4 Reasons Why Vitalik Buterin is Boycotting Coindesk’s Consensus 2018

In a series of tweets, Ethereum’s inventor Vitalik Buterin stated that he intends to boycott the 2018 annual blockchain summit organized by Coindesk – Consensus 2018. He went on to outline a few of the reasons for his decision, strongly urging others to do the same.

Buterin wasn’t too kind on Coindesk-organized Consensus 2018 conference, blasting the cryptocurrency news site, tweeting that the platform is “recklessly complicit in enabling giveaway scams.”

I am boycotting @coindesk's Consensus 2018 conference this year, and strongly encourage others to do the same. Here is my reasoning why.

1. Coindesk is recklessly complicit in enabling giveaway scams. See their latest article on OMG, which *directly links* to a giveaway scam. pic.twitter.com/WDr9uZ8XOw

— Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) April 26, 2018

Apparently, the first reason for Vitalik’s boycott was the fact that the cryptocurrency news website posted an article, linking directly to a giveaway scam. The link led to a phony site, claiming to be the official blog of OmiseGo and it said that the latter is going to do an airdrop of 0.3 OMG tokens for each token the user owns.

And this is *after* I publicly warned media to be very careful about such things. https://t.co/AxGyapFDAS

— Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) April 26, 2018

Buterin goes on to say that this obvious scam went on undetected by the media’s radars, despite the fact that he had previously warned about instances of the kind. His position is that the lack of proper investigation or, in his own their “ignorance/stupidity” further legitimizes “twitter scams.”

It’s worth noting, though, that CoinDesk went on to remove that part of their story, adding that:

UPDATE: This article has been updated to remove a link to a fraudulent website that was misrepresenting OmiseGo in an effort scam users. CoinDesk regrets the error.

Nevertheless, at this point it became obvious that the damage was pretty much done, leading to OmiseGo sharing Buterin’s position in not attending the conference. Their sentiment on the matter was also expressed in an official tweet:

We have decided to join @vitalikbuterin in not attending #Consensus2018. We can’t in good conscience support a publication that puts its readers at risk through careless reporting and reacts with hostility rather than humility when the error is brought to its attention. https://t.co/mXjCj0g5IW

— OmiseGO (@omise_go) April 26, 2018

As a reason number two, ethereum’s founder pointed out the lack of proper coverage of EIP 999.

2. Their coverage of EIP 999 was terrible. They published a highly sensationalist article claiming the chain would split, when it was very clear that EIP 999 was *very far* from acceptance.

This is why pundits need to be replaced by prediction markets, ASAP. pic.twitter.com/6A7OWlx0nR

— Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) April 26, 2018

Ethereum Improvement Protocol 999 (EIP-999) was a proposal that would have freed up some 513,000 ETH which were previously frozen in 580 Parity Library Contract wallets after a bug that was written by a developer last year in November. The community went on to vote against the proposal.

CoinDesk covered the event with an article on Wednesday, and, needless to say, Buterin wasn’t really happy with it.

When the piece was first posted, its lead sentence read “Ethereum may be on the brink of a blockchain split.” It has since been changed to the much more hushed “Ethereum appears to be at a notable crossroads on technical direction.”

Buterin’s concerns also include the media’s failure to include the feedback that they had requested from one of Ethereum’s developers Peter Szilagyi.

. @coindesk asked me a few questions about EIP-999, but for some reason didn't add even one of my answers into their piece. Maybe they preferred a more apocalyptic piece, maybe my answers were too late to incorporate. Either way, I spent time writing it, so here ya go. #Ethereum pic.twitter.com/kDVuklNiLU

— Péter Szilágyi (@peter_szilagyi) April 25, 2018

It’s worth noting that the piece has since been updated, including an UPDATE section at the top and linking to the statements of Szilagyi. Yet, Vitalik’s sentiment remains unshaken:

Seriously, is speed really that much more important to you than accuracy?

— Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) April 26, 2018

Next, he outlines that CoinDesk’s reporting policies are riddled with “gotchas” and “traps.” Posting a screenshot of the website’s “off the record” policy page, Buterin tweeted:

3. Their reporting policies are designed to trap you with gotchas. Did you know that if you send them a reply, and you explicitly say that some part is off the record, that's explicitly on the record unless you go through a request/approve dance first? pic.twitter.com/8in6ZYSPbR

— Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) April 26, 2018

Now, in all fairness, it does seem that Buterin doesn’t seem to have taken his time to research the matter. The page clearly says that if the journalist that is being addressed hasn’t previously agreed for a certain statement to be off the record, it will remain on it.

Therefore, when approaching a journalist with a sentence such as “this is off the record, but I want you to know that…” doesn’t mean that it has to stay off the record as the journalist hasn’t given his consent yet. It’s a common practice adopted in all serious media websites and publications.

Last, ethereum’s founder bashes the price of the Consensus 2018:

4. And by the way, the conference costs $2-3k to attend. I refuse to personally contribute to that level of rent seeking.

— Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) April 26, 2018

Price is always a subjective matter, so whether or not it’s high is left for the atendees to decide.

Do you think Buterin is right to call for a boycott of CoinDesk’s Consensus 2018? Please let us know in your comments below!

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