Looks to me that they got themselves in deep legal shit...
a) The terms and conditions of the particular smart contract supersedes hundreds of years of US legal contract law, not! Directly or indirectly, this has been fudded all over the internet. 100% of the legal consensus is that in the US, US contract law is the guiding agent. Who has jurisdiction is another matter, but in whatever jurisdiction, that jurisdiction's legal system is the controlling entity. You are not waving away the US court system with words written in magic pixie dust on a piece of paper.
b) It''s clear that the Ethereum foundation immediately needs to consult with legal experts in the areas of contract law and security and exchange law in order to clarify in their talks what exactly they can and cannot claim/promise. CEO's never say anything for public attribution without clearing it with legal.
Absolutely!
Why do they fail if they fork?
Seems to me the fanboys who buy anything that sounds good, don't really care about whether it is decentralized, because we were writing for months in the Ethereum Paradox thread that Casper would be moving it towards centralization. They only believe what they want to believe.
So why would recovering the funds for the fanboys be worse than not from the perspective of sustaining Ethereum?
They can state that the rules weren't well elucidated and that in the future, all users must understand that contracts are not warranted to perform as advertised.
Tual has potentially a big problem if they didn't do adequate disclosure. This can end up in lawsuits and he can end up prosecuted under securities regulations. If they did make very clear and conspicuous disclosure about risks, then they definitely shouldn't fork because no one will ever again know what the rules are (as they will be open to change at-will).
All about fungibility and centralization. It sucks, and I don't think anyone could honestly argue that the attacker
deserves the coins, but intervening would be disastrous to the long term prospects of ETH. There's plenty of precedent to suggest that intervention like this would be a death sentence. The "fanboys" wouldn't care, but as far as long term adoption and all that goes, you're really shooting yourself in the foot. Those in it for the quick money are no doubt pissed off, but anyone in it for the long haul should be staunchly against a fork.
I think the "attacker" deserves the funds, because and assuming he did nothing illegal (but I am not even sure if he didn't violate some obscure law). But we are discussing about perceptions of what the risks are. Please re-read my prior post as I added to it. For me, it hinges on whether they had adequately explained/disclosed the risks to the DAO and ETH investors. I suspect not (otherwise why $168m invested[1]). Thus I argue they can fork and then make the conspicuous and repeated disclosure so that it is clear they will be consistent from here on. And they pretty much have to fork in that case, else they throw themselves under the legal liability bus (but due to the decline in the ETH price they are fucked legally no matter what they do). As for the threats of lawsuits from the "attacker", these can be ignored because
they can claim that the majority has the Byzantine power to fork and everyone who uses CC knows that.
Or they can take the stance that all CC investors should know the risks and that they are the owners, because it is decentralized. In that case, they shouldn't fork, but I think they will lose this argument in court perhaps. The DAO investors can file a
class action lawsuit for example (
which btw supercedes every international jurisdiction!) and claim to be n00bs who trusted Vitalik and Tual their idols.
I believe this clusterfuck is going to lead to securities regulation of CC.
Vitalik is growing up very fast I think right about now.
[1] Where are the statements about how participants could lose everything if there is a bug? They should have scared away some of the money. I read 18,000 investors for $168 million, so several $1000s each.
Luckily there is Common law. Contracts are all about consent; abusing a gap/hole/vulnerability in a contract is obviously non-consentual and thus illegal. Without such a legal framework, no contract in the world could exist. No contract is perfect.
Agreed.
My father specializes in contract law, graduated top of his class at L.S.U. and was former West Coast Division Attorney for Exxon.
I once was fretting over the fine print of a contract for a $205,000 license I sold for CoolPage in 2001, and he advised to not kill the contract negotiations because he said the court would not enforce a one-sided contract.
So contract law interprets what is the intent, not just what is written in the contract.
Do you mean the intent of the DAO is not to enrich somebody by $50 million by exploiting a hole in the coding?
No. leopard2 and I mean that the intent of the DAO contract is roughly not to allow 1 user take all the value out without consensus voting.
And contract law will likely
enforce rule for that intent, regardless of an weakness in the code which prevents enforcing that intent.
Edit: but note it is not clear
whether the law could enforce it.
