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I love how everyone assumes that the ETH blockchain is immutable and there is nothing that can happen to undo any of this. Did everyone simply forget when the D

I love how everyone assumes that the ETH blockchain is immutable and there is nothing that can happen to undo any of this. Did everyone simply forget when the Dao had a contract bug and the ETH devs literally just rolled back the transaction?

aemreunal 5y ago
So crypto is immutable, "code is law", decentralized, whatever, until people need to roll back transactions and use centralized exchanges because "they already solved these issues"? Seems like a whole lot of global warming just to re-invent a terrible imitation of banking...
- neuronic 5y ago
  > decentralized After reading Moxie's blog post on web3 [1] I feel it is a stretch to call anything Ehtereum-based decentralized anymore when this many applications use Alchemy or Infura as providers for their Ethereum nodes. [1] https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html
  - dandanua 5y ago
    It's not just nodes. It's also - exchanges - mining pools - mixers - oracles Also, core devs and all stable cryptos are "centralized" by definition. This whole ecosystem is just cancer to a traditional society. It's not an evolution.
    - xtracto 5y ago
      Cancer like in the health issue? Or cancer like how Open Source (GPL) was a cancer back in the 2000s?
  - e12e 5y ago
    Thank you for that link, I see it was posted to hn, but gained little traction. It certainly puts words to my feelings around current "crypto" trends as someone (probably like moxie) that still remember the first wave of cypherpunks[1] and dreams of digital currencies. It feels strange when a lot of smart people insists on something that's obviously false in a practical, real-world sense - and it's nice to see someone else shine a light on that, and explain in simple, correct terms what's actually going on. I wonder if there are any emerging systems that are more likely to realise the idea (ideals) of digital currencies and smart contracts? I had hopes for etherum, but now I'm thinking that if we'll ever get there, it'd be in the next generation (call it third generation, bitcoin being first, etherum second - and earlier things generation zero). I'm thinking it would be proof-of-stake, and somehow viable as real peer to peer, or split in a more sane way between infrastructure and "wallets". [1] See eg this for a summary and some pointers https://nakamoto.com/the-cypherpunks/ https://nakamoto.com/the-cypherpunks/
    - gnabgib 5y ago
      3392pts and 1129comments is "little traction"?? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29845208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29845208
      - e12e 5y ago
        Eh, no. Thank you for that. But that's not what I found when I searched.. Strange. I found this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29860946 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29860946
jstx1 5y ago
It's a relatively small amount and I don't think that the original poster is connected enough. It's immutable for them.
repomies69 5y ago
It is immutable, unless in some cases it is not. However of majority of us plebs it is practically immutable.
- u-rate 5y ago
  Isn‘t that exactly like the status quo with banks?
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    Bank transactions are mutable/reversible by design and by law. It's quite the opposite from banks.
    - SilasX 5y ago
      Really? Access to the legal system doesn’t vary based on how pleb you are?
      - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
        Normally you do not have to actually directly interact with the legal system to reverse a fraudulent bank transaction. The banks have internal policies to comply with the legal system, because the other outcome is more expensive for them.
        SilasX 5y ago
        Um, what? I did. Banks didn’t do anything when I got defrauded by wire except tell me they can’t do anything.
        asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
        If you initiated a wire to the wrong account, that's one thing. The banks will not reverse this sort of transaction, to my understanding. If someone else fraudulently initiated a wire from your account, then that's another thing. This type of transaction will be reversed. I'm not sure which situation you're talking about. ACH transactions are a whole other ballgame.
RedShift1 5y ago
The only way to roll back transactions is to create a fork of the blockchain. A very politically loaded topic to say the least.
- ddtaylor 5y ago
  Which is exactly what ETH already did years ago with the Dao. There was no technical reason for the rollback/fork. It was just that too many people would lose money because of a bug in a contract. A contract that explicitly said "this is the code" regardless of bugs. So yeah, lol.
tromp 5y ago
> the ETH devs literally just rolled back the transaction? That's when some of them were themselves invested in the Dao...
disruptalot 5y ago
Something happening once does not mean it will happen again. There have been numerous huge hacks in the past 5 years, even where the losses were from the most influential of holders and no action was taken (e.g. parity bugs). A bug and reversal occurred in the first few years of Bitcoin's existence that has effectively meant that Bitcoin won't reach the stated 21m coins exactly. It's guaranteed at this point that there won't be any further reversals.
- root_axis 5y ago
  The point is that it can happen if enough influential individuals in the eth community want it to happen, it is a social software not "immutable", and this will be further enshrined if PoS ever becomes a reality. Bitcoin has the same problem, and cryptocoin enthusiasts are fooling themselves if they think that miners won't raise the 21m cap when the end of Bitcoin rewards start looming.
  - disruptalot 5y ago
    Anything can be done using a fork. But the days of a chain (read as "only bitcoin & ethereum") doing any kind of deep state change and coming out the other side as the winning fork are done. The stake holders are so diverse and so invested in the values (i.e. immutability, scarcity) that any such fork is doomed to failure. We found out with previous Bitcoin forks, how influential companies and miners are. 21M is non negotiable, and which stakeholder would want to dilute themselves?
    - root_axis 5y ago
      > But the days of a chain (read as "only bitcoin & ethereum") doing any kind of deep state change and coming out the other side as the winning fork are done. When it comes to miner prerogatives the day is never done, they are the sole arbiters of what "winning chain" means, and when they are incentivized to act in unison their will is indomitable. > and which stakeholder would want to dilute themselves Miners. Based on your definition, "stakeholders are diluted" every time miners make money, so if the choice is between continuing to make money or not, it's pretty obvious what decision they will make. I suppose there's a possible future where the miners do nothing and bitcoin transaction fees skyrocket in response. At that point I would expect a mass exodus to altcoins with cheaper transaction fees, but I don't see the miners acquiescing to this future.
xiphias2 5y ago
It was Vitalik’s money. Ethereum is immutable as long as Vitalik doesn’t lose money.
throw_m239339 5y ago
It's so immutable that it can be and was forked at least once... It's immutable as long as it's convenient to a clique of people...
- baobabKoodaa 5y ago
  Ethereum has been hard forked multiple times. Bitcoin at least once, too.
ohgodplsno 5y ago
It's immutable unless the grifters-in-chief lose their investment.
sanderjd 5y ago
The DAO is a big reason why (culturally) this kind of thing can no longer be done. That was a defining moment for the culture and is seen as a growing pain but also a "never again" moment.

