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Who cares about the language when the very premise of the project "code is law" was proven wrong. When the DAO was "hacked" by a "thief", rather than tell peop

Who cares about the language when the very premise of the project "code is law" was proven wrong. When the DAO was "hacked" by a "thief", rather than tell people "whelp, code is law and the code executed perfect" the mob (more accurately, those at the top of the etherium pyramid) decided to change history and roll back the blockchain. Even the language designed to describe the "hack" was garbage. It wasn't a "hack", if code is law, all bugs are code and therefore part of law. There was no "thief" that "stole" anything either. Code is law. Somebody followed the contract down to the letter and made a trade to their benefited. Code is law. If the central tenant of "code is law" cannot even be held and real meatspace-based humans can modify history at will.... what value does ethereum add at all besides pissing away an unimaginable amount of energy turning non-renewable fossil fuels into heat? If anybody can modify history.... just use AWS. It's cheaper.

epistasis 9y ago
IMHO, "code is law" is a silly thing to aim for, and by ignoring that saying for the DAO incident proves that Ethereum is more valuable than it would be otherwise. The "code is law" is just hype about how amazing and new and unprecedented this thing is, but it's a truly bad idea. The reversibility of bugs is a good thing. In human law, there are exceptions, and appeals, etc. Aiming for a completely mechanical system is the type of unnuanced thinking that leads me to be extremely skeptical of the entire cryptocurrency community, and in particular made me think that Ethereum was a total joke run by unserious people. Computer tools must adapt to human nature, not the other way around. Ethereum's hype train ignored that. Such temporary hype trains can help get the train moving, but it's always important to separate the hype and marketing from the reality. Especially in everything from post 2000 in the Silicon Valley, hype and marketing are what drives success much more than product itself. We need to remember to not get high on our own supply, and not believe the bullshit that gets peddled in order to drive platform adoption.
- dcow 9y ago
  I'm a little lost. What does ETH provide society if it's just another system for allowing 51% of people to screw over the 49% that dissent?
  - epistasis 9y ago
    It's not 51% of people, it's 51% of computing power, or 51% of stake if Ethereum ever switches to proof of stake. Ethereum runs by capitalistic power, not democratic power. I don't know if there's any alternative to that; any such system is going to have some means of enforcing truth and power, and means of gaining or losing it. Cryptocurrencies are not a way of escaping that fundamental fact. They shift where the power is. Having that alternative to current ledger and contract systems can be valuable to people in certain situations. Thinking that Ethereum or Bitcoin or any blockchain tech escapes these fundamental power relationships is exactly the type of inanity that makes the tech seem unserious. It's a hype train, it's not true, but there is still the potential for value.
    - madeofpalk 9y ago
      > It's not 51% of people, it's 51% of computing power, Cool, so in reality a lot less than 51% of people can screw over every else. Again, what is it that ETH provides society that's new and useful?
      - bigiain 9y ago
        And proof of stake is likely to be even worse. The people with the most money decide who gets richer and who doesn't. What could possibly go wrong?
        jvdizz 9y ago
        Not quite. The richest actually do the work to keep the system running. They need to stake their claim to the system to validate everyone else's trx. If is in their best interest not to mess up, otherwise they lose their stake in the system.
        jacobush 9y ago
        So those who benefit from cemented structures are incentivized to maintain status quo. Sounds like humanity, just a different set of masters.
- psyc 9y ago
  I think it's just the wrong forum, and fundamentally incompatible with "popularity". In crypto-anarchist mythos, hackers interact via deterministic, mechanical intermediary. It's darwinian. It's expected that participants shall beware, and inept ones will be injured. It may not be for you, and it may not be for society writ large, but it is an excellent and very important idea. Removing human judgement is exactly the point. Whether this thrills or horrifies you is, I think, a personality trait.
  - epistasis 9y ago
    > Removing human judgement is exactly the point. Whether this thrills or horrifies you is, I think, a personality trait. I attach neither horror nor thrill to that idea, I find it laughable. We all have our abstract ideals, and these abstract ideals eventually meet the reality of human interaction. There is no possibility of removing human judgement, as long as humans are in control of the machines. Humans may temporarily agree to go with whatever the machines say, but that is only a temporary status, as whoever controls the machines has ultimate control.
    - dcow 9y ago
      More of a clarification of my original comment: I'm still a little lost. What value does ETH provide if we cede to human emotions and social power structures at the end of the day? We don't need to invent a cryptocracy to realize a world where people who own 51% of the power can acceptably or at least "fairly" screw over the the dissenting lot with 49%... that is just old school power. It has been around for ages. In theory, ETH proposed a playing field where law is specified using a language that everyone agrees upon, and where applications of said law are recorded on a decentralized public ledge and even executed using the compute power of the underlying network. The system was valuable precisely because it provided a cryptographically robust way to circumvent humanity for the purpose of recording law with authority and confidence. But all we've learned from this experiment is that when someone messes up, or not, and it impacts a lot of people (in these cases negatively), they