Ethereum & TheDAO: It is about what you believe in!

Dear Vitalik & Stephan

After an in-depth analysis of what is going on, conducting research among all involved parties (people believing in the new economy, new investors and miners), it turns out the whole story should not be about one DAO contract — it should be focused more on Ethereum and the whole market of the new economy.

It’s a question of what is more important: VALUES — what we really believe in — and RULES. The smart-contract is about an important VALUE — no middleware, power to those who actually do, and everything based on RULES that are transparent — CODED.

Right now we have the following situation:

Ethereum’s fantastic idea of smart-contracts

TheDAO’s fantastic idea of the new business contract, replacing old-economy company contracts

replacing old-economy company contracts 150 mio USD invested in TheDAO (the contract)

Vitalik and Stephan are the best in their class — the trusted ones

TheDAO contract, which, as it turned out, is a contract with a hole, BUT a valid contract.

BUT a valid contract. Confused investors that don’t know what to do.

that And we have miners.

Even in the old economy if you function by the contract, all actions are legal. In the new economy it’s about what is written in the code and confirmed in the blockchain (Blockchain is a distributed database that maintains a continuously-growing list of data records, hardened against tampering and revision). It’s very transparent and that is what we stand for!

This is what WE fundamentally believe in — THE CODE.

If we are strict, that is if we REALLY BELIEVE IN CODE, then what happened is not theft — because IT IS CODED IN THE CONTRACT and written in the blockchain. Maybe that same person invested in TheDAO just because of that? Some people were carefully analysing the code, maybe next time we will do it too.

Or more simply — if you put money in a contract and you lose, did we steal from you? This is perhaps not moral, but get used to it — these are the laws of the smart-contracts world.

If you lose a private key, you also lose all the funds that this private key can manage. Are we going to fork for you to get funds back? Are we going to be forced by some government institutions to block Wikileaks contract/funds when they will store a decent amount of their assets in our blockchain?

This should be the (very expensive) key takeaway of this situation — for such projects the code should be carefully checked with no rush before it is launched. What will happen next time when somebody else, who does not have such a good relationship with the Ethereum project, makes a mistake? Another fork? Miners will be really happy…

With TheDAO case the CORE VALUE SYSTEM of Ethereum is at stake! We all have to get used to it — we have all voluntarily invested in TheDAO and we signed that contract.

The terms of The DAO Creation are set forth in the smart contract code existing on the Ethereum blockchain at 0xbb9bc244d798123fde783fcc1c72d3bb8c189413. Nothing in this explanation of terms or in any other document or communication may modify or add any additional obligations or guarantees beyond those set forth in The DAO’s code. Any and all explanatory terms or descriptions are merely offered for educational purposes and do not supercede or modify the express terms of The DAO’s code set forth on the blockchain; to the extent you believe there to be any conflict or discrepancy between the descriptions offered here and the functionality of The DAO’s code at 0xbb9bc244d798123fde783fcc1c72d3bb8c189413, The DAO’s code controls and sets forth all terms of The DAO Creation

There will always be contracts that will behave differently than expected. And the results will be written in a non-centralised, non-reversible blockchain. Whether we like the results or not. If we allow censorship, then we can all go back to centralised systems.

What you are proposing (forks) is:

In order to save “150 mio USD” (today it is much less than that). you are risking the whole Ethereum idea and you are actually passing responsibility to miners.

Forking means almost a month of UNCERTAINTY for the whole new economy. This is SOMETHING NEW for this economy, it has never happened before. But we know from the old world that uncertainty is not a good thing for the market, especially in the early stages of development. UNCERTAINTY can seriously damage the market and slow it down for a longer period!

We believe in Ethereum and we believe in TheDAO idea, BUT above everything, we believe in THE CODE and the blockchain. A decentralised and immutable chain of events.

Vitalik and Stephan — WHAT DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE IN?

We believe it is time to react quickly and publicly admit it — “We made a serious mistake” — and stick to the ideals.

With that Ethereum will come out of this even stronger than before!

Regards,

Zenel

P.S.

It seems like Ethereum is a hostage of TheDAO. The bigger is the hostage of the smaller. In the process of rescuing a 150mio $ TheDAO, Ether already lost 800 mio $ in market capitalisation.