[pYQAJ6Zm]

The way I recall it, they didn’t void past transactions; they added “irregular state changes” that would “return” the “stolen” funds to their “legitimate“ owners. Nor were they forced to fork; it was a voluntary decision of a group of people with enough social power over the platform.

Now this is more a matter of dispute, but I wouldn’t say the hacker stole the funds. They simply followed the DAO contract (not the “smart-contract”, mind you, but the one put forward by the Slock.it team on their page), according to which everything that went on the blockchain according to the DAO code was legitimate.

[mannykannot]

>Now this is more a matter of dispute, but I wouldn’t say the hacker stole the funds...

Verification is Ethereum's Achille's heel. Everyone seems to trust that someone else will verify that the contracts they participate in will work securely as intended, and the DAO showed how well that works.

If Ethereum ever gets used as its proponents imagine, with multiple interacting contracts in progress at any given time, rolling back an error will not be nearly as easy as it was in the DAO case (and that was not particularly easy.)

[aminok]

That's every system's Achille's Heel. It's a human fault.

[mannykannot]

The point is that in Ethereum's case, the extent of the problem is vastly underestimated by almost all of the participants. In most other cases, it is a risk that can be mitigated or accepted, but in Ethereum's case, it undermines the fundamental premise ('trustless' contracts.)

[mbrock]

I think Ethereum users will mostly converge on a limited set of useful cookie cutter contracts and simple combinations thereof. New types of contracts will hopefully be received with skepticism, as "The DAO" should have been. So the premise isn't really undermined. It's just that the focus on writing custom contracts in a programming language will diminish as the basic framework matures.

[mannykannot]

That is not the vision Ethereum was sold on.

[mbrock]

There was always a pretty limited range of basic use cases for smart contracts: crowdsales, auctions, debt registries, currency tokens, multisig wallets, etc.

As people begin to use Ethereum for real-world organizations, they will of course prefer to use popular, tested, verified implementations of these basic contract types.

I'm not sure what vision you refer to, but anyway, original visions aren't binding!

[aminok]

It's something that will change with experience.

[mannykannot]

It certainly will - people will realize that the fanciful dreams are not feasible.

[aminok]

And others will realise the possibilities opened up by Turing Complete contracting.