The existence of ETC says to me that ETH has the same problem, that is a bunch of power users can change the rules if they want to (if it is financially beneficial for them to do so). No different to a fiat currency controlled by the government.
Yeah that's just wrong. If you want to change the rules, you need to update the client software which means forking. Are you saying that a group of core devs can fork the chain and not have it be contentious?
