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Sort of..an individual smart contract is completely immutable; the code cannot be updated. You can create a proxy smart contract that points to the contracts ac

Sort of..an individual smart contract is completely immutable; the code cannot be updated. You can create a proxy smart contract that points to the contracts actually handling execution, and update those pointers to point to new, updated version of the code which is what I assume you're referring to. Plenty of popular smart contracts do not do this though, and are fully immutable. Rather than updates, the developers upload a new version. Users can use the new version, or stay on the old one forever (the developers cannot delete it). Regardless of which one, though, this is known ahead of time. A user (or, more likely, a community of users) can inspect the code and see to what extent the key holders can modify functionality.

Darvon 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic#The_DAO_bailout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic#The_DAO_bailo... Eth is immutable unless the central players lose too much money then they can roll it back
- baby 5y ago
  Consensus can mutate yes. People tend to forget that these protocols run on top of a consensus protocol.
- RealityVoid 5y ago
  I think the DAO hack is misrepresented in the crypto community lore. The network simply decided to follow the main developers and those that did not, kept with what is now ETH classic. A hard fork can happen in absolutely _all_ cryptocurrencies, and I see it as a feature rather than a bug.
  - drdeca 5y ago
    While I generally agree, I will say that the ability to dictate a Schelling point is a form of power. Imagine a first past the post election, where there is no official list of candidates (one simply writes in a name), but where a particular person has the position that they are always the first person to publicly recommend any candidate, and all voters hear this recommendation. This would be a powerful position, even if that person was not eligible as a candidate, and even though everyone can vote for whatever candidate they want. When in a position of significant power, even if this power is only of the form of one’s reputation and/or one’s influence on Schelling points, one has a responsibility to, when exercising this power, to take into account the effect it will have on others. I don’t mean that he failed to do so. I imagine it must have been a difficult decision! And I do hold Vitalik in high regard. But if one presents such a fork as being merely the the result of independent choices of each user, I think one is mistakenly omitting the power used by big names which promote one fork or another. I don’t mean to say that this power being present is a problem that needs to be solved, making this power not present. I don’t think that is possible. Like I said, I do largely agree with much of the “people are free to choose what fork they use” framing. But while I think it is probably basically the best that can be achieved, I do think it is best to acknowledge that even without authority from things other than social influence and such, that there is still power through said social influence + Schelling point influence + etc. , and it is possible for this power to be misused (though I don’t claim that it was misused in this particular case). In addition, I do think it seems prudent and good to avoid exercising this power unless the reason to use it is especially compelling (e.g. either part of an upgrade which basically the whole community has been expecting for a long time, or which has overwhelming support, or to handle something which , if not handled, could have an existential impact on the chain, or things like this) . (And, while I haven’t kept up with his latest writings and actions, I suspect he kind of agrees?)
    - RealityVoid 5y ago
      I think you are spot on, with the addendum that exercising this power comes with costs - see the very DAO hack we talked about. So while I fully agree this power exists, it is not unlimited and is invested by the users of the network. I also think Vitalik is aware of all these and they are actually using these principles in the ETH governance.
