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Comment by theli0nheart | Hacker News Reader

Curious, is there a contractual clause that prevents any members of the DAO from adopting or starting a fork?

First part of the explanation of the terms:

"The terms of The DAO Creation are set forth in the smart contract code existing on the Ethereum blockchain at 0xbb9bc244d798123fde783fcc1c72d3bb8c189413. Nothing in this explanation of terms or in any other document or communication may modify or add any additional obligations or guarantees beyond those set forth in The DAO’s code. Any and all explanatory terms or descriptions are merely offered for educational purposes and do not supercede or modify the express terms of The DAO’s code set forth on the blockchain; to the extent you believe there to be any conflict or discrepancy between the descriptions offered here and the functionality of The DAO’s code at 0xbb9bc244d798123fde783fcc1c72d3bb8c189413, The DAO’s code controls and sets forth all terms of The DAO Creation."

Emphasis mine.

from:

https://daohub.org/explainer.html

So yes, I'd interpret that as forks being 'right out'. It's either 'all terms' or it isn't.

Thanks. I'll admit that this is way over my head. Is there a concise summary of what's contained in the "smart contract code" at 0xbb9bc244d798123fde783fcc1c72d3bb8c189413?

The code at that location in the Ethereum blockchain implements a Decentralized Autonomous Organization that takes Ether from participants in exchange for tokens granting them the right to vote on proposals for this specific DAO to fund and the right to receive any benefits from the execution of funded proposals.

This is the primer to the how it is supposed to work: https://blog.slock.it/a-primer-to-the-decentralized-autonomo...

Here is how it was attacked: http://vessenes.com/deconstructing-thedao-attack-a-brief-cod...

Why? The DAO is implicitly referencing how ethereum works, it's not specifying that directly. So changing how ethereum works should be perfectly valid, and the DAOs terms would be valid, and yet refuse to run because ethereum changed to prevent it from running.

Also, strictly speaking it's not all the same people who might be bound by the contract as those who would do the forking.

It's the proverbial rock-and-a-hard-place dilemma. Stick to the contract and the original description: lose the funds. Fork and change how ethereum works and you've proven conclusively to all participants that a power grab is possible and that the contracts are all subject to future novel interpretation.

DAO -> DOA either way.

It sure seems that way, but this doesn't have anything to do with breach of contract per your original comment. Forking and changing how it works seems completely kosher from the contractual side, but seems like a bad idea for the reasons you stated.

But forking is a consensus decision of miners on the chain. Nothing to do with the DAO or its implicit or explicit terms. By that logic I can write a contract that dictates future behaviour of anyone choosing to mine this particular block chain.

I can see how forking in the case of a technology change is acceptable but I can't see how forking just to undo certain contracts would ever be acceptable. That's the foundation the whole thing rests on, if contracts can be rolled back at will (and this nicely exposes that it can be done to all those that weren't informed about this) then they are worthless.

That's what makes this attack so elegant, it strikes at the heart of the problem rather than 'just' take some money.

An even worse attack would have been to do this slowly over a longer period of time, which would make it even harder to roll back (but would have increased the chance of discovery before the damage was this large).

That must have been a tough decision on the part of the attacker.

> Nothing in this explanation of terms or in any other document or communication may modify or add any additional obligations or guarantees beyond those set forth in The DAO’s code.

As far as I see, that means there's no guarantee that Ether will be accepted by other parties, and no obligations on Ethereum miners, a de facto counterparty to the contract, not to agree to modify their own code. Of course, third parties [some of them with conflicts of interest] forking Ethereum is against the spirit of the "contract", but so was exploiting a recursion bug.

Which just goes to show that you still need to trust those with voting rights not to collude against you in a supposedly trustless system.

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