8 ms·

The ethereum “hacker” didn't hack anything

74 points by js4 9y ago

emilp89 9y ago
Sorry, but that's bs.
fenwick67 9y ago
It will certainly be interesting to see how this plays out in court (if they are caught).
explodingcamera 9y ago
Oh come on, a blockchain isn't an improvement because you can call lawenforcment and they'll try to catch the hacker? This was 100% illegal, even if you consider the law article he linked.
pkilgore 9y ago
"The smart contract is the authority" Not sure that's as clear as the article suggests (at least to the extent you are dealing with entities within the reach of U.S. law (which is a whole lot!)). See my thoughts on this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14820950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14820950
- pkilgore 9y ago
  To put this another way, though, just because I don't sanitize my database inputs on my website, doesn't necessarily mean your SELECT * command will not be considered a hack. Both are exploitation of unintended behavior.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - KGIII 9y ago
    I am reminded of a buddy of mine. He put a bunch of junk on the lawn. He also took a full sheet of plywood and painted "free for the taking" on it. Someone took the plywood and left his pile of junk.
  - tylersmith 9y ago
    The difference is that strict adherence to rules as written is the entire point of smart contracts. If you want nuance and subjective interpretation you use Ricardian Contracts. If you absolutely need smart contracts for some aspect they can be added to Ricardian Contract with the added benefit of prose. In the OpenBazaar community we call them Dumb Contracts. https://medium.com/@therealopenbazaar/the-case-for-dumb-contracts-6308aa5b757 https://medium.com/@therealopenbazaar/the-case-for-dumb-cont...
grey-area 9y ago
On the actual contract, it's possible a court would find that the contract was between parties x and y, and therefore party z inserting themselves into it is not valid. Often law comes down to intent, so the hacker could well find themselves in trouble, even if technically all they did was play by the rules allowed by the contract. There is another interesting point here, which I think applies to Bitcoin too - if the blockchain/smart contract is the distributed source of truth and lets you deal with untrusted third parties without a middleman, it shouldn't require external arbitration. If you need external arbitration in the event of problems, which requires verifying identity, intent, etc, why not have a central system with strong identities and regulatory bodies in the first place and forget the distributed system (which is slower and another point of failure), since the centralised system is what you fall back to anyway when the distributed trust fails.
- stale2002 9y ago
  Courts will absolutely use intent to judge contracts. The interesting thing with the DAO though, was the explicit INTENT of the contract, was for it to be entirely governed by the code. As in, the announcement website, and all the marketing for the DAO included a whole lot of lines like "None of the information here is binding. The only thing that it binding is the code. The contract is the code". So, it is arguable, that allowing people to exploit "bugs" in the code was actually intended. Of course, they didn't think there were going to be any bugs, but I bet that if you asked the DAO people ahead of time, before the bugs were found, something like "Hey, if I find a bug and exploit it, is that within the contract?", then i bet that the DAO people would have said yes.
  - detaro 9y ago
    This article is not about the DAO hack.
    - eridius 9y ago
      Not specifically, no, but the topic of the article applies equally well to the DAO hack as it does to the more recent one.
yarrel 9y ago
And if I use a teleportation device to move money directly out of a bank vault no breaking and entering has occurred and therefore no theft.
- tylersmith 9y ago
  Theft does not require burglary.
ArchReaper 9y ago
This was a waste of time to read.
s73ver_ 9y ago
The "he didn't do anything wrong!" narrative is pretty misleading, to me. He very clearly did. He exploited a loophole, taking things that were very clearly not meant to go to him. And these defenses of what that person did are doing nothing but undermining faith and credibility in these things. I don't care if you want to call what he did a hack or not a hack; at the end of the day, he exploited a loophole to take things from other people. Things that they were never intended to receive, or even be a party to. By hearing more and more of the community just shrug their shoulders and go, "oh well, he sure got us," while defending those actions, it shows that this is not a safe place to store value, or to move it. Think about it: Do you want to entrust your business's important payments to a system where it could be intercepted like that, and it's treated as if it's no big deal?
elnygren 9y ago
It seems we have some mismatch between the abstraction layer where we want to talk about cryptocurrencies and how their actual implementation goes. IMHO, we are venturing to the domain of lawyers; most people are not just going to be saying computer code == what-we-agreed-here because most people are just normal people and they couldn't care about computer code. And let's face it, cryptos are already full of normal people, it's not for the early nerds anymore. However, always keep in mind that cryptos are not regulated, they are not always too compatible with current regulation regarding normal money and they are extremely valuable when considering the fact that they are not regulated.
- ryanlol 9y ago
  If computer code == what-we-agreed-here isn't what you want, then you don't want smart contracts.
  - Spivak 9y ago
