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Code and Contract: The Hidden Unity of Law and Software (Ep. 11)
At 3:34 AM on June 17, 2016, sixty million dollars began draining from the DAO. The attacker had found a flaw in the smart contract—a recursive call that let them withdraw funds before the balance could update. They were stealing a fortune. They were also following every rule exactly as written.
This episode traces four thousand years of encoding human rules into formal systems. In the temple schools of ancient Babylon, scribes pressed the first if-then conditionals into clay: "Shumma awilum"—if a man. Hammurabi carved 282 laws into black diorite, each following that same pattern. The syntax that governed Mesopotamian justice is structurally identical to the syntax that governs every programming language ever designed.
The Romans refined the technology. Gaius organized law into persons, things, and actions—categories that map directly onto objects, data, and methods. Papinian, the greatest jurist of his age, was executed for refusing to provide legal cover for imperial murder. His final words: "It is easier to commit parricide than to justify it."
When Nick Szabo published his paper on smart contracts in 1994, he promised code that would execute itself, eliminating human discretion and the corruption that comes with it. The DAO was supposed to prove the concept. Instead, it proved the limits.
The Ethereum community faced an ancient choice: follow the rules and accept injustice, or break the rules to achieve justice. They forked the blockchain and returned the funds. Thirteen percent refused—maintaining Ethereum Classic, maintaining that code is law.
The attacker's funds on Ethereum Classic have never moved. Hundreds of millions of dollars, untouched since June 2016. A monument to the road not taken.
Legal code and computer code are not merely similar. They are the same thing—different implementations of the same four-thousand-year-old technology. The scribe and the programmer, separated by forty centuries, both pressing symbols into mediums, both hoping the words will mean what they say. Both discovering that formal systems are necessary but insufficient. That judgment cannot be coded away. That the code is law—and the law is what we make of it.
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By Bored and AmbitiousAt 3:34 AM on June 17, 2016, sixty million dollars began draining from the DAO. The attacker had found a flaw in the smart contract—a recursive call that let them withdraw funds before the balance could update. They were stealing a fortune. They were also following every rule exactly as written.
This episode traces four thousand years of encoding human rules into formal systems. In the temple schools of ancient Babylon, scribes pressed the first if-then conditionals into clay: "Shumma awilum"—if a man. Hammurabi carved 282 laws into black diorite, each following that same pattern. The syntax that governed Mesopotamian justice is structurally identical to the syntax that governs every programming language ever designed.
The Romans refined the technology. Gaius organized law into persons, things, and actions—categories that map directly onto objects, data, and methods. Papinian, the greatest jurist of his age, was executed for refusing to provide legal cover for imperial murder. His final words: "It is easier to commit parricide than to justify it."
When Nick Szabo published his paper on smart contracts in 1994, he promised code that would execute itself, eliminating human discretion and the corruption that comes with it. The DAO was supposed to prove the concept. Instead, it proved the limits.
The Ethereum community faced an ancient choice: follow the rules and accept injustice, or break the rules to achieve justice. They forked the blockchain and returned the funds. Thirteen percent refused—maintaining Ethereum Classic, maintaining that code is law.
The attacker's funds on Ethereum Classic have never moved. Hundreds of millions of dollars, untouched since June 2016. A monument to the road not taken.
Legal code and computer code are not merely similar. They are the same thing—different implementations of the same four-thousand-year-old technology. The scribe and the programmer, separated by forty centuries, both pressing symbols into mediums, both hoping the words will mean what they say. Both discovering that formal systems are necessary but insufficient. That judgment cannot be coded away. That the code is law—and the law is what we make of it.