Once the arrow is shot, there is no turning back: Ethereum hard forks should be decided by the community, not a few developers

Although more than a week has passed since The DAO was attacked, the Ethereum community has not yet stabilized. But now the goal is clear, that is, to solve the current problem through a soft fork or a hard fork. However, Peter Todd believes that a fork is not the right way to solve this situation.

Many people still seem confused about the relationship between The DAO and Ethereum. The DAO was a project on the Ethereum platform, and The DAO crowdsale used Ether. Unfortunately, due to a security vulnerability, The DAO was hacked, and the security issues of the Ethereum protocol were raised.

Ethereum fork is subject of debate

Interestingly, the hard fork solution is gaining a lot of support. More specifically, Slock.it, which wrote the code for The DAO, and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin seem to be in favor of this solution. This is quite strange, because a hard fork would set a very dangerous precedent for Ethereum.

Peter Todd mentioned that it looks like Ethereum miners have already implemented the first part of the proposed fork solution. The funds stolen from Ethereum will be blacklisted via a soft fork. Any transaction that attempts to transfer these funds will automatically be considered invalid. In addition, miners will no longer mine network blocks that contain funds that have been taken away from The DAO.

Many people are expressing their concerns about Ethereum forks. This is something that should be decided by the entire community, not a few developers, but you have to remember that some developers invested in The DAO, so it is reasonable for them to want their funds back at all costs. Freezing funds is taking things into a gray area. If law enforcement demands the same outcome, who can guarantee that Ethereum developers will refuse such a request?

Hard Fork: Once the arrow is shot, there is no turning back

As mentioned before, a hard fork is different from freezing funds. In a way, a hard fork will allow Ethereum developers to create value out of thin air. Community polls appear to be in favor of a fork, but these days such polls are simply not trustworthy.

Both Ethereum and Bitcoin are designed to be driven by the community, including through voting. Developers have a lot of power when they see fit, and forks should not be pre-programmed anyway. No one wants to see decentralized systems interfered with by humans.