and merged some other general content. Let me know your thoughts. I think if you want to remove other main parts of the lede, we need to find some consensus here. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 21:33, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

@Jtbobwaysf: I appreciate the help but I disagree that the crowd sale or DAO hack are what makes Ethereum notable or what the average user cares about when they are trying to get a quick overview of Ethereum. I think the introductory paragraph should be reserved for an overview of the Ethereum platform such as how it works (a blockchain with native cryptocurrency), what makes it different as a cryptocurrency platform (uses smart contracts/EVM/dapps) and maybe some general history information (like its launch date, founder, things like that). If you read the intro paragraph right now, you get a history lesson, but you don't understand what Ethereum actually does and how it's different than Bitcoin other than it had a crowd sale and fork. HocusPocus00 (talk) 22:27, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

They made it plenty notable at the time - in fact, the DAO, and its hack, was one of the things that made Ethereum actually mainstream notable - David Gerard (talk) 22:34, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

And it should be in the article. But should it be in the introductory paragraph? Plenty of things make Ethereum notable. HocusPocus00 (talk) 22:40, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, the DAO hack and other issues about the history should be in the introductory paragraph. At wikipedia we are more concerned with being encyclopedic rather than a place for all technical knowledge. The history of the founding, the DAO hack, etc are all key parts of the article and I dont think there is any support to remove this from the lede. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 07:47, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Again, as we talked through this, my main concern was that the intro was just doing a lot of talking with out actually explaining what Ethereum does. This doesn't require an update with technical knowledge. The ecosystem has grown now (for example, see the sourced DeFi articles). I think the intro is improved now by stating it can also run decentralized applications, but could use improvement. HocusPocus00 (talk) 14:13, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

OK, I added the ICO use case. Until today that is primarily what Ethereum is notable for. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 15:40, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

In 2017 that was notable, and I think that's fine to add. But a lot more has gone on since then. For example, there is currently a lot of news about DeFi. The intro needs more work IMO. HocusPocus00 (talk) 05:54, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

We use WP:DUE not notability. Generally we will look at historic events rather than what is currently going on. Would be nice to add Defi, but we need quality sources. The ICO craze had lots. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 16:13, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

It is incredibly well cited already in the article. Especially in the DeFi article itself. DeFi seems to be the biggest thing happening on ETH right now. HocusPocus00 (talk) 18:39, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Again "now" doesnt matter, refer to WP:NOTNP. I did notice a bunch of forbes sources in the article body. More than enough to say it is being used, but not sufficient to make a promo claim that it is the primary defi platform (although it very well might be in reality). Wikipedia is not going to lead the charge and state that ethereum is the leader in this and that. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 19:43, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Pretty sure the RS's say that DeFi is most commonly happening on Ethereum, but I think the intro is worded okay right now. Again, I think the introduction should just introduce that Ethereum is more than a cryptocurrency and it does that now after both of our edits. HocusPocus00 (talk) 23:03, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

I made a slight edit, adding a little more information about what Ethereum does in the intro. I think this resolves my concerns although I still believe it's wordy. Let me know if you have any issues with the edit.HocusPocus00 (talk) 02:59, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I am not ok with the edits as they conflate the issue of ETH and Ethereum. Right now we are saying (just above in the lede) that Ethereum is the network and ETH is the currency. Your sentence conflates that. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 07:51, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Updated. HocusPocus00 (talk) 13:48, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I again removed this. There is no need to say that ETH is somehow supported by EVM. Do you have sources for this? Its all one thing, and ETH is the token. This level of nuance (assuming arguendo it is true) has no business in the lede. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 15:33, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Huh? It didn't say that, or at least it was not intended to say that. The point that was trying to be illustrated is that Ethereum has a native cryptocurrency and in ADDITION, can run scripts and Dapps. A sentence explaining that it can do both is important because it is what made it notable and it's a clear distinction between it and Bitcoin. Perhaps the language just needed to be clearer. HocusPocus00 (talk) 05:50, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Also, please double-check your edits for typos and formatting errors before publishing them. Thanks. HocusPocus00 (talk) 06:06, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

ETH is the currency and it is noted higher up in the lede meaning it is already given higher WP:WEIGHT. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 16:14, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

