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Ethereum Wallet and Mist Beta with Hard Fork choice

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Re: Ethereum Wallet and Mist Beta with Hard Fork choice

#11

Post by mcherm »

Bromskloss wrote: post #9
CydeWeys wrote: post #7

This looks really bad from the perspective of trusting the currency to actually retain its value. What if you end up on the wrong fork, and that thousands of dollars in Ethereum you accepted to send out physical goods ends up being worthless? What's the point in saving the DAO if it kills the whole purpose behind the currency?

Won't you own Ether, and everything else, on both branches in the event of a fork?

Ether that you own (not related to the DAO) before the fork happens would be unaffected by the fork. But after the fork, suppose you accept payment for something. You can accept payment in cash, Bitcoin, Ether-on-left-side-of-fork, or Ether-on-right-side-of-fork. I suppose you could also insist on getting paid in BOTH "Ether-on-left-side-of-fork" and ALSO in "Ether-on-right-side-of-fork", but that starts to get really complicated.

Re: Ethereum Wallet and Mist Beta with Hard Fork choice

#12

Post by heliumcraft »

HappyFunGuy wrote: post #3

It's a good thing that smart contracts have allowed us freedom from human error and bias.... I guess we can just call them "contracts." now.

smart "contracts" = essentially a severless service running on a decentralized platform

smart "contracts" != legal contracts

Re: Ethereum Wallet and Mist Beta with Hard Fork choice

#13

Post by CydeWeys »

Bromskloss wrote: post #9
CydeWeys wrote: post #7

This looks really bad from the perspective of trusting the currency to actually retain its value. What if you end up on the wrong fork, and that thousands of dollars in Ethereum you accepted to send out physical goods ends up being worthless? What's the point in saving the DAO if it kills the whole purpose behind the currency?

Won't you own Ether, and everything else, on both branches in the event of a fork?

Not if the transactions happen after the fork, and on the "wrong" one. If you're purely using Ethereum as a store of value, and already have all your funds put into it, then this won't affect you, sure. But if you're actually trying to use it as a currency like intended, then you're screwed.

Money isn't very useful if you can't transact it at all for fear that new transactions won't be any good.

Re: Ethereum Wallet and Mist Beta with Hard Fork choice

#15

Post by CydeWeys »

mcherm wrote: post #11
Bromskloss wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't you own Ether, and everything else, on both branches in the event of a fork?

Ether that you own (not related to the DAO) before the fork happens would be unaffected by the fork. But after the fork, suppose you accept payment for something. You can accept payment in cash, Bitcoin, Ether-on-left-side-of-fork, or Ether-on-right-side-of-fork. I suppose you could also insist on getting paid in BOTH "Ether-on-left-side-of-fork" and ALSO in "Ether-on-right-side-of-fork", but that starts to get reall…

In practice I think I'd sooner switch back to a non-forked cryptocurrency than try to deal with running multiple forks and ensuring that I'm getting paid on all of them. That sounds like a right huge mess to deal with, as you point out.

Re: Ethereum Wallet and Mist Beta with Hard Fork choice

#16

Post by CydeWeys »

Gargoyle wrote: post #14

I was a hardcore Ethereum fanboy, but this fork completely turned me off.

Too many of the Ethereum devs had way too much of their currency tied up in the DAO. It's a classic conflict of interest. Don't forget that Ethereum had a significant premine as well (which is very shady in its own right), so the early devs and adopters have a lot of ETH to throw around.

Re: Ethereum Wallet and Mist Beta with Hard Fork choice

#17

Post by HappyFunGuy »

heliumcraft wrote: post #12
HappyFunGuy wrote: post #3

It's a good thing that smart contracts have allowed us freedom from human error and bias.... I guess we can just call them "contracts." now.

smart "contracts" = essentially a severless service running on a decentralized platform smart "contracts" != legal contracts

How decentralized is a platform that hardforks via human intervention? What happens when the 51% choose to take the money of the 49%? If your blockchain changes the rules, because someone followed the rules of the code, but following those rules led to the "wrong" people losing money. Then your blockchain is more harmful than useful.

Re: Ethereum Wallet and Mist Beta with Hard Fork choice

#18

Post by JorgeGT »

Gargoyle wrote: post #14

I was a hardcore Ethereum fanboy, but this fork completely turned me off.

  "The creatures outside looked from smart contracts to    
   regular contracts, and from regular contracts to smart  
   contracts, and from smart contracts to regular contracts 
   again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

Re: Ethereum Wallet and Mist Beta with Hard Fork choice

#20

Post by vertex-four »

HappyFunGuy wrote: post #17
heliumcraft wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

smart "contracts" = essentially a severless service running on a decentralized platform smart "contracts" != legal contracts

How decentralized is a platform that hardforks via human intervention? What happens when the 51% choose to take the money of the 49%? If your blockchain changes the rules, because someone followed the rules of the code, but following those rules led to the "wrong" people losing money. Then your blockchain is more harmful than useful.

> What happens when the 51% choose to take the money of the 49%?

What happens when the 51% desires to violate the rights of the 49% in general? (Or, more commonly in the real world, 10% desires to violate the rights of 0.5% and 85% don't care.) Direct democracy refuses to solve that issue in any way other than assuming that the minority will be successful at returning violence against the majority, or that everyone will just get along.

In practice, though, nobody's actually stealing your money here... you can still use the old chain if you want, it'll just be devalued to the point of uselessness.

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