will appeal to the people who own the power and request execution of an "authorized" (not by the original rules but by virtue of ownership of power) out-of-band attack against the system. In other words, they'll collude to perform an illegal move in order to counter the undersireable outcome. In essence, it's a network coup. Don't get me wrong, I think this is kinda cool too. And if ETH or blockchains or whatever is the zeitgeist what inspires people to continue to imagine and build transparent societies where we have better and better distribution of power, perhaps it has artistic value. But these events jade people, and the reason they lose trust in the system is because they learn just how easily it is not to be trusted.. how human it is. You put your faith in a system only to see the network owners use their power to operate outside of it. Of course this is great when you are the beneficiary of a network reset. But by condoning rewriting history, you've chosen to sacrifice the system and pander to your emotions above those of the people who shared trust with you when everyone agreed to play by the rules. So maybe you don't live in an ivory tower: there may appear to be few victimes (namely the bad actor) but finally don't forget the contracts that become void when the network is reset. To those who bought in ideologically to ETH, these events effectively invalidate the entire system. And ETH becomes a failed experiment. We both appear to agree that ETH is still human. You claim this is a boon. I am skeptical. I am still curious why being human innately makes ETH more valuable. Perhaps you mean the fact that the participants evoked "human mode" over "machine mode" is an indication that people value this system dearly. I do not disagree. But I'd argue this value comes from a different place. This value comes from a desire for, well, value itself. This is a different, darker, value. It's no longer simply valued for its merit: the vision for a mechanically infungable system isolated from human emotional responses. But it's just another victim of human irrationality, greed, ignorance, and laziness. And that is a little sad in my opinion. Just to be clear I'm not bitter I've never owned any ether.
- giaour 9y ago
  There are a number of reasons a court might throw out a contract, but one party having made an expensive mistake is not one of them. Edit: turns out this isn't true. TIL that a contract to which no reasonable or informed person would have agreed can be thrown out as "unconscionable." And even if it were, why roll back the block chain to rectify the situation? In traditional accounting, wouldn't you need a ledger record of both the mistake and its correction?
  - nradov 9y ago
    That's not necessarily how the US civil court system works. Courts will sometimes throw out or alter contracts if a good-faith mistake by one party produces a result that would violate the fundamental principle of equity. This is more likely if the result appears to violate the original intent of the contract.
    - giaour 9y ago
      That's very true; I should have looked this up before stating it. Edited my original comment
  - jobigoud 9y ago
    > And even if it were, why roll back the block chain to rectify the situation? In traditional accounting, wouldn't you need a ledger record of both the mistake and its correction? This is exactly what happened. The blockchain wasn't rolled back. New transactions crediting the victims were injected into it.
- keymone 9y ago
  > The reversibility of bugs is a good thing. So can I make a purchase, receive the goods and then claim a bug? Reversibility of platform bugs is a good thing, reversibility of contract bugs is basically reversibility of plain transactions, which makes the whole idea of cryptocurrency useless.
  - Iv 9y ago
    If you can convince 51% of the network, then yes.
    - keymone 9y ago
      yeah, the fact that ethereum community was convinced is already a death sentence, because it shows that no principle is sacred. go ahead and try convincing bitcoin community to reverse a transaction, that'll be fun to watch.
      - dave7 9y ago
        Here you go: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposures#CVE-2010-5139 https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposu...
        keymone 9y ago
        yep, that is an example of platform bug, not a contract bug.
paulmd 9y ago
The problem with the "code is law" principle is that it's also the version of history where a single attacker controls 15% of all Eth in existence. I think most participants probably would agree with that principle in general, but the practicalities outweighed principle in this situation. (the fact that the creator of Ethereum was heavily invested in the DAO doubtless played a role as well... it's different when it's your money that got stolen, and he had the power to do something about it.) Still though, people don't understand that the legal system is a feature, not a bug. A neutral arbiter that can judge the spirit of the contract and come to a decision that resolves the matter fairly for everybody... that way you don't need to guarantee bug-free code forever. There was a post here a while back that made the interesting point that essentially everything cryptocurrency attempts to do is anti-user and the problems they claim to solve would actually be viewed as features by most people. For example, no chargebacks! But chargebacks are a good thing, if the good turns out to be significantly not as described then you can get your money back. Or - immutable history! But it's actually quite nice when the bank can remove fraudulent charges when my wallet gets stolen, I quite like having that recourse. 3% merchant fees for Visa don't seem so bad compared to the DAO hack and Solidity and all that other shit.
- koheripbal 9y ago
  The point of "code is law" is to replace the legal system. Laws are, after all, code. Programmers are the new lawyers. The problem with the "hack" was that our laws/code are still incredibly primitive. I don't have an issue with the rollback - because that's part of the design, and I really doubt they'll be able to do that again if the ownership of ETH spreads out more. These problems will work themselves out.

