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"What's to prevent a similar situation in the future and why should anyone believe that to hold?"

Ask yourself if this was a centralized hard fork ordered by up high, or as users we chose to opt in to this change. Clearly we opted in, because Ethereum Classic exists for those who so wish. Therefore, the Ethereum Foundation did not "force" me to do anything that I didn't agree to.

Yes in my example Musk might have gotten sued (although really? is he at risk of that right now? I doubt it.), but a mistake early on in development should not hinder the advancement of the technology.

If you are going to say smart contracts are useful, but we should abandon the Ethereum blockchain, then BY ALL MEANS please go to Ethereum Classic. You'll be welcome there with open arms. But the main Ethereum community clearly prioritizes pragmatism, as do the majority of the world. We're not idealists. We're actually trying to put out a meaningful technology to help people. So you can throw Musk in jail or let him get back to work on saving lives.

> Ask yourself if this was a centralized hard fork ordered by up high, or as users we chose to opt in to this change. Clearly we opted in, because Ethereum Classic exists for those who so wish. Therefore, the Ethereum Foundation did not "force" me to do anything that I didn't agree to.

The analogy to the legal system is that mob rule supersedes (digital) contract law and property rights.

If people want to go down that path they're free to do so but I'm not a fan.

> Yes in my example Musk might have gotten sued (although really? is he at risk of that right now? I doubt it.), but a mistake early on in development should not hinder the advancement of the technology.

> If you are going to say smart contracts are useful, but we should abandon the Ethereum blockchain, then BY ALL MEANS please go to Ethereum Classic. You'll be welcome there with open arms. But the main Ethereum community clearly prioritizes pragmatism, as do the majority of the world. We're not idealists. We're actually trying to put out a meaningful technology to help people.

Eating the loss doesn't stop you from developing better software. Heck, I'd say that it's a pretty good way to prevent things in the future by giving people a real incentive to prevent bugs in the first place. If it's socially acceptable to roll back the clock because somebody wrote a dumb smart contract then it's a sign that writing dumb smart contracts is socially acceptable.

> So you can throw Musk in jail or let him get back to work on saving lives.

That's a false dichotomy. In the analogy Musk doesn't go to jail unless he willfully released something that he knew could kill people or otherwise programmed the cars to drive on the sidewalk.

In ETH's case they could have absorbed the loss, hardened the systems, and moved on. Honestly it would have added a lot more credibility to the whole endeavor by showing that they were willing to put their (ETH) money where their mouths are.

> The analogy to the legal system is that mob rule supersedes (digital) contract law and property rights.

Imagine if you and I wrote a contract, and in the contract, there is a typo which says that I will pay you $5 gazillion for an iPhone, then that doesn't mean that the courts must enforce it. Clearly, it doesn't follow the 'intent' of the parties.

Now, what if the other side truly signed the contract because they thought that their iPhone was being bought for 5 gazillion dollars, well this is why we don't "JUST" communicate via the contract. We communicate and perform negotiations via other human channels and the legal contract is a formalized expression of our communication.

Same thing goes with smart contracts. I don't intend to use Smart Contracts because the missing 11th commandment said: "Thou shalt obey the Legal/Smart Contracts to the word". I want to use Smart Contracts because they would be an extension of legal contracts taken to the decentralized + technology domain.

Literally, nobody put their money in the DAO because they thought that if a person puts in $1000 in the DAO then he should be able to take out $10 million if he is clever enough.

Lemme put it this way, had the hard fork not happened, but nearly 90% of the Ethereum holders quit Ethereum after that and joined say Lisk or some other smart contract platform, (which meant that the hacker's bounty would have been decimated, would you still say that 'mob rule has superceded the contract law and property rights'?

"Clearly, it doesn't follow the 'intent' of the parties."

And who is deciding what that intent? Right now, the mob, so the parent is right :)

Your analogies to courts defeats the entire argument against that.

Courts were, in fact, set up as deciders of that thing called "law".

If code is law, so to speak, you don't need them. There is no intent.

> And who is deciding what that intent? Right now, the mob, so the parent is right :)

Considering we can decide to abolish the constitution in America (or in any country) any time, does that mean we don't have a constitutional republic in America? Technically we can never say that we have a system X which is not Mob rule because the mob can always abolish it.

Literally speaking, there is no such thing as 'code is law' because in your definition there is no such thing as law, because anything which can be modified by the mob is not law and everything can be modified or abolished by the mob.

