We’ve all been there. Exploring your
computer to see what all those files are,
deleting one to see what it does, and
suddenly your computer is frozen. You
turn it on and off again, but all you get
this time is a blank screen.
Your day is certainly ruined, as may be
your pocket, but imagine the same at
the level of a world computer,
ethereum itself.
If Devops199 is to be believed, he is
just a noob messing about to see what
contract calls do and so happened to
freeze 500,000 eth. Not letting the big
mess-up go to waste, he is now on
twitter where he said:
“It’s simple really, imagine walking up
to a bank vault and there’s a button
that says “Lock Forever”… someone
accidentally pushes it.”
If there was a way to unlock it then
generally doing so would be a no-
brainer. But in this space things are a
bit different as there needs to be a
collective decision to unfreeze the
funds.
As you may expect, there are different
opinions on the matter. As they say, put
three people in a room and you get 300
views. But can there be a slightly more
objective way to decide what is right
and what is wrong?
Thankfully, or unfortunately, depending
on your views, an agreement of sorts
appears to be rising for the funds to be
unlocked during Metropolis
Constantinople which could implement
a general Ethereum Improvement
Proposal (EIP) that would cover this
case.
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s inventor,
suggested quite some time ago an EIP
that would generally unfreeze frozen
funds stuck due to accident or bugs. He
said the EIP:
“Allows for users with ether or other
assets in common classes of “stuck”
accounts to withdraw their assets. The
first case covers contracts that are
accidentally created with no code, as
well as some losses due to replay
attacks where a contract was created
on ETC, funds sent on ETH but the
contract not created on ETH; the second
case covers losses due to an old
ethereum javascript library that
incorrectly computed ethereum
addresses.
Note that in all cases, the “rightful
owner” of the assets is obvious and
mathematically provable, and no user is
being deprived of any assets, and this
proposal provides no explicit favor to
any single account, user or
application.”
In reply to it, Jesse Powell, Kraken’s
CEO and co-founder, stated:
“Speaking on behalf of Kraken, I would
characterize this more as recompense
than rescue. We did take on some not
insignificant losses as a result of the
mentioned bug in the old Ethereum
javascript library.
At the time, losses were covered out of
Kraken’s pocket to protect our clients.
We would greatly appreciate the ability
to recover the funds tied up in the
incorrectly computed addresses.”
Regarding the Parity hack, an etherean
says “all that is required is to simply re-
instantiate the contract with a “fixed”
version and the funds will be unfrozen.
It’s about as non-controversial as it gets
in my opinion. Especially, considering
that no ETH needs to be moved or
anything like that.”
Technically, it is all very simple.
Afterall, this is all just code, which may
explain why price hasn’t really reacted
much. Code can “easily” be fixed after
the event. But another etherean says:
“There have to be consequences for
writing bad code – the parity team, and
users of their software, already had
ample evidence that their code was
poorly authored and in need of a better
security audit. If we keep giving people
“free passes” these problems will
continue happening, because companies
will have no good reason to release
better code.”
The Parity team is probably hating
every single moment right now and
their reputation, which they worked
very hard to build last year as a great
client, isn’t currently at, let’s say, a
desirable level.
We don’t doubt for a moment that they
had no intention whatever for there to
be any bug, although the July fix in this
case may have been rushed which in
the circumstances – funds were actually
being stolen and moving out of
accounts – might be understandable.
However the general point, no gain
without pain, is a respectable position.
The question is whether there has been
enough pain already, or whether it
should rise to $150 million?
Another etherean says that a fork
“makes the ethereum foundation into a
centralized bank, which was a
complaint after DAO they very much
want to grow out of [and] just not
enough ETH thats frozen to warrant
such an action.
Take legal action against Parity if you
are mad.”
That’s an interesting view and really
the main argument against the DAO
fork last year. It presumes that
developers decide. If that is the case,
then the question becomes do they
have more power when they don’t offer
the fork option or when they do offer
the fork option.
Objectively, if we are to accept that
developers do have such power, then as
we have seen with the one megabyte
debate in bitcoin, it applies regardless
of fork or no fork. But it may be more
likely they do not have any such power
either in a pro or no fork position. An
etherean says:
“There is no vote. People run the chain
they want. They can even run all chains
at the same time according to their
values and interests. There will be no
votes because there is nothing to vote
for. Code is free. Data is free.”
He is right. There have been two major
contentious forks so far. The DAO last
year and Bitcoin Cash this year. In both
instances, both sides got exactly what
they want.
But, although you can technically have
two chains, practically what
Blockstream developers support or
what the Ethereum Foundation
supports does have influence, at least
in the short term until the new team
proves itself.
In this case that team would be the very
skilled coders at Parity which, if it came
to it, could run their own chain which
may be quite a respectable competitor.
But, if we try and stand out of the
intricacies to look at the bigger picture
and try to be a bit more practical at a
fundamental level, what we are seeing
here is the product of very crude first
generation inventions which
necessarily are at a bleeding edge
where things are expected to go wrong
and we should be thankful they haven’t
for a year until now.
Ethereum is a first generation car that
barely runs 3 miles an hour. Or the first
generation airplanes that could barely
fly without a crash. Or windows 93
which couldn’t go two minutes without
the blue screen or, for those old
enough, the early TV signals which
would constantly blank out the ten
o’clock news. All of those are now very
convenient and run smoothly.
At its foundations, although we are
dealing with money, we are dealing
with technology. And a new barely two
years old invention can not in any way
be expected to operate so finely at this
stage. Not without a trial and error
learning process which constantly
improves and refines it all until it’s nice
and good.
You accidentally hit backspace and
delete one public key letter or number
without noticing, click send, and
suddenly all your money is gone to a
black hole. You miss a comma in a
smart contract and boom, it’s burned.
Some kid comes around pressing
buttons and oops, it’s frozen.
In each instance, there is a learning and
improvement process. To the point
where eventually it all works fine and
conveniently for us all. To expect the
latter without the former in light of
experience is unrealistic.
Moreover, in our view, we should
never submit to the machines. Nor
should we ever forget that they are our
servants, here at our pleasure to serve
us as we please. It should never be us
that bend to their will, but the code
that bends and kneels.
But that’s a general point. In this case,
we don’t really have a strong view and
from our observation it appears most
ethereans are somewhat indifferent to
the question, willing to go with what
most agree. One of them says:
“I’m a hard-core anti-DAO-bailout
fundamentalist, and while my gut
reaction is still a firm “no bailout for
this either! This money was burned fair
and square!” I think this particular EIP
would actually be not a completely
terrible thing. It addresses a
whole class of bugs and does so in a
generalized, non-biased way.”
The DAO fork ignited spirits because it
was the first of its kind and pitied
practicality against ideology.
Practicality won, and it worked out
very well for eth in the end, rising
some 20x after the fork.
In this case, there does not appear to be
so much of a battle as deliberation on
whether it should be done or not with
most appearing to be agreeable to the
EIP as part of the planned Metropolis
hardfork.
Some worry whether that would make
the other non-controversial aspects of
Metropolis slightly more controversial,
but it is a general class of assets that
would be unfrozen, from some fat
fingered guy who sent to the wrong
address, to Kraken, to Parity.
And why not? Why punish the
pioneers? Who would drive this great
invention forward without them? The
champagne “philosophers”?