[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

If R2-D2 used Ethereum.

C-3PO: He made a perfectly legal move.

Han: Let him have it. It’s not wise to upset a Wookiee (The Ethereum founders).

C-3PO: But sir. Nobody worries about upsetting a droid (a regular contract user without influence). Han: That’s cause a droid (regular contract user) don’t pull people’s arms out of their sockets (hard fork the entire crypto currency and call you a thief) when they lose. Wookiees (The Ethereum founders) are known to do that.

C-3PO: I see your point, sir. I suggest a new strategy, R2. Let the Wookiee (Ethereum founders) win.

With Chewbacca's and the Ethereum founders' behavior, you would be a fool to play their game again thinking that they follow the rules.

[vkreso]

There are no perfect rules nor there is perfect law. The hard fork was simply an abandonment of an obviously unjust law, a revolution really. The people voted with their feet, and the current market cap is an indicator of where those votes went.

People don't like to get screwed over.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

In that case, why not just use current contract law with centuries of jurisprudence? Without, "code is the contract", Ethereum is a pointless, buggy, leaky abstraction of current contract law.

[hsod]

Perhaps in some cases a broad consensus mechanism (like hard fork) is preferable to putting it in the hands of 12 random people.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Perhaps in some cases a broad consensus mechanism (like hard fork) is preferable to putting it in the hands of 12 random people

Sounds good in theory. In practice it's mob rule. We have pretty good evidence, i.e. history, that the rule of law is better.

[erikpukinskis]

Ok, so you are saying there is scientific evidence for for the statement "the rule of law is better than mob rule"?

I'd love to see a couple citations for that? Hell, I'd be fascinated to read the experimental setup.

To be truthful, it sounds like someone hooked you with some pseudoscience on poor foundations.

[sbov]

As long as you're a Wookie. In the meantime, Droids will get screwed over.

[Fjolsvith]

Just don't be a droid.

[pikzen]

>The hard fork was simply an abandonment of an obviously unjust law, a revolution really.

This is what Ethereum users actually believe.

Want it or not, Ethereum is very much led by a small group of people, and when those people lose their money, they ask the community to hard fork because really it would be a shame if the cryptocurrency they invested in lost value and became worthless. After all, it's not as if every cryptocurreency was nothing more than just a way to speculate.

Ask a thousand people if they want to lose money or win some, they'll all answer win. Even if lose is the normal (and in Etheureum's case, codified and agreed on by everyone) course of action.

By the way, the vote was at a default 'yes' and had to be explicitly disabled.

[droopyEyelids]

The whole point of computers is that they're perfect rule-following systems.

[rtpg]

isn't it a bit disingenuous to say it was just the position of Ethereum founders? People wanted their money back.

It's almost as if some recourse for actions done in bad faith is a useful tool to have as a society...

[gus_massa]

That's not what says https://www.ethereum.org/

> Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference.

[mannykannot]

Among those of us who see some value in smart contracts, there are two camps: those who are realistic about their limits and challenges, and those who have bought in to a massive delusion. This quote epitomizes the latter.

For example, how does 'run exactly as programmed' rule out fraud? Fraud is as programmable as legitimate activity.

For example, if fraud is not possible, then what was the justification for the hard fork?

People who have bought into a delusion find it hard to evaluate evidence - for example "Van de Sande is eager to move on. “It was really just a blip,” he says." So what was all the fuss about? After all, it was just two lines of code, so simple in retrospect, and now it has been fixed, so there's nothing to worry about, right?

Perhaps my favorite quote is "“I’m absolutely amazed. Why has no one traced this back and found out who did it?” asks Stephan Tual, the third co-founder of Slock.it." He is amazed that in one respect, this digital currency lived up to one of their major claimed benefits?

I am also not at all surprised by the 'shoot the messenger' complaints about Sirer's involvement.

The reality is that the verification of software, especially at this scale, is a really difficult problem, and everyone who has bought into the delusion seems to think that someone else is going to do it for them - I doubt that even 1% know how to do it themselves. So much for 'trustless'.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference

"Without any possibility" - You'd think that'd raise a few red flags.

The probability that Ethereum will be subject to downtime, censorship, fraud, and third party interference is 1.

How can they have that on their landing page and keep a straight face?

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

Of course, people also want to take back losing moves in chess. The whole point of Ethereum was that the code alone specified the contract.

[bluejekyll]

But code is written by humans... have you ever seen code with no bugs? In 20 years of professional development I have not.

Given that humans are imperfect, and could even potentially act in bad faith, isn't it reasonable to have an exception clause? I get the argument to not have one; that it's impossible to have favorites and central figures manipulate the system, but nothing is perfect.

[kalleboo]

> isn't it reasonable to have an exception clause

It absolutely is. Which is why you don't say "code is law". Which is why Ethereum is dumb.

[nebabyte]

If you think laws are written without exception clauses, I have a bridge to sell ya.

[kalleboo]

Laws are interpreted by courts.

There is no court of Ethereum aside from "can I convince the developers + 50% of miners to do a hard fork"

[microcolonel]

https://github.com/seL4/seL4 https://www.mitls.org/

[bluejekyll]

sel4 is amazing, but it is not bug free:

https://github.com/seL4/seL4/issues/36

It might be close... for miTLS I don't have access to the issues, but let's assume it's bug free now for sake of argument; it hasn't always been bug free, that is in earlier unproven releases.

"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!" - Edsger Dijkstra

[microcolonel]

Minor nitpick: the x86 port was never verified, the 32-bit ARM one was.

[WalterSear]

Not while claiming the opposite, it's not.

[flunhat]

Then what exactly is the difference between Ethereum's smart contracts and our legal system's contracts? At least in the latter, we can elect (or elect the people who choose) those who make final decisions.

[WalterSear]

It is.

It's not useful to have in an electronic currency. In fact, it goes against the whole idea behind ethereum.

>Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference.

[nebabyte]

They took a vote and the vast majority voted for the HF.

Had Vitalik ignored the vote and put his organization and the "canonical" chain on the non-HF side his would be the "abandoned" no-name chain, and people would now be mining some ETH derivative in line with their votes.

This is honestly just a fulfillment of "code is law", with the obvious rule above it being "humans accept or reject laws collectively". In this case, people rejected the former "law" and opted for one that captured the spirit/intent rather than the letter.

[dsacco]

The whole value proposition of "code is law" is that the letter of the law theoretically obviates the spirit of the law.