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Comment by nkuttler | Hacker News Reader

Smart contracts that can be modified post-hoc, through consensus or (after a precedent was made that it is possible) legislation or a judge are not smart.

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A loophole in a contract is a bug in a smart contract. The difference is if you try to egregiously exploit a loophole there's a system of checks and balances... it's imperfect, but at least it tries to be fair.

Smart contracts are one-sided. The exploiter always wins if the contract writer made a stupid mistake.

WHY would you want that system?

That's kind of the point. If you don't want a smart contract, use the existing systems.

Why would you need Ethereum if the contracts you want to enforce shouldn't be "smart"?

> legislation or a judge

Sure, if the judges can use their power of personal persuasion to convince the dispersed population of anonymous miners/stakers that they should adopt the contract modification (as ethereum community leaders did during the DAOsaster) they will be able to enact changes.

This is based on a false narrative that miners/stakers determine the protocol. The protocol is determined by the nodes. The nodes produced by the dev team and run by the exchanges are the "economic majority" and are sufficient to change the protocol.

Perhaps this is confusing enough to trick regulators, however I'm not so certain.

Well, you make a fair point that miners are ultimately interested in mining on the fork with the largest economic activity. But just as with Bitcoin (where exchanges have lobbied for a blocksize increase for a long time already with zero success) I would argue the number of parties that affect overall economic activity is hard to pin down and includes a larger segment of the community than you suggest.

Thats a fair point

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