The DAO vote is called off, and the Slock.it team is trying to turn the tide

The DAO crowdsale officially ended on May 28, 1200多万ether (ETH) locked up. Therefore, it is understandable that participants are worried about the safety of their funds. Recently, three scholars Dino Mark, Vlad Zamfir and Emin Gün Sirer called on DAO token holders to temporarily refuse to vote for any proposals until the security vulnerability encoded in the DAO contract is completely fixed. The three of them published an article detailing all possible attack paths.

A hacker or cryptographer could gain access to a web server through an attack path, which would allow them to hack into the DAO smart contract or the computers of DAO token holders. The three academics wrote in a blog post:

We have listed 7 possible attack paths. Some of these investments may be forcibly controlled, and participants may even be forced to vote for projects they do not favor against, against their own interests and wishes.

The article lists a variety of possible attacks, one of which is "The Affirmative Bias" and "Disincentive to Vote No." Currently, as long as the holder exercises the right to vote, the DAO smart contract will prohibit the holder from withdrawing the token before the proposal is completed. The holder who voted against can withdraw the token, and the whole process is completely risk-free.

In the early stages, active voters may have a majority, but as the voting process progresses, passive voters will gradually gain the upper hand, which is an inherent problem for crowdfunding platforms that rely on group voting.

Another vulnerability listed is called "The Stalking Attack". In this case, hackers are able to track token holders and prevent them from withdrawing ether. However, this method is too costly for hackers because it requires 24-hour real-time monitoring and may even lose all the stolen money to the victim.

Even Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin agreed with the article. Alex Van de Sande of the curator team said:

Regulators should not suspend voting on their own initiative. We must first respect the opinions of DAO token holders. If you are a token holder, please tell us what you think by voting or leaving a message. No matter what the holders decide, I support it 100%.

Slock.it said it would never agree to suspend the vote. The Slock.it team will design a new security plan for DAO at all costs, and appoint a 24-hour online security expert for a period of one year to prevent crises. This plan has cost nearly 8000 ether. The regulatory team has approved this plan. Slock.it co-founder Stephan Tual said:

This approach would address all existing regulatory issues, including various levels of safety testing.

Currently, DAO token holders can decide to temporarily suspend all voting or vote for a new proposal from the Slock.it team, and they can also choose to reactivate their ether.