Update…looks like hard fork coming…
from a quote in the article and reference to DAO slack channel:
“The DAO will be winded down completely and transformed into a simple contract where you can only withdraw. It’s shutting down but as no ether was stolen and no ether was spent, nothing was lost.”
see also CRITICAL UPDATE Re: DAO Vulnerability | Ethereum Foundation Blog
Yeah, I was balancing also between hacked and paid out/transferred or the likes. I think it is hacked after all, because the DAO code might have done what it was supposed to do at that moment, however the intended consequences, exploited by one person, were unwanted by the DAO members, minus one. (Presuming it was one person hacking the system). And this one person no doubt knew this beforehand.
Technically it was granted, functionally and emotionally it was hacked.
I think that´s a fair distinction. People also occasionally get mad when they find out that Facebook sells their data even though they suscribed to the terms. Emotionally victims, technically self-imposed immaturity.
“It could be viewed as the thin end of the wedge – Centralised
interference in a decentralised platform, to bailout people who did not
know enough about the investment decision they were making, laudable
sure, but what do you interfere with next? Ethereum is supposed to
be about the code, and following rigidly what it does – this isn’t
really a hack – the smart contract is doing exactly what it is
programmed to do, there is no hack of Ethereum just a smart contract
doing what it is written to do and investors putting money into
something they didn’t fully understand.”
“Wait for the lawsuit from the guy who wrote the contract who points out
he is not doing anything illegal – just executing the code that
investors invested in, and that the proposed hard fork is actually theft
from him/her.”
I presume with 50+ m USD , you can hire a lawyers team and have this sorted out.
or differently: if that´s a hack, then corporate contracts which are signed even though the clients obviously don´t bother reading and understanding them are a hack.
Regarding the law-suit: would be very interesting and lot to learn from it. However, since it they are not taking from the person, but rather abandoning him, I wonder how he*she would be able to make a case…
Sounds a lot like The Key Maker.
A statement I say confidently will never be true for SAFE and MaidSafe ------‘It will have a newfound direction and charter that involves a slight pivot, away from “let’s get crypto-currencies at all costs, let’s make front-end programmers into network designers,” towards "let’s build up the science of secure, networks.’
----With a foundation in true science, much can be done to build amazing front-facing applications.
Also I totally agree that nothing illegal has happened here and the DAO is functioning exactly as we all hoped. In spite of obvious human opinion, a contract (Really dumb—funny because we say “smart”) exicuted exactly as it was programmed. I would say this is a success. Yes, it sucks people who bought DAO for profit will probably not get it (Unless you sold yesterday because you wanted to jump on the MAID wave 
Thanks china), but this eperiement seems to be going exactly as it has been plainly stated in various mediums of publication. Or am I missing something?
Now if they (People with the power to do it) fork the whole ETH network and centrally overt power over the people…well, then at least we know where the people holding the keys stand. Even that is valuable IMO; knowing what people will do when they are facing insurmountable odds.
We are all going the right direction and I feel privileged to be a part of it. I didn’t invest more than I could lose, and some of the best life lessons I have learned came from the most troubling times.
I believe that Ethereum overall will emerge from this in a few weeks, having been made much stronger as a result. It will have a newfound direction and charter that involves a slight pivot, away from “let’s get DApps at all costs, let’s make front-end programmers into smart contract writers,” towards “let’s build up the science of secure, smart contracts.”
And that will make everything worth it.
Thoughts on The DAO Hack
The Keymaker (Character)
from The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
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The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
The Keymaker: I’ve been waiting for you.
The Keymaker: We do only what we’re meant to do.
Agent Johnson: Then you are meant for one more thing: deletion.
The Keymaker: There is a building. Inside this building there is a level where no elevator can go, and no stair can reach. This level is filled with doors. These doors lead to many places. Hidden places. But one door is special. One door leads to the source.
Trinity: Where are you going?
The Keymaker: Another way. Always another way.
The Keymaker: Only the One can open the door. And only during that window can that door be opened.
Niobe: How do you know all this?
The Keymaker: I know because I must know. It is my purpose. It is the reason I am here. The same reason we are all here.
The Keymaker: If one fails, all fail.
Enter the Matrix (2003) (VG)
Keymaker: [Shows a key on a chain] It’s a very special key meant only for The One. Will you bring it to him?
Ghost: What does it unlock?
Keymaker: The future.