epistasis 9y ago

IMHO, "code is law" is a silly thing to aim for, and by ignoring that saying for the DAO incident proves that Ethereum is more valuable than it would be otherwise. The "code is law" is just hype about how amazing and new and unprecedented this thing is, but it's a truly bad idea. The reversibility of bugs is a good thing. In human law, there are exceptions, and appeals, etc. Aiming for a completely mechanical system is the type of unnuanced thinking that leads me to be extremely skeptical of the entire cryptocurrency community, and in particular made me think that Ethereum was a total joke run by unserious people. Computer tools must adapt to human nature, not the other way around. Ethereum's hype train ignored that. Such temporary hype trains can help get the train moving, but it's always important to separate the hype and marketing from the reality. Especially in everything from post 2000 in the Silicon Valley, hype and marketing are what drives success much more than product itself. We need to remember to not get high on our own supply, and not believe the bullshit that gets peddled in order to drive platform adoption.

dcow 9y ago
I'm a little lost. What does ETH provide society if it's just another system for allowing 51% of people to screw over the 49% that dissent?
- epistasis 9y ago
  It's not 51% of people, it's 51% of computing power, or 51% of stake if Ethereum ever switches to proof of stake. Ethereum runs by capitalistic power, not democratic power. I don't know if there's any alternative to that; any such system is going to have some means of enforcing truth and power, and means of gaining or losing it. Cryptocurrencies are not a way of escaping that fundamental fact. They shift where the power is. Having that alternative to current ledger and contract systems can be valuable to people in certain situations. Thinking that Ethereum or Bitcoin or any blockchain tech escapes these fundamental power relationships is exactly the type of inanity that makes the tech seem unserious. It's a hype train, it's not true, but there is still the potential for value.
  - madeofpalk 9y ago
    > It's not 51% of people, it's 51% of computing power, Cool, so in reality a lot less than 51% of people can screw over every else. Again, what is it that ETH provides society that's new and useful?
    - bigiain 9y ago
      And proof of stake is likely to be even worse. The people with the most money decide who gets richer and who doesn't. What could possibly go wrong?
      - jvdizz 9y ago
        Not quite. The richest actually do the work to keep the system running. They need to stake their claim to the system to validate everyone else's trx. If is in their best interest not to mess up, otherwise they lose their stake in the system.
        jacobush 9y ago
        So those who benefit from cemented structures are incentivized to maintain status quo. Sounds like humanity, just a different set of masters.
psyc 9y ago
I think it's just the wrong forum, and fundamentally incompatible with "popularity". In crypto-anarchist mythos, hackers interact via deterministic, mechanical intermediary. It's darwinian. It's expected that participants shall beware, and inept ones will be injured. It may not be for you, and it may not be for society writ large, but it is an excellent and very important idea. Removing human judgement is exactly the point. Whether this thrills or horrifies you is, I think, a personality trait.
- epistasis 9y ago
  > Removing human judgement is exactly the point. Whether this thrills or horrifies you is, I think, a personality trait. I attach neither horror nor thrill to that idea, I find it laughable. We all have our abstract ideals, and these abstract ideals eventually meet the reality of human interaction. There is no possibility of removing human judgement, as long as humans are in control of the machines. Humans may temporarily agree to go with whatever the machines say, but that is only a temporary status, as whoever controls the machines has ultimate control.
  - dcow 9y ago
    More of a clarification of my original comment: I'm still a little lost. What value does ETH provide if we cede to human emotions and social power structures at the end of the day? We don't need to invent a cryptocracy to realize a world where people who own 51% of the power can acceptably or at least "fairly" screw over the the dissenting lot with 49%... that is just old school power. It has been around for ages. In theory, ETH proposed a playing field where law is specified using a language that everyone agrees upon, and where applications of said law are recorded on a decentralized public ledge and even executed using the compute power of the underlying network. The system was valuable precisely because it provided a cryptographically robust way to circumvent humanity for the purpose of recording law with authority and confidence. But all we've learned from this experiment is that when someone messes up, or not, and it impacts a lot of people (in these cases negatively), they will appeal to the people who own the power and request execution of an "authorized" (not by the original rules but by virtue of ownership of power) out-of-band attack against the system. In other words, they'll collude to perform an illegal move in order to counter the undersireable outcome. In essence, it's a network coup. Don't get me wrong, I think this is kinda cool too. And if ETH or blockchains or whatever is the zeitgeist what inspires people to continue to imagine and build transparent societies where we have better and better distribution of power, perhaps it has artistic value. But these events jade people, and the reason they lose trust in the system is because they learn just how easily it is not to be trusted.. how human it is. You put your faith in a system only to see the network owners use their power to operate outside of it. Of course this is great when you are the beneficiary of a network reset. But by condoning rewriting history, you've chosen to sacrifice the system and pander to your emotions above those of the people who shared trust with you when everyone agreed to play by the rules. So maybe you don't live in an ivory tower: there may appear to be few victimes (namely the bad actor) but finally don't forget the contracts that become void when the network is reset. To those who bought in ideologically to ETH, these events effectively invalidate the entire system. And ETH becomes a failed experiment. We both appear to agree that ETH is still human. You claim this is a boon. I am skeptical. I am still curious why being human innately makes ETH more valuable. Perhaps you mean the fact that the participants evoked "human mode" over "machine mode" is an indication that people value this system dearly. I do not disagree. But I'd argue this value comes from a different place. This value comes from a desire for, well, value itself. This is a different, darker, value. It's no longer simply valued for its merit: the vision for a mechanically infungable system isolated from human emotional responses. But it's just another victim of human irrationality, greed, ignorance, and laziness. And that is a little sad in my opinion. Just to be clear I'm not bitter I've never owned any ether.
giaour 9y ago
There are a number of reasons a court might throw out a contract, but one party having made an expensive mistake is not one of them. Edit: turns out this isn't true. TIL that a contract to which no reasonable or informed person would have agreed can be thrown out as "unconscionable." And even if it were, why roll back the block chain to rectify the situation? In traditional accounting, wouldn't you need a ledger record of both the mistake and its correction?
- nradov 9y ago
  That's not necessarily how the US civil court system works. Courts will sometimes throw out or alter contracts if a good-faith mistake by one party produces a result that would violate the fundamental principle of equity. This is more likely if the result appears to violate the original intent of the contract.
  - giaour 9y ago
    That's very true; I should have looked this up before stating it. Edited my original comment
- jobigoud 9y ago
  > And even if it were, why roll back the block chain to rectify the situation? In traditional accounting, wouldn't you need a ledger record of both the mistake and its correction? This is exactly what happened. The blockchain wasn't rolled back. New transactions crediting the victims were injected into it.
keymone 9y ago
> The reversibility of bugs is a good thing. So can I make a purchase, receive the goods and then claim a bug? Reversibility of platform bugs is a good thing, reversibility of contract bugs is basically reversibility of plain transactions, which makes the whole idea of cryptocurrency useless.
- Iv 9y ago
  If you can convince 51% of the network, then yes.
  - keymone 9y ago
    yeah, the fact that ethereum community was convinced is already a death sentence, because it shows that no principle is sacred. go ahead and try convincing bitcoin community to reverse a transaction, that'll be fun to watch.
    - dave7 9y ago
      Here you go: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposures#CVE-2010-5139 https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposu...
      - keymone 9y ago
        yep, that is an example of platform bug, not a contract bug.