"Considering we can decide to abolish the constitution in America (or in any country) any time, does that mean we don't have a constitutional republic in America?"

The former is not correct, so the latter is nonsense. The constitution has no provision for abolishing it, the same as it does not have a provision allowing secession.

There is actually even caselaw on this, and it's very clear that it is about a perpetual union.

"Technically we can never say that we have a system X which is not Mob rule because the mob can always abolish it." That is 100% not what has happened here. In the constitutional system, there is a process for amending the constitution. it is not mob rule, or anything close to it. it is possible for basically 100% of the people to be against or for a thing, and them be unable to make it happen directly. (even if they call a constitutional convention, they send representatives, not a mob, etc)

In the other other case, the rules are 100% made up by whoever has the largest mob, directly. That is mob rule.

>The analogy to the legal system is that mob rule supersedes (digital) contract law and property rights.

That's basically true. I don't dispute that. That's basically how Bitcoin works as well. There's currently a coup attempt going on to overthrow Bitcoin Core. If the mob grows big enough they will succeed.

>Eating the loss doesn't stop you from developing better software. Heck, I'd say that it's a pretty good way to prevent things in the future by giving people a real incentive to prevent bugs in the first place. If it's socially acceptable to roll back the clock because somebody wrote a dumb smart contract then it's a sign that writing dumb smart contracts is socially acceptable.

Eat the loss or not eating the loss doesnt affect development. The development track is the same either way. One saves a sad sack of idiots from losing money and the other doesn't. It's not the development team's job to teach people basic life skills about risk. Users had a choice to be on the chain where they lost money or the one that they didn't. Shocker, they chose to recover their money. Has nothing to do with developing better software or not.

>That's a false dichotomy. In the analogy Musk doesn't go to jail unless he willfully released something that he knew could kill people or otherwise programmed the cars to drive on the sidewalk. In ETH's case they could have absorbed the loss, hardened the systems, and moved on. Honestly it would have added a lot more credibility to the whole endeavor by showing that they were willing to put their (ETH) money where their mouths are.

No one willfully released TheDAO code to suck. It just sucked by accident. Absorbing the loss would NOT have hardened the system. Everything would be exactly the same. It wouldn't have made Eth any more or less credible if we absorbed the loss. And if you are put off, that's fine. If you want to join a blockchain with perfect credibility, good luck. Bitcoin has forked ~3 times, and Ethereum Classic has forked 2 or 3 times now as well.

Maybe blockchain technology is too nascent, or it just isn't for you. But the takeaway here is that _we are all still striving and working hard to make this technology be meaningful for the world, so stop shitting on it just to get your rocks off_. Not you personally, but others clearly do.

I'm part of the Ethereum community and I think immutability is vital for its success (immutability is the core value proposition of public blockchains). I also think the DAO was early enough in Ethereum's life that it could be hard forked without seriously discrediting Ethereum's promise of immutability.

There's a huge difference between a blockchain that just started out, effectively in its beta release and learning the ropes, doing a hard fork under extraordinary circumstances, and a mature blockchain doing a hard fork to reverse any old major Dapp hack.

If Ethereum does hard forks to reverse hacks of third party applications at a mature phase of its life, I think its chances of succeeding and becoming the main platform for global asset management will diminish significantly. On the contrary, if Ethereum stays true to its principles, and becomes reliably immutable, even in the face of major hacks, I believe there is very little that can stop it from becoming the defacto protocol for global commerce. So I think being overly pragmatic is actually dangerous. Idealism is what sets principles, and principles are what give a platform credibility.

Remember, a hack of a third party application, no matter how major, cannot seriously harm Ethereum. A contentious hard fork and a discrediting of its principles can.

> What's to prevent a similar situation in the future and why should anyone believe that to hold?

Look, ETC is still there, and currently it's at its all time low. Clearly the market didn't care about the DAO situation.

In other words, if a company makes a decision X which you think is a bad decision, and nearly none of their customers oppose them for it, did they really make a bad decision?

If tomorrow another DAO debacle happens and another such thing happens, I for one expect Ethereum Foundation to take steps to safeguard the integrity of the network by thwarting the theft.

If after Mt Gox theft had bitcoin been forked to undo that theft, then I would have jumped on to the forked chain (again no promises, but in principle I'd have gone to the forked chain).

On the other hand I presume you'd have stayed on the non-forked chain.

In other words, there are two kinds of cryptocurrency investors. You and I belong to two different groups. If you like Ethereum but are worried about 'code is law' violation, then please go join ETC.

Proof of Stake.