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The ethereum “hacker” didn't hack anything

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Re: The ethereum “hacker” didn't hack anything

#21

Post by tylersmith »

stale2002 wrote: post #10
grey-area wrote: post #7

On the actual contract, it's possible a court would find that the contract was between parties x and y, and therefore party z inserting themselves into it is not valid. Often law comes down to intent, so the hacker could well find themselves in trouble, even if technically all they did was play by the rules allowed by the contract. There is another interesting point here, which I think applies to Bitcoin too - if the…

Courts will absolutely use intent to judge contracts. The interesting thing with the DAO though, was the explicit INTENT of the contract, was for it to be entirely governed by the code. As in, the announcement website, and all the marketing for the DAO included a whole lot of lines like "None of the information here is binding. The only thing that it binding is the code. The contract is the code". So, it is arguable,…

The intent of all smart contracts is to be exactly what the code says. That is why they exist. For any case where you want to consider intent you should not use smart contracts.

People using smart contracts when that's not what they really want are going to cause damage to the ecosystem that will take years to undo.

Re: The ethereum “hacker” didn't hack anything

#22

Post by msbarnett »

tylersmith wrote: post #21
stale2002 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Courts will absolutely use intent to judge contracts. The interesting thing with the DAO though, was the explicit INTENT of the contract, was for it to be entirely governed by the code. As in, the announcement website, and all the marketing for the DAO included a whole lot of lines like "None of the information here is binding. The only thing that it binding is the code. The contract is the code". So, it is arguable,…

The intent of all smart contracts is to be exactly what the code says. That is why they exist. For any case where you want to consider intent you should not use smart contracts. People using smart contracts when that's not what they really want are going to cause damage to the ecosystem that will take years to undo.

The question becomes, under what circumstances would you EVER want to use a smart contract for a non-trivial amount of money?

Since smart contracts are software, and all software has bugs, and to a first approximation nobody is interested in having a significant amount of their money, time, or goods erased by a software bug, of what use are these things other than as a curiosity?

Re: The ethereum “hacker” didn't hack anything

#23

Post by Spivak »

ryanlol wrote: post #20
elnygren wrote: post #15

It seems we have some mismatch between the abstraction layer where we want to talk about cryptocurrencies and how their actual implementation goes. IMHO, we are venturing to the domain of lawyers; most people are not just going to be saying computer code == what-we-agreed-here because most people are just normal people and they couldn't care about computer code. And let's face it, cryptos are already full of normal p…

If computer code == what-we-agreed-here isn't what you want, then you don't want smart contracts.

It's not really a matter of what you want, it's the legal prededent that will be set when someone exploits a bug in a smart contract that is obviously not part of the authors intent. Or a smart contract that was entered into by manipulation, coercion, or violence. Or a smart contract that violates some financial regulation or requires performing illegal activity.

The court will intervene and that will be the end of the idea that the code is the final authority.

Re: The ethereum “hacker” didn't hack anything

#24

Post by will_brown »

What is with the smart contract propaganda.

Let's put everything in a legal perspective using the DAO as the example...was what occurred there a "hack" or just a proper function of the contract which all parties agreed?

let's assume, all things being equal, the DAO smart contract wasn't a smart contract on the block chain but a regular contract, which included a provision allowing any single party to unilaterally take all the investment funds of the other parties to the contract...is that enforceable? No.

In fact with the SEC report on the DAO, we know the contract was likely an illegal offering of a security. Therefore, the entire contract is void and unenforceable and every party is entitled to their investment back, nothing changes because it was a smart contract on a block chain rather than a written contract.

Re: The ethereum “hacker” didn't hack anything

#26

Post by honestlyreally »

Spivak wrote: post #23
ryanlol wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If computer code == what-we-agreed-here isn't what you want, then you don't want smart contracts.

It's not really a matter of what you want, it's the legal prededent that will be set when someone exploits a bug in a smart contract that is obviously not part of the authors intent. Or a smart contract that was entered into by manipulation, coercion, or violence. Or a smart contract that violates some financial regulation or requires performing illegal activity. The court will intervene and that will be the end of t…

The court can order the contract's private key to be magically willed into existence?

The law often sees itself as onnipotent, but it stands no chance against cryptography and unnamed contract authors.

Re: The ethereum “hacker” didn't hack anything

#27

Post by woodandsteel »

One of the problems with Ethereum smart contracts is they are trying to do something that is basically impossible.

A contract is an explicit set of rules as to what the involved parties are supposed to do in every relevant situation that could arise. The problem is that in the real world it is very often simply impossible to anticipate every possible relevant situation. That is because the real world is so complicated, and we lack much of the needed information about what might happen in the future.

The consequence is that in business, unanticipated situations arise all the time where the signed contract either calls for something that would lead at least one party to suffer, or it is not at all clear what should be done.

%99 of the time, the involved parties simply decide informally what to do. 1% of the time one side sues, and in most of these cases the lawyers settle before trial. And if it goes to trial, the judge decides on things like intent and fairness that can't be clearly specified in a contract.

It is just not possible for smart contract coders to solve this problem that experienced business people can't. And let me add that this is similar to the problem with bugs. A bug arises when commands and/or data are encountered by the program that the coder had not anticipated, and so the program does something other than what is intended. It is the same basic problem of not being able to anticipate all possible situations, and so this is why all programs have bugs.

Re: The ethereum “hacker” didn't hack anything

#28

Post by eridius »

detaro wrote: post #13
stale2002 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Courts will absolutely use intent to judge contracts. The interesting thing with the DAO though, was the explicit INTENT of the contract, was for it to be entirely governed by the code. As in, the announcement website, and all the marketing for the DAO included a whole lot of lines like "None of the information here is binding. The only thing that it binding is the code. The contract is the code". So, it is arguable,…

This article is not about the DAO hack.

Not specifically, no, but the topic of the article applies equally well to the DAO hack as it does to the more recent one.

Re: The ethereum “hacker” didn't hack anything

#29

Post by [deleted] »

grey-area wrote: post #7

On the actual contract, it's possible a court would find that the contract was between parties x and y, and therefore party z inserting themselves into it is not valid. Often law comes down to intent, so the hacker could well find themselves in trouble, even if technically all they did was play by the rules allowed by the contract. There is another interesting point here, which I think applies to Bitcoin too - if the…

[deleted]

Re: The ethereum “hacker” didn't hack anything

#30

Post by nnfy »

>When you own a cryptocurrency, you can’t really “hold it in your wallet” like you could have a $100 bill in your physical wallet. In crypto, your wallet is actually a key which is used to control the associated account number on the Blockchain.

This is misleading. "Owning" cryptocurrency comes down yo controlling the private key. Cryptos exist solely as information. The bank analogy is a poor one because it implies that there is a single physical collection of value, which is fundamentally opposed to the premise of a distributed ledger. I'm not sure that the author really grasps the function and utility of Cryptos based on this mischaracterization. I didnt read any further.

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