paulmd 9y ago

The problem with the "code is law" principle is that it's also the version of history where a single attacker controls 15% of all Eth in existence. I think most participants probably would agree with that principle in general, but the practicalities outweighed principle in this situation. (the fact that the creator of Ethereum was heavily invested in the DAO doubtless played a role as well... it's different when it's your money that got stolen, and he had the power to do something about it.) Still though, people don't understand that the legal system is a feature, not a bug. A neutral arbiter that can judge the spirit of the contract and come to a decision that resolves the matter fairly for everybody... that way you don't need to guarantee bug-free code forever. There was a post here a while back that made the interesting point that essentially everything cryptocurrency attempts to do is anti-user and the problems they claim to solve would actually be viewed as features by most people. For example, no chargebacks! But chargebacks are a good thing, if the good turns out to be significantly not as described then you can get your money back. Or - immutable history! But it's actually quite nice when the bank can remove fraudulent charges when my wallet gets stolen, I quite like having that recourse. 3% merchant fees for Visa don't seem so bad compared to the DAO hack and Solidity and all that other shit.

koheripbal 9y ago
The point of "code is law" is to replace the legal system. Laws are, after all, code. Programmers are the new lawyers. The problem with the "hack" was that our laws/code are still incredibly primitive. I don't have an issue with the rollback - because that's part of the design, and I really doubt they'll be able to do that again if the ownership of ETH spreads out more. These problems will work themselves out.