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Too bad this theft did not affect the founders of Ethereum like the DAO exploit did. Otherwise, they would have found a way to reverse this and get people their

Too bad this theft did not affect the founders of Ethereum like the DAO exploit did. Otherwise, they would have found a way to reverse this and get people their money back from the hacker, even if it meant changing the protocol and upgrading existing binaries.

ipnon 7y ago
A point one of the founders of Ethereum has made: If you do not like a particular cryptocurrency, you can always use your own. Ethereum is an open source platform whose value, like paper money, is only the price that people are willing to pay for it.
ashtonkem 7y ago
The fact that losses can only be reversed if you’re sufficiently well connected to the developers is a major problem.
- nexuist 7y ago
  The losses were reversed because the system was exploited, not because someone had a close connection with one of the devs. Had they not forked the network right then and there they would only be facing more of the same in the future, reducing the reliability of ETH down to 0. No forks have been made since the incident, and I would hazard to say none of the devs are planning on forking anytime soon either. I think one of the problems in this space is that people treat their addresses like bank accounts when they should be treating them like cardboard boxes. Sure, you can put your money in it, but you only keep your money so long as nobody finds your box. Therefore, you should make as many cardboard boxes as possible and spread your wealth such that breaking into any individual cardboard box is worthless, and breaking into all of them would take so much time it effectively becomes impossible. In terms of securing keys, that's also a difficulty, but that's the price you pay for this sort of experience. Any entity that could reverse your losses could also make transactions on your behalf - ruining the point of decentralizing in the first place.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    If I lose money because of a buggy contract, will the developers trigger a hard fork for me, or is it just the DAO who gets that consideration?
    - nexuist 6y ago
      If you lost half a billion dollars like the DAO did, you would probably get that consideration, too.
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
        That’s my point, if I lose a more paltry sum like my life savings, nobody will lift a finger to bail me out. It’s only if my losses are massive will the developers trigger a hard fork on my behalf. “Code is law” only turns out to apply to those with small balances and poor connections.

ipnon 7y ago

A point one of the founders of Ethereum has made: If you do not like a particular cryptocurrency, you can always use your own. Ethereum is an open source platform whose value, like paper money, is only the price that people are willing to pay for it.

ashtonkem 7y ago

The fact that losses can only be reversed if you’re sufficiently well connected to the developers is a major problem.

nexuist 7y ago
The losses were reversed because the system was exploited, not because someone had a close connection with one of the devs. Had they not forked the network right then and there they would only be facing more of the same in the future, reducing the reliability of ETH down to 0. No forks have been made since the incident, and I would hazard to say none of the devs are planning on forking anytime soon either. I think one of the problems in this space is that people treat their addresses like bank accounts when they should be treating them like cardboard boxes. Sure, you can put your money in it, but you only keep your money so long as nobody finds your box. Therefore, you should make as many cardboard boxes as possible and spread your wealth such that breaking into any individual cardboard box is worthless, and breaking into all of them would take so much time it effectively becomes impossible. In terms of securing keys, that's also a difficulty, but that's the price you pay for this sort of experience. Any entity that could reverse your losses could also make transactions on your behalf - ruining the point of decentralizing in the first place.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  If I lose money because of a buggy contract, will the developers trigger a hard fork for me, or is it just the DAO who gets that consideration?
  - nexuist 6y ago
    If you lost half a billion dollars like the DAO did, you would probably get that consideration, too.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      That’s my point, if I lose a more paltry sum like my life savings, nobody will lift a finger to bail me out. It’s only if my losses are massive will the developers trigger a hard fork on my behalf. “Code is law” only turns out to apply to those with small balances and poor connections.