
The DAO Disaster Illustrates Differing Philosophies in Bitcoin and Ethereum - ca98am79
https://www.coingecko.com/buzz/dao-disaster-differing-philosophies-bitcoin-ethereum?locale=en
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aakilfernandes
Such a fork would be more difficult in Bitcoin due to their
political/financial (not necessarily technical) decentralization. This fork,
if it happens, will be proof that Ethereum is far behind bitcoin in terms of
decentralization.

~~~
WorldMaker
«This fork, if it happens, will be proof that Ethereum is far behind bitcoin
in terms of decentralization.»

Wouldn't a fork imply _more_ decentralization? Multiple active forks would
imply multiple actors working to their own agendas towards different
objectives/goals and no central fiat to realign their interests. That would
certainly sound more decentralized to me. (The block size tangle and the
inability for Bitcoin to fork recently to deal with that almost certainly
sounded like a power/political centralization problem to this lay observer
from what I was reading, but I've managed to stay somewhat unfamiliar with
much of the technical nuance.)

It seems to me like a truly decentralized system would likely be prone to
forking. The issue should likely not be whether the system can fork (and how
difficult it might be), but how the system handles forks when it does fork.

(This is the "DVCS criteria": a DVCS must realize that merges must be common
and handle sometimes heavily divergent forks well and with grace, otherwise it
is a bad DVCS that users will hate.)

~~~
mhluongo
Not really, if the fork is orchestrated and primarily by one group (the
Ethereum Foundation).

------
draw_down
> _Going from ‘The DAO is based on Unstoppable Code’ to ‘if we screw up badly
> enough, WE WILL FORK YOU’ is a big change that shouldn’t be taken lightly_

This is what I find so galling. If code is code is code, then the outcome
should be what the code says it is. But whoops, we decided we don't like the
outcome so let's toss that out.

~~~
wodencafe
That's how decentralized open source projects work.

------
triadicmonad
The value of money is subjective. Governments drain the value of fiat currency
by printing and spending. This causes people to subjectively value the
currency less, which makes its market value go down (inflation.)

There are several reasons why this is not the case with Eth/DAO:

1) Every fraction of Ethereum is accounted for in the public record.

2) No additional Ethereum was created to compensate the losses of investors,
only the original stolen Ethereum is being returned.

3) No politician's pockets are being padded, the only receivers of value are
the rightful owners of DAO Tokens. (Only ETH was stolen, not tokens - everyone
still has their tokens.)

4) If some government took this as precedent to force a bail-out in the future
Ethereum Ecosystem, based on the standards of the Ethereum community, the
value of Ethereum under an actual government-instituted bailout would plummet.
It goes against everything we believe in, and the subjective valuation of
Ethereum on a mass scale would plummet, effectively making any funds doled out
worth only a fraction of their value by the time the receiver had any chance
to use them.

I could go on giving more reasons, but is it really necessary? No one should
be attempting to make analogies between fiat currency controls and an Ethereum
fork unless they've considered both the philosophical and economic
implications of their arguments, and it's obvious that most anti-forkers
haven't bothered to give due diligence to the question of what's really at
stake here.

~~~
jsprogrammer
The ETH wasn't really stolen though. I thought a contract was submitted and
then executed?

~~~
triadicmonad
Do you really find that answer a satisfying resolution?

~~~
beefield
I do not think there exists a satisfying resolution. In the terms of Chess,
this is pretty much a definition of checkmate. Either you think that the
intent of the DAO actually was specified in the code, thus it was not a theft,
or you think that the intent of the DAO actually was _not_ specified in the
code, but somewhere else[1], and the whole raison d'etre of DAO disappears to
the air as a puff of smoke. No moves left either way.

[1]Where?

------
swalsh
Perhaps the next big of development the Ethereum guys need to build is a
decentralized court system.

~~~
aakilfernandes
Or perhaps if you want mutable contracts based on intent, you could use one of
the 253 legal systems that already provide you with that.

~~~
swalsh
There's boatloads of value in a decentralized block chain approach to legal
organizations.... What's amazing here is the ethereal guys are forging new
territory for truly global and potentially leaderless commerce.

What's unfortunate is that it's taking the form of a dystopia. Instead of
realizing that humans are a factor of the equation, and people doing business
in God faith... We're entering a ruthless period where anything goes, and
because it's all anonymous no one feels bad about it.

There's crazy potential in the ideas here, but it's way too Wild West.

~~~
aakilfernandes
If you want the benefits of a blockchain without the Wild West stuff, why not
set up a private chain with an "approver" instead of miners? I'm sure many
companies interested in Ethereum are going this route.

~~~
kang
Private/Federated blockchains are just applied cryptography, which is not the
same as the technology behind bitcoin; blockchain & proof-of-work.

~~~
aakilfernandes
Agreed. I think the ship has sailed on the term "blockchain" and it no longer
requires decentralization. It means a signed transaction log which can't be
secretly forged. Not as sexy as bitcoin, but language is fluid and I think the
definition has shifted.

