>Ethereum was only about a year old at the time. When Bitcoin a year-and-a-half old, it had a bug that required a five-hour chain rollback.
>Bitcoin people will object and say that was a bug with the blockchain itself. However, sample code on ethereum.org had vulnerabilities similar to TheDAO's bug, so arguably it was a platform issue on Ethereum as well.
I think the main difference here was that bitcoin never had a "code is law" belief, whereas ethereum did.
Propose another large Bitcoin rollback and see how the community reacts. The idea that the longest chain always wins has been a core value in Bitcoin since its inception; the manual rollback was a complete violation of that.
It was also necessary for success, but the Bitcoin community has little grounds for moral superiority here.
Bitcoin people will object and say that was a bug with the blockchain itself. However, sample code on ethereum.org had vulnerabilities similar to TheDAO's bug, so arguably it was a platform issue on Ethereum as well.
There have been large thefts from contracts since then, including a >$100M theft from Parity, the most popular client at the time. Parity made several attempts to get another fork to recover their funds, and they were roundly rejected by the community.