Mining Pools Are Now Allowing Users to Vote on The Ethereum Soft Fork Proposal

Several mining pools have enabled the possibility for miners to express their opinion on the whole Soft fork debate. Ethpool, Ethermine, and now Dwarfpool (the biggest Ethereum mining pool) have now implemented a voting mechanism.

Dwarfpool, Ethpool, and Ethermine have enabled a voting system to allow miners to express their opinion in the Soft Fork debate. Although the number of cast votes is low, the majority of users who have already expressed their opinion seems inclined to support the fork.

At press time, the result of the votes is as follows:

• For Dwarfpool, only 2.3% of the hash power has voted, with 1.87% (507578 MH/s) in favor of a fork and 0.41% (112087) against it.
• For Ethpool, 26% of the hash power already voted, with 61,229 MH/s supporting the fork, and 18,578 MH/s opposing it.
• Similarly, Ethermine (same owners of Ethpool) is showing a 22% participation, 73,088 MH/s voting YES for a fork, and 26.252 MH/s voting NO.

The is also a spreadsheet floating around with a summary of all the pools and their voting count (possibly outdated).

The heist perpetrated by an unknown hacker (some believe that the attack was carried out by a group of people) left the DAO with a loss of 3.64 million ETH. The effect of the attack was catastrophic, Ether valuation suffered a major crash (from $21.8 to $10). DAO tokens also took major losses across the markets.

The crisis unfolded, an emergency security meeting comprised of Ethereum foundation members was held during the attack’s execution. Slock.it employees (creators of the DAO smart contract), developers and researchers came together to analyze the critic situation.

Due to the nature of the DAO Smart Contract the attacker had to use a child DAO to store the funds, however, he can’t transfer the ether right away, he/she/they have to wait until a grace period of 27 days concludes. Developers suggested and implemented the code to allow a soft fork to happen, the update will prevent the attacker from moving the funds after the grace period, effectively freezing the funds. Lefteris Karapetsis, lead developer for the german startup Slock.it explained the steps needed to recover the stolen ether under three different scenarios.

The debate has been harsh and, in some occasions, toxic, however, the community continues to discuss the implications of a hard fork, researchers and developers have expressed their opinion, with some advocating to maintain the status quo as they believe a hard fork could forever alter the perception of ‘immutability’ in Ethereum.

However, other people argue that a blockchain ultimately should serve humankind and not the other way around. After all, the stolen ether represented the hopes and dreams of a community that seeks freedom, liberty, and the possibility to invest in what they really believe in. Blockchains are supposed to bring solutions to several problems like corruption, the unaccountability of public funds and records, among others.

Disclaimer: the author of this article holds DAO tokens. 

Image via Shutterstock.

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