~~~
kang
> "which can't be secretly forged"

Not possible without proof-of-work

~~~
aakilfernandes
Sure it is. If all blocks are relayed to all participants, theyll have a
record of whenever theres an attempt to change the block history.

All they need to do is show two coflicting blocks signed by the "approver"

~~~
kang
How was this not possible earlier?

------
haakon
In a similar and slightly broader vein, I recommend this article: "Ethereum’s
DAO Forking Crisis: The Bitcoin Perspective" \-
[https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/ethereum-s-dao-
forking-...](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/ethereum-s-dao-forking-
crisis-the-bitcoin-perspective-1467404395)

------
nkuttler
Smart contracts that can be modified post-hoc, through consensus or (after a
precedent was made that it is possible) legislation or a judge are not smart.

~~~
swalsh
A loophole in a contract is a bug in a smart contract. The difference is if
you try to egregiously exploit a loophole there's a system of checks and
balances... it's imperfect, but at least it tries to be fair.

Smart contracts are one-sided. The exploiter always wins if the contract
writer made a stupid mistake.

WHY would you want that system?

~~~
jjnoakes
That's kind of the point. If you don't want a smart contract, use the existing
systems.

Why would you need Ethereum if the contracts you want to enforce shouldn't be
"smart"?

------
nxzero
>> "it seems that funds can still be reverse under certain circumstances"

Maybe it's me, but ideas like being able to reverse funds do not belong in
crypto currencies. If risk is presented, escrow the transfer, buy insurance,
etc.

Why are people so unwilling to take responsibility for themselves?

~~~
sliverstorm
There are all kinds of completely legitimate (IMO) reasons to want the ability
to reverse a transaction. See theft, fraud, PayPal scams, etc.

We certainly could insist the victim live with it, but that seems like a worse
world for everyone.

~~~
ubersync
Wish I had the ability to downvote. What you are doing is there dictionary
definition of trolling. I'm sorry for your loss, but please do not put the
whole Ethereum project in danger.

~~~
sliverstorm
Call me a troll if you like. I have nothing to do with Ethereum, I just don't
believe in the sanctity of all transactions, and _" it's your fault, you
should have bought transaction insurance"_ sounds like victim blaming.

------
codys
My impression from all of this is simply that the tools (and perhaps the
etherium op codes themselves) for writing smart contracts still need work.

When programming for hardware began, it was very easy to shoot yourself in the
foot with languages of the time, but over time new languages which made it
harder (or eliminated certain foot-guns entirely) appeared.

For Etherium, I'd look at whether the ISA (set of opcodes) is complete enough
to allow one to create a contract specification language with enough
flexibility to do something while allowing a degree a safety.

Have there been attempts at alternates to Etherium's Solidity which generate
smart contracts?

~~~
drcode
There have been many other languages before solidity (LLL, Serpent, others)
Solidity is actually pretty well engineered, it is problematic mainly because
it put beginner-friendliness before security as a design goal.

I think the future the ethereum smart contract options will consist of (1)
Solidity with many static analysis tests added to generate warnings about
dangerous code use and (2) an ML-style language that is less novice-friendly
but allows for deep type-level constraints to mitigate potential attack
scenarios.

------
cloudjacker
Bitcoin has reversed funds multiple times via hard forks. The only thing this
article proves is that ethereum is young

~~~
ubersync
That is not true. Bitcoin has never reversed a transaction without a
signature.

The only time you are probably talking about is when someone made a block with
a 9 billion bitcoin reward. Even then, they just convinced the miners to start
a different chain. Thus, the chain with the 9 billion coins block just died.
So yea, no reversal without a signature, ever!

~~~
cloudjacker
oh without a signature, a completely irrelevant qualifier that I didn't even
make as a prerequisite!

I'm also referring to the march 2013 hard fork

so congratulations you just helped me prove my "multiple times" for the lay
man

~~~
ubersync
What happened in March 2013? Which transaction was reversed?

~~~
cloudjacker
every transaction that happened to be on the dropped chain.

I never said the hard fork was specifically to target a particular
transaction, the result is that every transaction on the dropped chain was
reversed.

------
Kinnard
I wonder how this would look today:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11641111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11641111)

------
jmount
Found the linked article [http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/06/28/ethereum-
soft-fork-...](http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/06/28/ethereum-soft-fork-
dos-vector/) very interesting as it points out the soft fork proposal
essentially introduces a 2nd kind of exception semantics into the the Ethereum
protocol. This in turn could be converted into a griefing attack on miners
supporting the soft fork. The system level semantics and consequences don't
really seem to be under control.

~~~
aakilfernandes
This soft fork has been abandoned, and the discussion had moved to a hard
fork.

~~~
jmount
Yes I know the soft fork proposal is off the table. I just thought it
interesting it got so far, given it would introduce additional flaws.

------
onestone
Note that Bitcoin Core contributors have been openly hostile to Ethereum in
many cases. So this article is a bit like asking Hitler how Hanukkah should be
celebrated.

~~~
seibelj
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law)

