[FatalLogic]

>"has this chain ever broken it's own rules and rolled back transactions at the behest of its benevolent dictator?"

Bitcoin has also done this.

You're referring to the $50m DAO smart contract bug (or "hack") early in 2016, when Ethereum had been running for about a year. The Ethereum blockchain was swiftly rolled back. This was achieved by the majority of Ethereum developers agreeing to create an update to Ethereum software that reversed the hackers transactions specifically, and the great majority of users and miners agreeing to use that updated software. The people behind the DAO were closely connected to the Ethereum developers. Some of them were Ethereum developers. Some of the people who lost money in the DAO were Ethereum developers.

What you're unaware of apparently, is that when Bitcoin had been running for about a year, in 2010, a bug allowed someone to create 184 billion Bitcoins. This effectively made everybody's Bitcoins worthless (or even more worthless!). This event was ALSO swiftly rolled back, just like the Ethereum DAO event, by the same consensus process that I described above.

"Core developers Gavin Andresen and Satoshi Nakamoto were on the case, and the 184 billion BTC transaction was purged from block 74638."

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-history-part-10-the-184-bil...

Since then, there have been various incidents involving Ethereum and Bitcoin and hacks or smart contract bugs that caused losses of millions or billions. But neither currency has ever done a roll back of this nature again.

For instance. A year or so after Ethereum's DAO debacle, there was another similar event, the Parity bug, which accidentally locked $230m in a smart contract, permanently. The people operating Parity were closely connected to the Ethereum developers, some of them were Ethereum developers. But this time, although the victims pleaded for a roll back, it was never seriously considered.

https://news.bitcoin.com/parity-calls-for-ethereum-hard-fork...

[Quindecillion]

> But neither currency has ever done a roll back of this nature again.

Maybe not a rollback, but Ethereum has proven it is malleable time and time again. As one example, compare the issuance of ether to Bitcoin. Eth's issuance is a dog's breakfast, indicative of changing opinions by those who call the shots... just like a central bank.

Bitcoin's issuance? Predictable and steady as a rock for 15 years.

Another example is replacing Proof-of-Work with Proof-of-Stake. A core part of how it works, important for censorship resistance and accessibility, and they removed it for something permissioned that makes censorship far easier.

Bitcoin? Still on PoW and never going to change. If you think it will change, you still don't understand Bitcoin. But never fear, there's already a PoS Bitcoin out there (that no one uses).

[FatalLogic]

I don't know why you're replying to my comment, because I wasn't talking about any of those other issues you've said here. I did not confirm or deny them.

I quoted the single issue that I was disputing. I wrote as clearly as possible to only refute one point, about the implication that Bitcoin had never done a roll back.

If you want to talk about all those other things, then make a separate thread or post,. Please don't use my comment as a vehicle for your arguments, because it's confusing and few people will understand what you're talking about.

[Quindecillion]

No.

[krupan]

Thanks for pointing that out, I didn't know that bit of Bitcoin history. I see a big fundamental difference between that chain fork and the ethereum DAO fork. The bitcoin fork was to fix a bug in the bitcoin source code. Without doing that fork, bitcoin would have died. All bitcoin users would have suffered if the fork had not been done. No bitcoin users complained about it.

The ethereum fork was to fix a bug in a smart contract running on top of ethereum. That bug only affected those who were participating in that smart contract (which was code for an investment scheme that a private organization had dreamed up). Lots of ethereum users complained about it.

Can you see the difference?

[FatalLogic]

>Can you see the difference?

Yes, I do see some differences. It's true that the situations were not identical. Thanks for your interesting reply.

One important difference is that the amount of money lost in the DAO was MUCH larger than the amount lost by the Bitcoin bug (the Bitcoin bug simply lost the total value of all valid Bitcoins, which I guess was only about $1m at that time in 2010, with few individuals holding substantial amounts). This meant that not much money was at stake and fewer people were affected, so the roll back was less contentious.

:

But there's a VERY important similarity between the two events: They were both existential threats to the respective currency.

That existential threat to Bitcoin was obvious. As you have just said, Bitcoin would have died if they did not quickly invalidate the 'faked' Bitcoins, because the quantity completely dwarfed the true Bitcoin money supply. So it was clearly the right thing to do.

The existential threat of the DAO bug to Ethereum was less clear. There was also more time to decide what to do, because the stolen funds had not yet been released from the smart contract, (and I recall the money could be stalled in the contract almost indefinitely by white hat hackers iteratively exploiting the same bug that had created the problem.)

But the consensus at the time, very early in Ethereum's life, was that Ethereum might die if 15% of the entire currency was in a state of limbo, or in the hands of a malicious hacker. This was compounded by the reputational damage and loss of confidence caused by such a huge disaster that directly impacted thousands of the most active Ethereum users, not just a few Ethereum developers.

:

I pointed out that some Ethereum developers lost substantial amounts in the DAO, so I can accept that personal financial loss probably also biased the decisions of some of them to approve a roll back.

But I personally don't believe that personal loss suffered by some Ethereum developers was a very significant factor in the decision to do a roll back of the DAO event. To explain my reasoning: That is why I mentioned the Parity bug.

The Parity bug was an even larger loss in financial terms, but it only affected a very small number of people, who mostly were Ethereum developers. The lost money was destroyed, not stolen. It did not affect the wider community, so it was not seen as an existential threat to Ethereum. So there was no question of a roll back.

:

Possibly the quite acrimonious argument over the DAO fix, which was bad enough to cause a semi-viable hard fork (creating the ETC currency), was an additional factor discouraging the developers and community from accepting a roll back to fix the Parity bug and later incidents.

Edit: Like you've mentioned, another difference is that the Bitcoin issue was a bug in Bitcoin itself. The Ethereum issues were coding bugs in smart contracts. I'm just making an observation about that, not claiming that one currency is better than the other.

[krupan]

Another way of looking at it:

The bitcoin fork was to fix a broken promise. The bug meant that Bitcoin didn't work as promised, the code fix and fork fixed that.

One of Ethereum's promises around smart contracts was, "code is law." The fork broke that promise by circumventing the smart contract code.

It is good that they have never done that again, but they have been making other big changes to the original Ethereum code not to fix bugs and broken promises, but to change the way it works. That, to me, is a concern.

[krupan]

"Since then, there have been various incidents involving Ethereum and Bitcoin and hacks or smart contract bugs that caused losses of millions or billions"

Sneaky of you to add "Bitcoin" to that sentence, implying that smart contract bugs on Bitcoin, or Bitcoin hacks have cost people millions or billions. That is completely false, but nice try.

[FatalLogic]

Honestly, I'm not trying to be "sneaky". I didn't mean to imply that Bitcoin has suffered from disastrous smart contract bugs like Ethereum has, or that the core Bitcoin or core Ethereum systems had ever been hacked since that time.

The hacks I was talking about were just all the numerous attacks on exchanges and users that have involved BTC or ETH getting stolen.

It's sort of tedious discussing this kind of thing on HN because there will always be some guy who jumps in and says 'Well, ACTUALLY, what about SBF and FTX!!" even though I'm not talking about that. So, I just wanted to admit there had been many other financial losses, to try to avoid all those clever people replying and telling me about MtGox or Tether or something like that, as if I didn't already know about it. Kind of like that other guy who replied to my comment with something mostly irrelevant that he wanted to spout.

I didn't have time to write that all out in such pedantically specific detail - almost nobody is reading this. So, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding that I created. I was not being sneaky. You know: Sometimes, people just don't have time to explain everything in detail.

You seem like someone who is able to see this side of the argument, so thank you again for your comments.