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The machines are controlled by humans, and will be, unless and until AI takes over the world. So how can you possibly have a system where humans can't decide th

The machines are controlled by humans, and will be, unless and until AI takes over the world. So how can you possibly have a system where humans can't decide things? I would still view it as less corrupt than traditional finance, where a few powerful companies / people / government have disproportionate control.

runeks 10y ago
> The machines are controlled by humans, and will be, > unless and until AI takes over the world. So how can > you possibly have a system where humans can't decide things? It's not about humans not deciding things. It's about: 1. Creating a protocol (Ethereum) 2. Making claims about what this protocol can do; attract investments 3. When the protocol is shown the be flawed: discard it The very value proposition of Ethereum is that it's a protocol. When the authors suddenly "change the protocol", it amounts to the reference implementation of the protocol changing to be incompatible with all other alternative implementations of the protocol. This has no value in the real world. The value proposition (the protocol) is now gone. Investors invested $150 million in a protocol, not an computer program distributed by the "official developers", which everyone must use in order to access the system.
- davidgerard 10y ago
  It's also the reason for the change. Changing the protocol to fix clear bugs is one thing; changing the protocol because whales lost a bundle is another.
  - runeks 10y ago
    On the surface we can "fix the protocol", yes. But when the value proposition was a protocol that has now been shown to be flawed, what is there to fix? Create a new protocol, which does not exhibit the exploited bug, and hope people choose to believe that this was the only bug that is there? In-production protocols can't really be changed. You can only create a new protocol, and hope people switch to that. And if you, the inventor of the protocol, have the power to just "move over" users to the new protocol, it was never really a protocol to begin with, but more like a backend interface (the difference being that the latter can change without changing the client protocol).
- kartickv 10y ago
  The post I replied to talked of "the dispassionate justice of machines", and I was saying it's ultimately the humans deciding things, not machines. Incompatibility is a downside of changing the protocol, but that doesn't justify jumping to the conclusion that protocols with serious flaws should never be changed, even after millions of dollars have been stolen. Keeping it running as it is won't convince anyone to invest in it, which defeats the point of running it, in the first place.
- CoryG89 10y ago
  Actually $150M worth of ether was invested in just the DAO, just a single contract running on the protocol. Probably more than that has been invested in the protocol at this point. One thing to keep in mind is that much of this was not invested by buying in with fiat currency or even mining in the traditional sense. Apparently a significant amount of the ether invested in the DAO belonged to Ethereum developers and insiders. If I understand correctly some of this ether was essentially created out of thin air during their "pre-mine" process[1]. The $150M USD worth of ether in the DAO is out of almost $1 billion USD in market cap[2]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8072340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8072340 [2]: http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/ http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/

runeks 10y ago

> The machines are controlled by humans, and will be, > unless and until AI takes over the world. So how can > you possibly have a system where humans can't decide things? It's not about humans not deciding things. It's about: 1. Creating a protocol (Ethereum) 2. Making claims about what this protocol can do; attract investments 3. When the protocol is shown the be flawed: discard it The very value proposition of Ethereum is that it's a protocol. When the authors suddenly "change the protocol", it amounts to the reference implementation of the protocol changing to be incompatible with all other alternative implementations of the protocol. This has no value in the real world. The value proposition (the protocol) is now gone. Investors invested $150 million in a protocol, not an computer program distributed by the "official developers", which everyone must use in order to access the system.

davidgerard 10y ago
It's also the reason for the change. Changing the protocol to fix clear bugs is one thing; changing the protocol because whales lost a bundle is another.
- runeks 10y ago
  On the surface we can "fix the protocol", yes. But when the value proposition was a protocol that has now been shown to be flawed, what is there to fix? Create a new protocol, which does not exhibit the exploited bug, and hope people choose to believe that this was the only bug that is there? In-production protocols can't really be changed. You can only create a new protocol, and hope people switch to that. And if you, the inventor of the protocol, have the power to just "move over" users to the new protocol, it was never really a protocol to begin with, but more like a backend interface (the difference being that the latter can change without changing the client protocol).
kartickv 10y ago
The post I replied to talked of "the dispassionate justice of machines", and I was saying it's ultimately the humans deciding things, not machines. Incompatibility is a downside of changing the protocol, but that doesn't justify jumping to the conclusion that protocols with serious flaws should never be changed, even after millions of dollars have been stolen. Keeping it running as it is won't convince anyone to invest in it, which defeats the point of running it, in the first place.
CoryG89 10y ago
Actually $150M worth of ether was invested in just the DAO, just a single contract running on the protocol. Probably more than that has been invested in the protocol at this point. One thing to keep in mind is that much of this was not invested by buying in with fiat currency or even mining in the traditional sense. Apparently a significant amount of the ether invested in the DAO belonged to Ethereum developers and insiders. If I understand correctly some of this ether was essentially created out of thin air during their "pre-mine" process[1]. The $150M USD worth of ether in the DAO is out of almost $1 billion USD in market cap[2]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8072340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8072340 [2]: http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/ http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/