4 ms·

> For me, the biggest blow to ETH is the revelation that "the code is NOT law". Considering Ethereum Classic has all the features of ETH and it follows whateve

> For me, the biggest blow to ETH is the revelation that "the code is NOT law". Considering Ethereum Classic has all the features of ETH and it follows whatever your distorted definition of 'code is law' means, the fact that ETC is at it's all time low (compared to its price in ETH)). The question remains if ETH violated 'Code is Law', then how come market doesn't care. Clearly the biggest blow to ETH is NOT the DAO fork. If ETH is not above bitcoin, then among all the reasons I can list, its decision to hard fork is not one of it (because if that is the case then ETC would have been the market leader).

merlincorey 10y ago
> Considering Ethereum Classic has all the features of ETH and it follows whatever your distorted definition of 'code is law' means, the fact that ETC is at it's all time low (compared to its price in ETH)). The question remains if ETH violated 'Code is Law', then how come market doesn't care. I'm not sure how my view is distorted - it might be naive, I concede. My view is basically the person who found a flaw in TheDAO code deserved to be rewarded for it, even if it was not the intent of TheDAO, because I was sold (perhaps improperly) on the code being the arbiter, not people or politics.
- splintercell 10y ago
  I am calling your view of 'code is law' as a distorted view because it isn't that the other side doesn't think that code is law, it's just what do we consider 'the law' to be. In my world view, if you and I wrote a contract, and in the contract, there is a typo which says that I will pay you $5 gazillion for an iPhone, then that doesn't mean that the courts must enforce it. Clearly, it doesn't follow the 'intent' of the parties. Now, what if the other side truly signed the contract because they thought that their iPhone was being bought for 5 gazillion dollars, well this is why we don't "JUST" communicate via the contract. We communicate and perform negotiations via other human channels and the legal contract is a formalized expression of our communication. Same thing goes with smart contracts. I don't intend to use Smart Contracts because the missing 11th commandment said: "Thou shalt obey the Legal/Smart Contracts to the word". I want to use Smart Contracts because they would be an extension of legal contracts taken to the decentralized + technology domain. Literally, nobody put their money in the DAO because they thought that if a person puts in $1000 in the DAO then he should be able to take out $10 million if he is clever enough. It wasn't a bounty contract. If that was known beforehand, then there is no way it would have accrued $150 million worth of ethers. > My view is basically the person who found a flaw in TheDAO code deserved to be rewarded for it, even if it was not the intent of TheDAO, because I was sold (perhaps improperly) on the code being the arbiter, not people or politics. Lemme put it this way, had the hard fork not happened, but nearly 90% of the Ethereum holders quit Ethereum after that, (which meant that the hacker's bounty would have been decimated, would you still say that Ethereum is never going to succeed because they didn't honor the hacker's bounty?
  - tyre 10y ago
    The parent is saying that the entire point of Ethereum was to remove fuzzy human-world debates around things like "intent". If it doesn't, then what is the point? That they are decentralized? Who cares, and why? I don't disagree that Ethereum should have forked, but that is a human response. If we can take human responses to these contracts, then they aren't any different than normal paper contracts.
    - cslarson 10y ago
      Yes it was a human response. One totally within the rules of the protocol - that those using it chose to no longer use it in it's current state but they do chose a slightly modified one. Humans were always the ones responsible for the network as they are for bitcoin.
- blusterXY 10y ago
  If a bug was discovered in bitcoin that robbed 80% of its users in some unexpected fashion, the network would probably hard fork too. All ETH did was basically a 51% attack by stakeholders in the network. One lesson is not to trust ANY contract to be immutable if it manages an outsized chunk of network capital. Another is that Ethereum will beat its private competitors, since for contracts to be trustworthy they will need to run on the biggest and most diversified network there is.
- TorKlingberg 10y ago
  Ultimately a cryptocurrency, like many things, is only worth what people are willing to pay for it. If people decide to stop using Old Etherium and switch to New Etherium that works the same and where everyone except the hacker get New Eth for their Old Eth, there is no way to stop them.
  - vvillena 10y ago
    Exactly. Code is indeed law, but we should take into account both the code living on the blockchain and the code the nodes are running.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - merlincorey 10y ago
      This is a good point - the implementation always matters. If the implementation changes, it doesn't matter what the original specification was, the new implementation is the new spec, if it gains mass adoption.
rebuilder 10y ago
ETC doesn't follow the code is law edict, they just haven't broken it yet. (AFAIK). The point is, the code is not law, and no solution seems to exist that would make it possible to say it is. This stands for all cryptocurrencies.

