Fund Recovery Is Ethereum's "Defining Moment," Developer Kasireddy Says

There is "No right answer" to ethereum's fund recovery debate.

The words were spoken by Preethi Kasireddy, a former partner at Andreessen Horowitz and former software engineer at Coinbase, during the ethereum community conference EDCON on May 4.

As the debate rages over whether ethereum should hard fork to return funds lost on the platform, including those lost in the Parity fund freeze, Kasireddy, now the founder and CEO of blockchain startup TruStory, told the audience that now was the time for the ethereum community to define its collective values.

The Parity fund freeze isn't the only instance of startups and users losing ether because of buggy code.

MyEtherWallet and Kraken lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in user funds last year because of a faulty ethereum address generator.

The fund recovery debate seemed to come to a head last week when some developers warned that due to a lack of community consensus on the topic, a split would be inevitable, though many have since come forward to state their commitment to avoiding such an outcome.

The divisive recovery question has led many developers to reassess ethereum's governance mechanisms.

A number of developers and other ethereum stakeholders got together before the conference started to hold a closed-door meeting to discuss how decisions should be made on the platform.

Kasireddy warned that a formal governance method may not be the correct resolution to the fund recovery problem.

"It's a very culturally defining moment for ethereum, because the answer is based on what our shared social norms are and what our shared political norms are. To be honest I don't think we know what those are, and that's why we're stuck at this debate."