A Robbery by the Rules

An ATM in a wall keeps pushing out banknotes onto the pavement while a hooded figure calmly gathers them into a bag. — The DAO paid out first and recorded the payment afterwards. The attacker kept asking again in between, and within hours a third of the fund was gone.

Every religion sooner or later reaches the day when its sacred text collides with the interests of the flock, and the priests have to decide which matters more. For Ethereum that day came a year after the network launched. The sacred text was the phrase “code is law,” and on that day the flock was robbed in strict compliance with that law.

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