    It's not really a matter of what you want, it's the legal prededent that will be set when someone exploits a bug in a smart contract that is obviously not part of the authors intent. Or a smart contract that was entered into by manipulation, coercion, or violence. Or a smart contract that violates some financial regulation or requires performing illegal activity. The court will intervene and that will be the end of the idea that the code is the final authority.
    - honestlyreally 9y ago
      The court can order the contract's private key to be magically willed into existence? The law often sees itself as onnipotent, but it stands no chance against cryptography and unnamed contract authors.
      - Spivak 9y ago
        They don't have to. Just like encryption having the ability to use violent force enables all sorts of side channel attacks. But in the case of an anonymous scammer they would probably hold the Etherium Inc. responsible for the damages.
will_brown 9y ago
What is with the smart contract propaganda. Let's put everything in a legal perspective using the DAO as the example...was what occurred there a "hack" or just a proper function of the contract which all parties agreed? let's assume, all things being equal, the DAO smart contract wasn't a smart contract on the block chain but a regular contract, which included a provision allowing any single party to unilaterally take all the investment funds of the other parties to the contract...is that enforceable? No. In fact with the SEC report on the DAO, we know the contract was likely an illegal offering of a security. Therefore, the entire contract is void and unenforceable and every party is entitled to their investment back, nothing changes because it was a smart contract on a block chain rather than a written contract.
- IIAOPSW 9y ago
  >was what occurred there a "hack" or just a proper function of the contract which all parties agreed? both. Lawyers are just hackers of the legal system. the runtime environment is the courtroom. The contract is the code. loopholes and technicalities are another name for bugs.
  - Angostura 9y ago
    This elegant-naive model of the law seems to be quite popular with certain hackers, 'sovereign citizens' etc. It works right up to the point where the judge says 'yeh... I don't think so, you're being silly'
  - msbarnett 9y ago
    This is a very naive view of the legal system. In reality, a lawyer trying to "hack" a contract with some technicality will run afoul of a judge telling them to sit down and shut up. Judges exist to discern the intent behind the contract and thereby fix "bugs" in the contract that would otherwise lead to absurd, unintended outcomes. "Loopholes" matter a hell of a lot less in real life than in episodes of Law & Order or whatever you've been watching.
    - js4 9y ago
basicplus2 9y ago
There was no meeting of minds so contract is void
woodandsteel 9y ago
One of the problems with Ethereum smart contracts is they are trying to do something that is basically impossible. A contract is an explicit set of rules as to what the involved parties are supposed to do in every relevant situation that could arise. The problem is that in the real world it is very often simply impossible to anticipate every possible relevant situation. That is because the real world is so complicated, and we lack much of the needed information about what might happen in the future. The consequence is that in business, unanticipated situations arise all the time where the signed contract either calls for something that would lead at least one party to suffer, or it is not at all clear what should be done. %99 of the time, the involved parties simply decide informally what to do. 1% of the time one side sues, and in most of these cases the lawyers settle before trial. And if it goes to trial, the judge decides on things like intent and fairness that can't be clearly specified in a contract. It is just not possible for smart contract coders to solve this problem that experienced business people can't. And let me add that this is similar to the problem with bugs. A bug arises when commands and/or data are encountered by the program that the coder had not anticipated, and so the program does something other than what is intended. It is the same basic problem of not being able to anticipate all possible situations, and so this is why all programs have bugs.
- tylerhou 9y ago
  The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded in 2016 to Oliver Hart, who made contributions to contract theory, and more specifically, the incompleteness of contracts. NPR's Planet Money has a good introduction: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/11/18/502475485/episode-736-messy-nobel http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/11/18/502475485/episo...
- vit05 9y ago
  You are thinking about contracts in a limited and restricted way. The economy today is about contracts, everything involves an agreement between two parties. It is not always necessary thousands of signed pages, sometimes they are simple things. There are thousands of standardized contracts that are signed by thousands of people and only a small percentage of them end up in conflict. "IF-WHEN-THEN"
nnfy 9y ago
>When you own a cryptocurrency, you can’t really “hold it in your wallet” like you could have a $100 bill in your physical wallet. In crypto, your wallet is actually a key which is used to control the associated account number on the Blockchain. This is misleading. "Owning" cryptocurrency comes down yo controlling the private key. Cryptos exist solely as information. The bank analogy is a poor one because it implies that there is a single physical collection of value, which is fundamentally opposed to the premise of a distributed ledger. I'm not sure that the author really grasps the function and utility of Cryptos based on this mischaracterization. I didnt read any further.
