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Topic: The DAO Disaster Illustrates Differing Philosophies in Bitcoin and Ethereum (Read 1812 times)

legendary
Activity: 3010
Merit: 1460
That could be the reason why there are some many ETC shills in the forum to promote the scam coin now.

Scam coin? You don't seem to understand that ETC is the original ether. You are saying that ethereum has always been a scam, but the new ethereum is not. I have to respectfully disagree with you.

You should not be affected by comments from a newbie account that clearly looks like someone from a click farm. They are only trying to make posts and increase activity level. It is already being investigated and please check this thread https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/account-farming-allowed-1597201

On the topic of ETC being the scam, yes I also disagree. What scam did the ETC supporters commit? The questionable move that was made is from Vitalik's hard fork to reverse transactions.
newbie
Activity: 19
Merit: 0
That could be the reason why there are some many ETC shills in the forum to promote the scam coin now.

Scam coin? You don't seem to understand that ETC is the original ether. You are saying that ethereum has always been a scam, but the new ethereum is not. I have to respectfully disagree with you.

The ETH is the original Ethereum as most voters voted to do the hard fork and it was also supported by most miners.
legendary
Activity: 4438
Merit: 3387
That could be the reason why there are some many ETC shills in the forum to promote the scam coin now.

Scam coin? You don't seem to understand that ETC is the original ether. You are saying that ethereum has always been a scam, but the new ethereum is not. I have to respectfully disagree with you.
sr. member
Activity: 545
Merit: 250
Colletrix - Bridging the Physical and Virtual Worl
It is not about "differing philosophies" in Bitcoin and Ethereum. The truth is they have the same philosophy. If you ask the development team of both what their philosophies are about blockchains and decentralization, I know most of them would have almost the same answers. But I do not know why Vitalik and his development team thought it was ok to roll back the transaction history even if they intend to do it only once. Now people are thinking that Bitcoin and the Ethereum fork have different philosophies.

Maybe someone should interview Vitalik and ask him why he thought it was ok to roll back the transaction history.

He has stated clearly in the blogs in the past that it is OK to rool back the transactions to protect the Ethereum ecosystem.

But some scammers and friends of the hackers do not like the roll back of the block chain. They will lose the stolen funds.

That could be the reason why there are some many ETC shills in the forum to promote the scam coin now.
newbie
Activity: 19
Merit: 0
It is not about "differing philosophies" in Bitcoin and Ethereum. The truth is they have the same philosophy. If you ask the development team of both what their philosophies are about blockchains and decentralization, I know most of them would have almost the same answers. But I do not know why Vitalik and his development team thought it was ok to roll back the transaction history even if they intend to do it only once. Now people are thinking that Bitcoin and the Ethereum fork have different philosophies.

Maybe someone should interview Vitalik and ask him why he thought it was ok to roll back the transaction history.

He has stated clearly in the blogs in the past that it is OK to rool back the transactions to protect the Ethereum ecosystem.

But some scammers and friends of the hackers do not like the roll back of the block chain. They will lose the stolen funds.
member
Activity: 117
Merit: 10
It is not about "differing philosophies" in Bitcoin and Ethereum. The truth is they have the same philosophy. If you ask the development team of both what their philosophies are about blockchains and decentralization, I know most of them would have almost the same answers. But I do not know why Vitalik and his development team thought it was ok to roll back the transaction history even if they intend to do it only once. Now people are thinking that Bitcoin and the Ethereum fork have different philosophies.

Maybe someone should interview Vitalik and ask him why he thought it was ok to roll back the transaction history.

He has stated clearly in the blogs in the past that it is OK to rool back the transactions to protect the Ethereum ecosystem.
legendary
Activity: 3010
Merit: 1460
It is not about "differing philosophies" in Bitcoin and Ethereum. The truth is they have the same philosophy. If you ask the development team of both what their philosophies are about blockchains and decentralization, I know most of them would have almost the same answers. But I do not know why Vitalik and his development team thought it was ok to roll back the transaction history even if they intend to do it only once. Now people are thinking that Bitcoin and the Ethereum fork have different philosophies.

