31–40 of 85 posts
If the intent of the DAO was to create a decentralized system that people could buy into so that they can vote/participate in investment opportunities presented by other members, then the big question I have is why was the system implemented in such a way as to hold all investment funds up front? Wouldn't a more secure implementation have allowed members to buy in for a nominal fee and keep their investment funds out…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can't possibly create a smart contract to purchase a house, because at the end of the day the person that physically occupies the house is in the position of power I can imagine a future where blockchain-based logic is used to drive robots, bridging the gap with the real world. To me, blockchains seem like a proto-DNA set to evolve as a base for AI; perhaps we are at ground zero for the primordial soup of futur…
I don't think anything can evolve in a space that wastes that much energy with proof-of-work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think anything can evolve in a space that wastes that much energy with proof-of-work.
Your DNA doesn't change very much throughout the course of your life. One a program is on a blockchain, much less energy is expended to maintain it compared with the POW used to create the block..
Interesting change of attitude! I was just watching a talk[1] from a couple of years ago where Vitalik says "there are a substantial number of applications where you can actually say yes 'I am 99.9 percent certain this is bug free'". Amazing how much a few years of industry practice can humble a young software engineer.
The fact that people are making Ponzi schemes and calling them Ponzi schemes tells you everything you need to know about the gullibility of the cryptocurrency community.
If you know you're giving money to a ponzi scheme and see all the rules of it, is it really a ponzi scheme/gullibility? It sounds just as interesting as betting on sports / stockmarket / ... People still play roulette or blackjack, even though they know they're guaranteed to lose in a long run / on average.
Ethereum/DAO would be much less of a tire fire embarassment if the management had taken some time to learn anything about the basics of contracts and law, instead of making it up as they go and assuming the entirety of centuries of civilization has no clue what they were doing.
Smart contracts are a very good thing, but they won't become perfectly safe any time soon (if ever), so the community should recognize that civil and criminal law are a safety net, likely to help smart contract get wider use, because of they create increased trust.
> The reason for this fundamental conclusion is as follows. All instances of smart contract theft or loss – in fact, the very definition of smart contract theft or loss, is fundamentally about differences between implementation and intent. This is, I think, to its core the fundamental problem with any kind of rigid language in contracts. It's nice to see an acknowledgement of its existence, but disappointing to see n…
Absolutely. This drastically limits the scope of smart contracts. You can do all kinds of interesting stuff with the contracts and digital money, like ponzi schemes, simple gambling games, and so on, but you can't link them with the real world without relying on some third party trust. And once you require trust, then you might as well implement the whole thing in the real world.
Incidentally, this is also the killer problem with Slock.it's (the DAO creators) other project, their 'digital locks', physical padlocks that would open or close based upon smart contracts. They were fundamentally flawed because it's impossible to prove that a physical lock is tied to the blockchain. There's no proof that it will honour a smart contract, so the whole system again relies on third party trust.
Specific vulnerabilities aside, I think any reader should stop trusting the judgment or effectiveness of Ethereum-backed projects at this point. Probably better doing the DAO as a well-managee, centralized non-profit to test crowd-funding scheme while Ethereum continues baby steps toward a distributed scheme that works.
Ethereum/DAO would be much less of a tire fire embarassment if the management had taken some time to learn anything about the basics of contracts and law, instead of making it up as they go and assuming the entirety of centuries of civilization has no clue what they were doing.
They were indeed very naive. In the history of law, there has always been a divide between those who believe that the letter of law should be applied no matter what, and those who believe that social justice should be ensured. Whatever the terms of theDAO, there WILL be judges to find that what just happened to it is theft. That is why instead of damaging trust in Ether by forking it, the ethereum/DAO management shou…
I am not completely sure if it went to court and it was litigated fully it would be found that the theDAO smart contracts that were buggy could be rolled back to what was "intended" as there was language that specifically denied that form of reasoning. theDAO clearly fucked up but that doesn't invalidate a contract. The intent in the contract was actually clearly declared, the smart contract was binding in its form. The smart contract's intent was its code. It's code was buggy. Thus one will have to litigate in court whether intent can inferred from buggy code and whether a software bug can be rules as outside of intent. Rolling back transactions like that are really exceptional.
I think it is quite interesting. A lot of people in the stock market have lost money because of software bugs, although everyone didn't agree beforehand that that software was the intent. I think it could go either way with theDAO's software contract if it was litigated.
That said you could possibly sue the implementers of the smart contract for negligence to try to recover the loss, or those that advertized theDAO as a viable investment vehicle for false advertizing or misleading one about safety, both of those are much more straight forward legal avenues.