15 ms·

Stick a Fork in Ethereum

250 points by themgt 10y ago

droopyEyelids 10y ago
Insane how there will be a pool of $6m worth of DAO tokens to be distributed according to the will of trustees. Maybe I'm not understanding correctly, but that seems to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard of in the context of a trustless system of computation.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- lunula 10y ago
  I also know only as much as you, and it seems hilariously weak. Shouldn't it be possible to make a smart contract that dispenses it in accordance to the whims of ETH stakeholders? I guess the trustees will need to decide...
- elaineo 10y ago
  nope, that's exactly correct. They even use the term "trustees".
467568985476 10y ago
Most people didn’t know, didn’t care, or couldn’t figure out how to vote. Carbonvote is a poll that weighed user votes by their ether account holdings. Only 5.5% of the total ether holders bothered to vote. A quarter of the DAO-Fork votes came from a single account. That's wild. It seems like the largest holders of Ether can tie their investments together and agree to "undo" anything that loses money. Am I misunderstanding how the hard fork process works? Why would anyone bet on this being the "killer cryptocurrency" if it already has entrenched interests capable of manipulating it for personal gain? How is this system decentralized beyond the trivial, technical sense?
- tdaltonc 10y ago
  The "proof of stake" vote wasn't binding. In the bitcoin world, this would be called a 51% percent attack. What really matters is what the miners choose to do.
  - 467568985476 10y ago
    Thanks for clearing that up - rereading the article, I see now that I missed the sentence describing the informal, non-binding nature of the vote.
  - onestone 10y ago
    Miners majority decides only with soft forks. A hard fork is a consensus protocol change, the economic majority can split even without the majority of miners (of course it is nice to have the miners on board as well).
- mablap 10y ago
  The reality, every blockchain is vulnerable to such forking. The system is still decentralized, as the miners have to make their choice. However, the Ethereum Foundation decided to force the fork upon geth users, as the software defaults to pro-fork. So in effect a lot of users will be coerced into forking, without knowing. This particular fork is political and not technical. The previous ETH forks were modifications to the protocol. The current fork is a modification to the account balances. The rich Ethereum fanatics are completely and absurdly delusional in thinking this will be a great event in their history. To me, the canonical chain is all but dead. The protocol will survive, just not on this chain.
  - mwilcox 10y ago
    Not quite. Ethereum's trie allows transaction paths like this to be clipped with almost no collateral damage to the rest of the data structure. Bitcoin's UTXO model makes it very difficult to roll back transactions since it would cause havoc on every other transaction on the network.
tdaltonc 10y ago
If Ethereum is just another way that humans muddle through (and not the dispassionate justice of machines), is it still something different then the legal and political systems that came before it?
- InclinedPlane 10y ago
  Of course not. Ethereum failed, spectacularly. Ethereum made as clear-cut and direct a statement of purpose and of conditions for success and failure as possible, and they failed. Instead of accepting that fact and moving on zealots have refused to believe that they could be wrong or that their utopian ideals could be flawed in any way. Like most zealous utopians they'll be willing to accept a horrific amount of damage and destruction before seeing reality.
  - j_s 10y ago
    Was it Ethereum or the DAO that failed?
    - hueving 10y ago
      Ethereum failed when it forked to try to mop up the DAO failure.
    - cjslep 10y ago
      As an outsider looking in on trying out my first cryptocurrency, Ethereum was definitely on my radar. Now that the founders have shown they are capable and will undo the way the system has executed if they do not like it, I feel much more comfortable keeping my money in fiat where the regulations are well-defined and I know I have recourse through the law. I do not want to be subjected to the whims of an unregulated group operating under unknown rules with an unknown, possibly nonexistent, path of rectification if they chose something I did not like. I otherwise would have accepted the operational philosophy similar to how Bitcoin has been handled thus far and all of the responsibilities associated with a level, permanent playing field. I honestly am no longer interested and do not plan to keep up with Ethereum. I'm just N=1, but if the trend continues then I see it not growing beyond a hardcore self-interested group of people.
mablap 10y ago
“Invent a new version of the universe” is normally not permitted by the software protocol, which is why this involves a client update and a hard fork. To have "separate universes" is to have separate blockchains with different genesis blocks. There's an incentive to do just that with Ethereum[1] since the effective doubling of funds (X ETH on each chain) is bound to cause disruption. Anything other than a new fork is going to fail for the reasons the author mentions. [1]: https://reddit.com/r/etheregen https://reddit.com/r/etheregen
- elaineo 10y ago
  Thanks for the link, I didn't know people were doing this. I had only seen EthereumClassic, which seems prone to attack, and a nightmare for exchanges.
tostitos1979 10y ago
