Maybe the immutability is not 100% now, but it will be when the technology is finalized, which will take a few more years. The fork to save DAO funds was a good thing, because otherwise too much ETH would have been in the hands of an attacker. The ETH distribution would have been skewed. That's all.
Yes you can call the person an attacker. The rules of a mature Ethereum protocol should be neutral to the intentions of users, including those that one would reasonably characterize as hackers, but Ethereum was not a mature protocol at the time. It was effectively in early-stage beta. The DAO was the first smart contract of its kind, and was expecting $500,000 worth of ETH to be deposited in it. Instead $150 million worth was deposited.
I believe that a fork like the DAO rescue would be perceived as totally unjustified and impractical today, and Ethereum is still a very young and experimental project. I think in a few years, when the network and technology are mature, such an application-rescue HF would be unthinkable.
Regardless of any of this, the person didn't attack anything.
I'm not saying my position on whether the fork was right or wrong, but I think folks on either side should not characterize that incident as an attack.
Comments
Maybe the immutability is not 100% now, but it will be when the technology is finalized, which will take a few more years. The fork to save DAO funds was a good thing, because otherwise too much ETH would have been in the hands of an attacker. The ETH distribution would have been skewed. That's all.
Can you really call the person an attacker when they simply used the contact as-written?
I think that's spinning things a bit to fit a narrative.
Yes you can call the person an attacker. The rules of a mature Ethereum protocol should be neutral to the intentions of users, including those that one would reasonably characterize as hackers, but Ethereum was not a mature protocol at the time. It was effectively in early-stage beta. The DAO was the first smart contract of its kind, and was expecting $500,000 worth of ETH to be deposited in it. Instead $150 million worth was deposited.
I believe that a fork like the DAO rescue would be perceived as totally unjustified and impractical today, and Ethereum is still a very young and experimental project. I think in a few years, when the network and technology are mature, such an application-rescue HF would be unthinkable.
Regardless of any of this, the person didn't attack anything.
I'm not saying my position on whether the fork was right or wrong, but I think folks on either side should not characterize that incident as an attack.