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A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

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Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#201

Post by jacquesm »

bsaul wrote: post #182
jacquesm wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, once more: I'm not saying smart contracts work at present. But if they work then judges would be without tools to do anything about it, that's a matter of definition, if you choose to define a smart contract in a way that does not agree with how the rest of the world views them then that's fine with me but it voids the discussion. Any contract that has all the outward aspects of being a smart contract but that…

so the scope of smart contract in your definition can only cover areas not already governed by traditional regulatory system / laws. Imho that doesn't cover a lot. or laws will have to be adapted to grant values to them. But then it isn't much different from today's contracts.

> so the scope of smart contract in your definition can only cover areas not already governed by traditional regulatory system / laws.

Correct, if you don't need a smart contract using one won't give you any advantages.

> Imho that doesn't cover a lot.

We're going to have to disagree on that.

> or laws will have to be adapted to grant values to them.

Absent a global government I don't see how that could be done.

> But then it isn't much different from today's contracts.

Well, it is, but not for most normal transactions.

if smart contracts can really be made to work they will be an enabler much like the laser, we didn't really have an application for those either when they were first invented.

But people are already getting creative with them and the DAO is a nice example of what could be done if smart contracts can be reliably built and executed.

I don't think this will happen in the near future because writing a regular contract is hard enough, a smart contract has to be perfect for it to be of value because any bugs will be beyond the regular safe-guards ability to be fixed, you will most likely simply lose your money or your goods without recourse.

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#202

Post by thinkloop »

rtpg wrote: post #88
HaseebQ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grant your point, but disagree with your framing of the problem. I think a good analogy here is to compare to American settlers. You're going to have a few waves: the explorers who move into totally uncharted territory and take on significant risk by using smart contracts. These are kinda crazy people who love the innovation, and I'd argue this is the majority of people in the space right now. Eventually there will…

Serious question: How can smart contracts create the "proper" trustless environment for most workplace contracts? For example, stock option agreements are usually pretty straightforward... until a termination date has to be decided on. How does the termination get put into the contract? Though I suppose smart contracts could exist as an automation mechansim , but there's a "wrapper contract" that provides "real deal"…

Bringing trustworthy real-world data into a blockchain in a decentralized manner is a known and important challenge that is being worked on by several projects like Augur. The prevailing answer is to incentivise humans to insert it correctly by appropriately aligning rewards for doing so, and making it difficult not to do so (schelling points). That's what the Augur project is really about, the prediction market they are building is just the first application of that system.

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#204

Post by novalis78 »

lsmarigo wrote: post #181
kahnpro wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a problem that everybody seems to skip over with cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are being sold as eliminating trust and allow us to rely on the cold certainty of mathematics. Only trust hasn't been eliminated from the system, it's just been shifted from a central bank to the authors of the software client you're using. To the majority of the miners in the network. The awful politics, lies, greed, corrupti…

Much worse in fact, since the entities in power have no oversight, were not elected, and have no obligation to anything but increasing their own personal wealth.

Not quite true. You elect with your money. Immediate. Instantly. And you withdraw your support with the one thing that hurts most: your money and move to a competing system. That's extremely liberating and powerful. Also: anybody can fork and create an alternative model whenever they prefer to do so.

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#205

Post by redy »

Jabanga wrote: post #179
dullgiulio wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, no. One hundred times, no. Governments in the west are quite accountable, voted for and with a system of checks and balances that has evolved over time, through wars and revolutions. Some random benevolents overlords (white-hat hackers) that save you just because they are magnanimous was the only option only in the most primive societies. Thankfully we moved on from those times, don't you agree?

Your Whig history of an ever progressing political system is not accurate in my opinion. I've written this comment before, and I'll repeat it as it's relevant to your comment: Societies have gradually grown more unfair as the political system has strained under their growing complexity. According to political scientists, the average voter has an extremely limited understanding of what their government is doing. The t…

This is paranoid fantasy.

Back over here in reality the citizens of the West enjoy unparalleled freedom, peace and prosperity unlike anything that has ever occurred before in the history of the planet. The idea that people are less safe or less free simply has no basis in reality.

We can discuss trends and certainly some trends are very concerning (rapidly growing inequality) while others are probably nothing (any advanced economy will probably have a government GDP share of 30-40%. This is not new, not unique to the USA, and is mostly considered a sign of an advanced economy[1]). But when you start with the fantasy that the government is engaging in widespread oppression of its own citizens (and the irony of reading this on Hacker News!) it's difficult to seriously consider any secondary points you raise.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending#As_a_perce...