I'm really disappointed in how the DAO heist was handled. The promise of cryptocurrencies was that they are harder to manipulate than fiat currency. If the fork succeeds (or even if it fails), I think the very notion of rolling back transactions is a step backwards. The next time there is something like the DAO, people can invest without fear since rollbacks are the modus operandi. Isn't this why people are upset with the financial system? When people invest in stuff, they need to be responsible for the results. As someone who didn't buy a house in the crazy mid-2000s, I am paying the price for everyone else's stupidity in the form of crazy low interest rates (which have fueled record home prices). But who is standing up for me? No one. I thought cryptocurrencies were leading to a better world (or at least one where the system couldn't be rigged as easily). I guess not in this instance :(
- brianwawok 10y ago
  I would love to hear the line of logic where if we all paid and got paid for everything in crypto currency would have spared you from the housing bust?
  - viycyjcutc 10y ago
    That went way over your head, didn't it?
    - dang 10y ago
      Please don't comment like this here. Also, please don't create many obscure throwaway accounts on HN. This forum is a community. Anonymity is fine, but users should have some consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community at all, and that would be an entirely different forum.
  - tostitos1979 10y ago
    If investors in stupid investments lost their money - all the way from investment banks down to individuals who made bad home purchase decisions, I'm pretty sure homes would cost less today. My point is that interventions have unforeseen consequences which hurt some people (typically the responsible ones).
asr1 10y ago
this may explain, why expanse(ethereum clone) has so much volume at the moment. Seems like a lot of people are bearish on eth. http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/expanse/ http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/expanse/
kevindong 10y ago
The entire hard fork idea was a case of "your choices are shit and shit, pick one". On one hand, if the hard fork fails, the hacker gets away with millions of dollars, representing a very large chunk of the entire market. On the other hand, if the hard fork succeeds, the entire idea of a decentralized currency where everyone's equal and there are no higher authorities (i.e., corporations or governments) to intervene against you is dead.
ilaksh 10y ago
The mistake was putting so much money in one untested contract. It was a big mistake. But Ethereum is still the leader in terms of a lot of technical aspects and also the ability to pull people together. To try to give people a perspective: say you and your friends took out second mortgages on your houses and came up with 5 million to invest. Then you invented some tool, and someone found a back door or bug in this tool that allowed them to steal 1 million dollars. So most of the group would like to undo this 1 million dollar theft with a patch. Now, most outsiders are condemning you for trying to work around the bug and recover your million dollars with a patch. I think that the mob is fickle. Quick to pile onto a bandwagon, and quick to burn it. So, I hope Vitalik and the other group of hard working, intelligent and ethical people involved do not take the mob's response to heart.
- elaineo 10y ago
  Now say, you took out a mortgage and came up with 5 million dollars. Another 100 people don't have any dollars, so they would like to seize your 5 million dollars with a patch. There's a clear majority vote to take your 5 million dollars. Should they be allowed to do that?
  - ilaksh 10y ago
    Its not anything like that though. Its more like the small group of investors with the most money in the pot are voting to protect the large amount of money 'hacked' away. Its not like a majority stealing money. The idea of decentralization and objective rule by code is sound, but the other part of this is that it is an alpha system that was untested, and obviously this was a theft. Forking in this case does not invalidate the concept or the team or any of it. It doesn't mean there will be people forking in the future to steal money. It really seems like most people are operating on the same level that the kids were in my 7th grade class. Which is pretty bad, because it was full of dullards, children acting almost like monkeys, and actual juvenile criminals. Honestly the common reaction here is at a middle-school level.
    - elaineo 10y ago
matt4077 10y ago
This heist a nice demonstration of the usefulness of politics. So much so that the zealots are willing to forgo actual money and let that injustice stand rather than admitting defeat. Well, some of them are.
- ForHackernews 10y ago
  The most entertaining part of cryptocurrency for me has been watching libertarian ideologues gradually re-discovering the reasons for financial regulation.
milesf 10y ago
VeriCoin did something similar when MintPal was hacked. They rolled back the blockchain prior to the heist. Now it's a shadow of itself, and MintPal is dead. What a mess.
polishninja 10y ago
