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The DAO Disaster Illustrates Differing Philosophies in Bitcoin and Ethereum

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Re: The DAO Disaster Illustrates Differing Philosophies in Bitcoin and Ethereum

#51

Post by aakilfernandes »

kang wrote: post #50
aakilfernandes wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want the benefits of a blockchain without the Wild West stuff, why not set up a private chain with an "approver" instead of miners? I'm sure many companies interested in Ethereum are going this route.

Private/Federated blockchains are just applied cryptography, which is not the same as the technology behind bitcoin; blockchain & proof-of-work.

Agreed. I think the ship has sailed on the term "blockchain" and it no longer requires decentralization. It means a signed transaction log which can't be secretly forged. Not as sexy as bitcoin, but language is fluid and I think the definition has shifted.

Re: The DAO Disaster Illustrates Differing Philosophies in Bitcoin and Ethereum

#52

Post by sandworm101 »

swalsh wrote: post #6

Perhaps the next big of development the Ethereum guys need to build is a decentralized court system.

>> a decentralized court system.

Decentralization denies the nature of courts. Courts exist to do those things that the market and the mob cannot. Heaven help the litigant who, while in all reality an upstanding person who has done no wrong, must now have his fate decided by popular vote. Why bother with laws. Just put every issue to the vote and let the one with the most twitter followers win.

Courts are where we go when democracy fails. They are where you go when what you want isn't necessarily what everyone else wants of you.

Re: The DAO Disaster Illustrates Differing Philosophies in Bitcoin and Ethereum

#53

Post by a3camero »

swalsh wrote: post #27
aakilfernandes wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or perhaps if you want mutable contracts based on intent, you could use one of the 253 legal systems that already provide you with that.

There's boatloads of value in a decentralized block chain approach to legal organizations.... What's amazing here is the ethereal guys are forging new territory for truly global and potentially leaderless commerce. What's unfortunate is that it's taking the form of a dystopia. Instead of realizing that humans are a factor of the equation, and people doing business in God faith... We're entering a ruthless period wher…

Although it's a bit unfair to judge an entire software system by the actions of a handful of people. Although many people may have bought into The DAO, it's still software made and marketed by a small group of individuals.

Re: The DAO Disaster Illustrates Differing Philosophies in Bitcoin and Ethereum

#54

Post by cloudjacker »

ubersync wrote: post #47
cloudjacker wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh without a signature, a completely irrelevant qualifier that I didn't even make as a prerequisite! I'm also referring to the march 2013 hard fork so congratulations you just helped me prove my "multiple times" for the lay man

What happened in March 2013? Which transaction was reversed?

every transaction that happened to be on the dropped chain.

I never said the hard fork was specifically to target a particular transaction, the result is that every transaction on the dropped chain was reversed.

Re: The DAO Disaster Illustrates Differing Philosophies in Bitcoin and Ethereum

#55

Post by aakilfernandes »

drcode wrote: post #16
aakilfernandes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is based on a false narrative that miners/stakers determine the protocol. The protocol is determined by the nodes. The nodes produced by the dev team and run by the exchanges are the "economic majority" and are sufficient to change the protocol. Perhaps this is confusing enough to trick regulators, however I'm not so certain.

Well, you make a fair point that miners are ultimately interested in mining on the fork with the largest economic activity. But just as with Bitcoin (where exchanges have lobbied for a blocksize increase for a long time already with zero success) I would argue the number of parties that affect overall economic activity is hard to pin down and includes a larger segment of the community than you suggest.

Thats a fair point

Re: The DAO Disaster Illustrates Differing Philosophies in Bitcoin and Ethereum

#56

Post by beefield »

triadicmonad wrote: post #44
jsprogrammer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ETH wasn't really stolen though. I thought a contract was submitted and then executed?

Do you really find that answer a satisfying resolution?

I do not think there exists a satisfying resolution. In the terms of Chess, this is pretty much a definition of checkmate. Either you think that the intent of the DAO actually was specified in the code, thus it was not a theft, or you think that the intent of the DAO actually was _not_ specified in the code, but somewhere else[1], and the whole raison d'etre of DAO disappears to the air as a puff of smoke. No moves left either way.

[1]Where?

Re: The DAO Disaster Illustrates Differing Philosophies in Bitcoin and Ethereum

#57

Post by gst »

aakilfernandes wrote: post #23
drcode wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, ethereum is a newer, and more experimental platform- It has many arguable advantages over Bitcoin, but as an etherean I am happy to agree that right now Bitcoin is more established and also may be somewhat more decentralized (given that the ethereum community is giving some deference to the core team at this early stage, in the future this will likely no longer be true)

Definitely agree with that. I'm a big fan of Ethereum, just very unhappy about this fork. I think that until Vitalik pulls a Satoshi, Etheruem will never be as decentralized. This has pros and cons, especially with sharding/PoS around the corner.

PoS will be much harder without a fork. I don't care about the DAO holders (disclaimer: I have around 5% of my total Ether holdings locked in the DAO), but due to the issues with PoS I think that a fork would be the best option at this point.

Re: The DAO Disaster Illustrates Differing Philosophies in Bitcoin and Ethereum

#58

Post by jmount »

aakilfernandes wrote: post #21
jmount wrote: post #20

Found the linked article http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/06/28/ethereum-soft-fork-... very interesting as it points out the soft fork proposal essentially introduces a 2nd kind of exception semantics into the the Ethereum protocol. This in turn could be converted into a griefing attack on miners supporting the soft fork. The system level semantics and consequences don't really seem to be under control.

This soft fork has been abandoned, and the discussion had moved to a hard fork.

Yes I know the soft fork proposal is off the table. I just thought it interesting it got so far, given it would introduce additional flaws.

Re: The DAO Disaster Illustrates Differing Philosophies in Bitcoin and Ethereum

#59

Post by whyoh »

aakilfernandes wrote: post #2

Such a fork would be more difficult in Bitcoin due to their political/financial (not necessarily technical) decentralization. This fork, if it happens, will be proof that Ethereum is far behind bitcoin in terms of decentralization.

Bitcoin mining is essentially controlled by a handful of people in China. Let's not use it as an example of decentralization.

Re: The DAO Disaster Illustrates Differing Philosophies in Bitcoin and Ethereum

#60

Post by codys »

My impression from all of this is simply that the tools (and perhaps the etherium op codes themselves) for writing smart contracts still need work.

When programming for hardware began, it was very easy to shoot yourself in the foot with languages of the time, but over time new languages which made it harder (or eliminated certain foot-guns entirely) appeared.

For Etherium, I'd look at whether the ISA (set of opcodes) is complete enough to allow one to create a contract specification language with enough flexibility to do something while allowing a degree a safety.

Have there been attempts at alternates to Etherium's Solidity which generate smart contracts?

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