- js4 9y ago
  You quote directly mentions a key that controls entries on the blockchain... Moreover fiat (which banks hold) isn't backed by a central physical store of value so the argument holds up.
valuepack 9y ago
It was a hack, clear as day. I really don't like this mindset of "code is law" that has arisen by calling the code being executed on the blockchain "contracts". I think people sometimes forget that these "smart contracts" are just code, no different than the code running HN or any other web app. This is a hack in the same sense that dumping a database from web app vulnerable to SQL injection would be considered a hack. Even though the code allowed it, it clearly isn't intended behavior. It just seems so silly -- no system is perfectly secure; any developer can attest to this. There is always going to be a way skirt around the smart contract owner's intent, especially as the apps being run on the blockchain grow in complexity. To not blatantly call this malicious activity just doesn't sit well with me.
- jacoblambda 9y ago
  To be fair, the whole point of "code is law" is that there is no intent beyond the code. The developer may not intend to write bugs in their code but that does not change the fact that they wrote it that way. This is much in the same way that by not catching a bug, both the developer and the person accepting the contract are equally at fault. Now is it ethical to exploit a bug in a contract? In almost all cases the answer is no, however that is besides the point as smart contracts are devoid of any ethics or intent. The whole problem with smart contracts is the mindset behind the community. Tech circles far to often follow the mantra "move fast and break things" and this is the issue. If smart contracts were treated like real contracts, then this issue would be largely avoided. Who do you blame for writing a shitty contract? The lawyer. The same should apply for smart contracts. Smart Contracts should be written or at least reviewed by "lawyers" specializing in smart contracts. They should be trained to be able to write contracts that are bulletproof. If the smart contract is defective, they should be responsible just like with normal contract lawyers. If there is a flaw in a contract, there should be a migration strategy for addressing it. Smart Contracts are a developing technology and an extremely powerful one at that and as such they should be used with extreme caution but that does not mean they are a bad idea. The whole problem is that they are being used haphazardly and often for purposes which are far better served by a more benign and low risk solution.
agotterer 9y ago
This logic is the same as saying that an ATM has a software bug and if it spits out too much money it's okay to keep it. The reason being that the "intent" of the machine was programmed to dispense that amount of money. That still feels like stealing to me. I also think the author misrepresents that the only purpose of the blockchain is to eliminate the central governing body. There are many other value propositions and uses for the technology. Here's just a few: - Eliminates financial overhead and operational complexity for banking. - Personal information control. Like profiles or identity data. - Distributed network to sell things with trust - Access to public records - The author shoots down the value of ICO's. But the blockchain can offer a significantly cheaper alternative to clearing costs for equites. And there so much other potential...
- killbrad 9y ago
  Computers don't lie, code doesn't lie. The idea of smart contacts is literally that code is law. If the code is flawed, that flaw is law. As soon as you try to wrap intent, disposition, and other legalities into the equation, how is a "smart contract" anything unique?
  - js4 9y ago
    This was exactly my (the author) point.
    - agotterer 9y ago
      But that doesn't make ATM's or the blockchain any less useful. The technology is still sound in both cases. But anything built by humans (I suppose machines too?) has the potential to be flawed, especially software.
      - js4 9y ago
        There is a difference between an ATM and blockchain app though. If an ATM spits out too much money and that violates the terms of service you signed with the bank (or the ATM provider) the bank has a way to recover the funds since they can rely on the legal system to enforce the terms. The blockchain exists to enforce the validity of state changes (transactions). There is no other value outside of that. Thus, if you are reliant on the legal system to enforce blockchain contracts there is no reason to have a contract on the blockchain since the only real benefit is decentralized consensus. You are better off just rolling a few EC2 instances and writing an old fashioned contract.
ada1981 9y ago
The previous owner of the $30M ought to create another smart contract that says something to the effect of: if $15M is sent to this wallet, all rights to press charges will be waived. They recoop half the money and the "contract executor" can step above ground with no worries.
- msbarnett 9y ago
  "Pressing charges" is mostly TV nonsense. Generally speaking it's the district prosecutor's decision, and if they have evidence to charge someone with theft of $30M, the victim can't thwart that by "refusing to press charges". It's not something that can be meaningfully waived (and it's not something Etherium could enforce, anyways).
  - ada1981 9y ago
    Fair point. I do wonder if there is a legal way to say return half as I'd like to be spared the legal battle.
ejanus 9y ago
Is this issue Parity 1.5 related(limited) or poorly written Ethereum smart contract ? I am a bit confused.
braeckmansj 9y ago
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74 points by js4 9y ago

