In a poll from our last issue, A Decade of Ether, A Century for Humanity, when asked about the most unforgettable event in Ethereum's ten-plus-year history, nearly half of the 56 participants were most impressed by the NFT speculative frenzy of 2021-22. This allowed the event to win by a large margin with 46% of the vote. Perhaps the reason is that NFTs were what most successfully broke into the mainstream, or perhaps it was recency bias affecting judgment. However, the event that best reflects the core values of the Ethereum community is undoubtedly The DAO Hack, which received the fewest votes in the poll.

Readers who have played massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have likely encountered situations where a bug in the game's code is exploited by some players to obtain rare weapons and large amounts of in-game currency, disrupting the game world's economy and ecological balance. Whenever such an incident occurs, the game company, while patching the vulnerability, has two choices: either accept the consequences brought about by the exploit, or roll back or alter the database to restore every player to their previous state. The former, while seemingly turning a blind eye to unfairness and economic imbalance, is also the choice that shows the utmost respect for the system's rules. The latter, though it tries its best to make amends, inevitably raises concerns among participants about the officials abusing their power and arbitrarily modifying data.

In 2016, Ethereum, which had been online for less than a year, faced The DAO Hack. It was just like an MMORPG with a critical vulnerability. Fixing the bug was a given, but as for whether to accept the consequence of 3.6 million ETH being stolen or to modify the code to recover the funds, the community was deeply divided and engaged in a fierce debate. Interestingly, the initial catalyst for Ethereum's main founder, Vitalik, to realize the ills of centralization was his experience playing World of Warcraft. In a 2009 update, the game's developer, Blizzard, removed the damage component of the warlock's Siphon Life spell, effectively crippling his character's power in an instant. In an MMORPG, the game developer is God, with the absolute power to modify characters and all sorts of data. Seven years later, Vitalik—later known affectionately (and sometimes jokingly) as "V God" in the Chinese-speaking world—had switched from the role of a player to that of a blockchain developer. What was his proposal for handling this incident?

First, let's clarify the scale of The DAO Hack. 3.6 million ETH was worth "only" about 50 million US dollars at the time, not even qualifying as a major theft in blockchain history. However, that was based on the market value and US dollar standard of the time. Calculated at the current rate of $3,878 per ETH, this sum would be a staggering $13.96 billion. In comparison, the largest cryptocurrency theft in history, which occurred in February of this year, involved assets stolen from Bybit valued at "only" $1.46 billion at the time. Even at current coin prices, this is six to seven times smaller than the scale of The DAO Hack. Furthermore, consider BitMine, the institution that currently holds the most ETH, with a position of around 560,000 ETH—less than one-sixth of the amount stolen. Comparing these numbers isn't to say that principles can be cast aside if the scale is large enough, but when making such a difficult decision, it's impossible not to consider the amount of money involved, especially when the scale of the theft is large enough to cause the entire ecosystem to sink without a trace.

The final outcome is well-known to many. The event split the community into two factions. One side held "code is law" as its highest principle, preferring to let the "cracker" walk away with the funds (some would even argue that the morally charged term "cracker" shouldn't be used). The other side, which included Vitalik, advocated for adding code to prevent the hacker from withdrawing the funds, allowing users to get their money back. Although forum discussions and one-coin-one-vote polls showed the latter opinion was more mainstream, the faction advocating for no changes also garnered enough support from miners. This ultimately led to a hard fork, creating two parallel worlds. The former became Ethereum Classic (ETC), while the latter is the Ethereum and ETH that the public knows today.

I joined the community too late to have personally participated in The DAO Hack. Looking back at the records, I agree with the handling of the situation by adding code to stop the "cracker". On the surface, this contradicts my previously emphasized stance of "code is law," but in reality, it reflects a deeper understanding of "law" and, in my view, marks the beginning of Ethereum's human-centric approach.

Whether in a democracy or an authoritarian society, no one would deny the importance of law. Yet, their interpretations can be worlds apart. The former, rule of law, uses law to check government power and prevent its overreach. The latter, rule by law, uses law to control the populace and consolidate governance. In the former, the law reflects the will of the people, and the legislative process is authorized by them. In the latter, the law reflects the will of the regime, serving the administration; there is even "legislation by decree," where new laws are enacted first and "deliberated" later (this is different from the "legislate first, then review" proposed during the Sunflower Movement, as it refers to new legal articles being promulgated and taking effect immediately, with "deliberation" to follow at a later date).

