Topic: The Market is not wrong, Vitalik Buterin is. - page 2. (Read 4371 times)

In the funnily strange world of smart contracts, he's not a thief.  In fact, in that world, there cannot exist thieves.  If you don't understand that, you've not understood smart contracts.  With a smart contract, there is no possible illegal act any more: if you can do it, it is legal, and if it is illegal, you can't do it.

I think it is much deeper than that.  No complex system of software can be guaranteed to be without a deviation, in border cases, from intend.  People call that "bugs" and "exploits" (depending on whether it happens like this, or is looked for).
As such, no complex smart contract will work as intended, and you can't correct for it, because it is the law, the whole law, and nothing else is the law.  Correcting bugs in a smart contract is essentially breaking the law, which is unheard of in human law.

So in essence, you can forget about the concept of complex smart contracts.  That is what this story told us.

He's certainly a thief, but he might not be a bad person. He might be a lovely guy to have a drink and shoot the breeze with. I just wouldn't leave my wallet unattended on the table. He'd steal it and quote possession being nine-tenths of the law.

Other drunkards in the bar, hoping to share the booty, would back his claim (while making sure he doesn't leave without buying them all a drink for supporting him!).

On another point, remember that this is probably an old school bitcoiner at work. He is protecting his investment. He hates alts, so unless you hold nothing but BTC you are probably in his sights. Hold ETC with caution.

People on here think he gives a shit about ETC. They might be right, they might be wrong. It's a hard one to call. They might end up as new world heroes for supporting the 'rebel rebel blockchain', or idiot ETC bagholders once he dumps on their asses.

Time will tell

EDIT: Maxcoin became nothing without Max, the ultimate crypto scammer. ETC might become nothing, without our beloved goat hacker thief!

Then you are one of the (visibly many) ethereum supporters who don't know what is the mind boggling idea of a smart contract, which is somehow strange, as the whole value proposition of ethereum is to make smart contracts.

In a smart contract, "code is law, all the law, and nothing else is the law".  I wrote already a few posts on that, but essentially, in a smart contract, you replace totally all human law (state law, international law, morality and all that) by a piece of code, which is the ultimate verdict on "right" and "wrong".  If the code allows it, it is right/legal/fair and if the code doesn't allow that, it is wrong/illegal/unfair.

This is the whole idea: you turn "right" and "wrong" into something like a law of nature: by running the code, ALL you can do is right, and it is IMPOSSIBLE to do wrong.   As such, you do not need judges, police and prisons, because only RIGHT things can happen.  Yes, but the "right" and "wrong" in this world are very, very, very strange.  But this is needed to do a smart contract, that a computer can decide, and that no police or judge is needed.

The Ethereum foundation has scammed people by letting them think that a smart contract is akin to a paper contract, but "in software".  That is not true.  A smart contract is a piece of code that replaces all of human law and morality by a mechanical execution.  A paper contract exists inside a whole bed of human legal constructs, from state and international law, down to human morality and sense of fairness.   A paper contract is much more than what's on paper: it includes implicitly a whole environment of legal and moral rules.

The Ethereum foundation sold smart contracts as if it was similar to a paper contract and people believed it.  If they would have realized how "unlegal", "immoral" smart contracts are BY DEFINITION, then they might not have poured 150 million in something like the DAO.

Because by definition, if the code tells you that you can do it, by definition, you are legal, right, and you are not harming any one.  That is the strangeness of a smart contract.  If the code gives you the coins, then you did so legally.

All the standard arguments of "poorly written software", "exploits", "bugs" and so on don't even exist as a concept in a smart contract.

In fact, the big scam of the DAO was not that there were "bugs" in the code.  The big scam was that the DAO guys "explained" the supposed, intended workings of their code.  In fact, given that the DAO law was the code, they should have only put online the byte code of the DAO.  Not even the source code.   Only the byte code.  THAT was the law and nothing else.

This is similar to not writing a "summary of intend" when you sign a paper contract, but only the contract itself.  What tricked people was that the DAO website told other things than the code.  