emilp89 9y ago

Sorry, but that's bs.

fenwick67 9y ago

It will certainly be interesting to see how this plays out in court (if they are caught).

explodingcamera 9y ago

Oh come on, a blockchain isn't an improvement because you can call lawenforcment and they'll try to catch the hacker? This was 100% illegal, even if you consider the law article he linked.

pkilgore 9y ago

"The smart contract is the authority" Not sure that's as clear as the article suggests (at least to the extent you are dealing with entities within the reach of U.S. law (which is a whole lot!)). See my thoughts on this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14820950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14820950

pkilgore 9y ago
To put this another way, though, just because I don't sanitize my database inputs on my website, doesn't necessarily mean your SELECT * command will not be considered a hack. Both are exploitation of unintended behavior.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- KGIII 9y ago
  I am reminded of a buddy of mine. He put a bunch of junk on the lawn. He also took a full sheet of plywood and painted "free for the taking" on it. Someone took the plywood and left his pile of junk.
- tylersmith 9y ago
  The difference is that strict adherence to rules as written is the entire point of smart contracts. If you want nuance and subjective interpretation you use Ricardian Contracts. If you absolutely need smart contracts for some aspect they can be added to Ricardian Contract with the added benefit of prose. In the OpenBazaar community we call them Dumb Contracts. https://medium.com/@therealopenbazaar/the-case-for-dumb-contracts-6308aa5b757 https://medium.com/@therealopenbazaar/the-case-for-dumb-cont...

grey-area 9y ago

On the actual contract, it's possible a court would find that the contract was between parties x and y, and therefore party z inserting themselves into it is not valid. Often law comes down to intent, so the hacker could well find themselves in trouble, even if technically all they did was play by the rules allowed by the contract. There is another interesting point here, which I think applies to Bitcoin too - if the blockchain/smart contract is the distributed source of truth and lets you deal with untrusted third parties without a middleman, it shouldn't require external arbitration. If you need external arbitration in the event of problems, which requires verifying identity, intent, etc, why not have a central system with strong identities and regulatory bodies in the first place and forget the distributed system (which is slower and another point of failure), since the centralised system is what you fall back to anyway when the distributed trust fails.

