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Deleting $300M by messing around with Ethereum contracts

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Re: Deleting $300M by messing around with Ethereum contracts

#31
post #20
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course no system is completely bulletproof against a determined attacker. There are however a few differences. First of all what these people did is obviously illegal and people go to jail for doing that sort of thing. As it stands there is no legal consensus on whether exploiting a bug in a smart contract is illegal or not. Secondly and more importantly, the fail-safes built into the system largely work. In the B…

Exactly. And this is just because there are no regulations to make it illegal and standard protocols to follow that, as I've mentioned in my first post, is the key requirement if crypto economy is to be something more than just a wet dream of crypto-anarchists.

But if one of the design requirements that we want/need is that people can override any contract and roll back any transaction, what do we gain from a blockchain/crypto based solution.

Re: Deleting $300M by messing around with Ethereum contracts

#32
That this could even happen - and especially not be reversed - does not bode well for the viability of Eth as 'good for anything'.

If this features continues to exist as part of Eth - it will not likely ever be used commercially.

Even the admins, experts and people working on it don't seem to understand it well enough for it to be safe ...

Re: Deleting $300M by messing around with Ethereum contracts

#34

The thing is, the kind of developers it takes to implement smart contracts correctly is probably exceptionally rare, if they even actually exist. I don't think it's impossible, but it's clearly in conflict with the "release early, release often" culture. If anything, developing smart contracts is more like building software for NASA crafts : you have to get it right before the launch. And even regarding the NASA, I g…

It's not the release culture that is at fault here. It takes age for a language to mature. Relying millions of dollars on an untested language is grounds for trouble.

Any idea why the developers chose to develop their own language, rather than just using an existing language that makes sense ?

Re: Deleting $300M by messing around with Ethereum contracts

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the release culture that is at fault here. It takes age for a language to mature. Relying millions of dollars on an untested language is grounds for trouble.

Any idea why the developers chose to develop their own language, rather than just using an existing language that makes sense ?

https://github.com/ethereum/solidity/issues/1090

Re: Deleting $300M by messing around with Ethereum contracts

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the release culture that is at fault here. It takes age for a language to mature. Relying millions of dollars on an untested language is grounds for trouble.

Any idea why the developers chose to develop their own language, rather than just using an existing language that makes sense ?

I recently started to code some Solidity, and there are some syntax expressions in the language (e.g payable function) that you wouldn't find in other languages because they don't deal with those concepts. Could you have used a modified version of Java or simply embed those concepts in a library, probably. I guess they wanted a specialized language.

Re: Deleting $300M by messing around with Ethereum contracts

#39

why is the ethereum price unscathed https://www.coingecko.com/en/price_charts/ethereum/usd despite bad news?

This happened days ago. The price of ether was going no where for some time, only in the last few days as the uptrend started.

Re: Deleting $300M by messing around with Ethereum contracts

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the release culture that is at fault here. It takes age for a language to mature. Relying millions of dollars on an untested language is grounds for trouble.

Any idea why the developers chose to develop their own language, rather than just using an existing language that makes sense ?

Hubris
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