13 ms·

The DAO Hacker Is Getting Away

64 points by dogecoinbase 10y ago

pavel_lishin 10y ago
Does this mean that there are now two Ethereum blockchains running concurrently?
- hakanderyal 10y ago
  Yes, ETC(original) and ETH(forked). You can find some comparisons at http://www.etc-eth.com/ http://www.etc-eth.com/
  - cypherpunks01 10y ago
    I suppose that implies that I can "double spend" my ETH that were bought pre-fork, then? Where can I do this?
    - sputknick 10y ago
      You'll need to use a splitter function. Shapeshift.io has one available. You will need to set up a new ETH and ETC address beforehand.
    - DSMan195276 10y ago
      Kinda. You can't do a regular double spend, where you spend the same currency twice (And thus get twice the value out of it, kinda). You could spend the coins in ETH, and then spend the coins in ETC, two different currencies worth different amounts. The catch is that there is no guarantee you come out ahead, like there would normally be with a double spend. The fork resulted in a price drop (That has now somewhat recovered), and ETC is not worth nearly as much as ETH (About a 10:1 ratio). So ETC+ETH is really not worth much more then ETH was originally before the fork, if it is at all - even if you spend both, you probably didn't make any money on the fork itself.
    - gus_massa 10y ago
      I don't have hard numbers. Let's suppose that you had 1ETH(old), then now you have 1ETH(new) + 1ETC, and you can expend both. The 1ETC(new) in the forked chain and the 1ETC in the unforked chain. But the price dropped, so if you had $1 in the ETH(old) then now you have $0.80 in ETH(new) and $0.2 in ETC, so you didn't get free money, only free tokens that you can try to exchange for money in the right place. (Actually, I guess that the sum after the split is lower because some investor ruined away, so the numbers can be $1->$.7+$.2 or something.) And beware that since both have the same underlaying technology, then some can copy some transactions from one blockchain to the other, because the signature to transfer the coins is the same in both chains. The solution is to make two "tainted" versions of the coins that are disallowed to transfer in the other chain. Read the sibling comment about the "splitter function".
- lsseckman 10y ago
  Yes. Though of course only one (ETH) is the 'official' Ethereum chain. But that in and of itself is being debated.
- ChrisClark 10y ago
  Ugh, yes. The minority who didn't want the hard fork have continued to use the old chain. They constantly try to promote it and troll the 'bailout chain'. It was supposed to be a vote on whether to fork or not, then leave the deprecated chain behind. The vote for the fork succeeded, and all the developers of Ethereum and 99% of the developers for apps on the chain have decided to go with the vote. Everything is being done on the main chain, ETH, Ethereum. The old deprecated chain is now called ETC, they named themselves Ethereum Classic.
  - vectorpush 10y ago
    Why ugh? They want to support the old chain for ideological reasons, what's the problem with that? Isn't that the whole point of these blockchain systems (i.e. that a centralized authority does not control the system)? I am a pretty big blockchain critic, but schadenfreude aside, I think the eth/etc split is a decent demonstration of the fact that these systems have legitimate resistance to centralized authority, even when ethereum's influential creator is the authority. It's not stable and eth's buggy contracts are not reliable, but as far as blockchain money goes it has lived up to the ideals of the enthusiasts.
    - joosters 10y ago
      The vitriol in r/ethereum is an amazing sight. There are cult-like levels of declarations of support for either chain. It's astounding, considering both chains are basically the same system, and that prior to the DAO 'theft', everyone seemed to be proponents of the 'code is law' viewpoint. How quickly things change, and how little time it takes for people to switch their beliefs and villify those who still hold the old beliefs. It's certainly fun to watch the fallout...
      - empath75 10y ago