stale2002 9y ago
Courts will absolutely use intent to judge contracts. The interesting thing with the DAO though, was the explicit INTENT of the contract, was for it to be entirely governed by the code. As in, the announcement website, and all the marketing for the DAO included a whole lot of lines like "None of the information here is binding. The only thing that it binding is the code. The contract is the code". So, it is arguable, that allowing people to exploit "bugs" in the code was actually intended. Of course, they didn't think there were going to be any bugs, but I bet that if you asked the DAO people ahead of time, before the bugs were found, something like "Hey, if I find a bug and exploit it, is that within the contract?", then i bet that the DAO people would have said yes.
- detaro 9y ago
  This article is not about the DAO hack.
  - eridius 9y ago
    Not specifically, no, but the topic of the article applies equally well to the DAO hack as it does to the more recent one.

yarrel 9y ago

And if I use a teleportation device to move money directly out of a bank vault no breaking and entering has occurred and therefore no theft.

tylersmith 9y ago
Theft does not require burglary.

ArchReaper 9y ago

This was a waste of time to read.

s73ver_ 9y ago

The "he didn't do anything wrong!" narrative is pretty misleading, to me. He very clearly did. He exploited a loophole, taking things that were very clearly not meant to go to him. And these defenses of what that person did are doing nothing but undermining faith and credibility in these things. I don't care if you want to call what he did a hack or not a hack; at the end of the day, he exploited a loophole to take things from other people. Things that they were never intended to receive, or even be a party to. By hearing more and more of the community just shrug their shoulders and go, "oh well, he sure got us," while defending those actions, it shows that this is not a safe place to store value, or to move it. Think about it: Do you want to entrust your business's important payments to a system where it could be intercepted like that, and it's treated as if it's no big deal?

elnygren 9y ago

It seems we have some mismatch between the abstraction layer where we want to talk about cryptocurrencies and how their actual implementation goes. IMHO, we are venturing to the domain of lawyers; most people are not just going to be saying computer code == what-we-agreed-here because most people are just normal people and they couldn't care about computer code. And let's face it, cryptos are already full of normal people, it's not for the early nerds anymore. However, always keep in mind that cryptos are not regulated, they are not always too compatible with current regulation regarding normal money and they are extremely valuable when considering the fact that they are not regulated.

ryanlol 9y ago
If computer code == what-we-agreed-here isn't what you want, then you don't want smart contracts.
- Spivak 9y ago
  It's not really a matter of what you want, it's the legal prededent that will be set when someone exploits a bug in a smart contract that is obviously not part of the authors intent. Or a smart contract that was entered into by manipulation, coercion, or violence. Or a smart contract that violates some financial regulation or requires performing illegal activity. The court will intervene and that will be the end of the idea that the code is the final authority.
  - honestlyreally 9y ago
    The court can order the contract's private key to be magically willed into existence? The law often sees itself as onnipotent, but it stands no chance against cryptography and unnamed contract authors.
    - Spivak 9y ago
      They don't have to. Just like encryption having the ability to use violent force enables all sorts of side channel attacks. But in the case of an anonymous scammer they would probably hold the Etherium Inc. responsible for the damages.

will_brown 9y ago

What is with the smart contract propaganda. Let's put everything in a legal perspective using the DAO as the example...was what occurred there a "hack" or just a proper function of the contract which all parties agreed? let's assume, all things being equal, the DAO smart contract wasn't a smart contract on the block chain but a regular contract, which included a provision allowing any single party to unilaterally take all the investment funds of the other parties to the contract...is that enforceable? No. In fact with the SEC report on the DAO, we know the contract was likely an illegal offering of a security. Therefore, the entire contract is void and unenforceable and every party is entitled to their investment back, nothing changes because it was a smart contract on a block chain rather than a written contract.