I've been following the Ethereum/DAO situation since the drain of funds occurred. I currently do not own any cryptocurrencies so this has been my first real look at the communities surrounding Ethereum and Bitcoin. In laymen's terms I am under the impression that these crypto coins are to be treated the same as cash. If I hand someone $10,000 in USD and they disappear and/or spend the money without fulfilling their side of the contract, I'm out of luck. Sure, I could take them to court but if I can't find them (or I sent my crypto coins to another country) or they can't repay, my coins are still gone. I know there are different schemes to handle this situation, such as coin burn, escrow, etc. But, barring those methods, once a coin is spent it's forever spent, same as a crisp $100 I hand to some door to door salesman that never comes back. After dipping my toe into the crypto currency world, learning about the DAO and Ethereum, there are a few things that bother me about this whole situation. 1.) Rolling back (voiding) transactions, which seems to go against the concept of cryptocurrencies in general. 2.) The conflict of interest between the DAO, slock it, and core Ethereum developers, and their hefty co-mingled investments in the DAO. 3.) The labeling of this person as a "thief" when they played by the rules set forth by the DAO contracts. Maybe not the spirit, but courts generally decide that. The code is the law and is final is my understanding. (I don't know how you code the spirit, by the way.) 4.) The non-inclusive "democratic" vote of the Ethereum community on the hard fork that appears questionable. 5.) The different rules for reversing a "theft" depending on whose funds where taken (see #1 and #2) or how much was involved. 6.) The centralized decision making on the fork by a small number of people who stand to lose substantial funds based on a poorly understood investment vehicle. This whole situation occurred because of some poorly implement code and now there's a whole lot more code being deployed in a hurried manner. If there is another unnoticed, unintentional way to run code that is not within the spirit of a contract in the future and no core Ethereum or slock it funds are involved, will another hard fork occur? Will they legally be forced to do it? It seems as though the risk was contained to the DAO's funds and now, with the hastily rolled out fork, the whole Ethereum market is put at risk.
- CoryG89 10y ago
  This. To me (1) are (3) are amazingly, agonizingly ironic given the context of the situation, even if the outcome is not entirely surprising knowing how the voting is done and how centralized mining pools make things (as well as point (2)). The hypocrisy of the whole thing is astonishing to me.
pantulis 10y ago
Blockchain newbie here. While I somewhat understand what a DAO is, can someone explain what is the DAO? What are its objectives?
- sidereal1 10y ago
  The objective is to create a decentralized fund/holding company. Thousands of people put money into a pot and then vote on what that money should be invested on. I view it as more of an experiment with new tech rather than an actual plan to run a successful business, however there is an absurd amount of money on the line.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
herbst 10y ago
ETH was always shit anyway. The idea is good, but the execution always lacked professionality. No idea how they came so far actually.
scandox 10y ago
As a layman, vis-a-vis blockchain and crypto in general, the language of this post reinforces my sense of a community of very smart, dumb people who I wouldn't trust with ten cents. Whenever I find myself looking at a topic which technically goes over my head, I generally have to rely on the way the people involve express themselves. The language of the Blockchain community is awful from that point of view. It reminds me of sitting in meeting with too-clever lawyers, lost in a world of cunning minutiae, oblivious to the fecking meteor about to land on their heads.
- fraggle222 10y ago
  >...who I wouldn't trust with ten cents. Interestingly the entire point of bitcoin, for example, is that you don't need to trust anyone at all.
  - scandox 10y ago
    You have to trust the system
- anonbanker 10y ago
  I love how, 15 hours later, you were proven to be so very wrong, and even the bitcoin people are now taking Ethereum's lead. Yes, it's epicaricacy. Yes, it's warranted.
markkat 10y ago
The author makes a lot of assumptions about DAO holders. I am both an ETH and DAO holder. I am pro hardfork, not because I will get my DTH back, but because 1) the consequences of the attacker having that much ETH as Ethereum migrates to PoS and 2) it's much better than eternal white hat battles to control the DTH and the drama it would bring. TBH if we could just destroy all the DTH without a HF, I would be happiest with that solution. But, of course that cannot be done. I would prefer if the HF just burned the DTH. Slock.it was very irresponsible not to cap The DAO from the beginning. Growing pains. I didn't vote with carbonvote.com because I didn't have to. It was clear the HF was going to win. No need to mess with my cold wallets. There was no perfect outcome from this situation, but I see the HF as the least bad. IMHO Bitcoin could use a HF, but they can't get one due to the centralization of mining in a few Chinese companies. I see that as a negative. The threshold for a HF will likely grow for Ethereum as the network grows due to the diversity of stakeholders and their interests. These are very early times for Ethereum, and even for Bitcoin. Ethereum does have more scheduled hard forks coming, BTW. The switch to PoS is going to require one.
- anonbanker 10y ago
  less than 13 hours later, your viewpoint was proven correct. The rule of HN and cryptocurrencies seems to be, look what the majority is saying, then do the exact opposite.
davotoula 10y ago
Too big to fail!
cyphar 10y ago
I was hoping that the title would be a pun on the phrase "Stick a fork in her, she's done." I was a bit disappointed given such a prime opportunity for a pun.
anonbanker 10y ago
one day later, Looks like all the naysayers were wrong. only one block remained on the old fork. I'm glad I bought in when I did, during all this FUD. I'll be making a killing now.

