Vitalik — a big fan of your work, as you well know, but on this point you’re misreading the lay of the land.

1. Strong-arming Szabo?

It’s Szabo who is agitating for change under the guise of absolute/maximalist “write your own law.” But that’s not recognized, anywhere — even in the most freedom of contract loving jurisdictions out there.

So what Szabo is continuing to do is suggest that: (1) complete “write your own law” (aka “crypto maximalism” aka, in your words, “immutabilism,” etc.) is settled doctrine; (2) that it can underpin a globally scaling blockchain ecosystem (hint: it can’t); (3) and that anyone who even remotely calls this into question on empirical/doctrinal grounds is an “interventionist,” a “statist,” or worse.

Your characterization that Szabo is creating a Schelling fence is too charitable. Szabo’s posture and arguments aren’t a Schelling fence; they’re a classic shell game.

In this shell game, whenever someone calls Szabo’s lawgic into question, he switches up the arguments — shifting the burden of decrypting the mess onto others. Then, whenever he’s actually being shelled by sound logical/lawgical arguments — like Vlad’s — he retreats back into his shell, snapping at anyone who dares come close.

Vlad is 100% correct to identify this as a political posture and to draw logical inferences from Nick’s shelled-out arguments. It’s Nick’s job to explain what fences and walls he’s building; not any of ours.

2. Enumerated Lists

Your list of scenarios that highlight tensions between Vlad’s CryptoLaw #1, #2 & #3 is very well taken. Your insistence on specific examples in the parallel twitter thread is well taken. Examples and explanations help to flesh out the scope of any legal theory.

But to echo the title of Szabo’s blog — (unenumerated@blogspot) and his overall legal theoretical posture, we can and should also analyze the crypto legal landscape on much more abstract planes. This helps sharpen the stakes, especially in global jurisdictional terms.

Vlad’s suggested framework is very useful in this respect. Will take some time to engage with his analysis more fully over the coming days. But in the meanwhile, just want to urge everyone to censure (not censor, but censure) Szabo’s especially nasty modes of argumentation. Vlad is absolutely right to call it out as needlessly aggressive, insecure, and ultimately, ineffective.

It just sucks that we all have to stoop to that level to get through today’s hard crypto legal/theoretical road forks.