merlincorey 10y ago

> Considering Ethereum Classic has all the features of ETH and it follows whatever your distorted definition of 'code is law' means, the fact that ETC is at it's all time low (compared to its price in ETH)). The question remains if ETH violated 'Code is Law', then how come market doesn't care. I'm not sure how my view is distorted - it might be naive, I concede. My view is basically the person who found a flaw in TheDAO code deserved to be rewarded for it, even if it was not the intent of TheDAO, because I was sold (perhaps improperly) on the code being the arbiter, not people or politics.

splintercell 10y ago
I am calling your view of 'code is law' as a distorted view because it isn't that the other side doesn't think that code is law, it's just what do we consider 'the law' to be. In my world view, if you and I wrote a contract, and in the contract, there is a typo which says that I will pay you $5 gazillion for an iPhone, then that doesn't mean that the courts must enforce it. Clearly, it doesn't follow the 'intent' of the parties. Now, what if the other side truly signed the contract because they thought that their iPhone was being bought for 5 gazillion dollars, well this is why we don't "JUST" communicate via the contract. We communicate and perform negotiations via other human channels and the legal contract is a formalized expression of our communication. Same thing goes with smart contracts. I don't intend to use Smart Contracts because the missing 11th commandment said: "Thou shalt obey the Legal/Smart Contracts to the word". I want to use Smart Contracts because they would be an extension of legal contracts taken to the decentralized + technology domain. Literally, nobody put their money in the DAO because they thought that if a person puts in $1000 in the DAO then he should be able to take out $10 million if he is clever enough. It wasn't a bounty contract. If that was known beforehand, then there is no way it would have accrued $150 million worth of ethers. > My view is basically the person who found a flaw in TheDAO code deserved to be rewarded for it, even if it was not the intent of TheDAO, because I was sold (perhaps improperly) on the code being the arbiter, not people or politics. Lemme put it this way, had the hard fork not happened, but nearly 90% of the Ethereum holders quit Ethereum after that, (which meant that the hacker's bounty would have been decimated, would you still say that Ethereum is never going to succeed because they didn't honor the hacker's bounty?
- tyre 10y ago
  The parent is saying that the entire point of Ethereum was to remove fuzzy human-world debates around things like "intent". If it doesn't, then what is the point? That they are decentralized? Who cares, and why? I don't disagree that Ethereum should have forked, but that is a human response. If we can take human responses to these contracts, then they aren't any different than normal paper contracts.
  - cslarson 10y ago
    Yes it was a human response. One totally within the rules of the protocol - that those using it chose to no longer use it in it's current state but they do chose a slightly modified one. Humans were always the ones responsible for the network as they are for bitcoin.
blusterXY 10y ago
If a bug was discovered in bitcoin that robbed 80% of its users in some unexpected fashion, the network would probably hard fork too. All ETH did was basically a 51% attack by stakeholders in the network. One lesson is not to trust ANY contract to be immutable if it manages an outsized chunk of network capital. Another is that Ethereum will beat its private competitors, since for contracts to be trustworthy they will need to run on the biggest and most diversified network there is.
TorKlingberg 10y ago
Ultimately a cryptocurrency, like many things, is only worth what people are willing to pay for it. If people decide to stop using Old Etherium and switch to New Etherium that works the same and where everyone except the hacker get New Eth for their Old Eth, there is no way to stop them.
- vvillena 10y ago
  Exactly. Code is indeed law, but we should take into account both the code living on the blockchain and the code the nodes are running.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - merlincorey 10y ago
    This is a good point - the implementation always matters. If the implementation changes, it doesn't matter what the original specification was, the new implementation is the new spec, if it gains mass adoption.

rebuilder 10y ago

ETC doesn't follow the code is law edict, they just haven't broken it yet. (AFAIK). The point is, the code is not law, and no solution seems to exist that would make it possible to say it is. This stands for all cryptocurrencies.