250 points by themgt 10y ago

Insane how there will be a pool of $6m worth of DAO tokens to be distributed according to the will of trustees. Maybe I'm not understanding correctly, but that seems to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard of in the context of a trustless system of computation.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
lunula 10y ago
I also know only as much as you, and it seems hilariously weak. Shouldn't it be possible to make a smart contract that dispenses it in accordance to the whims of ETH stakeholders? I guess the trustees will need to decide...
elaineo 10y ago
nope, that's exactly correct. They even use the term "trustees".

467568985476 10y ago

Most people didn’t know, didn’t care, or couldn’t figure out how to vote. Carbonvote is a poll that weighed user votes by their ether account holdings. Only 5.5% of the total ether holders bothered to vote. A quarter of the DAO-Fork votes came from a single account. That's wild. It seems like the largest holders of Ether can tie their investments together and agree to "undo" anything that loses money. Am I misunderstanding how the hard fork process works? Why would anyone bet on this being the "killer cryptocurrency" if it already has entrenched interests capable of manipulating it for personal gain? How is this system decentralized beyond the trivial, technical sense?

tdaltonc 10y ago
The "proof of stake" vote wasn't binding. In the bitcoin world, this would be called a 51% percent attack. What really matters is what the miners choose to do.
- 467568985476 10y ago
  Thanks for clearing that up - rereading the article, I see now that I missed the sentence describing the informal, non-binding nature of the vote.
- onestone 10y ago
  Miners majority decides only with soft forks. A hard fork is a consensus protocol change, the economic majority can split even without the majority of miners (of course it is nice to have the miners on board as well).
mablap 10y ago
The reality, every blockchain is vulnerable to such forking. The system is still decentralized, as the miners have to make their choice. However, the Ethereum Foundation decided to force the fork upon geth users, as the software defaults to pro-fork. So in effect a lot of users will be coerced into forking, without knowing. This particular fork is political and not technical. The previous ETH forks were modifications to the protocol. The current fork is a modification to the account balances. The rich Ethereum fanatics are completely and absurdly delusional in thinking this will be a great event in their history. To me, the canonical chain is all but dead. The protocol will survive, just not on this chain.
- mwilcox 10y ago
  Not quite. Ethereum's trie allows transaction paths like this to be clipped with almost no collateral damage to the rest of the data structure. Bitcoin's UTXO model makes it very difficult to roll back transactions since it would cause havoc on every other transaction on the network.