[after Cain and Abel stole the key meant for Neo]
Keymaker: You must stop them! They’ll ruin everything!
Niobe: What is so important about that key?
Keymaker: The key is integral to the path of the One.
Ghost: Why don’t you just make another one?
Keymaker: Once it is used, it cannot be used again! They will bring about the end of everything!
I’d say releasing an MVP of a network without value that can be improved as you go without endangering assets and protecting over a hundred million dollars worth of crypto-money is kinda not the same thing.
Either way, the problem seems to be a bug the DAO’s part, so if blame is to be put anywhere, one should blame the DAO team for placing soo much money under the guard of such unproven and seemingly shakey code. The attack seems to have came about from a random attacker, so I’d say this issue wouldn’t be relevant with a smart contract involving two parties.
Makes me have even more appreciation for the time and cautious testing MaidSafe takes with their codebase 
It worries me overall. The more complicated something is, the more vulnerabilities it will have. SAFE isn’t exactly simple… The best coders in the world make mistakes – But teams of coders each working on their own individual chunk leaves lots of gaps in the interaction between the pieces.
Time will tell – but I suspect cryptotech in general lost a lot of credibility today… It shouldn’t be trusted - yet – but in order to gain trust, people must trust it.
“Keep it simple” is probably the key to success. (Not exactly SAFE’s route)
Is trustless even possible? Can any code be made infallible? Or, is it part of the human condition that we are forced to rely upon each other in some measure and must choose whom to trust? The idea that there is no one to go to to fix a mistake or perceived injustice will be very hard to overcome to achieve mass adoption.
The way the MaidSafe team functions has gone through many iterations–especially recently–and I’m sure will continue to evolve.
But we’ve all seen the results of their work; making my apps and sites for the test networks that they’ve released has really shown me the network working top to bottom, and basically, now, they’re just taking that and making it absolutely as solid as possibly can be, with rapid testing and attacking etc etc… IDK how you can still have doubts?
And this type of problem really does need this level of complexity… You can’t have a decentralised network unless there’s a reward / incentive mechanism, and all the other things like global deduplication etc are all things that will simply be of mass benefit and shouldn’t be left for the future.
Just wanted to share my experience and respond to you. Glad to see you posting here again
No to all of this 
let us not give up and forever just throw in the towel on freedom and individual empowerment just yet please
some interesting views on these questions here :
http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-17/blockchain-company-s-smart-contracts-were-dumb
More and more crypto-currencies are beginning to look like laughing stock. The way the market reacts to news is like a mirror of oil/fiat. 
That Ethereum can go from almost $20 to see above
And The DAO can go from $0.18 to see above and even with $100M+ in the kitty be pronounced death, is funny.
Financial freedom comes at a price… Getting hacked is the price you pay for not putting security first. On the other hand this is a valuable lesson.
I think it goes deep into what the point of ethereum actually is and does. This shaking of the foundations has given those who just jumped on the band wagon a large expresso with their wake up call.
I was fascinated by the idea of ethereum, but always found myself coming back to - will it be useful and will there be a business model for it? Considering how complex and wasteful the network is, repeating complex tasks over all the nodes, it wasn’t going to provide economic distributed computing, so it was all about the smart contracts.
The whole The DAO mess has just questioned whether this sort of smart contract is possible (bug free) or desirable (most people can’t/don’t read the small print, let alone code!). This puts a huge question mark over ethereum as a whole.
Maybe The DAO was just too ambitious at this stage. Maybe simpler smart contracts which didn’t have hundreds of millions riding on them would have been a better place to start? Perhaps a simple betting engine, with clear outcomes based on external inputs?
I don’t profess to follow ethereum and what apps are available. Maybe The DAO is just open of many and the one which created the most hype? Either way, it is surely going to put ethereum back in its box until the dust settles.
BTW, I do think that smart contracts may make more sense on safe net. They could be the driver of accessible and economical distributed computing.
With safe you have both the money and the data, both of which are cheap to move around. This is an exciting combination, which I think the blockchain is struggling to deliver.
“If the code rips off the humans, something has gone wrong.” This could also apply Bircoins bypassing of national regulation.
After thinking about this i have come to the conclusion that no hack happened and the hardfork to fix it is criminal.
The DAO is supposed to be decentralized and autonomous, this means that an agreed set of rules is what should govern it. This set of rules is the implementation. The implementation allowed for what happened. So someone simply used the system according to the rules.
