They would gain trust for returning all of the WETH accumulated in all of the contracts where it’s been idled due to PEBCAK, in concert with a code fork that refuses to accept such transactions. That would be a sign of maturity and intelligence to bankers, and influence their consideration of whether Ethereum might be a viable platform for their financial business someday.
This idea would be antithetical to decentralization of cryptocurrency, but I think that since this issue is a platform level problem (e.g. future contracts can also introduce this) what is needed is a set of mediators/arbitrators (we can call them "judges" that hear these cases and have a technical mechanism to correct them without a fork.
In order to select these judges, the community can elect them directly or elect a board or leaders to select them indirectly.
Of course these corrections would require gas, so they may need to add a small additional gas charge to transactions to fund this group and perhaps also their salaries. We can call this extra gas a "tax".
In summary: Stand up an entire government around ETH in order to ensure the benefit of judges and humans can override code. Once you do this though, you have a central ruling authority with an in-code constitution, but parts that take place in a human judgement realm.
I set this up partially in jest of blockchain currencies in general, but I do actually say this seriously. I think that purists of decentralized code only control will hold back any possible benefits that cryptocurrency could bring. The situation above still has benefits from a monetary fiat system run by a nation state, though I think severely less than what the cryptocurrency ideal is. Some include:
- There is no nation state attached to this centralized ruling body and itself can be decentralized and beholden to no nation
- All transactions and reasons of the body can still be public and on open API's for people to integrate and monitor with modern tech
- The loose "untraceable" or general "freedom" arguments that come with a blockchain would still hold so long as the community with these tenants maintains control of the board / judges / leaders.
You jest, but “stand up a government” is a primary barrier to entry to being considered a “fiat currency”, which makes sense given the drawbacks of trying to qualify as a currency without one.
A banking-grade currency would have reversed the WETH transactions and prohibited new ones. Ethereum has refused so far to do so, even though it’s in their power to hard fork. Whether or not you view them as a currency, that’s not the sort of behavior that engenders a perception of financial trust and safety in their work.