In the normal software world, what counts is the intend, and if code does something else, people call that "bugs" and the code is adapted to the intend in an update.  However, in a smart contract, it is the other way around.  You should deduce intend from the (byte) code, and not the other way around.

People simply seem not to understand the weirdness of a smart contract ; in the first place, ethereum supporters, because they believe in the simplism that a smart contract is like a paper contract, but written in code.  It isn't.  At all.  A smart contract is a terribly weird idea and very inhuman.  I support smart contracts but that is because I am a fan of the Singularity, where humanity will be replaced by machines.  This is actually the only kind of vision in which smart contracts make sense.  The Ethereum foundation didn't tell you that, did it.


I perfectly understand that, but that is even another issue.  That is like bitcoin not forking over the more than 50 large bitcoin thefts (real thefts of wallets this time).  But it is still another issue.  



By saying that, you confirm that you don't understand the essence of a smart contract.  The "thief" wasn't a thief under the code=law system.  People only signed up to a contract they didn't understand (including their authors): it wasn't a venture capitalist firm, but it was a hacker's bait.   Which is normal.  EVERY COMPLEX SMART CONTRACT is a hacker's bait because NONE works as "intended".  That's in the nature of smart contracts, and what the Ethereum foundation forgot to tell you.

Only small smart contracts can reasonably well be considered more or less doing as intended.  The claim that complex smart contracts do as intended is the same claim as saying that one can write a complex piece of software not containing bugs or exploits ever.
So all complex smart contracts, being the law, will be legal hacker's baits.

Ok let us call him a thief. He is a bad person. Ok. Now whos fault is it that the DAO was poorly coded? Do you think a low dirty thief would not take advantage of this? Of course any smart person would know a thief will find every opportunity to do his job. Now who is at fault that investor's money got stolen?

So ok they tried to fix it by tweaking and tinkering with the transaction history thru the hard fork. After that what happened? ETC was born. Now you all cry in the forum blaming the thief for doing his job well when it is really slock.it developers and Vitalk's fault because they did not do theirs well.

If Vitalik started an antivirus company I will laugh hard.

We will have to agree to disagree. If you think poorly written code is an excuse for taking the property of others so be it. My morality requires doing no harm to others......it's as simple as that.

If you re-read my statement you'll discover that it in no way supported the fork of ETH.

This inability of some to not understand both that funds were stolen and at the same time the fork essentially broke ETH as a cryptocurrency is surprising. Essentially ETH might as well be put on a single server now because the blockchain serves no purpose.

A far better solution would have included catching the thief and suing the creators of the DAO (along with various associates). This would have allowed DAO purchasers to get their money back, encouraged due diligence in future contracts and penalized all guilty parties. Additionally one of the purposes of a blockchain over a centralized data base (malleability) would have been preserved.

You mean that if Amazon puts on its website "Apple i-phone 6 to to sale for $1000", and you pay them, they are not contractually liable for sending you an i-phone you paid for because they only put that on their web site, like you wrote something about the Pope ?  Only a paper contract engages any legally binding stuff ?

But then in what way could the hacker possibly be a thief, as these were just electronic things with no paper contract or engagement and he was just playing on the net ?

You are really logically challenged, aren't you ?

You seem to have missed the important point, that calling someone a thief because an act he committed is theft, is depending on the law system under which the action is taking place.

As such, under the "law of the code" the hacker was doing legal things.  The same action, most probably seen under human state (which state?) / human morality/sense of fairness law, is most probably seen as "theft".

Consider the following situation, to illustrate that:
in country A, there's a law that says that if you are laid off from your job for other reasons than misconduct (say, economic reasons) you are entitled to take the personal tools that your employer gave you (computer, smartphone....), with you when you leave.
in country B, there's no such law.

Now suppose that Joe gets fired from company C because C made a bad deal and has to face serious losses (a bad deal with which Joe has nothing to do, but the CEO of the company can't keep all personnel and has decided to lay off Joe).