  - staticassertion 5y ago
    Why is that preferable over a system that's just... mutable.
  - nextaccountic 5y ago
    This just means that as far as users are concerned there is no such thing as an immutable blockchain. That's because people don't interact with chains directly, they use "Bitcoin" and "Ethereum", and those names have an inherent mutability in what they refer to. The Ethereum developers convinced enough players of the crypto ecosystem to change what chain the name "Ethereum" refers to, not unlike a dns change (but to a large extent, done manually; there were humans in the loop to activate the hard fork). So wallets and exchanges changed the chain that the name "Ethereum" pointed to. Nodes migrated, and miners too. And it just happened that this fork was made specifically to revert a certain transaction. Those that were left on the original chain had to pick another name for it, and build another branding. It was now called ETC instead of ETH, even though it was ETH that changed; ETC points to the old chain that used to be called ETH. From the perspective of users, the transactions on ETH were truly reversed. Immutability is a mirage. (This is not necessarily a bad thing though.)
- thebean11 5y ago
  They cannot roll it back. Anybody can create a hard fork, and nobody is forced to use that version. In fact, the version that was not rolled back still exists, and we are all free to use it if we wish!
  - jcpham2 5y ago
    I know guys still holding on to their ETC bags. Bitcoin folks think the DAO fuckup perfectly illustrates Ethereums weakest link: the creator. The weakest link is and always will be Mr Buterin. Satoshi did it correctly by disappearing Hi Vitalik! I bought into your nonsense too. I’m even staking for you so whatever
  - xg15 5y ago
    This ignores network effects at play. As soon as large parties or developers of popular front-end software announce their support, the majority of smaller users will quickly follow - simply because not following would put them on a massive disadvantage. The developers of the clients do have a massive advantage here.
    - thebean11 5y ago
      Yes but anyone can develop a client, there is no permission needed
      - xg15 5y ago
        Anyone can develop their own Android fork - this will still not put Google's dominance in any danger.
        thebean11 5y ago
        I disagree, a fork with a non-Google app store could absolutely threaten Google. The Oculus Quest runs an Android fork for example. Are you saying if Google gets into VR Facebook will not be able to compete because of the fact they are using Android?
- everfree 5y ago
  Ethereum Classic without the rollback still exists, the old history didn't go anywhere. You and anyone else are free to use it.
  - pie_flavor 5y ago
    There is nothing of value in the history. The network of people using it is the value.
aboodman 5y ago
Thank you for the information. Yes, I was talking about the proxy pattern. My mental model was that this was the classic approach. I did not know that popular major projects were using immutable smart contracts. This seems crazy to me, but it does at least address the question of centralization (while introducing massive bug risk).
- javier123454321 5y ago
  Yeah I mean look at Uniswap. Billions of dollars in liquidity locked up and it is immutable. Software development in this context is much more similar to hardware engineering, the cost of rolling back is exponentionally more than rolling put a django app or whatever. But weve been doing this type of engineering for millenia, what happens if there is a bug in the design of a bridge? Its cratastophic, yeah so what do you do to prevent that? Should we not have bridges?
  - aboodman 5y ago
    I think it’s a little different because people do regularly maintain bridges without replacing them and rerouting all traffic. But I get your drift. What a crazy thought to have these completely autonomous programs moving billions in value.