        It's about the same as your typical video game console war, really.
        10y ago
rsync 10y ago
"DAO Hacker" and "getting away" are very loaded bits of language that point to an interpretation of events that differ, AFAICT, from reality. The DAO contract was neither hacked nor broken. This individual used the features and functions of the contract in unexpected ways, but ways that were legitimate nonetheless.
- ahelwer 10y ago
  This argument also rests on an assumption over and above the function of the system: that the result of executing a contract is immutable and thus beyond reproach. As was demonstrated, the result is subject to ratification by miners. To miners on the new chain, the DAO hacker is a hacker. Certainly it was the case that ethereum contacts were advertised as immutable and beyond reproach, but if you bought into that, well... you'd be making the same error you see in your ideological opponents! It is a separate question whether ethereum contacts ought to be immutable, but that requires a different type of argument.
  - grandalf 10y ago
    The issue in my opinion is that the Ethereum maintainers actively helped create a hard fork to steal Ether from the so-called "hacker". This crosses a line. Sadly, the DAO had major bugs and the time to do something about them was before it launched. It's not the end of the world, though it does place Ethereum in the category of "easily corruptible human organizations" which makes it largely ineffective for the sorts of things that made it most exciting. Ethereum may become more distributed which would make this sort of consensus more difficult to achieve, or it may be replaced by something that has a more corruption-resistant governance structure. The basic idea underlying the holocaust, the Iraq war, and pretty much any human atrocity is that the ends justify the means. This is exactly the argument that hard forkers made. But, much like the Iraq war, the president should not have ever had the sole discretion to launch a war, nor should such a small number of interested people have the ability to launch a hard fork. Apologies for the hyperbole, but I think it's helpful to illustrate the core issue.
    - 10y ago
erdevs 10y ago
I haven't been tracking this closely. Any chance the DAO "hacker" was influential in keeping the "classic" chain around?
- onestone 10y ago
  Considering that the DAO hacker has the most to gain from the "classic" chain still having value, there is a significant chance.
hakanderyal 10y ago
There is an interesting relationship between ETC and ETH community. ETC reddit[0] and ETH reddit[1] can provide some information for those interested in the debate. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/EthereumClassic/ https://www.reddit.com/r/EthereumClassic/ [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum
Fej 10y ago
How can the hacker get away with moving any ETC out of his account, if everyone can see?
- wickedlogic 10y ago
  The funds can be moved through other wallets, or exchanged (or washed), and it is unlikely any exchange is going to keep a constant eye on that potential chain of addresses... also, it is his/her ETC... despite how you see the stories framed.
- KingMob 10y ago
  For starters, it's not even clear if this constitutes theft or just a clever hack in a system that originally claimed "code = law". IIRC, the DAO hacker anonymously published a statement claiming that all the ETH was rightfully his, and any attempts to do otherwise would be met with lawyers.
Analemma_ 10y ago
I last saw this story when the fork looked like it was going to succeed. Did enough people really dig in their heels for the immutable chain that they're going to let the guy get away with robbery? Oh man. Ah, hardcore libertarians. You're all completely mad, but I won't deny you're consistent.
- api 10y ago
