
Onward from the Hard Fork - sethbannon
https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/07/26/onward_from_the_hard_fork/
======
russellallen
So we now know that contracts on Ethereum mean what they say, unless there is
a community consensus that the contract actually means something else, and the
machine meaning doesn't properly reflect the intent of the parties.

But it is a little unsatisfactory to have this ad-hoc method of hard forking.
Maybe there should be in future some sort of public process to determine
whether an action is consistent with the intentional meaning of the contract
(as opposed to the machine meaning). We could all agree to appoint some
qualified person to hear disputes and determine whether the code has got it
wrong and we should fix the code with a hard fork. Let's call that person a
'judge'.

Now that judge will need to have procedures and rules. He or she isn't
deciding on a whim, after all. These rules will set out things like what
evidence the judge can look at to determine the intentional meaning of the
contract. Just for giggles, let's call one of those rules the 'parol evidence
rule'. Also, we don't want anyone to be able to bug the judge and waste their
time, so we need some rules as to who can ask the judge to look at a dispute.
I'm feeling creative, so let's call those rules 'standing rules'.

What would be really fabulous is if this system could be paid by the taxpayer
out of general revenue. That way we can reduce the likelihood of the biggest,
richest investors bribing the judges.

But this is obviously all fantasy. No one would ever build such a system.

~~~
mmsmatt
Interesting. But I'm a widget maker, not a specialist in any of those fanciful
terms you threw around. I'd like to participate in the judges' world, but my
widgets take all my time. Is there someone that can sort through the
precedents and rules on my behalf if I tell them what I need in widget-speak?

~~~
arthur_pryor
good point! another thing is, i don't really have time to read all these meta-
rules for judges, and i certainly don't have time to write new ones in detail
or to argue or vote for each one of them. is there anyway i could help choose
a representative that'd consider my interests and the interests of others and
then do the actual nitty-gritty work of writing and selecting such rules?

~~~
nordsieck
Unfortunately, it has been found that the principle-agent problem is just to
much to overcome in this case.

------
mrschwabe
It has been interesting to witness ETC (the original non forked chain) gain
momentum in the past 48 hours.

According to Poloniex, as of this post, trade volume for ETC (via BTC) is
double that of ETH today. And asking price for ETC is up 140% while ETH is
down -8%.

So this fork isn't over - in fact, there's still no guarantee it will succeed;
the ETC vs ETH battle has just begun.

~~~
erikpukinskis
It makes sense volume would be high on ETC, the market is trying to resolve
its price. The price of ETH is basically what it was before.

It also makes sense that it would be making big gains. It just crashed
basically to zero, there's nowhere to go but up.

Neither of these metrics suggest long term viability to me. Although I am
surprised it's trading as well as it is. 10% of ETH is pretty good!

~~~
mrschwabe
"Nowhere to go but up" is perfectly logical reasoning, but may be an over
simplification; as it implies speculation only.

There may be another factor involved here; perhaps the 'hive mind' (market) is
arriving to a realization...

------
peatfreak
Does anybody else find that, even though this might have been a "sensible"
decision, particularly for people who have a vested (i.e., financial)
interest, that now a lot of the "wow" factor and everything that made Ethereum
exciting, has just evaporated? Now it's clear that rather than being
idealistic and principled for the greater good, it's simply nothing more than
a way for people to make money and for the powers that be to retain the status
quo. Business as usual, "the system" will prevail. The magic has gone.

~~~
jobigoud
Yes. It will never be the same. Part of the appeal was to entirely delegate
decisions to autonomous software. The autonomy aspect has been diminished at a
meta level.

It had always been clear that there would be bugs and exploitable logic flaws
in contracts. It's inherent to the platform. It does feel like a change in
philosophy has happened now that people have invested in it, their principles
are more pragmatic and less idealistic, which might be good short term but
inevitably undermine the project.

The idea behind the project are still good I think, and position regarding
this type of incidents will be a litmus test for future platforms based on
similar concepts.

------
antonios
This situation perfectly demonstrates the possible repercussions of performing
rushed _and_ contentious hard forks (which is actually the worst way one
should do a hard fork). Possible replay attacks alone cause considerable
confusion amongst Ethereum users. I believe Vitalik and the whole Ethereum dev
team sound much more relaxed than they really are at this point.

Note that Ethereum was just used for speculation so far. Had the same thing
happened on Bitcoin, it would wreak havoc to its reputation and utility as a
token to transfer wealth...most importantly because it would destroy two very
important properties: Immutability and fungibility.

Ethereum developers don't seem to care that much about those properties so
far.

~~~
UweSchmidt
The hardfork was on a clock to prevent the "hacker" (a.k.a. the person who
just executed the code as it was coded and therefore inteded) from cashing
out.

No doubt developers went through a few extremely stressful weeks.

------
ktRolster
Generally in real currency, when the government has difficulty managing things
(like in Brazil with years of inflation), people seem to have no trouble
returning to the currency after things are apparently fixed (for example, in
Argentina where foreign investors are happy to buy government bonds now).

For that reason, I suppose Ethereum will continue to exist and draw support.

