Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority • Hacker News Board

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#41

Post by nxzero » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 3:11 PM UTC

markkat wrote: post #26

I am surprised how so many seem to think this is a bad thing. Ethereum is very nascent, and this was how the community wanted to fix this issue. It was not just about returning DTH, it was about the implications of the allocation of the DTH in the hands of one individual when Ethereum moves to PoS. Obviously the HF isn't ideal, but not forking was potentially much worse. This settles the issue, and allows people to g…

ETH miners haven't enforced anything. Do you really believe that they're not playing both forks as an option until it's clear what's going to happen?

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#42

Post by zanny » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 3:12 PM UTC

ohnomrbill wrote: post #10

alexbock wrote: post #6

Looking in from the outside as someone with no involvement with Ethereum, I really don't understand how the people behind it can justify using their privileged position as developers and community leaders to try to undo this. They spent a lot of time talking about how "the code is the contract"... until they stood to be negatively impacted on a personal level by allowing the literal meaning of the code to stand. I'm…

Yep - I don't see the draw for new investors now. We know they will rollback contracts that are financially damaging enough, except with ETH there is no legal recourse in the case of disputed transactions. From the outside looking in, it just seems like a generally worse traditional currency.

It requires consensus in the chain to make such a fork. While you can argue against raw direct democracy of hash power like that, anyone who believes the state does not represent the will of the people should be strongly interested in something like Eth where the will of the majority is absolute.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#43

Post by tromp » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 3:12 PM UTC

eggie wrote: post #11

seibelj wrote: post #8

Someone probably has another exploit queued up, so they can immediately create the need for another fork. Ethereum contracts have a giant target on them for security researchers who want to earn money.

> Ethereum contracts have a giant target on them for security researchers who want to earn money. This is true, but the fork suggests the only way to do this will be by shorting the currency rather than trading the ETH earned from exploits.

Another way is to be not as blatantly greedy. Like, steal half a million instead of 60 million.

That would have made it so much harder to justify a hard fork...

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#44

Post by markkat » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 3:14 PM UTC

nxzero wrote: post #41

markkat wrote: post #26

I am surprised how so many seem to think this is a bad thing. Ethereum is very nascent, and this was how the community wanted to fix this issue. It was not just about returning DTH, it was about the implications of the allocation of the DTH in the hands of one individual when Ethereum moves to PoS. Obviously the HF isn't ideal, but not forking was potentially much worse. This settles the issue, and allows people to g…

ETH miners haven't enforced anything. Do you really believe that they're not playing both forks as an option until it's clear what's going to happen?

If you look at the OP's link:

http://fork.ethstats.net/

you can see that the miners have indeed enforced the hard fork chain.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#45

Post by zanny » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 3:14 PM UTC

api wrote: post #16

alexbock wrote: post #6

Looking in from the outside as someone with no involvement with Ethereum, I really don't understand how the people behind it can justify using their privileged position as developers and community leaders to try to undo this. They spent a lot of time talking about how "the code is the contract"... until they stood to be negatively impacted on a personal level by allowing the literal meaning of the code to stand. I'm…

What's funny is that the message in Bitcoin's genesis block is about this. The idea of doing something better than current financial systems gained traction after the US Fed hard forked the dollar to fix the housing bubble crash. (The degree of manipulation in 2008 to reflate the banking system resembles a hard fork.) Money is a signaling mechanism. It carries information. If you invalidate mistakes, you keep the eco…

Except "learning" in Etherium's case would have been to abandon the currency due to its insecurity, probably fork the code, and just start over from block 0 again.

The fact that didn't happen meant most people didn't want it to happen. If people did want a reset to compensate for the insecurity in the DAO it would have happened.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#46

Post by themgt » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 3:16 PM UTC

tankenmate wrote: post #14

echelon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prior to this fork, I had interest in Ethereum. I don't want to touch it now, out of both mistrust and the feeling that the developers are lacking in ethics. It really feels like a pyramid scheme if they're not willing to let the technology stand on its own. It's really a shame. Maybe some other group will fork the Ethereum code into a new cryptocurrency that can't have the blockchain forked as easily.

