Hacker News Reader

Comment by jamespitts | Hacker News Reader

Could you explain why you think that the hard fork release means that this is a bad time to build services on the Ethereum network?

View on HN

not sure what OPs reason is, but I agree. I am really disappointed by the Ethereum team considering the option of providing a revision in their chain's history in order to prevent a loss caused by an independent application. There is a conflict of interest since very prominent Ethereum devs have vested interests in the DAO and revising this history goes against many of the ideas that they stated Ethereum was built around.

Watching some of the talks from the first Ethereum Dev convention highlights this hypocrisy as they specifically advocate for "the code is law".

I still have a vested interest in Ethereum as an Ether holder, but the last few weeks have not really impressed me about it's communities adherence to their stated values.

Completely agree with this sentiment... I'm extremely disappointed by even the consideration of this idea by the core team. This could be a very hard but valuable lesson for both the community at large and the core team, but instead it is turning into a political drama fest in complete violation of the principles this entire idea was founded on.

I am curious - what principal(s) do you or gp think Etherium was founded on that which a hard fork decision will go against?

I think you can tell by the way I phrased the question I disagree. I own < $10 in DAO so I don't think I'm too biased here, and I believe in a pow system if you can get a majority the miners to agree than nearly any decision is justified.

I am pretty sure they are referring to "the code is law" as quoted above. That is apparently changing to "the code is law unless we think that is unfair".

I am not as worried about it in the longer term, but it's a big setback in the immediate term. Ethereum will have to convince the world that it has truly returned to "the code is law" at some point in the future.

That was either edited in or I missed it - but in either case I see it as "The code is law and the participants use a work-based consensus system to decide which code is run"

Code is not law. Code will never be law. No one is going to pay attention to records in a database that say something different from what everyone wants it to say. Despite this, blockchains are an incredibly powerful platform for social and economic software. They help people come to consensus on what those records in a database should say with very little effort, and bug-tolerant systems will be built that take advantage of this power to make trade easier without monopoly middlemen.

Not OP, but it bothers me because a hard fork means that bad investments are bailed out by all currency holders.

The reversal of opinion in parts of the ethereum community regarding bailouts is incredible. The only thing more shocking is that they appear unable to recognize it.

I don't want that in my cryptocurrency voting pool, so I'll pay less to enter it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com