@HocusPocus00: "Ethereum is the most used blockchain the world." Did you also add this text to the lede? I have removed the "in the world" and I think we also need to delete the whole sentence. How are we measuring this? Looks like more WP:PROMO. @Ladislav Mecir: looks like more of the same here, I guess this is going on at many different articles simultaneously. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 10:46, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

It's literally in the Bloomberg citations if you would care to read them. HocusPocus00 (talk) 17:06, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Bloomberg also says tether most active and The Print says it is Bitcoin. What to do with these? Jtbobwaysf (talk) 10:04, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Tether isn't a blockchain. The Print article about Bitcoin talks about trade volume, not blockchain usage. HocusPocus00 (talk) 16:02, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 29 January 2021

I would like to add a pretty good link about "What is Ethereum?". I saw many explanations but this one is worth adding it since it is very easy to understand and well written: What is Ethereum in 2021 - Author Thorsten Burger - Link: https://crypthor.net/what-is-ethereum/

Thank you Karsten Begrer (talk) 14:51, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: We don't really need that as an external links. Elliot321 (talk | contribs) 10:48, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Digix

Why does "Digix" redirect to this article, yet the term "Digix" is mentioned nowhere in the article? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 14:48, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

No idea, and agree it needs to be removed. I dont know how to do that. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 18:17, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Jtbobwaysf, you can see the redirect by clicking its name under the article title. Look at its history: it was created in April 2016. Examine the version of the article from around that time, and Digix is in the Applications section. You might re-add a description of Digix to this article, write a new article about Digix, look for an appropriate target for the redirect, or nominate it at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion. I've no opinion on which of these would be the best choice. Cheers, BlackcurrantTea (talk) 08:51, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

"Turing-complete scripts"

Hi,

Not a regular Wikipedia contributor but a computer scientist here, I hope this is the right way to suggest small edits:

"The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) can execute Turing-complete scripts and run decentralized applications."

The phrase "can execute Turing-complete scripts" does not really make sense. A machine can be Turing-complete, but scripts can't be. I would suggest rephrasing this as "The EVM is Turing-complete, can execute any scripts, and can run decentralized applications."

Note also that the NY times reference only talks about the decentralized applications part but does not mention Turing-completeness.

In fact, the EVM is only "quasi-Turing-complete" according to this reference: https://cypherpunks-core.github.io/ethereumbook/13evm.html

Another way to deal with this would be to just say "The EVM can run decentralized applications." Monpqr (talk) 04:31, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Y Agreed and done. HocusPocus00 (talk) 23:14, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

premined

@Overtheradar: I have reverted you edit to change the word premined to issued. We dont change things just because they are controversial. We also are only using top shelf WP:RS on crypto articles, meaning nyt, wsj, bloomberg, etc are ok. Coindesk, blogs, twitter, etc is not ok. If there a lot of sources saying issued, we can use that. I am assuming that we have a lot of sources for premined in the past, but that assumption could be wrong. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 17:45, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

@Jtbobwaysf: It's not good to assume sources. And the word "premined" has no formal definition, while "issuance" does and one that would be appropriate in that sentence. How I've seen it, "premined" had been a word used by Bitcoin only proponents to underplay any currency that had an offering via public sale to bootstrap its network. I wouldn't say it's controversial, but definitely political when it shouldn't be. Wikipedia articles shouldn't introduce politics into something apolitical. Overtheradar (talk)

@Overtheradar: We introduce political things all the time, there are thousands of political articles. I have already advised you that reverting to re-add disputed content is a violation of WP:GS/Crypto and you may be banned for it. Your view on how an article should be is WP:OR. We use WP:RS to justify what we include here. PS, please WP:INDENT your responses. I added an extra to mine so you have space to add a single : to yours. I understand you are a new editor, please familiarize yourself with the special rules for blockchain, sourcing, etc. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 18:06, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

@Jtbobwaysf: There's a difference between having politics in a political topic, and introducing politics into something not inherently political, like technology. Especially when using made-up words whose purpose is only to introduce politics. Overtheradar (talk)

