Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin is fending off naysayers who believe the smart contract platform is simply extending the life of the legacy financial system instead of offering a truly decentralized alternative.
In a debate on Twitter, Buterin counters a statement from the founder of CriptoNoticias who says the Ethereum-based decentralized finance movement, which is designed to offer a way to access services like loans without intermediaries, is actually creating an ecosystem that’s chock full of middlemen.
I really and truly think it's the opposite. BTC people seem happy to have lots of centralized middlemen (bitmex, tether, liquid….) and it's the ETH community that's trying to decentralize these functions with smart contract constructions.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) May 8, 2020
Buterin also lists a few Ethereum-based systems that he says have remained faithful to the decentralized nature of cryptocurrency, including decentralized exchanges, the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), and automated exchange protocol Uniswap.
While there may be a rift between the Bitcoin and Ethereum communities, Buterin also wants to build a decentralized bridge between the two leading crypto assets that will allow users to directly convert ETH to BTC and vice versa.
“We should put resources toward a proper (trustless, serverless, maximally Uniswap-like UX) ETH <-> BTC decentralized exchange.
It’s embarrassing that we still can’t easily move between the two largest crypto ecosystems trustlessly.”