Darvon 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic#The_DAO_bailout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic#The_DAO_bailo... Eth is immutable unless the central players lose too much money then they can roll it back

baby 5y ago
Consensus can mutate yes. People tend to forget that these protocols run on top of a consensus protocol.
RealityVoid 5y ago
I think the DAO hack is misrepresented in the crypto community lore. The network simply decided to follow the main developers and those that did not, kept with what is now ETH classic. A hard fork can happen in absolutely _all_ cryptocurrencies, and I see it as a feature rather than a bug.
- drdeca 5y ago
  While I generally agree, I will say that the ability to dictate a Schelling point is a form of power. Imagine a first past the post election, where there is no official list of candidates (one simply writes in a name), but where a particular person has the position that they are always the first person to publicly recommend any candidate, and all voters hear this recommendation. This would be a powerful position, even if that person was not eligible as a candidate, and even though everyone can vote for whatever candidate they want. When in a position of significant power, even if this power is only of the form of one’s reputation and/or one’s influence on Schelling points, one has a responsibility to, when exercising this power, to take into account the effect it will have on others. I don’t mean that he failed to do so. I imagine it must have been a difficult decision! And I do hold Vitalik in high regard. But if one presents such a fork as being merely the the result of independent choices of each user, I think one is mistakenly omitting the power used by big names which promote one fork or another. I don’t mean to say that this power being present is a problem that needs to be solved, making this power not present. I don’t think that is possible. Like I said, I do largely agree with much of the “people are free to choose what fork they use” framing. But while I think it is probably basically the best that can be achieved, I do think it is best to acknowledge that even without authority from things other than social influence and such, that there is still power through said social influence + Schelling point influence + etc. , and it is possible for this power to be misused (though I don’t claim that it was misused in this particular case). In addition, I do think it seems prudent and good to avoid exercising this power unless the reason to use it is especially compelling (e.g. either part of an upgrade which basically the whole community has been expecting for a long time, or which has overwhelming support, or to handle something which , if not handled, could have an existential impact on the chain, or things like this) . (And, while I haven’t kept up with his latest writings and actions, I suspect he kind of agrees?)
  - RealityVoid 5y ago
    I think you are spot on, with the addendum that exercising this power comes with costs - see the very DAO hack we talked about. So while I fully agree this power exists, it is not unlimited and is invested by the users of the network. I also think Vitalik is aware of all these and they are actually using these principles in the ETH governance.
- staticassertion 5y ago
  Why is that preferable over a system that's just... mutable.
- nextaccountic 5y ago
  This just means that as far as users are concerned there is no such thing as an immutable blockchain. That's because people don't interact with chains directly, they use "Bitcoin" and "Ethereum", and those names have an inherent mutability in what they refer to. The Ethereum developers convinced enough players of the crypto ecosystem to change what chain the name "Ethereum" refers to, not unlike a dns change (but to a large extent, done manually; there were humans in the loop to activate the hard fork). So wallets and exchanges changed the chain that the name "Ethereum" pointed to. Nodes migrated, and miners too. And it just happened that this fork was made specifically to revert a certain transaction. Those that were left on the original chain had to pick another name for it, and build another branding. It was now called ETC instead of ETH, even though it was ETH that changed; ETC points to the old chain that used to be called ETH. From the perspective of users, the transactions on ETH were truly reversed. Immutability is a mirage. (This is not necessarily a bad thing though.)
thebean11 5y ago
They cannot roll it back. Anybody can create a hard fork, and nobody is forced to use that version. In fact, the version that was not rolled back still exists, and we are all free to use it if we wish!
- jcpham2 5y ago
  I know guys still holding on to their ETC bags. Bitcoin folks think the DAO fuckup perfectly illustrates Ethereums weakest link: the creator. The weakest link is and always will be Mr Buterin. Satoshi did it correctly by disappearing Hi Vitalik! I bought into your nonsense too. I’m even staking for you so whatever
- xg15 5y ago
  This ignores network effects at play. As soon as large parties or developers of popular front-end software announce their support, the majority of smaller users will quickly follow - simply because not following would put them on a massive disadvantage. The developers of the clients do have a massive advantage here.
  - thebean11 5y ago
    Yes but anyone can develop a client, there is no permission needed
    - xg15 5y ago
      Anyone can develop their own Android fork - this will still not put Google's dominance in any danger.
      - thebean11 5y ago
        I disagree, a fork with a non-Google app store could absolutely threaten Google. The Oculus Quest runs an Android fork for example. Are you saying if Google gets into VR Facebook will not be able to compete because of the fact they are using Android?
everfree 5y ago
Ethereum Classic without the rollback still exists, the old history didn't go anywhere. You and anyone else are free to use it.
- pie_flavor 5y ago
  There is nothing of value in the history. The network of people using it is the value.

aboodman 5y ago

Thank you for the information. Yes, I was talking about the proxy pattern. My mental model was that this was the classic approach. I did not know that popular major projects were using immutable smart contracts. This seems crazy to me, but it does at least address the question of centralization (while introducing massive bug risk).

javier123454321 5y ago
Yeah I mean look at Uniswap. Billions of dollars in liquidity locked up and it is immutable. Software development in this context is much more similar to hardware engineering, the cost of rolling back is exponentionally more than rolling put a django app or whatever. But weve been doing this type of engineering for millenia, what happens if there is a bug in the design of a bridge? Its cratastophic, yeah so what do you do to prevent that? Should we not have bridges?
- aboodman 5y ago
  I think it’s a little different because people do regularly maintain bridges without replacing them and rerouting all traffic. But I get your drift. What a crazy thought to have these completely autonomous programs moving billions in value.