IIAOPSW 9y ago
>was what occurred there a "hack" or just a proper function of the contract which all parties agreed? both. Lawyers are just hackers of the legal system. the runtime environment is the courtroom. The contract is the code. loopholes and technicalities are another name for bugs.
- Angostura 9y ago
  This elegant-naive model of the law seems to be quite popular with certain hackers, 'sovereign citizens' etc. It works right up to the point where the judge says 'yeh... I don't think so, you're being silly'
- msbarnett 9y ago
  This is a very naive view of the legal system. In reality, a lawyer trying to "hack" a contract with some technicality will run afoul of a judge telling them to sit down and shut up. Judges exist to discern the intent behind the contract and thereby fix "bugs" in the contract that would otherwise lead to absurd, unintended outcomes. "Loopholes" matter a hell of a lot less in real life than in episodes of Law & Order or whatever you've been watching.
  - js4 9y ago

basicplus2 9y ago

There was no meeting of minds so contract is void

woodandsteel 9y ago

One of the problems with Ethereum smart contracts is they are trying to do something that is basically impossible. A contract is an explicit set of rules as to what the involved parties are supposed to do in every relevant situation that could arise. The problem is that in the real world it is very often simply impossible to anticipate every possible relevant situation. That is because the real world is so complicated, and we lack much of the needed information about what might happen in the future. The consequence is that in business, unanticipated situations arise all the time where the signed contract either calls for something that would lead at least one party to suffer, or it is not at all clear what should be done. %99 of the time, the involved parties simply decide informally what to do. 1% of the time one side sues, and in most of these cases the lawyers settle before trial. And if it goes to trial, the judge decides on things like intent and fairness that can't be clearly specified in a contract. It is just not possible for smart contract coders to solve this problem that experienced business people can't. And let me add that this is similar to the problem with bugs. A bug arises when commands and/or data are encountered by the program that the coder had not anticipated, and so the program does something other than what is intended. It is the same basic problem of not being able to anticipate all possible situations, and so this is why all programs have bugs.

tylerhou 9y ago
The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded in 2016 to Oliver Hart, who made contributions to contract theory, and more specifically, the incompleteness of contracts. NPR's Planet Money has a good introduction: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/11/18/502475485/episode-736-messy-nobel http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/11/18/502475485/episo...
vit05 9y ago
You are thinking about contracts in a limited and restricted way. The economy today is about contracts, everything involves an agreement between two parties. It is not always necessary thousands of signed pages, sometimes they are simple things. There are thousands of standardized contracts that are signed by thousands of people and only a small percentage of them end up in conflict. "IF-WHEN-THEN"

nnfy 9y ago

>When you own a cryptocurrency, you can’t really “hold it in your wallet” like you could have a $100 bill in your physical wallet. In crypto, your wallet is actually a key which is used to control the associated account number on the Blockchain. This is misleading. "Owning" cryptocurrency comes down yo controlling the private key. Cryptos exist solely as information. The bank analogy is a poor one because it implies that there is a single physical collection of value, which is fundamentally opposed to the premise of a distributed ledger. I'm not sure that the author really grasps the function and utility of Cryptos based on this mischaracterization. I didnt read any further.

js4 9y ago
You quote directly mentions a key that controls entries on the blockchain... Moreover fiat (which banks hold) isn't backed by a central physical store of value so the argument holds up.

valuepack 9y ago

It was a hack, clear as day. I really don't like this mindset of "code is law" that has arisen by calling the code being executed on the blockchain "contracts". I think people sometimes forget that these "smart contracts" are just code, no different than the code running HN or any other web app. This is a hack in the same sense that dumping a database from web app vulnerable to SQL injection would be considered a hack. Even though the code allowed it, it clearly isn't intended behavior. It just seems so silly -- no system is perfectly secure; any developer can attest to this. There is always going to be a way skirt around the smart contract owner's intent, especially as the apps being run on the blockchain grow in complexity. To not blatantly call this malicious activity just doesn't sit well with me.

