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Ethereum is Doomed

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Re: Ethereum is Doomed

#31

Post by pmorici »

cheez wrote: post #21
pmorici wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What _legally_ exploitable bank bugs have you heard of? Keyword there being legally.

It's effectively legal because a lot of financial fraud is not pursued. For example, people from different countries scamming old people out of $1000 for Prince Abu to free his millions. That being said, I can understand why you think something being legally exploitable is something new. Just like a loophole in a contract is a loophole in a contract. In the case of smart contracts, there is no recourse unless built i…

Scamming old people isn't a bug with the bank.

Re: Ethereum is Doomed

#32

Post by JorgeGT »

3pt14159 wrote: post #9

Ethereum isn't doomed. I don't think it will ever have as much backing as Bitcoin because of institutional buy-in; but the world needs programmable smart contracts. Some rich soon-to-be-dead billionaire tech nerds want to be able to do something every year without worrying about a judge taking that away from them. Individual will is what cryptocurrencies are about. Bitcoin in terms of international payments and store…

> Some rich soon-to-be-dead billionaire tech nerds want to be able to do something every year without worrying about a judge taking that away from them.

But apparently it only takes a fork to freeze/reverse their contracts. I would take my chances with a traditional foundation, Alfred Nobel's is still running smoothly since +110 years ago, yearly executing its "code".

Re: Ethereum is Doomed

#33

Post by dragontamer »

endergen wrote: post #29

I love that Smart Contracts act basically as bug bounties to make the Ethereum systems, community knowledge, and open contracts improve dramatically.

I love how law and court systems are basically bug bounties on legal systems, community knowledge, and social constructs. Society will inevitably improve dramatically.

Oh wait, no. We just turned programmers into politicians and lawyers. I think more people will be pissed when they find out that "trust in the system" ultimately means "trust the writer of the smart contract".

Unlike law, which has admitted that insane things happen and provides "emergency stops" (ie: Supreme Court can say whatever the heck they want and provide a check against any of Congress's laws)... there isn't really a way to add human "emergency stops" to the equation of Ethereum.

Re: Ethereum is Doomed

#34

Post by viraptor »

SlipperySlope wrote: post #2

The programming classic "Mythical Man Month" had a chapter for the "second system effect". Its where developers put lots of complicated features in to the second system in a series. Its a pattern for failure. In this case, Ethereum developers built a much more complicated cryptocurrency by making it Turing complete - to the extent of writing their own new computer language and virtual machine to run it. They skipped…

That's actually a pretty good decision in my opinion. At least in this case. Think what would happen if they went for alternative solutions:

1. If it wasn't immutable, you'd never be sure when a contract changes. That's the basic assumption about contract - once you sign it, whether in real world, or by doing some action in Ethereum, you don't expect it to change how it works. That's why immutable is good.

2. User-contributed is just how it's supposed to work. It's decentralised. Everyone's a user. The content has to be user-contributed. Having some central publisher/gatekeeper is contrary to the whole idea.

3. Own VM is debatable. Sure, they could go with JVM, but the scope would have to include much more complexity (classes, namespaces, etc.) than just function/instruction execution. Maybe the limits of javacard would be enough, maybe not.

I really don't think the second system effect applies here. It's not a rewrite of something that existed and had issues.

Re: Ethereum is Doomed

#35

Post by amaks »

aakilfernandes wrote: post #30
amaks wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All computations on Ethereum have to be funded with "gas" (transaction fees) But that's what was wrong with the exploited DAO code - it didn't use gas. The point of the article is that it's very hard or impossible to verify the correctness of the smart contracts.

> it didn't use gas this is incorrect

Well perhaps but I read this article (http://vessenes.com/deconstructing-thedao-attack-a-brief-cod...) and it says:

"OK, here we go. _recipient.call.value()() is called without a gas amount. That is easily attackable with an attacking wallet."

Re: Ethereum is Doomed

#36

Post by [deleted] »

amaks wrote: post #35
aakilfernandes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it didn't use gas this is incorrect

Well perhaps but I read this article ( http://vessenes.com/deconstructing-thedao-attack-a-brief-cod... ) and it says: "OK, here we go. _recipient.call.value()() is called without a gas amount. That is easily attackable with an attacking wallet."

[deleted]

Re: Ethereum is Doomed

#37

Post by eternalban »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #19

I didn't know the language was turing complete. Isn't this computing 101? If you want a secure thing then you must be able to reason about it statically. Making things turing complete means any non-trivial property of program correctness can not have a generic solution and so you've just opened yourself up to a world of hurt.

Another VC funded outfit I chatted with also boast of TC. This is, I agree with you, software engineering 101. But that's probably it: don't know about you, but I could not stomach making a pitch for funding for the latest hype [1] knowing that the fundamentals are unsound.

I am hoping that the recent events -- Theranos, out-smarted contracts, etc. -- will permit a return to maturity in this field. Money has poisoned this field.

[1]: wrote about (genetically) evolving cellular corporation back in '96 so this is not a case of I don't get it.

Re: Ethereum is Doomed

#38

Post by viraptor »

3pt14159 wrote: post #9

Ethereum isn't doomed. I don't think it will ever have as much backing as Bitcoin because of institutional buy-in; but the world needs programmable smart contracts. Some rich soon-to-be-dead billionaire tech nerds want to be able to do something every year without worrying about a judge taking that away from them. Individual will is what cryptocurrencies are about. Bitcoin in terms of international payments and store…

I think you're thinking of use cases that would definitely be stopped outside of ethereum world:

> Some rich soon-to-be-dead billionaire tech nerds want to be able to do something every year without worrying about a judge taking that away from them.

You can do things like this, but the law either already covers this, or will adjust. If you gain money, you're expected to pay the usual tax on that gain. First few may get away with it, but once it becomes popular, audits will start.

> Individual will is what cryptocurrencies are about.

Same as above - inheritance tax.

Essentially it's this xkcd situation: https://xkcd.com/1494/ Just with wealth gain and tax office instead.

Re: Ethereum is Doomed

#39

Post by aakilfernandes »

amaks wrote: post #35
aakilfernandes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it didn't use gas this is incorrect

Well perhaps but I read this article ( http://vessenes.com/deconstructing-thedao-attack-a-brief-cod... ) and it says: "OK, here we go. _recipient.call.value()() is called without a gas amount. That is easily attackable with an attacking wallet."

Ah, that means the exact opposite ie "use as much gas as needed".

This is different from the default _recipient.send() which would be limited to 2300 gas

Re: Ethereum is Doomed

#40

Post by viraptor »

cheez wrote: post #21
pmorici wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What _legally_ exploitable bank bugs have you heard of? Keyword there being legally.

It's effectively legal because a lot of financial fraud is not pursued. For example, people from different countries scamming old people out of $1000 for Prince Abu to free his millions. That being said, I can understand why you think something being legally exploitable is something new. Just like a loophole in a contract is a loophole in a contract. In the case of smart contracts, there is no recourse unless built i…

> It's effectively legal because a lot of financial fraud is not pursued.

That's not what "legal" means. Just like killing people without leaving traces to find you is not "effectively legal". It may simply be not worth pursuing because of gain/effort trade off.

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