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Ethereum has twice hard forked the blockchain to revert the results of "code is law", clearly saying that code is only law when a quorum of powerful individuals

Ethereum has twice hard forked the blockchain to revert the results of "code is law", clearly saying that code is only law when a quorum of powerful individuals accept the outcome. Code isn't law, "code is law" is a slogan with as much veracity as slogans usually have.

EGreg 5y ago
I will quote from an article I wrote in CoinDesk last year: https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/03/12/in-defense-of-blockchain-voting/ https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/03/12/in-defense-of-block... For every technology we use today, there was a time it was laughably inadequate as a replacement for what came before. Code isn’t law, code is better than law. I wondered what I would have done 300 years agi before computers, and realized I’d probably be an architect or one of those lawmaker guys who wrote the Constitution. I mean think about it … you’re setting initial conditions, trying to think of edge cases, putting in Byzantine Consensus (checks and balances between branches of government, mutually distrusting parties checking election results etc.), but making it an Upgradeable smart contracts (process to do amendments etc.) Now CODE can do a lot more. In our applications for instance, you can: 1) Know the average amount spent on food or clothing by a citizen of a city 2) Vote on how much of food, clothing etc to simply subsidize by issuing more currency and airdropping it to the people (universal basic income) 3) Take a dot product between 1 and 2, and issue the universal basic income or stipend etc. and redistribute the wealth in the community according to the And best of all — it is entirely voluntary, thanks to smart contracts. No one has to accept your currency by fiat. But if they do, they’re helping to end food insecurity in your community. Just like that. No representative democracy and out of touch elites. Just the community taking care of its business and its vulnerable. Via a smart contract and decision making. And that is just ONE of the many applications that are possible. Intercoin has produced 10-15 applications that can all work together like LEGOs. Now we will be giving them to communities. Here are some more possibilities: https://intercoin.org/communities.pdf https://intercoin.org/communities.pdf
- fatbird 5y ago
  You're right, you can do all that--until vested interests revert your blockchain because the current blockchain status quo isn't to their liking, at which point your belief that code is better than law is a lie, because it still comes down to powerful individuals deciding what benefits them instead of letting "deterministic" outcomes stand. It's not that people are laughing at it now; it's that it's already been proven to be a fraud, where the promise of an immutable blockchain is a grift to part suckers from their money.
- hansonkd13 5y ago
  All of 1/2/3 could be or gamed or hacked if not EXTREME measures are taken. As proven repeatedly by the hundreds millions in dollars in smart contract hacks and losses that have happened and continue to happen. People can’t trust the code to do what they want, because when you read it you might mistake a 0 or a O. You trust someone else or machine to audit the code tell you the code will do what you want. US court systems take into account the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. Its a feature not a bug.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > Just the community taking care of its business and its vulnerable. Until gas fees make it accessible only to the "out of touch elites"
  - EGreg 5y ago
    "gas fees" are an abberation, the "world computer" is a glorified mainframe where you rent time. Smart contract can be done in completely different ways, with no bottlenecks. If you notice point 2 of https://intercoin.org/presentation.pdf https://intercoin.org/presentation.pdf .. I can send you the details if you're interested. I spent years speaking with the best teams around the world working on things beyond blockchain.
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      Ah. So you propose a centralized intermediary that everyone should trust. Gotcha.
claudiawerner 5y ago
This is a very good point. It was pointed out quite a while ago that talk about 'decentralised' systems can hide the technical features of those systems and the mode of governance like a 'veil'. 'Decentralisation', aside from being a technical word for certain aspects of a technology, can also hide centralised structures, whether maintained by a small number stakeholders controlling a majority of nodes, or governance driven by major organisations people depend on for that decentralisation. "Deconstructing 'Decentralization': Exploring the Core Claim of Crypto Systems" (2019): https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3326244 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3326244
impulser_ 5y ago
Yes, but the original blockchain still exists. You can still use the original Ethereum blockchain, if you want too.
- fatbird 5y ago
  So what? Ethereum classic has two+ orders of magnitude less activity. The hard forks are where Ethereum is today. It's not just the maintainers deciding what's law, instead of code; the coin community actually wants it that way.
latchkey 5y ago
Miners choose which chain to follow, not the quorum of powerful individuals. If you believed that ETC was the correct option in that decision, you were free to mine that chain all you want.
- fatbird 5y ago
  Miners choose where it's profitable to mine, which will always be the more active blockchain. It's called voting with your feet, and clearly Ethereum miners followed the quorum of powerful individuals. What matters your massive holdings of ETC when there's no buyers?
  - latchkey 5y ago
    Disclosure: I'm a very very large miner and I've been doing it across many protocols over the last 7 years. You're right that miners choose profitability, but we also choose technology. I don't mine BTC any more, I mine with GPUs (and thus ETH). There are a dozen chains I could mine with these GPUs, but I'd like to see the success of ETH over others. I can tell you with certainty, no quorum of powerful individuals influenced that decision.
    - meheleventyone 5y ago
      Random question but as a large miner and supporter of ETH how will the proposed switch to PoS next year impact you?
      - latchkey 5y ago
        Thanks for asking. My business model has always been larger than just mining ETH. I'm focused on building data centers for providing decentralized compute to all these web3 applications being built today. Mining (aka: being paid to validate anonymous transactions) is just one use case. You see all these articles about how a dApp went down because AWS was down? I'd like to help solve that issue. It isn't just about renting out servers or virtual machines. It is about providing compute in a way that nobody realizes where it is even hosted. True "cloud" in my eyes.
can16358p 5y ago
Can we actually restate this as a 51% attack on Ethereum. But by the community itself, with powerful (yet not code-level enforcing) influence of Ethereum Foundation and rich people who has invested in The DAO (and lost money on the hack)? How is this really different than a 51% attack?

