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The only way to apply the court’s judgement (in the case of ETH) is to hark fork, because there is no governance contract in place. A blockchain can in theory
by zaroth 5y ago
The only way to apply the court’s judgement (in the case of ETH) is to hark fork, because there is no governance contract in place.
A blockchain can in theory support such things, which would allow a majority vote to approve the court’s judgement, but not ETH as it currently stands.
Alternatively if you could get enough miners to just collectively agree to replay the blocks without that transaction you could let the owners move the funds, but it’s monumentally difficult as time goes on and the number of blocks to rewrite increases.
If it was detected in seconds, an emergency protocol does exist between certain large mining pools for this sort of thing.
Specifically, if you have contracts holding that kind of balance, if a transaction appears on the network which touches a percentage of the funds, you get blistering alarms ringing and someone can “break glass / pull lever” to lock the contract balance into an emergency cold vault. It freezes the DEX but better that then lose the funds. You partner with mining pools to pre-clear that TX and ensure your transaction gets priority in the next block, before the attacker’s transaction goes thru (making theirs the double-spend).
But they weren’t even watching. They didn’t even know until the next DAY.
- jacques_chester 5y ago> The only way to apply the court’s judgement (in the case of ETH) is to hark fork, because there is no governance contract in place. Courts can and do issue orders against any kind of asset in order to enforce justice and unlike smart contracts, their orders are backed by men and women with dogs and guns. Put another way: a court will not say "gee, gosh, if only ETH had a mechanism I could give orders for! I guess I'm beaten". They will instead say "you owe $X and I will seize all assets you have today, or will ever possess in future, in order to pay that debt". And when it turns out that people thought they were clever by evading the court order by keeping everything in a coin, they will then learn that ethereum can't buy top bunk at the federal penitentiary if you don't have access to a computer.
- zaroth 5y agoWe are talking about two different things. I’m talking about a decentralized algorithm which runs on your own machine and can reach a conclusion about a transaction being invalid even though it may have a valid signature. For example, imagine the thief just burns the ETH. $600mm notional value is destroyed in a few bytes of crypto. Whether someone goes to jail or not is besides the point. Can the funds be recovered, and what is the algorithmic mechanism to provide for that recovery?
- colinmhayes 5y ago> you owe $X and I will seize all assets you have today Who owes?