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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

#271

Post by holtalanm »

CoryG89 wrote: post #225
brazzy wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is a bit too simplistic a view, and the better question is: when things go wrong, what is your fallback? Modern governments provide an elaborate system of fallbacks: checks and balances, a justice system with multiple levels of appeals. Those may be complex and fallible, but they are at least reasonably good at dealing with unexpected problems. When a smart contract goes wrong, there are no fallbacks.

> When a smart contract goes wrong, there are no fallbacks. Sure there is. As the DAO hack showed us, if you can get enough of the network to agree to it, you can literally rewrite history and create an alternate universe where the contract never went wrong.

so, essentially there are no fallbacks. Unless you want to break one of the core founding values of cryptocurrency.

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

#272

Post by krisoft »

meddlepal wrote: post #255
jacquesm wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of smart contracts is that lawyers' (and judges) opinions are not relevant. As soon as you need them and they have some power to make the thing go one way or the other the whole smart contract concept has failed.

This is adorably naive hacker thinking.

I agree with you. If the point of a smart contract is that "code is law" and "judges doesn't make decision, the protocol does", that surely sounds like naive hacker thinking.

If that's not the point of smart contracts then what is a smart contract? How is it different from that thing which we call just "contract"?

So either the smart contracts are just contracts, or they are product of naive hacker thinking.

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

#274

Post by Spivak »

empath75 wrote: post #169
spuz wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, what's the point of having a smart contract if it's not the final authority? I think this is a common misunderstanding of Ethereum and blockchains in general. The current Ethereum blockchain is authoritative only as long as a majority of it users consider it to be authoritative. The same applies to Bitcoin. No single person decided to fork Ethereum after the DAO was hacked, it was decided by a quorum of Ether…

You are making the argument that if, say, you've made a bunch of ethereum through means that the majority of miners don't like, they can just fork the currency and take your coins from you, and that's totally fine.

Other than the 'totally fine' part that accurately describes the situation with basically all cryptocurrentcies. How many coins you have is stored in a distributed ledger which can be arbitrarily modified with a majority of computing power.

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

#276

Post by holtalanm »

Pigo wrote: post #243
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…

>It’s important to understand that this exploit was not a vulnerability in Ethereum or in Parity itself. Rather, it was a vulnerability in the default smart contract code that the Parity client gives the user for deploying multi-signature wallets. Yeah, I don't see the difference here. So it was an aspect of Ethereum that had the vulnerability, how many more millions have to be stolen before the system is successfull…

I read that and said to myself "So....it WAS a vulnerability in Parity"

The article stating that it wasn't a vulnerability with Parity AND THEN IMMEDIATELY AFTER stating it was a vulnerability with code distributed BY PARITY is throwing up all sorts of red flags with me.

Like the Wizard of OZ with "There is nothing behind the curtain"

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

#277

Post by kcanini »

jacquesm wrote: post #142
wildmusings wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The world is larger than just your own country. Not too much larger, considering that every major company and country has large amounts of assets and other financial interests that are subject to US jurisdiction. The government of Argentina recently learned that the hard way when American courts forced them to honor their sovereign debt, or have their US-based assets seized to pay them. The same applies if you want…

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…

> Any contract that has all the outward aspects of being a smart contract but that allows a judge (or anybody else for that matter) to influence the outcome once it is activated is by definition a failed smart contract.

I think the crux of your argument with Marco is that he is viewing the "outcome" in a larger scope than you are. You seem to be focusing on the "outcome" as only the output of the smart contract, while the is viewing the "outcome" as the real-world consequences of the entire situation, as embedded in our political and legal systems.

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

#278

Post by [deleted] »

pdkl95 wrote: post #197
jacquesm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really just simply do not get it. Just like the law can not define Pi to be 3 the law should not be able to influence the outcome of a smart contract if smart contracts work at all because that is how it is intended to work, smart contracts are supposed to be the entirety of the agreement, no outside interpretation should make a difference nor could it make a difference. This is where the Ethereum crowd has - in…

> the law should not be able to influence the outcome of a smart contract You don't seem to understand how the law works. The problem isn't a judge trying to interfere with any of the technical features of the contract. A judge would rule on the legality of the contract as the law sees it[1]. You will be able to argue that the code is the final authority. You will probably also have to show why the other party knew a…

[deleted]

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

#279

Post by HaseebQ »

heliumcraft wrote: post #203

Again, Gavin Wood did NOT write the change that caused this, he wasn't even the reviewer.

Thanks for pointing this out. I assume because he pushed the fix that he was the developer, my mistake! Have amended the article.

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

#280

Post by meepmorp »

harryh wrote: post #245
return0 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, the question is who you trust, and that remains a moral choice, not an objective, empirical choice. Some people don't trust a government elected by only half the population, for example. Some others may prefer to trust an elite of "enlightened hackers" than hordes of plebs. You might be right that governments are more evolved and have more history but that doesn't make them universally better.

Again, the question is who you trust, and that remains a moral choice, not an objective, empirical choice. Oh come on. It absolutely is an empirical choice. Crypto-currencies have a very short history and that history is CHOCK FULL of people losing their money due to various forms of incompetence and graft. Storing your money in a bank in a western democracy has centuries of history with extremely rare losses. Please…

>Storing your money in a bank in a western democracy has centuries of history with extremely rare losses.

While I agree with your overall point, I think you're glossing over the historical instabilities in the banking system. Bank runs, failures, and physical robberies were pretty common until comparatively recently (in the US, at least - the 19th century was chock full of them).

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