Bitcoin service provider Purse.io CTO: Ethereum should "learn from the history of Bitcoin development"

Chris Jeffery, CTO of Bitcoin service provider Purse.io, suggested in a recent blog post that the Ethereum development team should learn from the Bitcoin community and learn from its failures. He pointed out that Ethereum has been ignoring threats to its stability, a problem that the Bitcoin community had solved many years ago.

Since the DAO was attacked, more than $60 million worth of ether has been stolen, causing the price of ether and DAO tokens to plummet. Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin subsequently proposed an emergency fork plan to save the situation, but the community has different attitudes towards this plan.

Jeffrey said in his blog:

To Ethereum developers/contract developers/DAO developers, before you write contracts, fork or rollback, please refer to the development history of Bitcoin blockchain. Pay more attention to abnormal transactions and study the transaction history carefully.

This blog analyzes the differences between Bitcoin and Ethereum from a technical perspective, specifically pointing out how each solves the problem of "untransacted outputs" (UTXOs).

Jeffrey admitted that Bitcoin had suffered security vulnerabilities many years ago, such as the int64 vulnerability in 2010. However, he pointed out that similar security vulnerabilities had been properly addressed before they broke out and caused the price to fall.

In a way, it’s a good thing for Bitcoin that there are security vulnerabilities. Fortunately, the problems were fixed before they got out of hand. Bitcoin always grows from its mistakes and is good at making appropriate adjustments.

In order to ensure the stable development of Bitcoin, the debate on block capacity in the community is becoming more and more intense. The discussion on segregated witness is endless. Many people began to blame the changes to the Bitcoin core protocol for taking too long.

However, Jeffrey believes that it would be too hasty to make a decision too quickly. He agrees with the attitude of developer Amir Taaki that "slow and steady development of the Bitcoin protocol is better than hasty changes."

Jeffrey believes that the DAO attack is not comparable to the Bitcoin vulnerability in 2010. Although he did not name names, he seemed to criticize Buterin's fork plan and even compared him to Mark Karpeles. He believes that Buterin's handling of the DAO this time is similar to Mark Karpeles' handling of the Mt. Gox incident.
He concluded:

I think the two things are not comparable for the following reasons:

1. Bitcoin did not lose a single cent in the 2010 vulnerability incident.

2. Satoshi Nakamoto did not blacklist any addresses or attempt to retrieve funds through human intervention at the time.

3. Satoshi Nakamoto had successfully resolved the issue before it became a serious problem.

4. Satoshi Nakamoto did not notify any exchange to stop Bitcoin trading, nor did he attempt to control the market alone.

5. That incident occurred in 2010 and did not pose as great a risk as the DAO.

6. In the end, Satoshi did not rewrite history. He simply fixed a bug. Bitcoin users, including miners, updated the protocol to invalidate the blocks with the bug. The problematic chain was eventually reorganized and a new main chain took its place.