Genetic Purity Fallacy Fallacy

In his works Cryptoeconomics Erik Voskuil attempts to explain and define what he call the Genetic Purity Fallacy. He intros the concept of “genetic purity” as follows:

There is a theory that a coin is strongest when all validation is performed by a common implementation. According to this theory the complexity of consensus rule implementation implies a likelihood that multiple implementations will diverge, resulting an inadvertent chain split. The split implies financial loss by people on the weaker side.

This would be a response to Satoshi’s sentiment that he believed that a 2nd implementation of bitcoin would always be net negative to the consensus of the system:

I don’t believe a second, compatible implementation of Bitcoin will ever be a good idea. So much of the design depends on all nodes getting exactly identical results in lockstep that a second implementation would be a menace to the network.

It is relevant and notable to point out that Voskuil does in fact maintain and endorse an alternative implementation of bitcoin called “libbitcoin”.

Where we can see the fallacy of Voskuil’s assertion that ‘multiple implementations are a negative benefit to the system-is a fallacy’ is found here:

The split implies financial loss by people on the weaker side.

Furthermore, Eric continues his nefarious wrapped extension of Satoshi’s sentiments in his conclusion:

A single implementation would produce a weakness directly analogous to that of a living species with genetic uniformity. In the case of a single implementation, both internal and external updates penetrate the economy quickly and deeply. The financial impact of a split is therefore more significant than that caused by a less widely-deployed implementation. In a scenario where ten implementations each supporting an even fraction of the economy there would be risk to at most 10% of the economy for any given update, whereas the update of a single universally-deployed implementation reaches the maximum split risk of 50%.

Eric is speaking to the concept of “economic harm” while Satoshi is speaking to the “problem of consensus”. This is why in Eric’s math the more implementations there are the more secure (ECONOMICALLY or FINANCIALLY!) the system is whereas in Satoshi’s view the more implementations there are the LESS secure the system is (from a CONSENSUS perspective!).

Eric added the economic and financial considerations in order to make his strawman fallacy of Satoshi’s prescient comments.

It is this nefarious wrapping that allows Eric to conclude the opposite of Satoshi who is obviously an expert on the fields related to bitcoin and most specifically consensus field theory:

The theory is therefore not only invalid but expresses the opposite of actual behavior.

Eric’s strawman fallacy is therefore invalid and harmful to the general audience’s understanding of bitcoin’s security mechanisms.