  The issue is more complex than that. The DAO was created and backed by people who are also Ethereum developers, and forking the entire block chain to save what many people consider to be a badly thought out and badly executed experiment is just as dubious as some of the things that were done to save mega-banks in 2008. It's a clear case of moral hazard among other issues. Many of the people who are backing Ethereum Classic (the non-fork) are doing so because they like the ideas of Ethereum but want it to be truly independent. If the fork succeeds many people take it as a sign that Ethereum is a "proprietary" coin rather than a more open "nobody owns it" system like Bitcoin. I have no dog in the fight but that's how I understand it.
  - Analemma_ 10y ago
    > as dubious as some of the things that were done to save mega-banks in 2008. That's a good analogy, but not for the reason you're thinking. The expert consensus on the 2008 bank bailouts is that they had to be done, because letting them fail would've turned the recession into another Great Depression, and that much harder to recover from. Does that mean bailouts are good and proper? No, bailouts are terrible. It means the right way to avoid the moral hazard would have been to better regulate the banks and never have let them get "too big to fail" in the first place. I feel the same way about Ethereum. The DAO hack was a no-win situation, because these "smart contracts" should never have been created to begin with. They're always going to end up in situations like this, because they involve the affairs of messy, imperfect humans. The correct answer to the DAO mess was never to get into it in the first place.
    - grandalf 10y ago
      > The correct answer to the DAO mess was never to get into it in the first place. I don't think this is true at all. The DAO is (and was) a very cool idea. The only problem was that the code was complex enough that those who casually reviewed it failed to notice the vulnerability that the attacker noticed. As for the financial crisis, it was a combination of an unexpected event and entrenched interests scrambling to benefit as much as possible from it. By definition, entrenched interests want a continuation of the status quo, and that is what happened. We think about how bad it would have been if some homeowners would have foreclosed, but we fail to think about the people who would have been able to afford a home at a great price.
joosters 10y ago
I think the most interesting part of the DAO story is the 'white hat hackers' situation. Prior to the fork, these people also hacked the DAO, basically stealing all the remaining ETH that the original attacker had failed to take. It was justified at the time because they claimed to be a 'robin hood group', trying to save the money of DAO victims. However, now the fork has happened, these same hackers have vanished, or disavowed anything to do with the hacking, despite the fact that they now control millions of dollars worth of other people's money. They 'stole' from the rich but now don't want to let go of their takings. I wonder how they try to justify their action/inaction now?
_Marak_ 10y ago
I was chatting in the DAO slack chatrooms early on ( before any of this hacking news ). I was looking to legitimately fund a company using the DAO software ( still looking for funding... ) Pretty much every developer there told me the thing was unsafe, untested, and should not be used for any real business ( yet ). Not very surprised about any of this.
- grandalf 10y ago
  Ironically, many of them used that same answer as a justification for why a hard fork of Ethereum was reasonable... But clearly if there had been many investments and some had gone well and others poorly, the idea that it was a "practice round" and should be reversed would have been met with laughter.
- lawnchair_larry 10y ago
  So why are you still looking? :)
  - _Marak_ 10y ago
    Well, if anyone is interested in doing a seed or angel round for a profitable PAAS / FAAS, check out my profile and shoot me an email: hn@marak.com
vectorpush 10y ago
