



From Bad To Worse

The Ethereum cryptocurrency recently underwent a hard fork to return funds from a hacked application/smart contract called the DAO. See my previous posts for more info - here, here and here.

It seem the hard forked version of the currency (ETH) and the ethereum foundation who implemented it just can't get a break these days.

The community has been surprised by the unexpected success of the continuation of the original blockchain known as ethereum classic (ETC). It is continuing to gain support with more and more exchanges adding it, including most recently Shapeshift.io and the largest bitcoin exchange, Kraken. It has consistently outperformed ETH (the hard fork version of ethereum) at times having double the volume.

The Replay Attack Problem

Unfortunately since this was unprecedented and the ethereum foundation expected the original chain to die - they did not code any protective measures into the new fork to prevent "replay attacks".

(See this article by Timon Rapp on Medium for an explanation of what replay attacks are.)

The TLDR is that ether on either chain can literally disappear due to such attacks. This necessitates one of the chains being forced to do another hard fork.

It is already clear that the ETC community will not accept such a fork under any circumstances.

Catch-22 but not the novel

This leaves the ethereum foundation and ETH in a catch-22 situation. By doing nothing the chain remains open to these sorts of attacks which reduces it's viability. As the larger chain they must act to prevent losses but if they perform another hard fork so soon after the last they could cause a catastrophic loss in value and confidence in ETH.

Forked for Good?

Whatever they do it seems they (the foundation/ETH) will lose. Could this be the final nail in the coffin for ETH?

It just seems this whole saga gets stranger by the day. What do you think will happen? Is there a workable solution that doesn't kill either chain?

Please have your say in the comments below.