The Chopping Block: ETHPoW Is 'a Terrible Way to Fork the Blockchain' - Ep. 396

Welcome to The Chopping Block! Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Robert Leshner and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest news in the digital asset industry. In this episode, Emin Gün Sirer, the emperor of Avalanche, also joined the conversation



Show topics: Gün’s take on the Ava Labs conspiracy story and whether there was any truth in the videos The impact of the Merge on ETH issuance and energy usage What’s going on with the ETHPoW fork, and how the team has been messing up The TL;DR of the technical side of Ethereum scaling, explained by Tarun How, in the beginning, proof of stake was designed to resemble proof of work  What Ethereum miners are going to do after the Merge Whether increasing hash rates spike prices of PoW coins  How the Basic Attention Token is like the Stanford prison experiment Whether the fights between Gün and other founders were positive or negative How an exchange delisted every privacy coin Whether Coinbase's support of the lawsuit against the US Treasury over Tornado Cash was a PR move How this moment in history resembles the 90s and the rise of the internet Whether there are blockchain-haters and what the crypto industry can do better How there can’t be a single chain to meet every need How FTX and Coinbase have different approaches to regulation  How would everyone celebrate a successful Merge and whether there’s a chance of it failing


Hosts Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly Capital Tarun Chitra, managing partner at Robot Ventures Robert Leshner, founder of Compound 


Guest Emin Gün Sirer, Founder and CEO of Ava Labs
Episode Links
Ava Labs Accusations: Emin Gün Sirer’s statement CoinDesk article  Crypto Leaks article
Tornado Cash Treasury Press release  Coinbase supports lawsuit against US Treasury Huobi delisting privacy coins Previous coverage of the Tornado Cash Sanctions on Unchained: Is TRM Labs Blocking Addresses From DeFi Protocols? Ari Redbord Says No  Tornado Cash Sanctioned. Did the Government Overstep Its Bounds? The Chopping Block: Did OFAC Overstep by Sanctioning Tornado Cash? Given the Sanctions on Tornado Cash, Is Ethereum Censorship Resistant? Preston Van Loon on Ethereum's Merge and His Lawsuit Against Treasury
ETH Proof of Work and Miners: ChainID missing; the request from Coinbase
CoinDesk article The ETHPoW team said the fork will be deployed within 24 hours of the Merge ETHPoW team’s promise to abolish EIP-1559 ETHPoW first blocks
The Merge: Ethereum Foundation Merge announcement. Ethereum carbon emission reductions.