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RE: My rational basis for being pro-fork is that to be never-fork or anti-fork has much worse long term potential consequences.
I get all your saying, but what I don't get is;
a) In the DAOs terms and conditions it appears to have a tough titty clause, in the event of a drain arising from a bug.
b) They don't seem to have fixed it.
So in these circumstances, I don't see how they can justifiably hardfork.
Bearing in mind, I am woefully underinformed about this whole fiasco, but I'd love to hear what you think of my points Dana.
Thanks
CG
Right but just because they say it doesn't make it legal or ethical. In addition, what the external law says really has nothing to do with the judgement of the blockchain which is internal and global law of code. I would say if we look at how things are handled off chain then if someone sells you a house, with no blueprint, and the house caves in on you, then you have recourse. If someone sells you a defective product through false advertising you would call it a scam and you have recourse. Why shouldn't people at least have the same level of recourse on the blockchain that they have off the blockchain when dealing with defective products or false advertising?
What you say is possibly true in some courts in some jurisdictions if it is a legal issue. The point is we don't want it to be decided there as that could be worse than a hard fork and would set the worst precedent I can think of for a blockchain which is to have external law enforcement or the SEC all over the future DAO projects just because of this.
References
But who decides that a product is defective or advertising is false? The blockchain consensus?
That's a straight recipe to create a totalitarian society. I for sure don't want to be part of that.
So you think any justice system at all is totalitarianism? How else can disputes be resolved if not through some process? If you want an AI as your judge this is fine because what matters is that SOMETHING be capable of resolving the dispute. The fact is, if you look at Bitcoin with the block size debate there is no process in Bitcoin to resolve that dispute. The blockchain consensus is what resolves disputes in a blockchain society but if you don't think so then how would you resolve disputes?
Speaking of tyranny, if you have an immutable blockchain with runaway AI smart contracts that could leave you to permanent tyranny where forking may not be allowed and disputes may not be allowed by the AI controlling the smart contracts.
Where we disagree is that you think the legacy system is the best humanity has to offer. I think Ethereum can be better than the legacy system even if it can undo or revoke transactions at the consensus level because the consensus if it remains globally distributed will not be subject to coercion or to abuse like the decision of one or two executives being pressured by powerful government bureaucrats.
In addition, the Ethereum platform could set it's own rules for when to reverse, shut down, or block. If Ethereum is a world computer then a world computer even with flaws is better than anything we've ever had before because it's the first global version and can do more than legacy systems. On the other hand because of how Ethereum is designed it's very likely that smart contracts will continue to be broken and while I'm interested in Tauchain, what about today? Tauchain could take another year before people even understand how it works enough to use it and in that time if Ethereum is spreading bad press on smart contracts or constantly failing it will make it harder for Tauchain to catch on.
The point is that when you fail in a big way like The DAO it can take a whole generation to recover. We might not see recovery for 10 years. We might have to deal with the really bad negative articles just as how websites on the Internet used to deal with. These doom and gloom articles will make people think you can't have reliable smart contracts.
Tauchain avoids this problem because it never needs to fork to begin with because of context separation. Ethereum has to fork because there is no other way.
You say if you get involved with a buggy smart contract you'll eat your losses and move on? Suppose all smart contracts have some zero day bug which some state sponsored hackers take advantage of. In Ethereum everyone should accept that some possibly hostile state actor can have large stolen stakes of the chain? Why would anyone buy Eth if most of them at some point are just stolen by hackers? Why would anyone trust smart contracts if there is so much incentive to hack them and so easy to hack them too? You may know about Tauchain but most people don't know about it, will never understand how it works or how Ethereum works, and will never return once they get burned.
No, quite the opposite. Justice system is what protects us from totalitarianism. And a justice system should not be confused with a majority vote. Actually one of the crucial roles of a justice system is to protect an individual from a majority vote.
No, the only solution on a blockchain is not to have any disputes at all or use an escrow. If you are not comfortable with that, stick to the legacy system, as it is the best humankind can offer at the moment.
Again, you mix up two problems: the governance issue and allowing things to be undone. You can have some sort of efficient governance on a blockchain (e.g. DPOS) but still stick to the rule of never undoing any transactions without any exceptions.
What tyranny are you talking about? If I got involved in buggy smart contract, I eat my loss and move on. And in a few years' time something like TauChain will come into existence - then it will be safe to do bigger amounts.