While it will probably only be aa hardware hack at first, this will eventually lead to some kind of software hack.
Did you read the IRC log posted above? neimod made it quite clear a software hack will almost certainly
not be possible (at all). Because of how the 3DS works, you cannot load new code. Assuming you find an exploit, the best you can do is jump to other (already existing and loaded) code. You'd then have to exploit THAT code (breaking out of the kernel) as well to be able to load custom code. He is 99.9% sure purely software homebrew will
not be possible. And this is coming from neimod, who knows the 3DS better than anyone else in the homebrew scene (or probably in Nintendo
)