I don't see this often discussed, but the DAO always seemed pretty shady, even prior to the hack. This was a system meant to function as an autonomous investment platform, but I couldn't find any details that explained exactly how the recipients of the investment funds were meant to be held accountable for the money they received. Ultimately, the eth would have needed to be cashed out into spendable money so that the business could pay for expenses and grow the company, but an eth contract is incapable of forcing the company to put fiat money back into the DAO and it's not a stretch to imagine a situation where the recipients do not agree to use the money in a fashion that is entirely inline with the intent of the investors or even fulfill any of the obligations stipulated as conditions of the investment. This was a scam waiting to happen even if the contract did function as intended by the authors.
- will_brown 10y ago
  >This was a scam waiting to happen even if the contract did function as intended by the authors. I have said this from the beginning. From a purely logical point as a potential investor, you should ask yourself, why would an autonomous investment platform (borrowing your phrasing) require all the funds up front? In other words, look at kickstarter/gofund me, how skeptical would everyone have been if they asked for investors money before there was even an investment opportunity? Even with the fork, I think they should have returned everyone's money to them, and allow them to buy membership/voting right to the DAO for a nominal fee that would allow them to invest in future investment opportunities.
  - vectorpush 10y ago
    Indeed. It seems to me that the only concern was building hype for the DAO (in order to solicit further investments) and ethereum in general. I kept seeing claims about how smart contracts would enable autonomous corporations to pay employees and run factories and other clearly impossible things, everyone was so excited about the possibilities that nobody sat down to critically examine what is actually possible.
- EdHominem 10y ago
  That wasn't insurmountable. First, most people thought of small kickstarter projects where social pressure would be enough and if the contract lost a few k$ here and there it wouldn't matter. But the ultimate answer is that the company receiving the money could be bound by their country's law to do whatever they said they'd do. Presumably people would only vote to give them large amounts if they were accountable.
milesf 10y ago
This all reminds me of what happened to VeriCoin and the MintPal heist. A hacker stole millions in coins, but the devs of VeriCoin rolled it back and in one fell swoop stopped one theft but cut the floor out from under themselves. What's needed is a cryptocurrency that cannot, under any circumstances, be rolled back. Otherwise crypto is a fiat currency just like all other modern currencies that can be manipulated.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  > that cannot, under any circumstances, be rolled back But getting hacked is ok, right?
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    Cash transactions can't be rolled back either, and run the many risks, but they have advantages as well.
    - slavik81 10y ago
      Countries have hard-forked cash to invalidate large thefts. > When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Iraqi dinar replaced the Kuwaiti dinar as the currency and large quantities of banknotes were stolen by the invading forces. After liberation, the Kuwaiti dinar was restored as the country's currency and a new banknote series was introduced, allowing the previous notes, including those stolen, to be demonetized. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwaiti_dinar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwaiti_dinar > the Central Bank of Kuwait (CBK) announced the withdrawal of Kuwaiti Dinar currency notes issued and placed in circulation up to August 1,1990, and the issue of currency notes of the new design against those notes withdrawn. The Bank also announced that they will not accept certain series of old Kuwaiti Dinar currency notes in different denominations in exchange of new currency notes so issued. The final date for the conversion into new design notes of valid old Kuwaiti Dinar currency notes, held abroad by individuals and banks was 30.09.91. http://www.island.lk/2001/10/11/busine02.html http://www.island.lk/2001/10/11/busine02.html
fapjacks 10y ago
I lost money to the "hacker", but I fully support the original, untainted, "the code is the contract" blockchain.

