DAO White Hat vs Black Hat and Are pending rewards irreversible?
It seems like everyone in the entire cryptosphere is up in arms about the nature of smart contracts. Does exploitation of a bug that results in unintended consequences that benefit the few at the expense of the many constitute an irreversible suicide pact?
The "good guys"(aka white hats) at Ethereum are actively designing and deploying counter-attacks designed to reclaim as much Eth from the attacker as possible. Everyone is playing by the rules. Everything is messy. If the white hats are successful then the final outcome will be largely the same as a hardfork. A hardfork would likely be a cleaner, more elegant solution.
Does the End justify the Means?
Given two different strategies that result in largely the same outcome, what is the significance of how it was achieved? If the white hats could prove that the final outcome would be the same, then would those who oppose the hard fork of Ethereum back down? Isn't a hardfork really just another aspect of the broader rules?
If property rights in smart contracts are determined by the code and a community can use the code without modification to achieve a certain end, then is a community violating anyone's property rights by changing the code to achieve the same end in a more efficient manner?
Steem Pending Payouts
Everyone has been watching as their pending payouts have fallen over the past months. This is a clear indication that the rewards to be paid out remain subject to change depending entirely upon how people choose to vote going forward. What if Steem had its own set of white hats that were actively leveraging the existing rules to acquire a large portion of the rewards. What if these same white hats then redistributed these rewards via transfers according to the more desirable distribution? What if playing by the rules achieved 99% of the same outcome?
If it is possible to play by the rules and achieve a desired outcome, then changing the code to achieve that outcome in a more efficient manner should be on the table without violating anyone's property rights.
Dan & Ned
It appears that @ned and @dantheman could easily redistribute their surplus rewards to get a large part of the desired effect. If a few other benefactors from the old rules joined in then it would be even better.
No one wants to start a black hat / white hat war over the pending reward payouts. That would have ample collateral damage on its own.
It seems to me that the mere fact that the same end can be achieved without changing the rules, that there should be no harm to changing the rules to make it more efficient for all with minimal collateral damage.
Principles
We have two sets of principles at work here. One is that community is sovereign, the other is that code is sovereign. Deciding which way is the right way to go depends largely upon this principle. The distinction is largely imaginary, because code is only sovereign to the extent that a particular community agrees to make code sovereign. Some will argue that a community that attempts to make code sovereign will grow faster than one that makes community sovereign.
Bitcoin had a hardfork to fix a money printing issue. This proves that even in Bitcoin, the community is sovereign over the code and not the other way around. Perhaps the perception that code is sovereign is more important than the reality.
Not Everyone will Agree
People will continue to cling to code-is-sovereign like any other religious belief. It has a certain appeal to anyone who has suffered at the hands larger communities commonly known as government. The question we have before us today is whether or not a blockchain community will turn into a corrupt government if there is even a slight possibility of people changing the code to get justice. Perhaps equally important is whether or not avoiding changes today, while the community is small, will prevent changes in the future when larger political forces are at play.
Not changing things today doesn't protect the future. Changing things today doesn't destroy the future.
All that matters is public perception of justice and fairness. Perception really does trump reality.
How would they prove it without doing it? How do we know the attacker would not come up with a smarter plan and successfully counteract the white hats action? Your proposition is based on an assumption that cannot be proved until it's actually done.
In the case of Steem it would be trivial for white hats (aka Steemit) to claim the vast majority of all pending payouts with a single vote of the @steemit account.
That kind of action would be a bruit force means of achieving our goals, but using that approach would be perceived similar to us forcing a hardfork on everyone.
In the case of Ethereum, the jury is still out.
The short answer is yes. Mainly because there is no strict definition of justice.
By allowing hard-forks you recreate the existing political system. There are no reasons to assume that when you apply similar rules, you will get different results.
Even worse, the existing system has some provisions to protect an individual against the majority (e.g. whatever crime you commit you get a chance to defend your case in a court of law). Whereas the rule of majority will cause situations like murdering Osama bin Laden to be commonplace.