Ethereum's Dialogue Divide Is Slowing Answers to Its Toughest Questions

As ethereum, now the world’s second most valuable blockchain, grows larger and more diverse, it’s becoming clear its mechanisms for getting input from its constituency are proving problematic.

Indeed, a series of proposals targeted at controversial topics – lost fund recovery, the ether supply rate and the emergence of new mining hardware – have sparked questions within its developer ranks of late about how to coordinate messaging and find consensus among the often conflicting attitudes about the protocol’s roadmap.

Most recently, several developers even went so far as to worry such divisions could have broader repercussions after a new proposal, EIP 999, was introduced that some feared could lead to the creation of two incompatible blockchains.

And while many prominent developers, including software creator Vitalik Buterin, are pushing back on the idea that a split is probable, it remains a technical possibility, both because of the extent of the disagreement and the fact that…