64 points by dogecoinbase 10y ago

pavel_lishin 10y ago

Does this mean that there are now two Ethereum blockchains running concurrently?

hakanderyal 10y ago
Yes, ETC(original) and ETH(forked). You can find some comparisons at http://www.etc-eth.com/ http://www.etc-eth.com/
- cypherpunks01 10y ago
  I suppose that implies that I can "double spend" my ETH that were bought pre-fork, then? Where can I do this?
  - sputknick 10y ago
    You'll need to use a splitter function. Shapeshift.io has one available. You will need to set up a new ETH and ETC address beforehand.
  - DSMan195276 10y ago
    Kinda. You can't do a regular double spend, where you spend the same currency twice (And thus get twice the value out of it, kinda). You could spend the coins in ETH, and then spend the coins in ETC, two different currencies worth different amounts. The catch is that there is no guarantee you come out ahead, like there would normally be with a double spend. The fork resulted in a price drop (That has now somewhat recovered), and ETC is not worth nearly as much as ETH (About a 10:1 ratio). So ETC+ETH is really not worth much more then ETH was originally before the fork, if it is at all - even if you spend both, you probably didn't make any money on the fork itself.
  - gus_massa 10y ago
    I don't have hard numbers. Let's suppose that you had 1ETH(old), then now you have 1ETH(new) + 1ETC, and you can expend both. The 1ETC(new) in the forked chain and the 1ETC in the unforked chain. But the price dropped, so if you had $1 in the ETH(old) then now you have $0.80 in ETH(new) and $0.2 in ETC, so you didn't get free money, only free tokens that you can try to exchange for money in the right place. (Actually, I guess that the sum after the split is lower because some investor ruined away, so the numbers can be $1->$.7+$.2 or something.) And beware that since both have the same underlaying technology, then some can copy some transactions from one blockchain to the other, because the signature to transfer the coins is the same in both chains. The solution is to make two "tainted" versions of the coins that are disallowed to transfer in the other chain. Read the sibling comment about the "splitter function".
lsseckman 10y ago
Yes. Though of course only one (ETH) is the 'official' Ethereum chain. But that in and of itself is being debated.
ChrisClark 10y ago
Ugh, yes. The minority who didn't want the hard fork have continued to use the old chain. They constantly try to promote it and troll the 'bailout chain'. It was supposed to be a vote on whether to fork or not, then leave the deprecated chain behind. The vote for the fork succeeded, and all the developers of Ethereum and 99% of the developers for apps on the chain have decided to go with the vote. Everything is being done on the main chain, ETH, Ethereum. The old deprecated chain is now called ETC, they named themselves Ethereum Classic.
- vectorpush 10y ago
  Why ugh? They want to support the old chain for ideological reasons, what's the problem with that? Isn't that the whole point of these blockchain systems (i.e. that a centralized authority does not control the system)? I am a pretty big blockchain critic, but schadenfreude aside, I think the eth/etc split is a decent demonstration of the fact that these systems have legitimate resistance to centralized authority, even when ethereum's influential creator is the authority. It's not stable and eth's buggy contracts are not reliable, but as far as blockchain money goes it has lived up to the ideals of the enthusiasts.
  - joosters 10y ago
    The vitriol in r/ethereum is an amazing sight. There are cult-like levels of declarations of support for either chain. It's astounding, considering both chains are basically the same system, and that prior to the DAO 'theft', everyone seemed to be proponents of the 'code is law' viewpoint. How quickly things change, and how little time it takes for people to switch their beliefs and villify those who still hold the old beliefs. It's certainly fun to watch the fallout...
    - empath75 10y ago
      It's about the same as your typical video game console war, really.
      - 10y ago

rsync 10y ago

"DAO Hacker" and "getting away" are very loaded bits of language that point to an interpretation of events that differ, AFAICT, from reality. The DAO contract was neither hacked nor broken. This individual used the features and functions of the contract in unexpected ways, but ways that were legitimate nonetheless.

ahelwer 10y ago
This argument also rests on an assumption over and above the function of the system: that the result of executing a contract is immutable and thus beyond reproach. As was demonstrated, the result is subject to ratification by miners. To miners on the new chain, the DAO hacker is a hacker. Certainly it was the case that ethereum contacts were advertised as immutable and beyond reproach, but if you bought into that, well... you'd be making the same error you see in your ideological opponents! It is a separate question whether ethereum contacts ought to be immutable, but that requires a different type of argument.
- grandalf 10y ago
  The issue in my opinion is that the Ethereum maintainers actively helped create a hard fork to steal Ether from the so-called "hacker". This crosses a line. Sadly, the DAO had major bugs and the time to do something about them was before it launched. It's not the end of the world, though it does place Ethereum in the category of "easily corruptible human organizations" which makes it largely ineffective for the sorts of things that made it most exciting. Ethereum may become more distributed which would make this sort of consensus more difficult to achieve, or it may be replaced by something that has a more corruption-resistant governance structure. The basic idea underlying the holocaust, the Iraq war, and pretty much any human atrocity is that the ends justify the means. This is exactly the argument that hard forkers made. But, much like the Iraq war, the president should not have ever had the sole discretion to launch a war, nor should such a small number of interested people have the ability to launch a hard fork. Apologies for the hyperbole, but I think it's helpful to illustrate the core issue.
  - 10y ago

erdevs 10y ago

I haven't been tracking this closely. Any chance the DAO "hacker" was influential in keeping the "classic" chain around?

onestone 10y ago
Considering that the DAO hacker has the most to gain from the "classic" chain still having value, there is a significant chance.

hakanderyal 10y ago

There is an interesting relationship between ETC and ETH community. ETC reddit[0] and ETH reddit[1] can provide some information for those interested in the debate. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/EthereumClassic/ https://www.reddit.com/r/EthereumClassic/ [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum

