Overriding Code is Law

This topic is designed to determine whether it is ever appropriate to override the “Code Is Law” principle, as well as the conditions under which such an override would be acceptable.

There are some types of EIPs that some people desperately want approved, while it appears very difficult to build consensus around them. This is especially true for EIPs that propose any kind of violation of the “Code Is Law” idea. The DAO fork is a prime example, as it continues to divide and damage the community.. Because of this, there are tens of millions of dollars worth of capital that are currently locked up due to various issues. For these and other reasons, the default answer is to just reject them, causing much pain for some members of the community. Some people are afraid to commit to any leaderless organization precisely because “nobody is in charge.

We believe that it is possible to design a modern consensus-building communication system that can work more intelligently by amplifying the wisdom of the crowd. This can function more efficiently than any hierarchy at the task of getting everyone everything they want, or at least as much as possible of what they want, using an open definitive method that everyone can trust.

We want the process to be developed in a single consensus camp where we hope to achieve more than 90 percent of all groups of participants supporting it. We seek to have enough participants to provide confidence to everyone that this is a good representation of the entire ethereum community, and that it includes, concisely and quantitatively, the views of anyone with any interest in the issue.

This topic is part of the Ethereum Consensus Project.