* If you have to involve the legal system then the project has failed because the whole point was to have a contract enforcement mechanism which doesn't need a court system.
* If a legal system can override the smart contract then there's no point to even having one since the ultimate authority still resides with the state.
It is the point though. It is the only point that will matter. Since the writers of the software are US citizens, it's most likely that they will get sued if the transaction is not aborted. Any scenario where the money is not returned to investors will result in the investors suing people -- no matter how much conviction people have that the DAO should be outside of the courts.
> * If you have to involve the legal system then the project has failed because the whole point was to have a contract enforcement mechanism which doesn't need a court system.
$50 million is missing, and people feel wronged as a result. I wouldn't call it a "failure of the project" that it is accountable to the law. Nobody is above the law, not even programmers that write software which governs itself.
> * If a legal system can override the smart contract then there's no point to even having one since the ultimate authority still resides with the state.
Again, nothing and nobody is above the law. You'd have to overrule the Magna Carta if you wanted to change that. And that's just not going to happen.
So what is the plan going forward - if either party in a "smart contract" feels disadvantaged by the outcome - they go running to the law and outside jurisdictions for remedy? Isn't avoiding all that overhead the point of have a "smart contract" in the first place?
It's an interesting concept and I'd like to see the project survive (from a technology standpoint; I not risking any cash with it)... maybe it is good they did a faceplant 6 weeks in and can start answering some very hard questions that have come up.