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Re:Critical Update on DAO Vulnerability by darawk on Friday June 17, 2016 @03:04PM (#11924850)
> Agreed. If this soft and hard fork idea really goes through, it seems that now you are in fact getting the worst of both worlds: For your contract, you have to write code that apparently is very hard to get right and bug-free[1], while at the same time you are at the whim of a "community" -- whose decisions (sorry, "suggestions") can apparently be announced by one guy in a blog post -- not to deem what you are doing an "attack".

That's not really fair. His decree does not make it so. It still must be accepted by a majority of the miners, and this is and always has been a known property of the system. The collective will of the miners ultimately trumps the contract system. However, consensus there is purposely extremely difficult to achieve, and likely only possible in extreme cases like this.

Since this was a known property of the system, and since the agreement is inherently democratic, I don't see how this is a problem. Hard forks are simply another behavior of the network. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re:Critical Update on DAO Vulnerability by theptip on Friday June 17, 2016 @03:15PM (#11924919)
The troubling issue with the system that this highlights is that a majority of users can agree to implement a fork which invalidates an existing contract.

As you say, that's a known property of the system. And it might be one of those things that's only viable in practice when the network is young. But can a CFO be considered to have satisfied their fiduciary duty if they write a contract which can be subverted in this way?

Re:Critical Update on DAO Vulnerability by darawk on Friday June 17, 2016 @03:20PM (#11924947)
Ya, it's a tricky issue to be sure. But the miners are strongly incentivized to act in a way that minimizes harm to the currency itself. If they start accepting hard forks left and right then ether will lose all its value extremely rapidly. So i'm not really sure the slippery slope argument applies here.

I think this really can be considered a 'one time thing'. It isn't like miners can be pressured by a government to halt contracts for terrorists or other things. They have to be convinced and agree with the argument being made. There isn't a sole individual to whom pressure can be applied here. Granted, Vitalik may wield some influence, but if he started advocating things that were clearly not in the best interest of Ethereum, people simply wouldn't take on his suggested upgrades.

EDIT: I'd also add that for the record, as a DAO token holder, my personal opinion on what should be done is this: A soft fork to prevent ether from moving out of the child DAO, and then nothing. Just burn that ether forever. This avoids the moral hazard problem while minimizing harm to the overall ecosystem. People like me who made the mistake of investing still feel the pain, but Ethereum itself moves forward.

Re:Critical Update on DAO Vulnerability by theptip on Friday June 17, 2016 @03:41PM (#11925082)
I respect that position, the moral hazard question is quite significant, particularly this early in the lifecycle of this network.
Re:Critical Update on DAO Vulnerability by sjg007 on Friday June 17, 2016 @07:44PM (#11926221)
This basically sounds like, should we bail out Greece?