[The following is my opinion about the conversation above in the Ethereum Classic (ETC) Discord, but because it is too long for a group chat, I post it here for easier reading.]
Regarding Meredith Patterson, I think she may be a good complement to ETC (again, ETC is permissionless, so I still think she should just start working rather than doing formal intros) because she seems to be more dedicated to the theoretical side [1].
However that role is not related, therefore is no proximate replacement of ETCDEV, as in “willing to step up and take point on ETCDEVs role”, in any way. It is much more likely a complement.
The differences between Meredith’s team work and ETCDEV’s work are:
1. Formal science vs applied science: Meredith does LANGSEC which seems to be largely research and theory. ETCDEV is primarily engineering, meaning building stuff using best practices, much of which are learned thru research and theory, first, from teams such as Meredith’s.
2. Planned vs ad hoc: Going thru the process of long research processes to come up with master-plans is useful, but blockchains, as the internet, are collections of teams dispersed around the world with different plans, goals and time preferences. It is impossible to establish centralized or generalized methodologies. They just have to learn by losing money. In the meantime, ETCDEV is far ahead in that game, building concrete solutions (such as Emerald, SputnikVM and Orbita) and establishing a clear vision for its own practice: blockchain and virtualization for decentralized computing, IoT, robotics, and smart contracts. Everything on top of ETC (see image below).
On the other hand, Meredith’s complexity vs simplicity concept is very valuable, in my opinion. I agree with the proposal to keep things as simple, thus as comprehensible by humans as possible. That is ETCDEV’s strategy on the engineering side, to breakup things into modules and keep them as lean, simple and efficient as possible.
In summary, the combination of theory and engineering is good for ETC, I do think the ecosystem lacks theory, especially more diverse sources, but one is not a replacement of the other.
Lastly, other than advocating for LANGSEC in general, I didn’t see that Meredith advocated for immutability or other blockchain principles per se [2]. It seems that LANGSEC applies to whatever blockchain philosophy an ecosystem adheres to, it’s more of a “making sure it works as intended” approach, regardless of what the intent or principles are.
References & sources:
[1] This is the LANGSEC website Meredith Patterson links to from her Twitter profile: LANGSEC: Language-theoretic Security: http://langsec.org/
[2] Meredith’s presentation at ETC Summit 2017: ETC Hong Kong summit | Meredith Patterson: https://youtu.be/rqqdFufARXA
Update 12–8–2018:
- I see Meredith has expressed cypherpunk values in the past as applied to biological research: A Biopunk Manifesto — Meredith Patterson: https://youtu.be/Thn7d7-jywU
- This is her profile on Wikipedia. Meredith worked on a paper with David Chaum about privacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meredith_L._Patterson
Update 12–10–2018:
- Meredith has a deep understanding of game theory and evolutionary game theory. I think this is very valuable for ETC as well: https://youtu.be/jWxtTsRJOYg
