Vitalik: Centralized USDC could decide future of controversial ETH hard forks

Speaking at the BUIDL Asia event in Korea, Vitalik Buterin said centralized stablecoins like USDC and USDT will become important decision makers in future hard forks.< /p> New

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said that centralized stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) could become “an important decision maker in future controversial hard forks”.

Buterin was speaking at the BUIDL Asia conference in Seoul on Wednesday, along with Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of Near Protocol, to discuss the upcoming Ethereum merger.

The Ethereum co-founder argued that centralized stablecoins could be an “important” blockchain protocol decision maker that the industry would “respect” in hard forks.

A hard fork occurs when there is a drastic change in the protocol of a blockchain network that effectively results in two versions. Usually one string ends up being preferred over another:

"At the time of the merge you will have two [separate] networks [...] and then you have exchanges, you have Oracle vendors, you have stablecoin vendors who sort of decide which one they respect ."

"Because at that point you'll have 100 billion USDT on one chain and 100 billion USDT on the other chain, cryptographically - and so they [Tether] have to stop respecting the one of them," Buterin explained. .

However, Buterin said he "saw no indication" that such a claim would be a problem in the upcoming Ethereum merger, noting that the centralized stablecoin issue is more of a concern for future hard forks.

“I think in the more distant future it will definitely become more of a concern. Basically, the fact that...