There are always politics in everything. There are Ethereum supporters and crypto haters, etc and all edit this article. The truth lies in the middle. The approach that I suggest if you want to continue to challenge this content (ie this word) is to find sources that say that ethereum was issued. Please find what I call 'top shelf' sources like wsj, nyt, bloomberg, fortune, etc. Make a list of those here, or you can also make a list on your sandbox. Then if we can find some to offset the term "premine" we can then discuss which to use, or if we use both. Note things like reddit, twitter, coindesk, other crypto sites, etc will all not be counted as RS and will be useless in this exercise. It is very rare we will remove something defamatory, but it can occur on a WP:BLP, noting this article is not a BLP. WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT wont be considered anywhere. This is the wikipedia process. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 18:18, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

What RS's currently support the statement that there was a premine? I'm reading through the Tapscott reference and it doesn't mention it. I'm also searching for RS's elsewhere and cannot find anything on the subject. If this statement is not supported by an RS, it should not be in the article. HocusPocus00 (talk) 14:30, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

I found this. I dont see a premine hit when i search Tapscott. The ethereum website is not an RS, unless they refer to it as a pre-mine. "Out of the Ether: The Amazing Story of Ethereum and the $55 Million Heist" By Matthew Leising refers to premine. I dont see much else. Are there RS that say issued? Jtbobwaysf (talk) 17:13, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

QZ is a reliable source. I think that should be used instead of Tapscott. I believe it's also referred to as a premine in Russo's Infinite Machine book as well. HocusPocus00 (talk) 21:31, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

@HocusPocus00:Just seeing this now. One quick search found "mint" used to describe ICO crowdsourcing and initial issuance in the The Infinite Machine, no mention of "premine." Mastering Ethereum uses the term "mint" to describe token creation, no mention of "premine" anywhere. Mastering Ethereum written by another author also uses the word "mint" to describe tokens created for token sales. No mention of "premine" found. Ethereum-Beginner's Simplified Guide to Make Money with Ethereum mentions the public sale directly, calls it "a first supply." No mention of "premine" anywhere. Ethereum for Web Developers uses the word "mint" for referencing token creation. No mention of "premine." Introducing Ethereum and Solidity uses the term "issue" and "presale." No mention of "premine." Introduction to Blockchain and Ethereum uses the term "initial supply." No mention of "premine." Bitcoin And Ethereum Cryptocurrencies uses the term "initial supply." No mention of "premine" anywhere. Overtheradar (talk) 09:01, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

@Jtbobwaysf: Checking on any updates. I motion to change "premine" with "an initial supply" like it is on most RS.Overtheradar (talk) 04:41, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping and for the clear sources and research you have done. HocusPocus00 do you have an opinion here? David Gerard do you have an opinion, I see you used the term premine in a tweet. I too dont see too many pre-mine hits when I google in wsj and fortune. Most just cryptozines like coindesk (which we are not using anyhow). Maybe it is also a bit too jargon for wikipedia as well. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 07:29, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

@Jtbobwaysf: @Overtheradar:I am fine with "an initial supply of 72 million" as Overtheradar proposed above. "Premine" presupposes that there were entities actively mining ETH before it was launched which was not the case. ETH was crowdfunded and tokens were released to individuals who bought into the initial ICO. This new language is more accurate for the Wiki article. HocusPocus00 (talk) 14:30, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Request to lift semi-protected status

I'd like for the semi-protected status to be lifted. I don't know why the article was put into semi-protected in the first place. I didn't see much, if any, vandalism going on. 107.77.219.26 (talk) 16:39, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

It semi protected due to excessive promotional edits by IP address editors and is authorized by WP:GS/Crypto . Please create an account and feel free to join the party. I support continued restrictions on this article, it is one of the very worst of the WP:PROMO and WP:COI articles in the crypto space. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 04:53, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

interesting new update

I read this (for just one second until the paywall stopped me). Seems to say there was a major protocol change, about something. Maybe supply? This is a clear RS if someone has paywall access (I think there is a free limit per month, I guess I am over). Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 04:55, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

This is regarding EIP 1559 which is planned for the London hard fork in July or August 2021. It will burn transaction fees as opposed to providing them to miners. May be interesting to include in the Ether subsection. Thanks Hocus00 (talk) 13:37, 28 March 2021 (UTC)