Topic: It’s Time To Break The 5 Most Common Myths About Smart Contracts (Read 2281 times)
This looks pretty interesting, thanks for this, I'll be reading this later tomorrow over a cup of coffee
I think cryptoland is going to find out increasingly rapidly, repeatedly and upsettingly that the law hasn't caught up with their rate of progress. Despite that it's still going to be rather interested what they're up even if it's 'on the internet'.
Is executing this code, which was allowed by the smart contract code, admittedly unintentionally, then legal?
I don't see why not. If a paper contract allows multiple valid interpretations (even unintentionally), the courts normally allow whichever interpretation is worst for the author of the contract, on the grounds that it's their responsibility to write the contract correctly.Now, the ETH/DAO community is considering reversing the transaction so ... would that be legal?
Doubt it. Even if the exploit is found to be illegal and the hacker is ordered to return the money, a court can only decide that after allowing the hacker to present a defence. I don't think they will be too happy with Vitalik and Co. making that decision completely unilaterally (especially since they claimed Ethereum was completely neutral in such disputes - code is law and all that). I do not think the article gives us something new. Any reasonable person should be aware of the the above in the article.
I have a lot of questions about "smart contracts" which have been raised by this event:
http://pastebin.com/CcGUBgDG
So the "smart contract" says that the entire contract is contained in the code and that whatever is defined/allowed by the code is what defined/allowed in the contract.
Then a loophole is found in the "contract" and someone uses it to their advantage.
Is executing this code, which was allowed by the smart contract code, admittedly unintentionally, then legal?
Now, the ETH/DAO community is considering reversing the transaction so ... would that be legal? Wouldn't that be theft by the collective ETH/DAO community?
Some messy questions to say the least.
I do not think the article gives us something new. Any reasonable person should be aware of the the above in the article.
Important info for any smart contract interested parties to understand. thanks
Thanks for posting this!
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