Joe puts his company's telephone and laptop in a cardbox which he takes home.  Is Joe a thief ?

In country A, he isn't and acted according to the law.
In country B, he's an outright thief and stole company property.

In the DAO, it was said that the code is the law, and according to the code, the hacker could take the funds he took, like Joe took his laptop.  The terms of the DAO were written clearly to anybody: it was the code (and NOT, explicitly NOT, the explanations given on the DAO site).

But almost with certainty in any jurisdiction, where the DAO website explanations would have been the paper contract, what the hacker did was theft, under state and even moral law.

Now, is Vitalik a thief depends on under which law system we look at it, but things don't look good.  The reasons are:
- everywhere, the DAO guys and Vitalik engaged in writing (on their website) that "the code was the law".  If afterwards, they did something so that the code isn't the law any more, they are breaking their own contract.
- you can argue that under state law, the hacker was a thief.  But then, under state law, you are not supposed to go and "steal back".  ONLY A JUDGE can decide whether a thief was a thief, and whether someone needs to take some action to break his own contract terms to take back what belonged to someone else.  YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO APPLY HUMAN JUSTICE YOURSELF.  You must go to court.
- finally, I think that Vitalik is probably a stake holder in the DAO.  As such, his actions (taking back the funds of the hacker) are FOR PERSONAL GAIN.

These three things make that Vitalik is not in his right shoes according to human law either, and indeed, he stole back the hacker funds by breaking his own engagement/contract ("that the code is the law, that code is unstoppable, that the past is immutable...") for his own gain.

In as much as "taking back the funds" would have been the normal thing to do under human law, it would also have to have been ordered by a judge.  Otherwise, it is theft.

Oh really Einstein. So explain how Vitalik is a thief. Bare in mind that what you post can be construed as slander and open to legal process.

This is not planned. This is a result of panic from Vitalik, the foundation and slock.it. They were in such a hurry to fork it before the hacker could dump his coins and now they have created more problems. Ethereum fork is possibly going to be not the longest chain as the original chain gathers momentum and support. I'm sorry guys but this is reality.

I think you're wrong, that this was "planned".  This is like so many conspiracy theories, and so many religions, that think that because something happens, there must have been a Planner or a Maker behind it.  What we have actually witnessed, was "emergent intelligence from a distributed interacting system".   We are so terribly indoctrinated by thinking that if something (good or bad) happens, it must have been hierarchically organized or thought off, and hence "at the top" there must be a genius or an evil brain.   All of our history courses are full of Kings, Emperors, Presidents and Leaders of revolutions, having determined and thought off the great things of society.  For evident reasons authorities want us to think so (and most of the time, they think honestly themselves that they are the brains).  But, exactly like a free market assigns resources in the best possible way without anyone planning it, a distributed system of interacting agents has emergent intelligence without anyone planning it.    We thought that the only thing such a "community" could do, was to "vote".  We only know of one way for a community to express itself, namely to "democratically vote" and then have it the majority way.  We should know better: the market doesn't vote with a majority.

To the evident, but impossible riddle that the ETH/DAO guys lead themselves, namely that they wanted to have smart contracts (code is law) LOOK LIKE human contracts (legal, moral, contract, judge,...) - which is outright impossible, they didn't know the solution.

The DAO illustrated that a perfectly legal act according to code law, is considered, without the slightest doubt on the human legal and moral level, theft, and it was not on the test net (well, one excuse was that they had actually put $150 milion in a beta test...).   The impossible choice of the ETH/DAO community was this:

- do we stick to the fundamental tenet of smart contracts (code = law) and hence demonstrate that smart contracts are totally different from human contracts (sounding the end of the illusion that smart contracts are similar to human contracts, like bitcoin is similar to dollars as a monetary asset) ?

- do we apply human law in extreme cases like this, and break the foundations of smart contracts, unstoppable, immutable and all those nice words that are still present in a comical way on the ethereum foundation website ?  (and do we also break the human contract that we had with our customers doing explicitly what we told them would never happen) ?