Maybe someone should interview Vitalik and ask him why he thought it was ok to roll back the transaction history.
legendary
Activity: 2184
Merit: 1024
Vave.com - Crypto Casino
Philosophies ?  Cheesy

One is a currency and one is not..

Might as well compare a Lawn-mower and a scammy ICO Turkey sandwich  Grin
Currency - the fact or quality of being generally accepted or in use.

If people agree to use something, anything as a medium of exchange then it's a currency. But you know that ETH is MORE THAN simply a currency.

If i run around with my feet inside plastic shopping bags.. does that make them shoes ?
No it makes you the village idiot. Meanwhile if enough of said villagers agree within the to trade pitchforks between them then pitchforks becomes a currency.
member
Activity: 117
Merit: 10
They are in a state of competition, but I think they should be able to live in peace.

That is right. It depends on who has got the power to destroy the other. It seems that the bitcoiners are supporting the ETC.
legendary
Activity: 2156
Merit: 1072
Crypto is the separation of Power and State.
Bitcoin Maximalist:  The protocol is the law.  The code is a means to that end.

Ethereum Maximalist:  The code is the law.  The code is an end in itself.

Bailout Maximalist:  There is no law.  The code is a tool for social justice.
hero member
Activity: 718
Merit: 545
hero member
Activity: 770
Merit: 629
I guess everyone has forgotten about block 74638, when somebody following the consensus rules created 184 billion BTC. A hard fork was done in order to undo those transactions.
Everyone including you, it seems. It was a soft fork (which didn't specifically target any particular transaction, it just fixed the overflow bug).

You are correct. It wasn't a hard fork, but that is not really the point.

The claim is that Bitcoin and Ethereum are different because Bitcoin transactions would never be undone in order to fix something that people feel is an exploit. Yet, it has been done.

A 51% attack against Bitcoin was successfully executed with a client that enforced new consensus rules in order to undo transactions that were valid under the current consensus rules.

You feel that there was a "bug" in the consensus rules that needed to be fixed, just as people now feel that there is a bug in the DAO contract that needs to be fixed. It all looks the same to me.
Of course it's the same. Anyone who denies it is simply a ETH fudder.  

If there would have been a fundamental bug in ethereum, I would agree that it should have been corrected, because ethereum runs on INTEND (of the white paper), not on "code is law".  

Bitcoin was supposed to run ON INTEND (the Satoshi white paper), and the bitcoin core software was supposed to IMPLEMENT that INTEND.  As such, the concept of "bug" is perfectly possible in bitcoin core.  Bitcoin core was not "the code is the law", but "the implementation of intend is the law".

However, ethereum does something totally different.  Ethereum is, like bitcoin, based upon a white paper, and the ethereum geth is supposed to implement that INTEND.  So if there had been, like with early bitcoin, an ERROR, a BUG (deviation of implementation from intend), then a soft or hard fork was due in order to bring the block chain, which had been ERRONEOUSLY recognized as correct (as to intend) by buggy software, back in agreement with the monetary intend.

But that is not what happened, ethereum ran PERFECTLY AS INTENDED IN ITS WHITE PAPER.

Ethereum, however, had as main value proposition "smart contracts", where these have the extremely funny property of NOT HAVING INTEND but "code = law".  This is the essential value proposition of ethereum.

Now, the DAO having a funny implementation that doesn't correspond to "intend" is hence similar to running bitcoin byte code that doesn't do as you intended.  It is the complex version of having "signed a transaction" (= bitcoin byte code) in which you made a mistake and that was exploited by someone.

So there is a HUGE difference between fixing bitcoin, and fixing the DAO.  Fixing bitcoin was bringing the bitcoin core in agreement with the bitcoin intend (white paper).  Fixing the DAO was denying the fundamental (even though silly) value proposition of ethereum, namely "code is law", by making the ethereum code DEVIATE from white paper intend.

