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Comment by jnpn | Hacker News Reader

For those who havent been paying attention to the drama: this is a breakaway blockchain for people who want to use ethereum but refuse to use a blockchain in which a $50MM exploit was reversed. There's a lot of false information out there, particularly about how/why the exploit was reversed. Don't take anyone's word for it; ask for sources.

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> a $50MM exploit

Calling it an exploit seems politically charged. There wasn't an exploit in the Ethereum software itself, which behaved exactly as intended. Instead, someone wrote a shitty, poorly-designed contract that had a loophole in it. Someone took advantage of that loophole and make a bunch of money off of it. To me, "exploit" has connotations of breaking the ethereum system somehow, which was not the case.

Ethereum Classic seems to be sticking by the original stated purpose of Ethereum (to have fully automated, non-repudiable contracts).

The other Ethereum seems to be instead stating that it's acceptable for the judgement of the Ethereum devs to have ultimate control and veto power over anything that happens on the Ethereum blockchain. In other words, Ethereum is more of a fiduciary contract system than any sort of "objective" contract platform.

To be clear, I have no vested interest either way. I have never been involved with Ethereum.

exploit: "a software tool designed to take advantage of a flaw in a computer system"

The exploit was on a poorly written smart contract, not ethereum itself, correct -- I never said otherwise.

>the judgement of the Ethereum devs to have ultimate control and veto power over anything

This is the misinformation I'm talking about. The Ethereum devs had neither control nor veto power. That's simply not how hard forking works.

It was made clear multiple times that the decision was up to the community.[1][2] The decision was coordinated via a decentralized community hashpower vote,[3][4] and executed via a majority hashpower commitment.[5] Exchanges and the foundation carried on with the longest chain[6] as is intended with nakamoto consensus.[7]

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4r9yud/the_curren... [2]https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4ro2p9/options_in... [3]https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4tlb1y/hard_fork_... [4]https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4tffta/hard_fork_... [5]https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4tsl16/new_blog_p... [6]https://poloniex.com/press-releases/2016.07.15-Ethereum-Hard... [7]http://nakamotoinstitute.org/bitcoin/

The "vote" was opt-out of the hard fork, and most people are not involved enough to opt out. Effectively, the devs just decided for everyone else.

That is incorrect. The Mist browser forces you to select a choice upon startup. There was no default. Mist is the most popular client.

And for those who didn't open mist while the vote was taking place?

Nothing happened for them... Mist is a client that lets you see your balances and send ether or other tokens from one account to another. If you don't open Mist, you don't send any coins on one chain or the other, and nothing happens with your accounts.

The "vote" is ETC. Your examples make me happy you are not an authority figure and also makes me want to donate to the NRA

The devs, or the miners?

I thought this is the original blockchain?

The original blockchain was deprecated on 3/14. Neither ETH nor ETC are using it. http://ethdocs.org/en/latest/introduction/the-homestead-rele...

That's technically true but not actually so and is very misleading. Quoting you,

> Don't take anyone's word for it; ask for unbiased sources.

>That's technically true but not actually so

Not sure what you mean by this. In case you need a refresher, this is how hardforking works: http://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/1952/what-is-a-h...

I thought meanings should not be literal but based on interpretation? Is that principle thrown out of the window again?

> The original blockchain was deprecated on 3/14.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

Ethereum used to be a protocol but now it is an interest group. You said it best, just study the facts.

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