Slock.it spokesperson Griff Green: Ethereum mining pools strongly support soft forks

Griff Green, a spokesperson for Slock.it, the founding team of the DAO, told CoinTelegraph that internal voting by some Ethereum mining pools showed that they strongly supported the soft fork.

However, he is not sure that these mining pool operators will recognize the voting results and publicly support the soft fork.

I previously interviewed a user who claimed to be a DAO attacker. In the interview, the "attacker" said that he would consider negotiating with the Ethereum team, provided that there is no fork. Green responded:

I personally do not support negotiations because I think a hard fork would be a good way to get back the ethers of those who have been attacked.

I think the Ethereum community has a consensus that soft forks are convenient. The Ethereum community has already started working together on soft forks.

CoinTelegraph has also asked some Ethereum mining pools what they think about the fork contingency plan proposed by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, but only Dwarfpool has responded so far.

We still need to learn more about the DAO attack before we can respond.

As for when the fork will happen, Green said:

We are currently writing and testing code, after all, we represent the interests of multiple Ethereum clients, including the geth client which has more than 85% of miners using it. Parity (version 1.0 of the Ethereum client) is the first client to adopt the fork, and Gavin Wood is working tirelessly to solve this problem. I estimate that this will take about a few days or a week.

The Ethereum community has faced what is arguably the worst hacker attack in the digital currency space. The attack, which exploited a vulnerability known as a recursive call , caused the price of Ethereum to drop by nearly 50% and the price of DAO tokens to drop by nearly 70% .

Vitalik Buterin proposed an emergency fork plan, freezing the DAO tokens through a soft fork, and then performing a hard fork to transfer the tokens to a new contract address for holders to retrieve.

Green said:

A hard fork can completely resolve this attack while leaving the entire Ethereum ecosystem intact. The Ethereum blockchain is structured differently than the Bitcoin blockchain, and we do not have the ability to cancel irrelevant transactions. All tokens converted from ether received by the DAO remain in the DAO system, so token holders can retrieve their stolen assets without affecting the Ethereum ecosystem.

Regarding the fork plan, CoinTelegraph also conducted a survey among readers. There were a total of 600 voters, of which 52% agreed to the fork and 48% opposed it. It is said that the DAO attacker was willing to reward miners with 1 million ether to deny the fork.

However, most Ethereum enthusiasts still firmly support Buterin’s decision, which proves that this incident is a critical moment for Ethereum and can determine its future development.

Interview text

The following is the exact transcript of my interview with Slock.it spokesperson Griff Green on June 18th. The content has not been changed.

Andrew Quentson (AQ): Hi, is there any further progress on this incident? Have you/Ethereum developers negotiated with the attacker?

Griff Green (GG): No. I think whenever there is a crime our first concern should be the victims. So we (the Slock.it team) are working on solutions for the victims of this incident, and hopefully there won't be any more victims.

AQ: Did you negotiate with the attackers?

GG: I personally do not support negotiations because I think hard forks can completely help those who have been attacked to get back their own ether.

AQ: I have contacted some mining pool operators, but some have not responded. Do they support forking?

GG: I have participated in some discussions with mining pools, and they all treat forks with a rational and analytical attitude. They are very supportive of soft forks, and are expected to start discussing hard forks next week.

AQ: Will they respect the results of the miners' vote?

GG: I’m not sure about this, but I think there is a consensus in the Ethereum community that soft forks are convenient.

AQ: Do you know when the soft fork will take place?

GG: We are currently writing and testing the code, after all, we represent the interests of multiple Ethereum clients, including the geth client which is used by more than 85% of miners. Parity (version 1.0 of the Ethereum client) is the first client to adopt the fork, and Gavin Wood is working tirelessly to solve this problem. I estimate that this will take about a few days or a week. The Ethereum community has already started to work together for the soft fork. After the soft fork is implemented, we will start discussing the hard fork.

AQ: Have you taken any protective measures for the remaining ether?

GG: Lefteris and Colm from our security department are working with DAO Curators and community members to prevent any further breaches of DAO token funds and to ensure that funds can be redeemed, and given the confidentiality of their work, that’s all I can say. Sorry, I feel like I’m speaking through a sporadic radio signal.

AQ: It doesn’t matter. This is an interview with a person who claims to be a DAO attacker that was just published. There is a lot of content. What do you think?

GG: I haven’t read it, but I’m not surprised so many people are scrambling to admit they were the attacker.

AQ: I know you are still working on resolving this attack. But what do you think went wrong?

GG: A hard fork can completely resolve this attack while leaving the entire Ethereum ecosystem unaffected. The structure of the Ethereum blockchain is different from the Bitcoin blockchain, and we do not have the function of canceling irrelevant transactions.

All tokens received by the DAO from ether remain in the DAO system, so token holders can retrieve their stolen assets without affecting the Ethereum ecosystem.

I think we'll stop here. Thanks for your question.

AQ: Okay, last question. A lot of people are criticizing the slock.it team. Do you have anything to say to them?

AQ asked again on the morning of the 19th whether the previous questions could be answered, but received no response.