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0 pointszeven78y ago0 comments

Unfortunately it's not an honest portrayal of events.

Disclaimer: I was a DAO investor. The DAO held 5% of my Ether at the time of the attack.

Having said that, it's not as simple as saying: I support the DAO refund because it was in my best interest. That doesn't necessarily follow, and it didn't necessarily follow for most of the other DAO investors.

I still held 95% of my crypto $ in Ether. I would have been happy to eat the 5% loss if it would have been the right thing to do and instilled confidence in Ethereum and its leadership. There were many debates at that time about what the right course of action was, and it was a very hard decision. If saving 5% of my investment meant I ended up with a worthless 100%, it would be foolish to save that 5%. And everyone else knew this as well.

I think the decision the Ethereum team made was the best moral and legally advisable choice. They had the opportunity to stop the theft of 14% of all Ether, which would have gone to a criminal actor. It required a very risky solution (a hard fork) which came with big consequences (an alternative chain which remains to this day), so the solution wouldn't be feasible for smaller attacks (as some people like the poster before you try to allege). But for an attack which threatened 14% of the available supply, a hard fork to retrieve the funds was a viable solution.

Most of the market agrees with this decision. In the time since the Ether market cap has grown to the second largest of any cryptocurrency at 1/2 the size of Bitcoin. The alternative chain that didn't fork is still alive but only has less than 10% of the Ether market cap. The vast majority of dApps are running on the Ether chain. And it's the chain that is being taken seriously by enterprise (look up "Enterprise Ethereum Alliance"). Large businesses know the founders can't simply hard fork whenever they want to better themselves. The model works around consensus, consensus that is clearly shown by the considerations listed above, and I am glad that the consensus model is strong enough withstand an attack on 14% of its supply and respond with a difficult solution to rescue the chain from a catastrophe. It makes me feel more confidence in the technology, the community, and the protocol.

0 comments

kej8y ago

Your whole argument is predicated on the idea that what happened with the DAO was "theft".

All the publicity for the DAO explicitly said that the code was the full specification of the contract even if it disagreed with any other statements, and the code allowed someone to transfer the funds to their own child DAO. What crime, exactly, are you accusing them of committing when everyone agreed to a contract that allowed them to do what they did? How do I know using another contract won't be labeled theft and rolled back?

> Most of the market agrees with this decision.

This is exactly the problem. Ethereum would have been interesting if it could enforce unpopular decisions because they're specified in the code and them's the rules. Instead it will enforce them as long as there's not too much public outcry. No thanks.

kefka8y ago

> Your whole argument is predicated on the idea that what happened with the DAO was "theft".

So did the Ethereum Devs, who owned a bulk of coin from the initial auction. And they just so happened to also control development of the protocol AND the client programs. This was the message they "asked" users... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/Et...

"....IN WHICH FUNDS RELATED TO THE EXPLOIT ARE RESTORED...."

Consensus is nice, especially when you can manufacture it. Noam Chomsky talks about this in great detail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTBWfkE7BXU

Chomsky: "The first place to look is, who's in a position to make the decisions that determines the way a society functions."

splintercell8y ago

Your two points:

> What crime, exactly, are you accusing them of committing when everyone agreed to a contract that allowed them to do what they did?

And

> How do I know using another contract won't be labeled theft and rolled back?

What the DAO hack revealed is the following fact, which I learned over the past year:

That there are two kinds of cryptocurrency holders, one group demands immutability at any cost, the other group demands 'reasonable immutability'.

The reason why ETH/ETC split was 90/10 because majority of the Ethereum holders fall in the second group, and majority of the people who fall in the first group holding nothing but bitcoins.

csomar8y ago

There is no morality on the blockchain.

As far as legality goes, I think the attacker is in the clear because what matters is the code and not the intentions.

fapjacks8y ago

Or, "the code is the contract" as they say.

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