Critical Update on DAO Vulnerability

Post by mbrock » Fri, Jun 17, 2016, 3:51 PM UTC

johncolanduoni wrote: post #329

tremon wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No-one can write bug-free code No, we can. We just don't, because it's very expensive, and we lack proper tooling to make it cheaper and/or faster. The flaw as I see it is that ETH jumped the gun, and tried to move to software law enforcement without investing the right amount of time/money in the code. Worthwhile goal (though the desirability and practicality remains debatable), bad execution.

> No, we can. We just don't, because it's very expensive, and we lack proper tooling to make it cheaper and/or faster. Eh, it depends on how amenable your standards for correctness are to formalization. Also when it comes to security, where clearly bugs tend to hurt a lot more, we're almost always at the mercy of "unproven" (in the formal sense) algorithms. Don't get me started on quantum computing's effects. Reasoni…

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 17, 2016, 3:53 PM UTC

mootothemax wrote: post #353

kauffj wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They provide a far more accurate insight into the likelihood of events than any other alternative. You can think of it as betting if you like, but it's betting with lots of positive externalities. Consider a business that needs to reason about the probability of a law passing, severity of global warming, or any number of other difficult to predict events. Prediction markets would provide by far the most accurate insi…

>Consider a business that needs to reason about the probability of a law passing, severity of global warming, or any number of other difficult to predict events. Prediction markets would provide by far the most accurate insight. Surely such prediction markets are a guarantee of corruption? That or I just don't understand - if a market exists that takes bets on human actions such as passing laws, how long someone will…

Post by carver » Fri, Jun 17, 2016, 3:53 PM UTC

JulianMorrison wrote: post #413

DennisP wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contracts can be upgraded if they're designed that way. You can have a wrapper contract that just calls out to other contracts, where the addresses of the other contracts are updateable. You can even make the callee run in the context of the caller, so all the data is held at the caller, which calls an external function that manipulates it. Doing this is a tradeoff. On the one hand it lets you fix bugs and vulnerabil…

It completely obviates the point, because a contract no longer means what it says, it means what Bob says. So just wire your money to Bob, it's simpler.

Post by riprowan » Fri, Jun 17, 2016, 4:02 PM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #401

infodroid wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if we agree that Ethereum is still in its early stages we have to ask whether this response is setting a good or bad precedent going forward. Will the project leadership offer a soft- and/or hard-fork every time a poorly-implemented smart contract is exploited in a manner that is not intended by the contract creators? If every smart contract is going to be "guaranteed" in this way, then this introduces significa…

In this particular case the contract holds 15% of all ether. The fork won't be enacted unless a majority of the community agrees to run its code. That's not likely to happen except in extreme cases, like this one.

Post by wyager » Fri, Jun 17, 2016, 4:04 PM UTC

infodroid wrote: post #266

imglorp wrote: post #214

This is what concerns me about contract programming. With human contract law, if there's a minor typo or loophole, participants can generally see the spirit and intent, and at worst go to a judge who will usually enforce the intent. But with software contracts, only the characters matter and there's no intent anywhere: either you get paid or you don't. ETH is advising, "Contract authors should ... be very careful abo…

Unlike traditional contracts, the idea was that smart contracts were going to eliminate the need for enforcement or dispute resolution. So that law is enshrined in code. But this incident has set a precedent, at least within Ethereum, that the project leadership will intervene to enforce the spirit of a smart contract. So what now are the benefits of Ethereum smart contracts over the traditional legal system? The way…