Excellent article, thanks for putting this information together. I'm one of those sad saps that got REALLY excited about Ethereum when it was about $9 and talking it up to my friends, but for some reason never took the plunge.... well hindsight is 20-20 and all.
Anyway, I would like to voice a slightly different perspective that likely stems from my ignorance in large part, that I would like to hear your perspective about. I just wonder if it is appropriate to discuss the choice to hard or soft fork as one of freedom/censorship? For example, if you think about Steem's delegated proof-of-stake model, it is (as far as I know) not possible to have a hard fork. And it seems like there are other platforms for smart contracts popping up that include a meta-governance layer for resolving these issues 'democratically' that eliminates the need (and ability?) to hard fork. So, it's likely that system upgrades will inevitably arise which do not have 100% support, but ultimately, a dissenting individual could still launch a new chain using the previous state of the existing blockchain as an initial condition, along with new witnesses (for DPOS) and new upgrades. For example, Steem cannot hard fork, but nevertheless, GOLOS exists, because Russian speakers wanted a more friendly platform for themselves. So that, even without the ability to hardfork, those users still have built the platform they desired.
So you mentioned
It is important that we avoid soft forks or other protocol changes that could endanger the explicit choice of a hard fork.
which I'm not sure I understand, because even on a platform where hard forks are not possible, users still have freedom as long as the codebase is open and 'free'.
I'd be interested in your thoughts, and maybe you could elaborate on the quote that I mentioned of yours.
Best,
Trogdor
Well from a freedom perspective, it is very much the hardfork that ensures that freedom. Google Hardfork: the tale of the full node referendum to read more about this perspective.
Steem's DPOS gives it very different rules when it comes to resolving consensus.
Hardforks are always possible with consensus. Even on steem. Users may not have freedom if the economic control of a network is malicious.
Hardforks preserve freedom of explicit choice at all times.