Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

Code as law is right, but laws can (and should) change, because the effect they can have can be devastating if loopholes do the opposite of the intention behind the law.

The fallacy here is that we have one immutable law that governs everything, that is set at one time and never changed - how ridiculous. This is utter nonsense.

The DAO was a beautiful experiment that went badly wrong. In the grand scheme of things, if this was a heist in the traditional sense - everyone would have lost out. But as it stands, it's probably the biggest bug bounty in history.

Hopefully no one got hurt. We learn and move on.

How exactly?

By rolling back the primitive marketplace that had almost zero repercussion because the marketplace was barely beyond the first users?

I didn't see anyone calling for solutions that went outside of the control of Ethereum. To fit into your snide analysis they would have turned to state authorities for help or called for other real centralized systems of control. But that didn't happen. As far as I can tell there was zero control relinquished to central bodies as a result and it would be almost impossible for them to take the same approach now that the market is maturing. So the original decentralized concept still underpins the technology as it ever did.

Comparing the early alpha days of the system to the stated ideals of what they want the system to be in the future in not fair.

If every experimental project followed your advice by being totally risk adverse as well as was carefully controlled with red tape from the early days then we wouldnt have any innovation or the great products we have today. Just look at Japan's market, feeding off industry from the last time they allowed markets to operate freely in the 1980s, if you need proof of this.

This idea that you see nothing wrong with believing you know better than people who volunteered their time and money with this project and they need to be protected by government systems is what concerns me. Why not let them run this project and see if it fails or not? Is it really worth killing this experiment to mitigate risk so a few people don't get burned?

I personally think this project is full of snake oily hand wavy ideas that will mostly fail. But I'll endless defend their right to try it. And provide feedback and thoughtful analysis to poke holes in the bad stuff as I come across it.

It's the same thing with Communism/Socialism. Communism is the pure end state, utopia, etc.

Socialism is the ugly road there.

Now, of course we know Socialism usually does a 5 minute walk in the park then turns 90 degree at that big pine tree, and when no one's watching puts on the evil hat, and by the end of the hour it's a totalitarian state! No iteration on ideas, criticism is met with GULAG, no education, teachers and thinkers are decadent freeloaders, enemies of Communism, internment, execution, mass murder! You know the drill.

Etherum and other code is law experiments are trying to find the best expression of that "common sense" platform, they are trying to craft the best Constitution for this. "And no true Scotsman claimed that Etherum/DAO is perfect." (This is the part where semantics is fuzzy, as it really depends on who said what, when, how, why, and to whom. But realistically, anyone who claimed to get it right the first time, was too optimistic, and of course, it was "reviewed", http://piratepad.net/theDAOreview [ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4hkgsz/a_summary_... ] and see .. but never audited - https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4ota1q/the_truth_... .)

>How exactly?

If I am not mistaken, the central principle of Ethereum, from which almost all of its alleged benefits arise, is that the blockchain is the sole authority and so the currency, contracts and transactions are consequently immune to meddling. Of course, one might argue that it was never true, and that all the hard fork did was to demonstrate that fact, but truth is not a necessary feature of a principle - though false principles usually turn out to be unworkable in the long run; see, for example, communism.

Your argument seems to be that the hard fork was feasible, expedient and harmless, but that is not an argument against it being a breach of their own principles. Furthermore, if you followed all the arguing at the time over whether there should be a hard fork, you would know that there are plenty of people who thought it was a terrible idea - so much so that some of them have gone to the considerable trouble of keeping Ethereum Classic running.

>Comparing the early alpha days of the system to the stated ideals of what they want the system to be in the future in not fair.

It is certainly fair to point out that they are unjustifiably claiming that it is, now, what they want it to be in the future. Furthermore, I don't recall it being described as alpha software when people were putting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets into the DAO.

> If every experimental project followed your advice by being totally risk adverse as well as was carefully controlled with red tape from the early days then we wouldnt have any innovation or the great products we have today.

Even if these general points were not exaggerated and simplistic, they would not refute the specific claims about the current state of Ethereum. Furthermore, you seem to think I am advocating the regulation of Ethereum, but I don't think that would save it from its fundamental contradictions.

> This idea that you see nothing wrong with believing you know better than people who volunteered their time and money with this project and they need to be protected by government systems is what concerns me. Why not let them run this project and see if it fails or not?

See my immediately previous response - though I would prefer it if Ethereum was promoted without claims that cannot currently be justified.

> Is it really worth killing this experiment to mitigate risk so a few people don't get burned?

That's what the opponents of the hard fork said - but the people who would have been burned without the hard fork would have included some of the most influential people in Ethereum. It would be interesting to know how much the pro-fork miners had at risk in the DAO.

> I personally think this project is full of snake oily hand wavy ideas that will mostly fail. But I'll endless defend their right to try it. And provide feedback and thoughtful analysis to poke holes in the bad stuff as I come across it.

You seem to be trying pretty hard to not notice some significant holes.