tdaltonc 10y ago

If Ethereum is just another way that humans muddle through (and not the dispassionate justice of machines), is it still something different then the legal and political systems that came before it?

InclinedPlane 10y ago
Of course not. Ethereum failed, spectacularly. Ethereum made as clear-cut and direct a statement of purpose and of conditions for success and failure as possible, and they failed. Instead of accepting that fact and moving on zealots have refused to believe that they could be wrong or that their utopian ideals could be flawed in any way. Like most zealous utopians they'll be willing to accept a horrific amount of damage and destruction before seeing reality.
- j_s 10y ago
  Was it Ethereum or the DAO that failed?
  - hueving 10y ago
    Ethereum failed when it forked to try to mop up the DAO failure.
  - cjslep 10y ago
    As an outsider looking in on trying out my first cryptocurrency, Ethereum was definitely on my radar. Now that the founders have shown they are capable and will undo the way the system has executed if they do not like it, I feel much more comfortable keeping my money in fiat where the regulations are well-defined and I know I have recourse through the law. I do not want to be subjected to the whims of an unregulated group operating under unknown rules with an unknown, possibly nonexistent, path of rectification if they chose something I did not like. I otherwise would have accepted the operational philosophy similar to how Bitcoin has been handled thus far and all of the responsibilities associated with a level, permanent playing field. I honestly am no longer interested and do not plan to keep up with Ethereum. I'm just N=1, but if the trend continues then I see it not growing beyond a hardcore self-interested group of people.

mablap 10y ago

“Invent a new version of the universe” is normally not permitted by the software protocol, which is why this involves a client update and a hard fork. To have "separate universes" is to have separate blockchains with different genesis blocks. There's an incentive to do just that with Ethereum[1] since the effective doubling of funds (X ETH on each chain) is bound to cause disruption. Anything other than a new fork is going to fail for the reasons the author mentions. [1]: https://reddit.com/r/etheregen https://reddit.com/r/etheregen

elaineo 10y ago
Thanks for the link, I didn't know people were doing this. I had only seen EthereumClassic, which seems prone to attack, and a nightmare for exchanges.

tostitos1979 10y ago

I'm really disappointed in how the DAO heist was handled. The promise of cryptocurrencies was that they are harder to manipulate than fiat currency. If the fork succeeds (or even if it fails), I think the very notion of rolling back transactions is a step backwards. The next time there is something like the DAO, people can invest without fear since rollbacks are the modus operandi. Isn't this why people are upset with the financial system? When people invest in stuff, they need to be responsible for the results. As someone who didn't buy a house in the crazy mid-2000s, I am paying the price for everyone else's stupidity in the form of crazy low interest rates (which have fueled record home prices). But who is standing up for me? No one. I thought cryptocurrencies were leading to a better world (or at least one where the system couldn't be rigged as easily). I guess not in this instance :(

brianwawok 10y ago
I would love to hear the line of logic where if we all paid and got paid for everything in crypto currency would have spared you from the housing bust?
- viycyjcutc 10y ago
  That went way over your head, didn't it?
  - dang 10y ago
    Please don't comment like this here. Also, please don't create many obscure throwaway accounts on HN. This forum is a community. Anonymity is fine, but users should have some consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community at all, and that would be an entirely different forum.
- tostitos1979 10y ago
  If investors in stupid investments lost their money - all the way from investment banks down to individuals who made bad home purchase decisions, I'm pretty sure homes would cost less today. My point is that interventions have unforeseen consequences which hurt some people (typically the responsible ones).

