Two hacks and two approaches - is Bitcoin is looking better than Ethereum?

[CIYAM]

What's got bitcoin core developers got to do with an "inside job" that happened in an exchange?

A fair point - and some have suspected that the DAO hack was also an "inside job" which has nothing to do with any failure of the underlying Ethereum smart contract implementation either (yet they got involved enough to create a hard fork).

[1714600974]

1714600974

[1714600974]

1714600974

[1714600974]

1714600974

[mobnepal]

This two hack attempts are totally different in my view as actually dao have security fault or eth have allowed dammps to run in mainchain than side chain so whole chain has to forked to address this security bug. However bitfinex got hacked due to their security fault not that of bitcoin network so actually bitfinex have to fork their security.

[eternalgloom]

For me, Bitcoin is certainly looking better than ETH/ETC at the moment, this 'hack' of Bitfinex doesn't have anything to do with Bitcoin itself, while in the case of Ethereum, that was bound to happen due to how it was programmed.

[Mike8]

Opinions?

Bitcoin team has some sort of Fork-o-phobia. Bitcoin needs a couple of great changes to be implemented, but they fear to do that because the big bad fork may affect the price.
Ethereum team did the fork too easy, but it's a more complicate story. And now the ETH-ETC war will make bitcoin team phobia even stronger.

The result is a stone age sturdy Bitcoin mammoth, and if something big happens the mammoth may die and an Ethereum which, while it's still young and forks should come easy, it forked so bad so instead of evolving, it started a war between its own supporters.

Conclusion: both cases are extreme and neither is good.

[CIYAM]

Bitcoin team has some sort of Fork-o-phobia. Bitcoin needs a couple of great changes to be implemented, but they fear to do that because the big bad fork may affect the price.
stronger.

Bitcoin has had several soft forks already so "fork-o-phobia" isn't really correct. Perhaps "hard-fork-o-phobio" would be more accurate.

[Mike8]

Bitcoin team has some sort of Fork-o-phobia. Bitcoin needs a couple of great changes to be implemented, but they fear to do that because the big bad fork may affect the price.
stronger.

Bitcoin has had several soft forks already so "fork-o-phobia" isn't really correct. Perhaps "hard-fork-o-phobio" would be more accurate.

Yes, you're right.

[Quickseller]

In the case of ETH, if I understand correctly (and I may not), ethereum is suppose to be something closer to a distributed supercomputer then to money.  Also, again if I understand correctly, doing a reorg by the miners would really not have accomplished anything as the attacker could have simply executed the attack a second time in a similar way. Lastly, although some people will disagree with this, the fact that the DAO was hacked is verifiable on the blockchain, as anyone can verify that ETH was taken from the DAO that should not have been.

On the other hand, with the Bitfinex hack, it is not possible to verify on the blockchain that Bitfinex was in fact hacked, as in order to know that Bitfinex was hacked, you will need to trust the operator of Bitfinex. In order to confirm that BTC was even taken from Bitfinex's wallets, you will need to either trust Bitfinex, BitGo, or collectively several account holders of Bitfinex. Although I disagree that this is what happened, it is possible that Bitfinex in fact received something of value in exchange for the ~120kBTC that was withdrawn from their wallets.

I am somewhat disappointed that Bitfinex did not attempt to get the miners to do a reorg of the blockchain, as this would give everyone a very important lesson as to when it is safe to trust that a confirmation is sufficiently confirmed. Although it is still technically possible, I don't think this will happen after ~5 days of the hack. the fact is that miners rely on economic incentives to collectively act in a way that builds only on the Bitcoin blockchain with the most work. If there are economic incentives to build on an alternate blockchain, then miners would logically do this. I would much rather everyone learn that a transaction is not "really" confirmed until the miners have received block rewards totaling the amount of the transaction since the transaction confirmed (this may be less in some circumstances depending on if fraud is involved or not). I would much rather this be discovered now to resolve what is almost certainly a hack/theft then in several years when there is a lot of idol mining capacity and a large reorg is done to reverse a very large (in terms of BTC) transaction that is legitimate.

[eddie13]

ETH never had a chance at replacing BTC.

I never once thought "Hey ETH is the new thing, Bitcoin is obsolete now.."

Still don't think it even came within reasonable spitting distance of having a chance..

As far as its current price trend, which looks better right now, I think ETH was extremely overvalued and I'm not about to buy in now..

[adamstgBit]

Opinions?

Bitcoin team has some sort of Fork-o-phobia. Bitcoin needs a couple of great changes to be implemented, but they fear to do that because the big bad fork may affect the price.
Ethereum team did the fork too easy, but it's a more complicate story. And now the ETH-ETC war will make bitcoin team phobia even stronger.

The result is a stone age sturdy Bitcoin mammoth, and if something big happens the mammoth may die and an Ethereum which, while it's still young and forks should come easy, it forked so bad so instead of evolving, it started a war between its own supporters.

Conclusion: both cases are extreme and neither is good.

i think this is a fair assessment/conclusion.