Returning to The DAO Hack, the act of adding code to recover the stolen ETH is not enough on its own to determine right from wrong. We must consider whether the community, in its crisis management, adhered as much as possible to democratic principles—encouraging expression, communication, and discussion—rather than acting autocratically or as a "tyranny of the majority" in the name of efficiency. By the same token, "code is law" alone is not a sufficient reason to reject all needs to modify code. It's impossible to avoid making a judgment on whether a certain action is an attack or normal usage, let alone treating a bug as a feature. Otherwise, if human judgment were to be completely excluded, wouldn't the first version of the code become an eternally immutable law after its public release, never to be updated?

It is common knowledge that Taiwan is a society that emphasizes sentiment, reason, and law, often in that order. When practiced well, this manifests as human warmth; when abused, it becomes perfunctory, where the law is not followed. During the 2014 Sunflower Movement, breaking into the Legislative Yuan was, objectively, illegal. However, law enforcement and the judiciary considered the overall context and the sentiment and reason beyond the law, respecting the public's will by exercising discretion. This reflects a people-first, human-centric approach. In contrast, some societies exercise prosecutorial discretion for the powerful and well-connected while stressing to citizens that "the law is the law." And if no law is broken, they can tailor-make new ones with extreme speed. This is an abuse of sentiment, reason, and law, and it is why humanism must underpin the principle of "code is law."

In the physical world, everyone is born a citizen of Country X. A few who wish to be citizens of another country can choose to emigrate, but most can only sigh, "In my next life, I won't be a citizen of Country X." The digital world is different. Blockchains are permissionless ecosystems. If you have a major grievance, you can always "vote with your feet." If the dissenting voices reach a critical point, it can even result in an effect of "forking the government."

Back then, for Ethereum to modify its code to handle The DAO Hack, it would have been absolutely impossible to rely on the will of the Foundation or Vitalik alone had the miners not agreed and cooperated by upgrading their nodes. The subsequent fork into Ethereum and Ethereum Classic, and which ecosystem would ultimately become more vibrant and enduring, was also the result of the entire community's continuous "voting" through their actions. After The DAO Hack, Ethereum has thrived through difficulties to this day. Meanwhile, Ethereum Classic has suffered multiple 51% attacks, and its current market value is less than 1% of the former's, a fact that reflects the community's choice.

Ever since Nokia, the "dumb phone" maker, used "Connecting People" (or more literally, "Technology always comes from humanity") as its advertising slogan in the 1990s, the saying has become deeply ingrained in the public consciousness, as if it were an indisputable consensus. However, an advertisement, after all, only seeks to create an image. "Human-centric" becomes just a slogan, and its actual meaning is often a matter of divided opinion.

The most common and resonant understanding of "human-centric" is "easy to use." There's nothing wrong with this understanding; tech products should be intelligible to grandmothers and children alike—who could object? From this perspective, one must admit that blockchain is an absolute failure. And Ethereum, with its massive architecture that includes L2 designs, is even harder to use than other blockchains. Even for someone like me who uses it daily, I spent a whole day last week on an incompatibility issue between a smart account and a multi-sig wallet interface. Imagine how it is for a newcomer. The weakness of a poor user experience cannot be denied. Fortunately, the Ethereum community is actively confronting this. After successfully scaling, it has begun to gradually improve the user experience through updates like smart accounts.

However, ease of use isn't everything, nor should it override higher values. For instance, WeChat is very easy to use, but it lacks end-to-end encryption and its payment system is completely centralized. This is not what a human-centric approach should look like. A truly human-centric approach doesn't just cater to the interests of developers and venture capitalists, let alone those of powerful nations or governments. It also cares for the underdogs, the marginalized, the disadvantaged, and the long-term well-being of all humanity. It pursues not short-term price surges, but sustainable and affordable transaction fees. It considers not just efficiency and cost-effectiveness, but also privacy and resilience. It cares not just about humans, but also the environment and other species.

I am immensely glad that the core values demonstrated by Ethereum over the past decade—from not kowtowing to VCs and distributing the initial ETH fairly at the start, to spending years on development to switch to PoS and reduce energy consumption by 99%, to sacrificing short-term gains by moving most transactions to L2, and to recently investing significant R&D resources into technologies like zero-knowledge proofs to enhance privacy—all embody the humanistic spirit I aspire to.

Although it may seem obvious in hindsight, it is in fact incredibly difficult. Consider the pressures: Tron stands undefeated by aligning with a powerful state; Solana achieves powerful performance by slightly sacrificing decentralization; ETH's own token demand has fallen sharply in the short term due to the L2 architecture. In such a fiercely competitive business environment, to resist the temptation of short-term profits, withstand voices of doubt, and still show humanistic care is a rare and precious quality.

I hope that in the next decade, two decades, or ten decades, Ethereum will continue to uphold its long-term vision, prioritizing resilience, privacy, and the public good. May it be a century for humanity, transcending the narrow vision of nation-states to work for the well-being of all humankind.