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points by michaelt 5 hours ago | 0 comments

That hasn't been true for years.

Back in 2016 a then-huge Ethereum smart contract called "The DAO" [1] had a loophole that let an attacker extract a third of all the funds.

But a lot of the developers and miners had either lost money themselves, or had friends who'd lost money, or felt the embarrassing incident was devaluing their own Ethereum holdings. So they decided to allow takesies-backsies.

There's probably a philosophical lesson there about power and who the rules really apply to.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO

[–] chao- 5 hours ago

I vividly remember a number of discussions/debates during that time (including on HN). I was more favorable to cryptocurrency in those days, and one of the things that contributed to my disillusionment was watching the people deepest and closest to it rediscover financial regulation from first principles, now that it was in their interest.

[–] throwaway132448 5 hours ago

Witnessing the same people discover philosophy from first principles in the face of AI has been similarly farcical, as if we’re the first people to try and wrestle with a definition of intelligence.

[–] cheraderama 4 hours ago

Philosophy, unlike financial regulation, isn't generally forced on people.

[–] narrator 4 hours ago

Yeah it is. It's called law. For example: when is intent important or a mitigating factor in a crime? When is it not important. Very philosophical.

[–] nonethewiser 3 hours ago

By that logic financial regulation is philosophy too but that makes the original comparison of financial regulation to philosophy non sensical. You’re shifting the terminology beneath out feet.

Law is downstream of philosophy. Youre forced to deal with conclusions that may be based in philosophy (or they may be arbitrary or self interested). Nobody makes you hold a position on mens rea. In that way you can ignore the philosophy.

[–] throwaway132448 4 hours ago

I don’t think I understand what you’re trying to say.

In the literal sense, people have been forcing their philosophy on other people for at least as long as we’ve had societies, so I assume it’s not that.

[–] nonethewiser 2 hours ago

Arent you disagreeing with yourself? You say these people are just now wrestling with the question of what intelligence is despite it being a longstanding philosophical question. So it clearly wasn’t forced on them.

[–] michaelt 4 hours ago

I myself was held prisoner by John Searle for 20 years, my only contact with the outside world by notes slipped under the door written in Chinese - a language I do not speak.

[–] jojobas 2 hours ago

You take not being subjected to say Marxism-Leninism at every stage of your life for granted.

[–] ex-aws-dude 5 hours ago

That is the tech bro circle of life

Invent Notion then keep adding features enterprise customers want until you're re-inventing JIRA/Confluence

Who left this stupid fence here?

[–] ahartmetz 47 minutes ago

Laws and contracts are just words unless there is someone willing and able to enforce them. Which is how constitutions are regularly ignored and perverted by dictators.

[–] phire 4 hours ago

The DAO incident was a special case. It was only sane to do the rollback because the stolen funds were time-locked up for 28 days.

Ethereum never did it again, rolling back hacks didn’t (and couldn’t) become normal policy. IMO, they shouldn’t have made an exception, as it set a bad example.

I’ve seen a few other small projects attempt to do rollbacks since, but it usually turns into some kind of mess. In most hacks, the coins aren’t time-locked and quickly get laundered through smaller exchanges (and other services) which act as mixers. The stolen coins end up in the hands of a bunch of innocent people, and the rollback then causes way more harm as those users lose their coins.

[–] vvillena 4 hours ago

The unforked variant of the network was kept alive for years. Why didn't it prevail over the forked variant?

[–] monk_grilla 3 hours ago

I don't think this counts as takesies backsies. This incident clearly followed the code is law principle, the whole point is that a majority forms the chain of truth. In this case, a majority decided to splinter and use a different chain where the incident never occurred.

As far as I understand blockchain, that is the system working as intended. Some nodes choose to run Ethereum Classic and some choose to run Ethereum. Isn't that the whole point? Decentralisation?