aemreunal 5y ago

So crypto is immutable, "code is law", decentralized, whatever, until people need to roll back transactions and use centralized exchanges because "they already solved these issues"? Seems like a whole lot of global warming just to re-invent a terrible imitation of banking...

neuronic 5y ago
> decentralized After reading Moxie's blog post on web3 [1] I feel it is a stretch to call anything Ehtereum-based decentralized anymore when this many applications use Alchemy or Infura as providers for their Ethereum nodes. [1] https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html
- dandanua 5y ago
  It's not just nodes. It's also - exchanges - mining pools - mixers - oracles Also, core devs and all stable cryptos are "centralized" by definition. This whole ecosystem is just cancer to a traditional society. It's not an evolution.
  - xtracto 5y ago
    Cancer like in the health issue? Or cancer like how Open Source (GPL) was a cancer back in the 2000s?
- e12e 5y ago
  Thank you for that link, I see it was posted to hn, but gained little traction. It certainly puts words to my feelings around current "crypto" trends as someone (probably like moxie) that still remember the first wave of cypherpunks[1] and dreams of digital currencies. It feels strange when a lot of smart people insists on something that's obviously false in a practical, real-world sense - and it's nice to see someone else shine a light on that, and explain in simple, correct terms what's actually going on. I wonder if there are any emerging systems that are more likely to realise the idea (ideals) of digital currencies and smart contracts? I had hopes for etherum, but now I'm thinking that if we'll ever get there, it'd be in the next generation (call it third generation, bitcoin being first, etherum second - and earlier things generation zero). I'm thinking it would be proof-of-stake, and somehow viable as real peer to peer, or split in a more sane way between infrastructure and "wallets". [1] See eg this for a summary and some pointers https://nakamoto.com/the-cypherpunks/ https://nakamoto.com/the-cypherpunks/
  - gnabgib 5y ago
    3392pts and 1129comments is "little traction"?? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29845208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29845208
    - e12e 5y ago
      Eh, no. Thank you for that. But that's not what I found when I searched.. Strange. I found this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29860946 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29860946

jstx1 5y ago

It's a relatively small amount and I don't think that the original poster is connected enough. It's immutable for them.