asr1 10y ago

this may explain, why expanse(ethereum clone) has so much volume at the moment. Seems like a lot of people are bearish on eth. http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/expanse/ http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/expanse/

kevindong 10y ago

The entire hard fork idea was a case of "your choices are shit and shit, pick one". On one hand, if the hard fork fails, the hacker gets away with millions of dollars, representing a very large chunk of the entire market. On the other hand, if the hard fork succeeds, the entire idea of a decentralized currency where everyone's equal and there are no higher authorities (i.e., corporations or governments) to intervene against you is dead.

ilaksh 10y ago

The mistake was putting so much money in one untested contract. It was a big mistake. But Ethereum is still the leader in terms of a lot of technical aspects and also the ability to pull people together. To try to give people a perspective: say you and your friends took out second mortgages on your houses and came up with 5 million to invest. Then you invented some tool, and someone found a back door or bug in this tool that allowed them to steal 1 million dollars. So most of the group would like to undo this 1 million dollar theft with a patch. Now, most outsiders are condemning you for trying to work around the bug and recover your million dollars with a patch. I think that the mob is fickle. Quick to pile onto a bandwagon, and quick to burn it. So, I hope Vitalik and the other group of hard working, intelligent and ethical people involved do not take the mob's response to heart.

elaineo 10y ago
Now say, you took out a mortgage and came up with 5 million dollars. Another 100 people don't have any dollars, so they would like to seize your 5 million dollars with a patch. There's a clear majority vote to take your 5 million dollars. Should they be allowed to do that?
- ilaksh 10y ago
  Its not anything like that though. Its more like the small group of investors with the most money in the pot are voting to protect the large amount of money 'hacked' away. Its not like a majority stealing money. The idea of decentralization and objective rule by code is sound, but the other part of this is that it is an alpha system that was untested, and obviously this was a theft. Forking in this case does not invalidate the concept or the team or any of it. It doesn't mean there will be people forking in the future to steal money. It really seems like most people are operating on the same level that the kids were in my 7th grade class. Which is pretty bad, because it was full of dullards, children acting almost like monkeys, and actual juvenile criminals. Honestly the common reaction here is at a middle-school level.
  - elaineo 10y ago

matt4077 10y ago

This heist a nice demonstration of the usefulness of politics. So much so that the zealots are willing to forgo actual money and let that injustice stand rather than admitting defeat. Well, some of them are.

ForHackernews 10y ago
The most entertaining part of cryptocurrency for me has been watching libertarian ideologues gradually re-discovering the reasons for financial regulation.

milesf 10y ago

VeriCoin did something similar when MintPal was hacked. They rolled back the blockchain prior to the heist. Now it's a shadow of itself, and MintPal is dead. What a mess.

polishninja 10y ago

I've been following the Ethereum/DAO situation since the drain of funds occurred. I currently do not own any cryptocurrencies so this has been my first real look at the communities surrounding Ethereum and Bitcoin. In laymen's terms I am under the impression that these crypto coins are to be treated the same as cash. If I hand someone $10,000 in USD and they disappear and/or spend the money without fulfilling their side of the contract, I'm out of luck. Sure, I could take them to court but if I can't find them (or I sent my crypto coins to another country) or they can't repay, my coins are still gone. I know there are different schemes to handle this situation, such as coin burn, escrow, etc. But, barring those methods, once a coin is spent it's forever spent, same as a crisp $100 I hand to some door to door salesman that never comes back. After dipping my toe into the crypto currency world, learning about the DAO and Ethereum, there are a few things that bother me about this whole situation. 1.) Rolling back (voiding) transactions, which seems to go against the concept of cryptocurrencies in general. 2.) The conflict of interest between the DAO, slock it, and core Ethereum developers, and their hefty co-mingled investments in the DAO. 3.) The labeling of this person as a "thief" when they played by the rules set forth by the DAO contracts. Maybe not the spirit, but courts generally decide that. The code is the law and is final is my understanding. (I don't know how you code the spirit, by the way.) 4.) The non-inclusive "democratic" vote of the Ethereum community on the hard fork that appears questionable. 5.) The different rules for reversing a "theft" depending on whose funds where taken (see #1 and #2) or how much was involved. 6.) The centralized decision making on the fork by a small number of people who stand to lose substantial funds based on a poorly understood investment vehicle. This whole situation occurred because of some poorly implement code and now there's a whole lot more code being deployed in a hurried manner. If there is another unnoticed, unintentional way to run code that is not within the spirit of a contract in the future and no core Ethereum or slock it funds are involved, will another hard fork occur? Will they legally be forced to do it? It seems as though the risk was contained to the DAO's funds and now, with the hastily rolled out fork, the whole Ethereum market is put at risk.