~~~
InclinedPlane
The reason why fiat currencies are stable is because they are backed by
governments. Governments who can collect taxes, set monetary policy through
central banks and mints, control inflation through various means, and so on.
Recoveries from periods of instability usually involve massive efforts from
governments to do all of those things better. Virtual currencies generally
lack all of those mechanisms, so transitioning from "trust the protocol" to
"trust the people in charge" is a huge and risky step.

~~~
mdasen
Going off this, let's say I'm paid in Bitcoin and think the US Dollar is dumb.
I still owe taxes in US Dollars and if taxes are 20-50% of what I spend money
on in the world, then I'm going to have to use the US Dollar whether I want to
or not. That gives the fiat currency weight - someone that is a third of my
budget will only accept payment in it.

That's what a virtual currency lacks - someone that is a large portion of your
spending that won't accept any other currency as payment. The US government is
a large portion of my spending and won't accept non-USD payments.

The fact that you need to pay the government money in the currency they
mandate means you'll use their currency. That guarantees users. For a virtual
currency, there's no one demanding that I use it - at least no one that's a
significant portion of my life that I can't avoid. So, I can easily leave and
never come back. But if I lose faith in the US Dollar, I still need a
significant portion of my income in dollars to give to the government.

~~~
russell_h
I'm not sure that paying (US) taxes is a good example. The effort required to
buy some virtual currency is insignificant compared to the effort required to
file a tax return.

~~~
FatalLogic
Yes, but US citizens are also legally compelled to file a tax return if their
income is above about $10,000 to $15,000. So that effort is a sunk cost for
many people.

------
chx
That people are buying and investing in bitcoin is hard to fathom but why
would anyone after this bother with ethereum? Oh well, it's good
entertainment.

I had my share of moving internationally and it's not trivial occasionally
(although Transferwise took most of the hurt out by now!) but
[https://steemit.com/ethereum/@pauls/ethereum-fork-step-by-
st...](https://steemit.com/ethereum/@pauls/ethereum-fork-step-by-step-guide-
to-safely-splitting-your-eth-etc) this is ridiculous.

Ah yes the downvote brigade is here. Hi!

~~~
erikpukinskis
I think it's a good question. And you're being polite. Not sure why you're
being downvoted.

My interest in Ethereum is twofold:

1) I got into open source software at a time when you ran software locally. An
OSS project could just post a tarball and users could download it, modify it,
and use it. That meant hosting costs were low for the developers, and most of
the computational cost was born by the users. This system has broken down in
the X-as-a-Service era. If an open source developer wants to build a web
service, they have to basically pay the entire computing bill for their users,
which can get exorbitant if your software is popular.

Ethereum is a way to socialize the hosting costs. I can write software as an
Ethereum contract, put it onto the network, and then users can pay for their
own hosting. I can do the work of setting up the necessary software
infrastructure, and they can pay for it without having to do the work of
maintaining their own server instance. Something like Ethereum is needed to
bring about a resurgence in end-user open source software.

2) Bitcoin has value because it can do some useful tasks, but not very many.
You can keep a ledger, transfer funds to another person. That's about it.
That's an advantage: it's the first mover, and it is very narrow in scope.
It's easy to reason about, and offers a clear value proposition. It is useful
the way Western Union is useful, or the way your savings account is useful.
Those are big markets, and Bitcoin is worth whatever amount of value it takes
to float some large number of transactions from the time of purchase to the
time of sale.

Ethereum does function as a currency, but that's almost a side effect. Instead
of just burning cycles on transaction processing the way Bitcoin does,
Ethereum actually does valuable work. It is useful the way Google is useful,
or the way Microsoft Word is useful. And those are _really_ big markets, and
growing. Ethereum is potentially worth whatever amount of value is required to
float that computational power between the time of purchase and the time of
execution. That could be a quite large number.

I think there will be a lot of projects like Ethereum, which do valuable work
in a decentralized way and use a currency to float the running computational
costs. Ethereum is the first credible such system we've seen and appears to be
fairly general purpose. Whether it is The One, or just The First One leaves to
be seen.

But as a speculator in currencies, I think it's a great diversification after
you've invested in Bitcoin. And I am quite certain there will be another down
the line.

~~~
chx
1) Ethereum is a clear scam after this. Your contracts say one thing unless
someone posits a vote where a miniscule fraction of the userbase votes one way
and from that point on your contract suddenly say something else.

2) Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme. It never was anything else and it will never be
anything else. That temporarily you can trade shares in a Ponzi scheme without
being badly burned is certainly a novelty but beyond that, it's a typical,
very old scam.

------
ChristianBundy
> The foundation has committed to support the community consensus on the
> admittedly difficult hard fork decision.

Consensus? The hard fork has majority support, not consensus.

~~~
mthoms
consensus [kuh n-sen-suh s]

1\. Majority of opinion: _The consensus of the group was that they should meet
twice a month._

[http://www.dictionary.com/browse/consensus](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/consensus)

~~~
Q6T46nT668w6i3m
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-
making](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making)

~~~
jacoblambda
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-
making](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making)