jacoblambda 9y ago
To be fair, the whole point of "code is law" is that there is no intent beyond the code. The developer may not intend to write bugs in their code but that does not change the fact that they wrote it that way. This is much in the same way that by not catching a bug, both the developer and the person accepting the contract are equally at fault. Now is it ethical to exploit a bug in a contract? In almost all cases the answer is no, however that is besides the point as smart contracts are devoid of any ethics or intent. The whole problem with smart contracts is the mindset behind the community. Tech circles far to often follow the mantra "move fast and break things" and this is the issue. If smart contracts were treated like real contracts, then this issue would be largely avoided. Who do you blame for writing a shitty contract? The lawyer. The same should apply for smart contracts. Smart Contracts should be written or at least reviewed by "lawyers" specializing in smart contracts. They should be trained to be able to write contracts that are bulletproof. If the smart contract is defective, they should be responsible just like with normal contract lawyers. If there is a flaw in a contract, there should be a migration strategy for addressing it. Smart Contracts are a developing technology and an extremely powerful one at that and as such they should be used with extreme caution but that does not mean they are a bad idea. The whole problem is that they are being used haphazardly and often for purposes which are far better served by a more benign and low risk solution.

agotterer 9y ago

This logic is the same as saying that an ATM has a software bug and if it spits out too much money it's okay to keep it. The reason being that the "intent" of the machine was programmed to dispense that amount of money. That still feels like stealing to me. I also think the author misrepresents that the only purpose of the blockchain is to eliminate the central governing body. There are many other value propositions and uses for the technology. Here's just a few: - Eliminates financial overhead and operational complexity for banking. - Personal information control. Like profiles or identity data. - Distributed network to sell things with trust - Access to public records - The author shoots down the value of ICO's. But the blockchain can offer a significantly cheaper alternative to clearing costs for equites. And there so much other potential...

killbrad 9y ago
Computers don't lie, code doesn't lie. The idea of smart contacts is literally that code is law. If the code is flawed, that flaw is law. As soon as you try to wrap intent, disposition, and other legalities into the equation, how is a "smart contract" anything unique?
- js4 9y ago
  This was exactly my (the author) point.
  - agotterer 9y ago
    But that doesn't make ATM's or the blockchain any less useful. The technology is still sound in both cases. But anything built by humans (I suppose machines too?) has the potential to be flawed, especially software.
    - js4 9y ago
      There is a difference between an ATM and blockchain app though. If an ATM spits out too much money and that violates the terms of service you signed with the bank (or the ATM provider) the bank has a way to recover the funds since they can rely on the legal system to enforce the terms. The blockchain exists to enforce the validity of state changes (transactions). There is no other value outside of that. Thus, if you are reliant on the legal system to enforce blockchain contracts there is no reason to have a contract on the blockchain since the only real benefit is decentralized consensus. You are better off just rolling a few EC2 instances and writing an old fashioned contract.

ada1981 9y ago

The previous owner of the $30M ought to create another smart contract that says something to the effect of: if $15M is sent to this wallet, all rights to press charges will be waived. They recoop half the money and the "contract executor" can step above ground with no worries.

msbarnett 9y ago
"Pressing charges" is mostly TV nonsense. Generally speaking it's the district prosecutor's decision, and if they have evidence to charge someone with theft of $30M, the victim can't thwart that by "refusing to press charges". It's not something that can be meaningfully waived (and it's not something Etherium could enforce, anyways).
- ada1981 9y ago
  Fair point. I do wonder if there is a legal way to say return half as I'd like to be spared the legal battle.

ejanus 9y ago

Is this issue Parity 1.5 related(limited) or poorly written Ethereum smart contract ? I am a bit confused.

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