This impossible choice was given to "the community" for a VOTE, because this is how "leaders" think that the community should speak (they want to preserve unity in the community for sake of power of their leadership).  

The interaction of all independent agents came with the BEST POSSIBLE SOLUTION even though nobody in his right mind planned this:  a genuine fork.  Indeed, this was the technical possibility that resolved the riddle in the best way, by having it both ways.   In the same way as a free market does: the market doesn't go for a "majority vote" on whether Apple or Samsung are to make smartphones, after which the minority accepts the majority vote and we all buy only Apple or only Samsung phones.  The market has diversified offer, and people take what they want.

This is something that no "leader" planned.   This is something that was anticipated as a potential catastrophe that hopefully never would occur.  It was the best thing that could happen, and it emerged AGAINST ALL leadership.

Emergent distributed intelligence.

Thank you. I'll read it.

Answered here.

Original chain, ETC trading volume (24 h): $ 41,402,300
Forked chain, ETH trading volume (24 h): $ 25,392,300

Predictable or not? If it was predictable, why they have forked the whole chain?

Irony 101

Utter utter bullshit. You are such a sad spiteful individual you clearly have limited intelligence to think that a thief of millions can be right. If so where is he? He did no legal wrong and is an unstanding citizen of us all. Where is he? Where is his legal representative?

I'll tell you where. Nowhere. He is a dirty thief and knows he is. Nothing more.

Good story here and i agree with your idea.. would be cool if he did something like that.
But what is he planning on next ?

I see this as a decentralized matter at the heart of it all.
We intend to make the most decentralized autonomous coin we can.
yet when we see a large gain by someone we want to cry for the Police (while chanting Free Market)
And then we want to have a centralized authority in charge of the coin do roll-backs or forks etc.
This is silly nonsense and really does undermine the core concept we are aiming for.
I won't budge on this issue.. and i have no motivation either way to speak up.
I never have & never will own any ETC / ETH ICO coins etc.
It's the principal to me..

I have been a massive nutcase about piracy for a decade or two now and this remind me of all that.
I was around far before there was an iTunes..
They simply seen what we File Sharing guys did and thought, Hey WOW ! What a great idea !!
Let's COPY them, steal their idea.. monetize it then declare what they are doing as illegal criminal theft
..after the fact.. EVEN if they was no ACTUAL  law broken.
THEN.. they say if you don't pay money with iTunes.. then.. LOST REVENUE !

It amounts to they don't like it.. so they are saying it's a "crime"
Ohh yeah.. my Girl-Friend does not give me nearly enough BJ's.. CRIME !!! She is Robbing me !
Lost revenue ? NO ! lost fucking BJ's !!!111
She owes me about 342 gummers and i am taking her to court.
If i have to end up going to a prostitute then SHE is footing the bill dammit !

I hate Mushrooms too ..when people put them in Spaghetti sauce i want to throw up !
CRIME ...

I also am selling Bottles of my Urine with a certificate of Authenticity.. your not buying it ?
Lost revenue ..

I also sell Spoetnik Autographs for 1 BTC each.. so if you all ever bought an autograph
of some other person then i formally here & now declare this as "Lost Revenue"
You will see me in court THIEVES !

I wish i thought of making the internet first.. so well.. i am saying i did anyway.
For now on you all have to pay $50 a month to use the web or i will call the cops.. THEFT !
Lost revenue ..

Pay me or i am taking my ball & going home  

Not piggybacking. BitBay has it's own blockchain. But we are getting sidetracked here.

Back to topic:
Does anyone in here believe it's possible to have global Eth style contracts that are immune to what we have seen happen with DAO? If so, how?

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood.  I thought you were talking about a private block chain with just one single smart contract between two parties, mined by the sole two parties.  You are piggybacking on an existing block chain to get the immutability.

Then you're right of course, as long as the contract value is way way below the chain value, there's no risk of hard fork.