DAOsaster Hard Fork: Pyrrhic Victory for Ethereum or Future Moon Fuel Requirement from Industry Giants?

This opinion piece was posted on the NYTimes last week by Richard Lumb, the Group Chief Executive of Accenture Financial Services. Until today, I didn't notice this little gem:

One thing is clear: If the financial services industry is to embrace a new technology, it cannot be one in which mischief and mistakes are immutable and fraudsters can defend their actions on spurious ideological grounds.

I was particularly excited to read this because it confirmed and validating to my own assessments of how the business world would view this historic event:

This statement, coming from a Chief Executive of a Financial Services Group in one of the best consultancy firms in the world, says a lot. Furthermore, it speaks to what business minds have been saying for months.

It also highlights one of the best products of the 'DAOsaster' (I always search for silver linings): the Bitcoin blockchain and the Ethereum blockchain are now forever differentiated.

What do I mean by this?

With the current status of the blocksize debate and the general schism that has formed within the bitcoin ecosystem, it should be crystal clear what the stance is on any sort of forks of the protocols, and what can happen if you fall on the 'wrong side' of that debate.

On the other hand, there was rather simple, clear and concise leadership in the Ethereum space and a general acceptance of what path should be taken. First, a soft fork was recommended. Members of the community quickly identified an exploitable flaw in this approach, leading ultimately to a hard fork which was completed by essentially reversing all of the exploited transactions within the DAO contract, moving funds to a separate contract, and simultaneously establishing a simple contract command that allowed all DAO investors to exchange their DAO tokens for Ether at a 1:100 ratio.

Consequently, this hard fork resulted in another great lesson for the cryptocurrency space: Ethereum Classic.

Ethereum Classic was borne out of the disagreement over which Ethereum blockchain was the 'correct' one. Ideological purists (and likely the DAOattacker) certainly fall into this camp. They contributed enough hashing power to keep the chain alive down a separate, but similar path. The functions remain the same, but in different directions as the current (forked) Ethereum chain.

This was a valuable lesson and the whole community should be grateful for the opportunity to learn without any mortal wounds done to the ecosystem at large.

Ultimately, I believe the differentiation between Ethereum and Bitcoin over immutability is a net positive for both Ethereum and Bitcoin. Both have very viable, yet different use cases, in addition to the many use cases that overlap. Such is competition in the free market.

The argument that the cryptocurrency realm is a zero sum game where one chain can/should/must be all things to all people is the sort of central planning I would expect from people at the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. It's corrosive and ultimately destructive to the cause of financial and economic freedom and independence.