Fej 10y ago

How can the hacker get away with moving any ETC out of his account, if everyone can see?

wickedlogic 10y ago
The funds can be moved through other wallets, or exchanged (or washed), and it is unlikely any exchange is going to keep a constant eye on that potential chain of addresses... also, it is his/her ETC... despite how you see the stories framed.
KingMob 10y ago
For starters, it's not even clear if this constitutes theft or just a clever hack in a system that originally claimed "code = law". IIRC, the DAO hacker anonymously published a statement claiming that all the ETH was rightfully his, and any attempts to do otherwise would be met with lawyers.

Analemma_ 10y ago

I last saw this story when the fork looked like it was going to succeed. Did enough people really dig in their heels for the immutable chain that they're going to let the guy get away with robbery? Oh man. Ah, hardcore libertarians. You're all completely mad, but I won't deny you're consistent.

api 10y ago
The issue is more complex than that. The DAO was created and backed by people who are also Ethereum developers, and forking the entire block chain to save what many people consider to be a badly thought out and badly executed experiment is just as dubious as some of the things that were done to save mega-banks in 2008. It's a clear case of moral hazard among other issues. Many of the people who are backing Ethereum Classic (the non-fork) are doing so because they like the ideas of Ethereum but want it to be truly independent. If the fork succeeds many people take it as a sign that Ethereum is a "proprietary" coin rather than a more open "nobody owns it" system like Bitcoin. I have no dog in the fight but that's how I understand it.
- Analemma_ 10y ago
  > as dubious as some of the things that were done to save mega-banks in 2008. That's a good analogy, but not for the reason you're thinking. The expert consensus on the 2008 bank bailouts is that they had to be done, because letting them fail would've turned the recession into another Great Depression, and that much harder to recover from. Does that mean bailouts are good and proper? No, bailouts are terrible. It means the right way to avoid the moral hazard would have been to better regulate the banks and never have let them get "too big to fail" in the first place. I feel the same way about Ethereum. The DAO hack was a no-win situation, because these "smart contracts" should never have been created to begin with. They're always going to end up in situations like this, because they involve the affairs of messy, imperfect humans. The correct answer to the DAO mess was never to get into it in the first place.
  - grandalf 10y ago
    > The correct answer to the DAO mess was never to get into it in the first place. I don't think this is true at all. The DAO is (and was) a very cool idea. The only problem was that the code was complex enough that those who casually reviewed it failed to notice the vulnerability that the attacker noticed. As for the financial crisis, it was a combination of an unexpected event and entrenched interests scrambling to benefit as much as possible from it. By definition, entrenched interests want a continuation of the status quo, and that is what happened. We think about how bad it would have been if some homeowners would have foreclosed, but we fail to think about the people who would have been able to afford a home at a great price.

joosters 10y ago

I think the most interesting part of the DAO story is the 'white hat hackers' situation. Prior to the fork, these people also hacked the DAO, basically stealing all the remaining ETH that the original attacker had failed to take. It was justified at the time because they claimed to be a 'robin hood group', trying to save the money of DAO victims. However, now the fork has happened, these same hackers have vanished, or disavowed anything to do with the hacking, despite the fact that they now control millions of dollars worth of other people's money. They 'stole' from the rich but now don't want to let go of their takings. I wonder how they try to justify their action/inaction now?

