Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority • Hacker News Board

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#111

Post by DennisP » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 9:03 PM UTC

zenogais wrote: post #51

dnautics wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Once we passed the fork block, we had a vote by 100% of the mining power.

The ether vote had the percentages you mentioned, but all elections are decided by the people who show up. Generally we consider elections fair if everyone has the opportunity to vote; whether they actually do is up to them.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#112

Post by jude- » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

watty wrote: post #89

zeveb wrote: post #77

And just like that, the entire point of Ethereum vanished into the ether. Contracts which contain an implicit item 'we can renegotiate this any time a majority of miners wish' are contrary to what Ethereum was meant to be.

What was it "meant to be"? I'm completely ignorant of the politics but my assumption was that every cryptocoin post-bitcoin was a way for the creators/developrs/owners to make money. Did the creators make money? Success.

Straight from ethereum.org:

"Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference."

Emphasis mine.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#113

Post by erikpukinskis » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 9:44 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #77

And just like that, the entire point of Ethereum vanished into the ether. Contracts which contain an implicit item 'we can renegotiate this any time a majority of miners wish' are contrary to what Ethereum was meant to be.

The point of Ethereum to me is that I can write a service, fund it, and then have it run in perpetuity without any intervention from me.

How is that vanished? There is some small probability that the Ethereum community might from consensus around interfering with my service. But I'm no more worried about that than I am about Heroku or anyone else deciding I'm not allowed on the platform. If anything this episode has shown just how high that bar is on Ethereum as compared to centralized offerings.

People act like just because there is one tiny corner case where the full letter of the promise is unfulfilled that means the entire offering is void. But what offering doesn't have at least a few caveats?

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#114

Post by moefogs » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 9:56 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…

This was a political and cultural question: is the contract the code?

The hard-fork won by arguing that "no, the contract is the code plus whatever a quite small number of greasy nerds decide it will be."

If the greasy nerds had instead decided to accept the loss, it would've established a cultural norm so strong that nobody would likely dare to try a fork again. It would have baked it into the community in a nearly indelible manner. "nope, they lost tens of millions and they ate it because the contract is the code, so we won't help you either."

Instead, what the nerds did was say "hey, you know the one interesting part of Ethereum? yeah, forget it... because we decided that we value our short-term wealth over the creation of that system."

And that's fine. It's fine that they decided they don't give a shit about contracts as code. It's fine that they took their ball and went home. But Ethereum is now dead. Not today mind you, but in the long run.

Only a complete and total lunatic will ever trust Ethereum again, because there will be more forks in the future. The precedent is set. They won't all remain "clear cut".

So the interesting question is: who's next? It's not ethereum anymore. But it's still an interesting problem space. And maybe there's a team that is actually interested in it.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#115

Post by yarrel » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 10:10 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…

Bitcoin had to hard fork to revert transactions early on due to a bug in the code (not a bug in code written on the platform, a bug in the platform itself).

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#116

Post by yarrel » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 10:11 PM UTC

JoachimSchipper wrote: post #5

Note that this says more about the defaults in software than about any Ethereum user's opinion. (The miners may or may not be more informed, but note that Ethereum is only valuable if users are willing to exchange things of value for Ethereum, i.e. a hard fork requires changes in wallet software.)

There's no default for or against the fork. You have to explicitly choose.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#117

Post by ComodoHacker » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 10:14 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #7

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…

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.

>developers are lacking in ethics

From their point of view however, it was perhaps most ethical to try their best to save money of all other people who trusted in their system that failed.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#118

Post by yarrel » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 10:15 PM UTC

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?

They really can't.

If the argument is that code is law, the fork was implemented in code, so it's law.

If their argument is that the white hat hacks shouldn't have happened then they lay themselves open to the argument that their initial hack shouldn't have happened.

And then there's how draconian unauthorised computer access laws tend to be...

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#119

Post by baby » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 10:22 PM UTC

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…

> Looking in from the outside as someone with no involvement with Ethereum

This basically answers your question. A few pointers:

* you cannot do a hard fork alone, if no one follows you it own't work. You need the majority (to become the majority fork)

* hard forking, soft forking, are always possibilities that can happen at any moment (same for bitcoin)

* There was no reason not to fork at this point. Ethereum is at an early stage. Bitcoin had the same thing happened to it during its birth stage.

* If you cannot have confidence in this system because you were planning to "steal", then wait until the system gets bigger so that not enough people get affected by your theft

* If you cannot have confidence in this system because you were planning to truly write smart contracts or use them in a legit way. Then wait until the system gets bigger as well.

Re: Ethereum hard fork successful with mining majority

#120

Post by ComodoHacker » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 10:35 PM UTC

cloudjacker wrote: post #15

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 dao exploiter really should have followed through with the plan to pay miners $1,000,000 to mine their transactions toward exchanges. The legal argument was solid enough to also be purchaseable , so no anonimity required

Maybe he really would if it were just 3-4 persons to negotiate with and 3-4 wallets to pay to.