EGreg 5y ago

I will quote from an article I wrote in CoinDesk last year: https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/03/12/in-defense-of-blockchain-voting/ https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/03/12/in-defense-of-block... For every technology we use today, there was a time it was laughably inadequate as a replacement for what came before. Code isn’t law, code is better than law. I wondered what I would have done 300 years agi before computers, and realized I’d probably be an architect or one of those lawmaker guys who wrote the Constitution. I mean think about it … you’re setting initial conditions, trying to think of edge cases, putting in Byzantine Consensus (checks and balances between branches of government, mutually distrusting parties checking election results etc.), but making it an Upgradeable smart contracts (process to do amendments etc.) Now CODE can do a lot more. In our applications for instance, you can: 1) Know the average amount spent on food or clothing by a citizen of a city 2) Vote on how much of food, clothing etc to simply subsidize by issuing more currency and airdropping it to the people (universal basic income) 3) Take a dot product between 1 and 2, and issue the universal basic income or stipend etc. and redistribute the wealth in the community according to the And best of all — it is entirely voluntary, thanks to smart contracts. No one has to accept your currency by fiat. But if they do, they’re helping to end food insecurity in your community. Just like that. No representative democracy and out of touch elites. Just the community taking care of its business and its vulnerable. Via a smart contract and decision making. And that is just ONE of the many applications that are possible. Intercoin has produced 10-15 applications that can all work together like LEGOs. Now we will be giving them to communities. Here are some more possibilities: https://intercoin.org/communities.pdf https://intercoin.org/communities.pdf

fatbird 5y ago
You're right, you can do all that--until vested interests revert your blockchain because the current blockchain status quo isn't to their liking, at which point your belief that code is better than law is a lie, because it still comes down to powerful individuals deciding what benefits them instead of letting "deterministic" outcomes stand. It's not that people are laughing at it now; it's that it's already been proven to be a fraud, where the promise of an immutable blockchain is a grift to part suckers from their money.
hansonkd13 5y ago
All of 1/2/3 could be or gamed or hacked if not EXTREME measures are taken. As proven repeatedly by the hundreds millions in dollars in smart contract hacks and losses that have happened and continue to happen. People can’t trust the code to do what they want, because when you read it you might mistake a 0 or a O. You trust someone else or machine to audit the code tell you the code will do what you want. US court systems take into account the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. Its a feature not a bug.
dmitriid 5y ago
> Just the community taking care of its business and its vulnerable. Until gas fees make it accessible only to the "out of touch elites"
- EGreg 5y ago
  "gas fees" are an abberation, the "world computer" is a glorified mainframe where you rent time. Smart contract can be done in completely different ways, with no bottlenecks. If you notice point 2 of https://intercoin.org/presentation.pdf https://intercoin.org/presentation.pdf .. I can send you the details if you're interested. I spent years speaking with the best teams around the world working on things beyond blockchain.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    Ah. So you propose a centralized intermediary that everyone should trust. Gotcha.

claudiawerner 5y ago

This is a very good point. It was pointed out quite a while ago that talk about 'decentralised' systems can hide the technical features of those systems and the mode of governance like a 'veil'. 'Decentralisation', aside from being a technical word for certain aspects of a technology, can also hide centralised structures, whether maintained by a small number stakeholders controlling a majority of nodes, or governance driven by major organisations people depend on for that decentralisation. "Deconstructing 'Decentralization': Exploring the Core Claim of Crypto Systems" (2019): https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3326244 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3326244

impulser_ 5y ago

Yes, but the original blockchain still exists. You can still use the original Ethereum blockchain, if you want too.

fatbird 5y ago
So what? Ethereum classic has two+ orders of magnitude less activity. The hard forks are where Ethereum is today. It's not just the maintainers deciding what's law, instead of code; the coin community actually wants it that way.

latchkey 5y ago

Miners choose which chain to follow, not the quorum of powerful individuals. If you believed that ETC was the correct option in that decision, you were free to mine that chain all you want.

fatbird 5y ago
Miners choose where it's profitable to mine, which will always be the more active blockchain. It's called voting with your feet, and clearly Ethereum miners followed the quorum of powerful individuals. What matters your massive holdings of ETC when there's no buyers?
- latchkey 5y ago
  Disclosure: I'm a very very large miner and I've been doing it across many protocols over the last 7 years. You're right that miners choose profitability, but we also choose technology. I don't mine BTC any more, I mine with GPUs (and thus ETH). There are a dozen chains I could mine with these GPUs, but I'd like to see the success of ETH over others. I can tell you with certainty, no quorum of powerful individuals influenced that decision.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    Random question but as a large miner and supporter of ETH how will the proposed switch to PoS next year impact you?
    - latchkey 5y ago
      Thanks for asking. My business model has always been larger than just mining ETH. I'm focused on building data centers for providing decentralized compute to all these web3 applications being built today. Mining (aka: being paid to validate anonymous transactions) is just one use case. You see all these articles about how a dApp went down because AWS was down? I'd like to help solve that issue. It isn't just about renting out servers or virtual machines. It is about providing compute in a way that nobody realizes where it is even hosted. True "cloud" in my eyes.

can16358p 5y ago

Can we actually restate this as a 51% attack on Ethereum. But by the community itself, with powerful (yet not code-level enforcing) influence of Ethereum Foundation and rich people who has invested in The DAO (and lost money on the hack)? How is this really different than a 51% attack?