Before I did not have the last time with his views on the failure of The DAO. What is correct: soft fork, fork hard, do nothing? My preliminary conclusion that the best solution - do nothing. Let me explain why.
Let's look at the facts. Ethereum and The DAO - two completely different things. Ethereum is a basic computer with its own protocol blokcheynom. Its sole purpose - to provide reliable code execution in the global computer network.
The DAO - one of the first programs for execution in Ethereum network. "DAO" refers to decentralized autonomous organization - a new type of company. It operates autonomously controlled by the program code.
This is a key point: The DAO - company. The company without personnel. The DAO is not suschestvuetvne code. The company is the code. Investors can finance company investing money in it.
The DAO was not subjected to hacker attacks. She just sang your own code, and in the process of execution has come to bankruptcy. Just a business model proved nekudyshnaya. Catastrophe? Only from the viewpoint of investors The DAO. From a technical point of view The DAO has worked flawlessly.
Mt. Gox 2.0
Bankruptcy The DAO is very similar to bankruptcy Mt.Gox. Bitcoin community remembers well how the media described bankrotstvoMt.Gox. The headlines screamed "Bitcoin - bankrupt" or "Hackers attacked Bitcoin!". Both were wrong. With Bitcoin everything was in perfect order. Mt.Gox was now working "outside" the main Bitcoin protocol.
People trust Mt.Gox as a company, and unfortunately, it went bankrupt. Participants lost large sums. This, of course, very sad, but that disaster was a good lesson. He went for the future.
The same thing happens with The DAO. Investors trust companies without going into details. They invested money in the company, and it has gone bankrupt, but which it is based Ethereum platform had no relation to the disaster. Yes, the creators of The DAO made in its code is not properly thought out functionality, which ultimately allowed to withdraw funds from investors through a recursive split. What does the Ethereum?
So I think the idea hardforka Ethereum unacceptable to the community. And softforka too.
Money is lost, it is a fact, but not because of technical problems with the Ethereum. At one time people have lost a lot of money on bankruptcy Mt.Gox (as in hacking other companies bitcoin ecosystem), but hardfork Bitcoin "for the salvation of investors" it has been recognized as fundamentally unacceptable. Moreover, in fact he even seriously discussed - the difference between the base platform and the periphery was obvious to everyone.
In this story from the "salvation The DAO» unpleasant affects apparent conflict of interest. The fact that the Ethereum developers have invested money in The DAO, and now, in fact, protect their selfish interesy.Voobrazite that Bitcoin-based company went bankrupt, and the developers plan hardfork to return the money - because they have invested in this company! The code was correct, everything worked as it should work, but they burned and now want all the "replay". It is reasonable in such cases to hold hardfork? This is a very dangerous precedent.
New Attack 51%
However, the final decision on Fork Ethereum is not for developers, and for miners,. Like, it's very good. Democracy in Action, the voice of the people - the voice of God, all that. However, there is one problem. After all, in fact, we are seeing a new type of attack blokcheyn-technology - Democratic attack 51%.
People offering "hardfork for salvation The DAO», do not discuss the elimination of any technical errors. They discuss the possibility of "justice" - refunds lost by investors of the bankrupt business. People invested in the company, not really having considered risks. The company went bankrupt, and now they want to take their money by force from blokcheyna.
Again, a dangerous precedent. It is democratic, but is not a democracy ( "rule of the majority over the minority") - it is always right? Today, the vote of the majority, there will be a redistribution of funds in favor of The DAO investors. What exactly would be the opinion of the majority, unfair tomorrow or the day after?
Error Exchange against the company's bankruptcy
Suppose you have an account on the Stock Exchange and put him $ 1,000. Imagine two scenarios:
At the stock exchange fails, and you lose money.
The company, whose shares you bought, there was a technical failure, the company because of it went bankrupt, you lose your money.
In the first variant it is reasonable to assume that the market will find a solution - that is, they make "hardfork" their software, and the situation will return to the situation that preceded the crash.
In the second variant is unlikely Stock Exchange will solve your problem. It is doubtful that it will shift your risks on the shoulders of others, and be able to present all the way that you like and do not buying shares of bankrupt companies.
The Exchange is responsible for their mistakes. Ethereum is responsible for technical failures on their side. Technical was no failure. Why someone has to modify the code to correct wrong decisions of their customers?
Contracts, Codes, knock on the door
Another analogy is the failure of The DAO.
Suppose you sign a contract on their own. In it, in particular, it says: "Every time your neighbor knocks on your door, $ 5 from your bank account automatically sent to his account."
Like, everything is fine, as long as the neighbor did not knock on your door. In the morning you wake up and your bank account is empty. Who is guilty? Your neighbor stole the money? He's a hacker?
I understand that this is what now happened to The DAO. Company Code provided for a fee splitting, someone spent splittinga process until the account is not empty. This is a bad business model that showed this bankruptcy.
Conduct Ethereum fork to add to the global blacklist address this unknown person? And even cut part blokcheyna, to rewrite history, to take money from him? I do not think it is reasonable. I'm not saying that this kind of morally pure. However, from the point of view of the autonomous organizations and smart contracts, the use of the functionality published in blokcheyne code can not be considered criminals.
On the other hand
I'm not saying that everything is so simple, no. Major errors must be corrected by the whole community, especially in view of the novelty of the technology. Of course, this is a dangerous precedent, but still, Ethereum scale still very small. Hardfork because of the failure of the contract would be totally unacceptable in the future, but maybe now he's not so undermine the credibility of the platform and not much harm to the community. I do not support hardfork, but maybe he would not a death sentence for the Ethereum.
Frankly, it would be much easier if the bug was in the code Ethereum platform, but alas, this is not the case.
I hope that some lessons to be learned from the incident. Firstly, invest large sums of money as a pilot project - exceptionally bad idea. Second, if you still decide to Ethereum community to recover their money through hardforka, I hope they firmly determine that such an event will be the only one in history. On this depends the credibility of the entire project.
That's only when the precedent has already been created, whether to refrain from repeating it will be possible in this case, when the "innocent investors" will again be touching cry for help?