What is the Arrow of time: "the fact that the past is different from the future. We remember the past but we don’t remember the future. There are irreversible processes. There are things that happen, like you turn an egg into an omelet, but you can’t turn an omelet into an egg.
And we sort of understand that halfway. The arrow of time is based on ideas that go back to Ludwig Boltzmann, an Austrian physicist in the 1870s. He figured out this thing called entropy. Entropy is just a measure of how disorderly things are. And it tends to grow. That’s the second law of thermodynamics: Entropy goes up with time, things become more disorderly. So, if you neatly stack papers on your desk, and you walk away, you’re not surprised they turn into a mess. You’d be very surprised if a mess turned into neatly stacked papers. That’s entropy and the arrow of time. Entropy goes up as it becomes messier." Sean Carroll (theoretical physicist at Caltech)
How did Ethereum Betray the Arrow of Time Ethereum turned back time on the DAO attack. While it may be nice to think about a world where we can turn back time and simply hit undo the ramifications of our actions are real they play an import role in our experience of the world, our sense of morality and community. The whole process in all directions as far as we can extend our sights into the depths of space is based on the passing of time. To betray the simple principle of the passing of time and its finality means that Ethereum has betrayed physics and our understanding of how every part of the universe behaves.
Why this actually makes Ethereum Useless Ethereum use cases are mostly a huge liability for the network and token holders. Some think that implementation of Fiat currencies or Amazon dollars that use Ethereum will make its value go up however I think it would be a very short time before we saw situations similar to the DAO attack. How can Ethereum be used to represent Gold or Real Estate if those things which cannot be physically reversed in time can be digitally reversed in time. Nobody wants to go to the bank to find out their transactions have been reversed. A smart contract is supposed to be a promise, the DAO was supposed to be a promise but it got broken. Friends dont break their promises.
Your analogy about the bank is flawed. It would be more like this: Someone found a bug in the banking software and exploited it and stole all your funds, so the bank reversed the transactions in which your funds were stolen. It's actually not a bad thing, I would be happy to know that the bank can take measures to protect its customers the same way the decision was made to reverse the DAO hack and protect the users.
Emperor_Penguin
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@CosmicBrownies, No its more like I go to a bank that has been hacked because of its poor design and they ask me to pretend like it never happened and try to void all the old money and give me different money at a new bank where the exact same problems exist just you have your money. Its like every investor agreed to the code in the DAO when they bought it, DAO wasnt Ethereum, its like if Ethereum rolled back for Augur. They rolled back the entire economy. Its like if Enron happened and they reclaimed all US dollars and reversed all transactions for the investors that lost money. Sure Enron was a major hack, a huge fraud and cost people billions but the damage could not simply be undone by reversing the transactions. Like if my Bank gets hacked they will do everything they can to get back the money but there are times where they loose money and they accept that they loose money to hacks and frauds (they dont just try to roll back the entire currency) and they have insurance that covers those losses. I think its far more likely that Banks would reverse transactions because they were irresponsible with clients funds and broke the economy than because some hacker broke into their systems. If you think the ability to reverse transactions that lead to losses isnt going to lead to horrible corruption and wont be used to benefit the few in times of crises then you are living under a rock.
CosmicBrownies
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@Emperor_Penguin, If the majority of Ethereum holders shared your opinion, ETH Classic would have a higher market cap than Ethereum.
Emperor_Penguin
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@CosmicBrownies, No they wouldnt because they are stupid and greedy. Its an inconvenient truth, given the choice people would have reversed Mt Gox and that chain would have a higher value but it still would have undermined the unbroken immutable record that Bitcoin is today and destroyed that part of the Dream. Just because people make more money off of something does not mean that its right. Thats really feeding the kind of thinking that lead to the problems that gave rise to Bitcoin. By your logic we could fork again and if some coin that defies all the things that make crypto valuable is pumped to a high enough price whatever the features however it was designed the fact it had a higher market cap would make it somehow better, I call BS on that. Ether Classic is worth less because the greedy F*&^% that wrote it stopped supporting it because they messed up and tried to get everyone on a new chain with a magical fairytale timeline where everything is made good again.