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Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

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Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#91

Post by zeven7 »

EdHominem wrote: post #88
Lawtonfogle wrote: post #79

Any chance the one who ran this exploit can sue for the money they were due? If the code IS the contract, then by the contract they are owed this money, no? Or does this mean the code isn't the contract?

It's worth a try. They have ~$60 million to promise to shareholders in the lawsuit. They paid to participate in a code-based Nomic and were denied their prize because they won too quickly.

In order to start litigation, they would have to reveal their identity. Among other things, this could bring them their own legal troubles.

I am surprised the attacker didn't try to bribe the miners, though.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#92

Post by zenogais »

dnautics wrote: post #53
zenogais wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the interesting thing here is the "majority assent" phrase. All the polls I saw included Really this shows that a small group of people plus a core team already leaning in one direction are probably enough to fork the network.

that's fine. Those figures just say that many people are ok with whatever. Ultimately: If you don't like it, then you can leave. And if you aren't paying attention, then, well, you obviously don't care enough about that asset.

There we go, just wanted you to backpeddle on this "majority" thing.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#93

Post by DennisP »

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…

The Foundation took no official position. Some of the lead developers supported the fork, some opposed it. The decision was made by the miners, by the exchanges (which decided to follow the miners), and indirectly by a public vote of ether holders. Vitalik expressed only a mild preference for the fork, and was careful to say that the opposition had good points and there would be no censorship of anyone. The fork code was implemented in all the major clients, some of which are independent of the Foundation.

From what I've seen, none of the devs or community leaders had especially large DAO holdings, compared to their likely ETH stashes. Their economic incentive is heavily weighted towards keeping Ethereum healthy and supporting the price of ETH.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#94

Post by giblfiz »

searine wrote: post #52
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…

From the sound of your post, the Currency of Ethereum must be undefined acronyms.

DTH == DAO Tokens (Money in the DAO) HF == Hard Fork PoS == "Proof of Stake" as opposed to PoW Proof of Work. This means that a large part of what goes into mining will be owning ether, and causes a concern about a hostile entity owning a huge pile of stolen Ether.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#95

Post by ecopoesis »

mrfusion wrote: post #75

Would anyone be willing to explain the background on this? I'll admit I haven't been following it.

Ethereum is a post-Bitcoin blockchain. One of the major differences with Bitcoin is that Ethereum is designed to be Turing complete: the blockchain can be used to run any arbitrary code.

The ability to run arbitrary code was built to allow for the creation of smart contracts. The basic idea with a smart contract is that the contract's code (running on the blockchain) enforces all the rules of the contract itself. No need for courts or external parties to handle disputes: the code just does the right thing.

A company called Slock.it created a smart contract called the DAO (distributed autonomous organization). The DAO was a venture capital smart contract. Anyone could submit proposals, owners of the DAO would vote on them, and if successful, fund them, taking some ownership of the proposed venture in hope of a payoff.

The DAO got people excited, and $160 million worth of Ethereum was invested in it. However, the DAO had bugs, and someone exploited one of those bugs to move a large portion of the DAO's Ethereum into another contract that the DAO owners couldn't control. This crashed the ETH exchange rate.

The "hack" split the Ethereum community: some felt that nothing should be done, the DAO contract ran correctly, just not in a way that was anticipated. Others felt that the DAO funds should be recovered and returned, and suggested a soft-fork followed by a hard-fork to make this happen. Both the Ethereum Foundation and Slock.it supported the fork option.

Eventually the soft-fork was released. The soft-fork stayed on the same blockchain (hence the soft) as previous versions, it just blocked transactions related to the "hacked" contract so the former-DAO funds couldn't be moved. However, once again bugs were found, making folks running the soft-fork vulnerable to DOS attacks. I don't know if it ever reached consensus.

A short while later, the hard-fork version of Ethereum was released. As the name implies, this version splits the blockchain into two, one continuing the existing blockchain and another that moves the DAOs ETH into a new contract that's going to be distributed to the former DAO owners. The forked blockchain also put ~$5 million in the hands of a curator to distribute as they see fit.

The hard-fork went live today, and it looks like the majority of miners have switched to it, which means the hard-fork has become the new Ethereum blockchain.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#96

Post by twilightfog »

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…

Exactly... and if you reverse the roles, the hypocrisy just becomes more clear, to quote Emin Gün Sirer:

"Had the attacker lost money by mistake, I am sure the devs would have had no difficulty appropriating his funds and saying "this is what happens in the brave new world of programmatic money flows."

http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/06/17/thoughts-on-the-dao...

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#97

Post by ittekimasu »

dnautics wrote: post #23
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…

Disclaimer: I don't really have much of a stake in ethereum, although I made some money off of it during the craziness last month (I cashed out when early warnings about the DAO hit hn, and bough back in when it was at the bottom, and cashed out again) > I'm not sure how anyone could have any confidence in this system after that. I think the situation is the opposite. After the DAO there were broad calls criticising…

Aren't bailout in fiat systems fundamentally different ? I mean central banks create money and then lend them out to cover losses; this is distinct from ETH where stolen coins were returned.

More like the financial fraud police; less like the fed ?

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#98

Post by mrfusion »

ecopoesis wrote: post #95
mrfusion wrote: post #75

Would anyone be willing to explain the background on this? I'll admit I haven't been following it.

Ethereum is a post-Bitcoin blockchain. One of the major differences with Bitcoin is that Ethereum is designed to be Turing complete: the blockchain can be used to run any arbitrary code. The ability to run arbitrary code was built to allow for the creation of smart contracts. The basic idea with a smart contract is that the contract's code (running on the blockchain) enforces all the rules of the contract itself. No…

Wow that could almost be a movie! Thanks for the great explanation.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#99

Post by throwaway2048 »

DennisP wrote: post #93
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…

The Foundation took no official position. Some of the lead developers supported the fork, some opposed it. The decision was made by the miners, by the exchanges (which decided to follow the miners), and indirectly by a public vote of ether holders. Vitalik expressed only a mild preference for the fork, and was careful to say that the opposition had good points and there would be no censorship of anyone. The fork code…

supporting the fork in the official client is very much taking an official position.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#100

Post by PeterisP »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #55
tankenmate wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The submissive person in the relationship has all the power; they are the one who gets to say "stop". Maybe when you're into BDSM. You're right that authority comes from submission, but people submit to power . A gun, a hostage, a 51% voting majority.

People often also submit to simple suggestions and someone just taking charge - because in many (most?) social situations that's the effective and beneficial thing to do instead of requiring preexisting power.

Power can be 'taken' and enforced, but very commonly power is simply given/gifted when a community, small or large, self-organizes.

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