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This is the wrong level of abstraction to think about the problem at. You're talking about how it was done, in terms of technical implementation. Focus on the e

by JackC 9y ago

This is the wrong level of abstraction to think about the problem at. You're talking about how it was done, in terms of technical implementation. Focus on the effects, in terms of real-world exchange value -- that's what matters, both to the law and to human beings. In my analogy, Casey owned 1/3 of X (a corporation), where X is some social construct with real-world market value in terms of dollars or bitcoin or gold or whatever. The other owners of X worked to transfer real-world market value from X to a new social construct, Y, in order to capture Casey's share of the value. Under the US-law ruleset this is a violation of their fiduciary duty to Casey as a minority shareholder. In the Ethereum example, the DAO hacker owned 1/20th (or so?) of X, where X (ether) is some social construct with real-world market value in terms of dollars or bitcoin or gold or whatever. The other owners of X worked to transfer real-world market value from X to a new social construct, Y, in order to capture the DAO hacker's share of the value. Under the Ethereum ruleset this is OK. So we have two different rulesets with different protection for minority stakeholders. It's an interesting question whether (despite this example) Ethereum could end up being more favorable for minority stakeholders overall. But it's not at all interesting to spend time arguing about whether a minority stakeholder was injured by the Ethereum split -- that was the entire, explicit, point of the split, and if you focus on real-world exchange value there's no way to disguise it.

flashmob 9y ago
Again, I think this is where we differ - you're thinking in terms of stocks and shareholders, but there are no shareholders here. There are no shares that represent ownership of anything, and the most important distinction here is that when the fork was created, there was no transfer of ownership, which is the key concept in your argument. Also, if I change my level of abstraction to think about the problem as you say, it would appear that the attacker was trying to injure the project, opposite to your Casey example, where she was the victim. Those that had 'skin in the game' did what they had to do, to protect themselves from the attacker. I don't think the attacker was naive, they would have known that such a move would inflict a loss of value for the project. I also think that the hardfork was the best outcome for both parties: Classic represents the value of Ethereum should it have chosen to keep on going with the attacker, and Ethereum Fork is the value representing the attacker absent. Everybody wins, the thief would be pretty happy with their loot regardless (if it's legally theirs, maybe it's not). In your Casey example, she was left with nothing, so it's another important distinction to make. Btw, thanks for replying and for the debate. It's been a pleasure.

by JackC 9y ago

flashmob 9y ago

Again, I think this is where we differ - you're thinking in terms of stocks and shareholders, but there are no shareholders here. There are no shares that represent ownership of anything, and the most important distinction here is that when the fork was created, there was no transfer of ownership, which is the key concept in your argument. Also, if I change my level of abstraction to think about the problem as you say, it would appear that the attacker was trying to injure the project, opposite to your Casey example, where she was the victim. Those that had 'skin in the game' did what they had to do, to protect themselves from the attacker. I don't think the attacker was naive, they would have known that such a move would inflict a loss of value for the project. I also think that the hardfork was the best outcome for both parties: Classic represents the value of Ethereum should it have chosen to keep on going with the attacker, and Ethereum Fork is the value representing the attacker absent. Everybody wins, the thief would be pretty happy with their loot regardless (if it's legally theirs, maybe it's not). In your Casey example, she was left with nothing, so it's another important distinction to make. Btw, thanks for replying and for the debate. It's been a pleasure.