[pooya87]

there shouldn't be a "bail-out-switch" in bitcoin or any other coin so when you screw up yourself you can fall back on it and get your money back.
if the bitfinex hacker had used a weakness in bitcoin protocol and stole the funds (or like a long time ago created coins out of thin air) then it would be possible to think about a fork in bitcoin but this hack was a screw up from the exchange owner themselves.

[adamstgBit]

Opinions?

there's a fork coming for bitcoin too, apprently
https://bitcoinforks.org/

we even have luke-jr posting his comments on the consider it page  
https://btcfork.consider.it/

IMO this fork will fail to gain any significant support like ETC did.
but its worth a look at what they are doing, its interesting to say the least.

[alyssa85]

To bitcoin, Bitfinex is not important- it is just one of the many many exchanges, just that it is slightly bigger. Bitcoin can continue without Bitfinex.

To Ethereum, DAO is almost everything. It is almost the only useful "application" of Ethereum. DAO hack is equivalent to an Ethereum hack. This is why Vitalik needed to hard fork ethereum to reverse the theft- to secure the Ethereum network. Ethereum is almost dead without DAO.

True, and Bitfinex itself isn't that large an exchange. The MtGox hack tanked the bitcoin price from $1000 to $100 and it has taken two years but the price hasn't quite recovered. If there was a serious competitor to bitcoin in 2014, bitcoin would have been in danger...

[Lauda]

there's a fork coming for bitcoin too, apprently
https://bitcoinforks.org/

We usually call those altcoins, so this isn't anything special aside from them wanting to market themselves as as relevant to Bitcoin. IIRC I had mentioned that something like "Bitcoin Original" would pop up eventually even though it's based on nonsense.

we even have luke-jr posting his comments on the consider it page   https://btcfork.consider.it/

The majority of the people voting on that website have very limited knowledge.

IMO this fork will fail to gain any significant support like ETC did. but its worth a look at what they are doing, its interesting to say the least.

It's just another damaging altcoin attempt, nothing more.

[adoell]

Bitcoin was always looking better than ethereum...this only showed the discrepancies between the bitcoin devs and the ethereum devs.

[Slark]

Why exactly we need bitcoin developers to act every time some pathetic satellite service like exchange is hacked?
I am against interventionism of any kind. And that DAO hack was completely different case because it was linked to be coin foundations.

[NorrisK]

Why exactly we need bitcoin developers to act every time some pathetic satellite service like exchange is hacked?
I am against interventionism of any kind. And that DAO hack was completely different case because it was linked to be coin foundations.

I agree that developers should never interfere if nothing is wrong on a protocol level and a service on top has messed their stuff up.

The only reason the ethereum devs could even think about forking was that they did not have to reverse any transactions. The DAO funds were still locked and they only had to make sure that they would never be moved again or in this case, that the funds were put in a different contract.

After an exchange hack, a rollback is impossible due to the thousands of transactions every block, which would be reversed.

[calme]

There's probably more than two Ethereums out there

[pereira4]

We have seen the hacking attack of reportedly 60M USD from Bitfinex and the attack of the DAO for reportedly around double that amount.

But after both attacks we have seen two very different things happen.

In the case of the Bitfinex attack there isn't even the slightest suggestion that some sort of "hard fork" would be offered by the Bitcoin Core developers (so they are just going to have to wear their loss for their mistake) but in the case of Ethereum we have now ended up in a "fork war" with ETH vs. ETC (and ironically ETC is actually the "original" code with ETH now being a fork).

Opinions?

ETC is severely damaged forever as a project, and the reputation of its leader, Vitalik Buterin, it's also perpetually damaged after he tried to stop exchanges, after he bailed out investors with a very questionable hardfork, and after the hard fork due it being rushed presents huge problems like the replay attack.

The only reason ETC is not higher than ETH is because ETH has the inertia of being the bigger chain, but eventually the tide will change and ETC will take over. ETH fundamentals are doomed.

[Amph]

there's a fork coming for bitcoin too, apprently
https://bitcoinforks.org/

We usually call those altcoins, so this isn't anything special aside from them wanting to market themselves as as relevant to Bitcoin. IIRC I had mentioned that something like "Bitcoin Original" would pop up eventually even though it's based on nonsense.

unless everyone switch to that fork, especially miners and merchants, at that point you can not call it an altcoin anymore

[pereira4]

Opinions?

there's a fork coming for bitcoin too, apprently
https://bitcoinforks.org/

we even have luke-jr posting his comments on the consider it page  
https://btcfork.consider.it/

IMO this fork will fail to gain any significant support like ETC did.
but its worth a look at what they are doing, its interesting to say the least.

Luke JR is a troll. The fact that there is still people pushing for a "big blocks" agenda shows how dumb/vested interest behind that they are. Anyone with a brain in 2016 knows scaling on-chain it's impossible unless you don't care that the network becomes more centralized and stupid without a conservative approach, that's why Core is and will remain the #1. There will never be enough consensus to hard fork Bitcoin for mindless experiment's sake. The conservative approach which is the approach that has made Bitcoin able to survive for this long, will remain the chosen one. Every alternative will end up like Classic/XT because they are unprofessional amateur punks without nothing to show.