CoryG89 10y ago
This. To me (1) are (3) are amazingly, agonizingly ironic given the context of the situation, even if the outcome is not entirely surprising knowing how the voting is done and how centralized mining pools make things (as well as point (2)). The hypocrisy of the whole thing is astonishing to me.

pantulis 10y ago

Blockchain newbie here. While I somewhat understand what a DAO is, can someone explain what is the DAO? What are its objectives?

sidereal1 10y ago
The objective is to create a decentralized fund/holding company. Thousands of people put money into a pot and then vote on what that money should be invested on. I view it as more of an experiment with new tech rather than an actual plan to run a successful business, however there is an absurd amount of money on the line.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

herbst 10y ago

ETH was always shit anyway. The idea is good, but the execution always lacked professionality. No idea how they came so far actually.

scandox 10y ago

As a layman, vis-a-vis blockchain and crypto in general, the language of this post reinforces my sense of a community of very smart, dumb people who I wouldn't trust with ten cents. Whenever I find myself looking at a topic which technically goes over my head, I generally have to rely on the way the people involve express themselves. The language of the Blockchain community is awful from that point of view. It reminds me of sitting in meeting with too-clever lawyers, lost in a world of cunning minutiae, oblivious to the fecking meteor about to land on their heads.

fraggle222 10y ago
>...who I wouldn't trust with ten cents. Interestingly the entire point of bitcoin, for example, is that you don't need to trust anyone at all.
- scandox 10y ago
  You have to trust the system
anonbanker 10y ago
I love how, 15 hours later, you were proven to be so very wrong, and even the bitcoin people are now taking Ethereum's lead. Yes, it's epicaricacy. Yes, it's warranted.

markkat 10y ago

The author makes a lot of assumptions about DAO holders. I am both an ETH and DAO holder. I am pro hardfork, not because I will get my DTH back, but because 1) the consequences of the attacker having that much ETH as Ethereum migrates to PoS and 2) it's much better than eternal white hat battles to control the DTH and the drama it would bring. TBH if we could just destroy all the DTH without a HF, I would be happiest with that solution. But, of course that cannot be done. I would prefer if the HF just burned the DTH. Slock.it was very irresponsible not to cap The DAO from the beginning. Growing pains. I didn't vote with carbonvote.com because I didn't have to. It was clear the HF was going to win. No need to mess with my cold wallets. There was no perfect outcome from this situation, but I see the HF as the least bad. IMHO Bitcoin could use a HF, but they can't get one due to the centralization of mining in a few Chinese companies. I see that as a negative. The threshold for a HF will likely grow for Ethereum as the network grows due to the diversity of stakeholders and their interests. These are very early times for Ethereum, and even for Bitcoin. Ethereum does have more scheduled hard forks coming, BTW. The switch to PoS is going to require one.

anonbanker 10y ago
less than 13 hours later, your viewpoint was proven correct. The rule of HN and cryptocurrencies seems to be, look what the majority is saying, then do the exact opposite.

davotoula 10y ago

Too big to fail!

cyphar 10y ago

I was hoping that the title would be a pun on the phrase "Stick a fork in her, she's done." I was a bit disappointed given such a prime opportunity for a pun.

anonbanker 10y ago

one day later, Looks like all the naysayers were wrong. only one block remained on the old fork. I'm glad I bought in when I did, during all this FUD. I'll be making a killing now.