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#206

Post by novalis78 »

aerique wrote: post #158
buzzybee wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding smart contracts and other inventions of cryptocurrency: I think, most of all, the crypto market is absolutely vicious, in a way that both capital markets and technology companies haven't seen(in the public eye) for many, many years. As of right now there's still some faith left that Ethereum is going to go places because firms keep trying to use the technology on the basis of hype. Unlike with most overhype…

It's like EVE Online but for real.

Because it is unfettered completely innovative ruthlessly competitive free market. Boom and bust cycles from the era of industrial revolution tied to a capped deflationary currency (gold) that saw some of the fastest and most astounding speed of technological advancement in recorded human history. It's creative chaos is, personally, liberating.

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#207

Post by redy »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #195
Jabanga wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your Whig history of an ever progressing political system is not accurate in my opinion. I've written this comment before, and I'll repeat it as it's relevant to your comment: Societies have gradually grown more unfair as the political system has strained under their growing complexity. According to political scientists, the average voter has an extremely limited understanding of what their government is doing. The t…

Societies have gradually grown more unfair as the political system has strained under their growing complexity. Is this not a revisionist view of history? Modern republics are pretty new things. There were serfs (and absolute autocracy) in Russia as of 1860, slaves in the US until the 1860s, voting tied to gender until the 1920s, colonial empires without fair representation until 1950, laws against interracial and ho…

> People have so much more power than they had as little as decades ago in almost every single society and that seems to me hard to argue.

What's remarkable is the historical ignorance that drives such arguments. Citizens of the West enjoy access to information today that would seem like a dream even just 10 years ago. And while the mass surveillance policies of today suck hard they are absolutely nothing compared to the surveillance abuses of the 1970s which were uncovered by the Church or Pike committees.

But combine historical ignorance and fantastic propaganda and you get exactly this sort of nonsense.

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#208

Post by heliumcraft »

bastawhiz wrote: post #33
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know I'm this situation the dev made a simple mistake, but I wonder if Ethereum is safe as a system assuming developers will make many mistakes, and those mistakes will happen more often as more complicated contracts are written. This will probably come off as being assholish, but I honestly don't mean it to be: you should read the rest of the article. It actually covers this topic in depth and has good thoughts…

The rest of the article amounts to a few points: - Humans make mistakes, the tools should have been better - The technology to make Ethereum safe doesn't really exist - We should work to make that technology exist - We should be happy this happened since it raises awareness about the problem > In the end, attacks like this are good for the community. They call you to your senses and force you to keep your eyes open.…

Gavin wood did not write that change nor review it. https://github.com/paritytech/parity/pull/3773/

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#209

Post by beefield »

novalis78 wrote: post #204
lsmarigo wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much worse in fact, since the entities in power have no oversight, were not elected, and have no obligation to anything but increasing their own personal wealth.

Not quite true. You elect with your money. Immediate. Instantly. And you withdraw your support with the one thing that hurts most: your money and move to a competing system. That's extremely liberating and powerful. Also: anybody can fork and create an alternative model whenever they prefer to do so.

Only in this particular case you do not have any money left because you made (probably unknowingly) a contract to give it away. (Or it was stolen, depending on your point of view, but anyway, there is no money left to vote with)

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#210

Post by mannykannot »

shadowmint wrote: post #42

This is a very pro-Ether take on what happened, but ultimately it comes to the right conclusion: > The problem is that his programming toolchain allowed him to make these mistakes. Damn straight. The problem is that the model of 'public by default, opt in for security' is fundamentally daft in this context. There's quite a good read on that particular topic here too http://hackingdistributed.com/2017/07/20/parity-wal…

>This is a very pro-Ether take on what happened, but ultimately it comes to the right conclusion:

>> The problem is that his programming toolchain allowed him to make these mistakes.

This is not the right conclusion; it is too shallow. It suggests that the risks of smart contracts can be fixed with some changes to the programming toolchain, but no-one has ever made one that only produces secure code, and I think I can safely call that notion a pipe-dream. How, then, do we write code with the level of security needed by smart contracts, and in the volume needed for smart contracts to be useful, if they are to be publicly accessible like Ethereum? The fact is, this has never been done before at that volume, and we do not know how to do it.

> Just remember...

>> certainly you should not store any money in a hot wallet that you’re not comfortable losing.

But what does it take to be comfortable? Unless you are just going to take someone else's word for it, you would have to examine all the code, including the libraries and the EVM itself, and be competent enough in security to be comfortable that you had not overlooked ay risks. But the real problem is that this does not just apply to hot wallets, it applies to anything that puts your Ethereum at risk. So, in practice, 'being comfortable' means trusting a bunch of people you probably do not know well, and with no recourse if that trust turned out to be overly optimistic.

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