Ethereum developers fight back against hackers who broke into The DAO

Rage Review : Ethereum chief designer Alex Van Der Sande announced on Twitter earlier today that he would fight back against hackers. The Ethereum development community decided to remove the funds from The DAO to prevent new vulnerabilities from appearing in The DAO and endangering the security of funds. Ethereum miners, who decide what transactions constitute a permanent record of digital currency, agreed to "reverse" and reverse the Ethereum blockchain to before the hacking incident. The stolen fund transactions will be considered invalid. This is a completely transparent community activity, which is different from the bank's central service secretly changing the numbers.

Translation: Nicole

Hacking can go both ways.

The core developers behind Ethereum, a cryptocurrency similar to Bitcoin, have fought back against hackers who stole at least $89 million.

Ethereum chief architect Alex Van Der Sande announced the pushback on Twitter earlier today, with core developers able to get back more than 7 million ether, or $89 million, in four hours, according to the wallet address where the funds were stored.

Ethereum developers are trying to recover funds that were invested in the Distributed Autonomous Organization (DAO), which raised $150 million, the largest crowdfunding project in history. An anonymous hacker published an open letter saying that he had simply discovered a vulnerability in the Ethereum smart contract system and that the funds were "legitimate." It is not clear how much money the hacker stole.

The hack shook the faith in Ethereum and sparked interest from companies like IBM and Microsoft. There are other ways to get the funds back, but they would jeopardize the trust in the Ethereum network, as

Joon Wong Ian

Quartz' Joon Wong Ian writes:

Stephan Tual, co-founder of the startup Slock.it, which helped create the DAO, said one way to fix the problem while still helping the ethereum economy thrive would be for ethereum miners, who decide what transactions constitute the digital currency’s permanent record, to agree to a “rollback”, reversing the ethereum blockchain to before the hack. Transactions with the stolen funds would be considered invalid and removed from the transaction record. Tual said:

“It means that the community comes together to achieve a common good.”

This isn’t as crazy as it sounds. Bitcoin miners also “reverted” at least once in 2010 to fix a technical glitch. But back then, bitcoins were trading in pennies, which is a far cry from the $11.5 billion worth of bitcoins currently in circulation. The current price of ether is pretty reasonable, with all ether in circulation worth about $1.3 billion at current prices.

Stephan Tual

Another question is whether this reversal will undermine the decentralized digital currency, which is not controlled by any one party. Tual also disputes this. He said,

“You can compare this to a central bank server, where you can change numbers without anyone knowing. But in this case, the meaning is completely different, if all the miners come together and do a turnaround, it’s a community action. And it’s transparent, completely transparent.”