_Marak_ 10y ago

I was chatting in the DAO slack chatrooms early on ( before any of this hacking news ). I was looking to legitimately fund a company using the DAO software ( still looking for funding... ) Pretty much every developer there told me the thing was unsafe, untested, and should not be used for any real business ( yet ). Not very surprised about any of this.

grandalf 10y ago
Ironically, many of them used that same answer as a justification for why a hard fork of Ethereum was reasonable... But clearly if there had been many investments and some had gone well and others poorly, the idea that it was a "practice round" and should be reversed would have been met with laughter.
lawnchair_larry 10y ago
So why are you still looking? :)
- _Marak_ 10y ago
  Well, if anyone is interested in doing a seed or angel round for a profitable PAAS / FAAS, check out my profile and shoot me an email: hn@marak.com

vectorpush 10y ago

I don't see this often discussed, but the DAO always seemed pretty shady, even prior to the hack. This was a system meant to function as an autonomous investment platform, but I couldn't find any details that explained exactly how the recipients of the investment funds were meant to be held accountable for the money they received. Ultimately, the eth would have needed to be cashed out into spendable money so that the business could pay for expenses and grow the company, but an eth contract is incapable of forcing the company to put fiat money back into the DAO and it's not a stretch to imagine a situation where the recipients do not agree to use the money in a fashion that is entirely inline with the intent of the investors or even fulfill any of the obligations stipulated as conditions of the investment. This was a scam waiting to happen even if the contract did function as intended by the authors.

will_brown 10y ago
>This was a scam waiting to happen even if the contract did function as intended by the authors. I have said this from the beginning. From a purely logical point as a potential investor, you should ask yourself, why would an autonomous investment platform (borrowing your phrasing) require all the funds up front? In other words, look at kickstarter/gofund me, how skeptical would everyone have been if they asked for investors money before there was even an investment opportunity? Even with the fork, I think they should have returned everyone's money to them, and allow them to buy membership/voting right to the DAO for a nominal fee that would allow them to invest in future investment opportunities.
- vectorpush 10y ago
  Indeed. It seems to me that the only concern was building hype for the DAO (in order to solicit further investments) and ethereum in general. I kept seeing claims about how smart contracts would enable autonomous corporations to pay employees and run factories and other clearly impossible things, everyone was so excited about the possibilities that nobody sat down to critically examine what is actually possible.
EdHominem 10y ago
That wasn't insurmountable. First, most people thought of small kickstarter projects where social pressure would be enough and if the contract lost a few k$ here and there it wouldn't matter. But the ultimate answer is that the company receiving the money could be bound by their country's law to do whatever they said they'd do. Presumably people would only vote to give them large amounts if they were accountable.

milesf 10y ago

This all reminds me of what happened to VeriCoin and the MintPal heist. A hacker stole millions in coins, but the devs of VeriCoin rolled it back and in one fell swoop stopped one theft but cut the floor out from under themselves. What's needed is a cryptocurrency that cannot, under any circumstances, be rolled back. Otherwise crypto is a fiat currency just like all other modern currencies that can be manipulated.

smallnamespace 10y ago
> that cannot, under any circumstances, be rolled back But getting hacked is ok, right?
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  Cash transactions can't be rolled back either, and run the many risks, but they have advantages as well.
  - slavik81 10y ago
    Countries have hard-forked cash to invalidate large thefts. > When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Iraqi dinar replaced the Kuwaiti dinar as the currency and large quantities of banknotes were stolen by the invading forces. After liberation, the Kuwaiti dinar was restored as the country's currency and a new banknote series was introduced, allowing the previous notes, including those stolen, to be demonetized. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwaiti_dinar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwaiti_dinar > the Central Bank of Kuwait (CBK) announced the withdrawal of Kuwaiti Dinar currency notes issued and placed in circulation up to August 1,1990, and the issue of currency notes of the new design against those notes withdrawn. The Bank also announced that they will not accept certain series of old Kuwaiti Dinar currency notes in different denominations in exchange of new currency notes so issued. The final date for the conversion into new design notes of valid old Kuwaiti Dinar currency notes, held abroad by individuals and banks was 30.09.91. http://www.island.lk/2001/10/11/busine02.html http://www.island.lk/2001/10/11/busine02.html

fapjacks 10y ago

I lost money to the "hacker", but I fully support the original, untainted, "the code is the contract" blockchain.