If the DAO Attacker Shorts ETH, Buys ETC, and then Refunds the DAO Hack Victims on the ETC Chain
This evening, reddit user darawk made an excellent post on the Ethereum subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4ugjoh/im_prohf_but_the_success_of_etc_may_be_inevitable/
I'll summarize it. He offered that the DAO Attacker should just Short ETH, Buy ETC, and then refund all the DAO tokens he took (or not interfere with someone else refunding them). The ETC chain would then have a fix for the DAO exploit without having any of the issues associated with the hard fork. He reasons that this will result in a substantial decrease in the value of ETH and that the economic incentive to the DAO attacker is substantial enough that such a move is inevitable.
Here are my questions:
1) Do you think that an ETC chain with the stolen DAO tokens refunded will have any lasting value?
2) Do you think that the existence of an ETC chain with the stolen DAO tokens refunded will actually result in a reduction in the value of ETH?
My thoughts:
If Chandler Guo's planned 51% attack against ETC actually happens then maybe none of this is even relevant. But, completely disregarding Chandler Guo's plans, it seems like there are fundamental problems with the proposition that ETC can compete with ETH. Some people are forgetting that the value of ETH has always been largely tied to it's potential functionality given the support of dapps by the turing complete programming language. However, as has been pointed out repeatedly, future dapps running on ETC would be vulnerable to replay attacks. This means that the only way forward for ETC in terms of functionality is really for it to have its own hard fork (to fix the replay attack problem) thereby destroying the immutability its supporters seem to value so highly. So, the only way for ETC to match the functionality of ETH is to do the one thing that would destroy it's raison d'être.
"Ethereum Classic Is A Scam
Why I feel Ethereum Classic is a scam and a lame attempt to derail the growth the Ethereum community has enjoyed lately.
Shortly after I file this story, I’ll be selling off 80% of my personal Bitcoin holdings; or more accurately, converting them into Ether, on Coinbase."
Interesting "Vitalik Buterin in the past, have indicated at least tacit support for spin-off efforts growing out of the project.
He told Backchannel in an interview earlier this year that in the event of a community split, he’d be “quite happy” for the project to adopt a different approach.
"I generally support just about every secession attempt that comes along. If in the future there is that kind of a dispute in ethereum, I’d definitely be quite happy to see ethereum A go in one direction and ethereum B go the other,” he told the publication."
http://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-hard-fork-creates-competing-currencies-support-ethereum-classic-rises/
I definitely like the fact that Vitalik has been so understanding all along of those who opposed the hard fork. It's pretty refreshing compared to the bitter infighting over block size in the btc ecosystem.
Hello Wise-brain, why would you sell bitcoin and convert them into Ether? I bought $1,000 worth of Ether on coinbase at $14.90 and I'm looking at other currencies to invest in, so I was just wondering why you put your money there?
Etc has said they will do fix forks but not reversal forks for bad code. I think ether is doomed either way .
Could you elaborate? What will lead to ether's doom?
Great article!