repomies69 5y ago

It is immutable, unless in some cases it is not. However of majority of us plebs it is practically immutable.

u-rate 5y ago
Isn‘t that exactly like the status quo with banks?
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  Bank transactions are mutable/reversible by design and by law. It's quite the opposite from banks.
  - SilasX 5y ago
    Really? Access to the legal system doesn’t vary based on how pleb you are?
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
      Normally you do not have to actually directly interact with the legal system to reverse a fraudulent bank transaction. The banks have internal policies to comply with the legal system, because the other outcome is more expensive for them.
      - SilasX 5y ago
        Um, what? I did. Banks didn’t do anything when I got defrauded by wire except tell me they can’t do anything.
        asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
        If you initiated a wire to the wrong account, that's one thing. The banks will not reverse this sort of transaction, to my understanding. If someone else fraudulently initiated a wire from your account, then that's another thing. This type of transaction will be reversed. I'm not sure which situation you're talking about. ACH transactions are a whole other ballgame.

RedShift1 5y ago

The only way to roll back transactions is to create a fork of the blockchain. A very politically loaded topic to say the least.

ddtaylor 5y ago
Which is exactly what ETH already did years ago with the Dao. There was no technical reason for the rollback/fork. It was just that too many people would lose money because of a bug in a contract. A contract that explicitly said "this is the code" regardless of bugs. So yeah, lol.

tromp 5y ago

> the ETH devs literally just rolled back the transaction? That's when some of them were themselves invested in the Dao...

disruptalot 5y ago

Something happening once does not mean it will happen again. There have been numerous huge hacks in the past 5 years, even where the losses were from the most influential of holders and no action was taken (e.g. parity bugs). A bug and reversal occurred in the first few years of Bitcoin's existence that has effectively meant that Bitcoin won't reach the stated 21m coins exactly. It's guaranteed at this point that there won't be any further reversals.

root_axis 5y ago
The point is that it can happen if enough influential individuals in the eth community want it to happen, it is a social software not "immutable", and this will be further enshrined if PoS ever becomes a reality. Bitcoin has the same problem, and cryptocoin enthusiasts are fooling themselves if they think that miners won't raise the 21m cap when the end of Bitcoin rewards start looming.
- disruptalot 5y ago
  Anything can be done using a fork. But the days of a chain (read as "only bitcoin & ethereum") doing any kind of deep state change and coming out the other side as the winning fork are done. The stake holders are so diverse and so invested in the values (i.e. immutability, scarcity) that any such fork is doomed to failure. We found out with previous Bitcoin forks, how influential companies and miners are. 21M is non negotiable, and which stakeholder would want to dilute themselves?
  - root_axis 5y ago
    > But the days of a chain (read as "only bitcoin & ethereum") doing any kind of deep state change and coming out the other side as the winning fork are done. When it comes to miner prerogatives the day is never done, they are the sole arbiters of what "winning chain" means, and when they are incentivized to act in unison their will is indomitable. > and which stakeholder would want to dilute themselves Miners. Based on your definition, "stakeholders are diluted" every time miners make money, so if the choice is between continuing to make money or not, it's pretty obvious what decision they will make. I suppose there's a possible future where the miners do nothing and bitcoin transaction fees skyrocket in response. At that point I would expect a mass exodus to altcoins with cheaper transaction fees, but I don't see the miners acquiescing to this future.

xiphias2 5y ago

It was Vitalik’s money. Ethereum is immutable as long as Vitalik doesn’t lose money.

throw_m239339 5y ago

It's so immutable that it can be and was forked at least once... It's immutable as long as it's convenient to a clique of people...

baobabKoodaa 5y ago
Ethereum has been hard forked multiple times. Bitcoin at least once, too.

ohgodplsno 5y ago

It's immutable unless the grifters-in-chief lose their investment.

sanderjd 5y ago

The DAO is a big reason why (culturally) this kind of thing can no longer be done. That was a defining moment for the culture and is seen as a growing pain but also a "never again" moment.