Ethereum is a human construct; written by humans, directed by humans, and facilitated by humans (no skynet has come along to do mining). Ipso facto, it is fallible just like humans. You think it is a bad thing that this has happened; I think it is a good thing. Now everyone is aware that the 51% can take control of the chain; you can't pretend any more that the code is the final arbiter, because it isn't. Black and w…

No, the problem is you've replaced code-is-contract with an insider-run Politburo who decides to put referenda up to a vote with their preferred choice set as default and propagandized to the community from the top-down. I have long thought anarchist digital currency is bound to fail because of the need for a political superstructure able to make some decisions. The problem is now you've thrown out 3000 years of political thought and replaced it with ... whatever the hell the process behind these decisions is now.

What you would actually need to do this right is put real thought and effort into how to have an effective, impartial and ethical governing body managing a digital currency. Giving the primary stakeholders carte blanche to make these decisions is basically recreating a virtual version of "company scrip".

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#47

Post by ohnomrbill » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 3:23 PM UTC

zanny wrote: post #42

ohnomrbill wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep - I don't see the draw for new investors now. We know they will rollback contracts that are financially damaging enough, except with ETH there is no legal recourse in the case of disputed transactions. From the outside looking in, it just seems like a generally worse traditional currency.

It requires consensus in the chain to make such a fork. While you can argue against raw direct democracy of hash power like that, anyone who believes the state does not represent the will of the people should be strongly interested in something like Eth where the will of the majority is absolute.

Agreed on the consensus; the nice thing about making decisions with a currency is that people can vote with their money. But I can buy other state-backed currencies today, some of which I trust to represent my interests. They have the benefit of an established legal system too, which Ethereum does not.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#48

Post by daveguy » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 3:25 PM UTC

davidgerard wrote: post #25

skybrian wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to justify it might be to consider this a beta period. It is still early days for this new currency and perhaps when the system is more robust, they will be able to walk away. But the question is whether that day will ever come, or the currency will always need emergency overrides.

"beta" isn't really an excuse for a clustercuddle involving $150 million.

Upvoted for the term clustercuddle. A couple of points:

1) It's probably not unusual to have $150 million in value tied up on the success or failure of a beta.

2) Calling this "beta" was a stretch. I'm of the opinion that the first "beta" should almost always still be called an "alpha" until in-the-wild bug fixes. However, it would be difficult to get $150 million invested on alpha software. It may have been beta for etherium, but it was definitely alpha of DAO.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#49

Post by petertodd » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 3:28 PM UTC

chejazi wrote: post #27

cloudjacker wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Block height has nothing to do with it

The longest chain always wins. Block height tells you which chain is longer. Am I missing something?

The chain with most work _thats valid_ wins.

Post-bailout Ethereum is not the same currency as pre-bailout, and given that a non-trivial minority (~5%) of miners are mining pre-bailout Ethereum - and the difficulty of mining quickly adjusts - pre-bailout Ethereum will actually be a viable currency from a technical perspective, in the sense that it can be sent and received.

From a social perspective, it's hard to be sure quite yet; we'll see in the coming days and weeks whether or not people decide that pre-bailout Ethereum has value or not (and equally, post-bailout Ethereum).

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#50

Post by tankenmate » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 3:29 PM UTC

themgt wrote: post #46

tankenmate wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum is a human construct; written by humans, directed by humans, and facilitated by humans (no skynet has come along to do mining). Ipso facto, it is fallible just like humans. You think it is a bad thing that this has happened; I think it is a good thing. Now everyone is aware that the 51% can take control of the chain; you can't pretend any more that the code is the final arbiter, because it isn't. Black and w…

No, the problem is you've replaced code-is-contract with an insider-run Politburo who decides to put referenda up to a vote with their preferred choice set as default and propagandized to the community from the top-down. I have long thought anarchist digital currency is bound to fail because of the need for a political superstructure able to make some decisions. The problem is now you've thrown out 3000 years of poli…

I think you might be misunderstanding authority. Authority doesn't come from lording it over people, or making the best decisions. Authority comes from submission; as long as someone submits to you you have authority over them, likewise anything you submit to has authority over you. The submissive person in the relationship has all the power; they are the one who gets to say "stop".

In this case the various arguments were put forward by various people; this included rants, well researched documents, but most importantly code. In the end most people submitted to the code that was put out there by the main group. But still this submission is a choice.

The main group survives by this submission, but it isn't their choice; this is government by consent. You may not consent to it, but plenty others have.

So if you don't like it I suggest you follow Alan Kay's advice; "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." If you want to influence the situation go write better code; of course you need good ideas for that code, but you still need to ship code! Otherwise the cost of submission is too high for most people and they won't follow you.