Bitcoin never forked over any piece of byte code not running as intended by those writing the byte code.  And bitcoin even doesn't have as fundamental value proposition "bytecode is law", which was the ethereum value proposition in the first place !
hero member
Activity: 770
Merit: 629
Well the point about alts is to experiment with new things. Ether tried the whole "contract in the code" thing and found it didn't really work when there are flaws in both the contract and the code. A valuable lesson learned by everyone.

This!

I also liked the ethereum idea, and the DAO hack learned me why "code is law" in complex systems is in fact a bad idea if you are in a Turing complete environment.
legendary
Activity: 1540
Merit: 1011
FUD Philanthropist™
Philosophies ?  Cheesy

One is a currency and one is not..

Might as well compare a Lawn-mower and a scammy ICO Turkey sandwich  Grin
Currency - the fact or quality of being generally accepted or in use.

If people agree to use something, anything as a medium of exchange then it's a currency. But you know that ETH is MORE THAN simply a currency.

If i run around with my feet inside plastic shopping bags.. does that make them shoes ?
hero member
Activity: 728
Merit: 500

ETH is still on very early stage, I wouldn't say this hard fork indicates different philosophy. Bitcoin has also been hardforked at the beginning to fix vulnerabilities.

This hardfork doesn't address vulnerabilities they will continue to exist.
newbie
Activity: 19
Merit: 0

ETH is still on very early stage, I wouldn't say this hard fork indicates different philosophy. Bitcoin has also been hardforked at the beginning to fix vulnerabilities.

The Ethereum is just one year ago. It will have some growth pains. I can understand that and give it chance.
legendary
Activity: 2184
Merit: 1024
Vave.com - Crypto Casino
Philosophies ?  Cheesy

One is a currency and one is not..

Might as well compare a Lawn-mower and a scammy ICO Turkey sandwich  Grin
Currency - the fact or quality of being generally accepted or in use.

If people agree to use something, anything as a medium of exchange then it's a currency. But you know that ETH is MORE THAN simply a currency.
legendary
Activity: 2184
Merit: 1024
Vave.com - Crypto Casino
I guess everyone has forgotten about block 74638, when somebody following the consensus rules created 184 billion BTC. A hard fork was done in order to undo those transactions.
Everyone including you, it seems. It was a soft fork (which didn't specifically target any particular transaction, it just fixed the overflow bug).

You are correct. It wasn't a hard fork, but that is not really the point.

The claim is that Bitcoin and Ethereum are different because Bitcoin transactions would never be undone in order to fix something that people feel is an exploit. Yet, it has been done.

A 51% attack against Bitcoin was successfully executed with a client that enforced new consensus rules in order to undo transactions that were valid under the current consensus rules.

You feel that there was a "bug" in the consensus rules that needed to be fixed, just as people now feel that there is a bug in the DAO contract that needs to be fixed. It all looks the same to me.
Of course it's the same. Anyone who denies it is simply a ETH fudder. 
legendary
Activity: 1540
Merit: 1011
FUD Philanthropist™
Philosophies ?  Cheesy

One is a currency and one is not..

Might as well compare a Lawn-mower and a scammy ICO Turkey sandwich  Grin
legendary
Activity: 4494
Merit: 3178
Vile Vixen and Miss Bitcointalk 2021-2023
A 51% attack against Bitcoin was successfully executed with a client that enforced new consensus rules in order to undo transactions that were valid under the current consensus rules.
Except they actually weren't. The consensus rule was (and is) that the sum of the outputs of a transaction must be less than or equal to the sum of the inputs, but the integer overflow bug meant the sums weren't calculated correctly. It's a bug.

You feel that there was a "bug" in the consensus rules that needed to be fixed, just as people now feel that there is a bug in the DAO contract that needs to be fixed. It all looks the same to me.
The DAO =/= Ethereum. There is no bug in Ethereum. Instead, a poorly-written Ethereum contract sent money to someone the creator of the contract didn't intend, in exactly the same way that a poorly-written Bitcoin transaction can send money to someone the creator of the transaction didn't intend. This has happened many, many times in Bitcoin and nobody has suggested "undoing" poorly-written transactions, since that would destroy the usefulness of the system.
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