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Miners Aren’t Friends

blog.keep.network

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Re: Miners Aren’t Friends

#141

Post by dcow »

epistasis wrote: post #139
spookthesunset wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares about the language when the very premise of the project "code is law" was proven wrong. When the DAO was "hacked" by a "thief", rather than tell people "whelp, code is law and the code executed perfect" the mob (more accurately, those at the top of the etherium pyramid) decided to change history and roll back the blockchain. Even the language designed to describe the "hack" was garbage. It wasn't a "hack",…

IMHO, "code is law" is a silly thing to aim for, and by ignoring that saying for the DAO incident proves that Ethereum is more valuable than it would be otherwise. The "code is law" is just hype about how amazing and new and unprecedented this thing is, but it's a truly bad idea. The reversibility of bugs is a good thing. In human law, there are exceptions, and appeals, etc. Aiming for a completely mechanical system…

I'm a little lost. What does ETH provide society if it's just another system for allowing 51% of people to screw over the 49% that dissent?

Re: Miners Aren’t Friends

#142

Post by psyc »

epistasis wrote: post #139
spookthesunset wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares about the language when the very premise of the project "code is law" was proven wrong. When the DAO was "hacked" by a "thief", rather than tell people "whelp, code is law and the code executed perfect" the mob (more accurately, those at the top of the etherium pyramid) decided to change history and roll back the blockchain. Even the language designed to describe the "hack" was garbage. It wasn't a "hack",…

IMHO, "code is law" is a silly thing to aim for, and by ignoring that saying for the DAO incident proves that Ethereum is more valuable than it would be otherwise. The "code is law" is just hype about how amazing and new and unprecedented this thing is, but it's a truly bad idea. The reversibility of bugs is a good thing. In human law, there are exceptions, and appeals, etc. Aiming for a completely mechanical system…

I think it's just the wrong forum, and fundamentally incompatible with "popularity". In crypto-anarchist mythos, hackers interact via deterministic, mechanical intermediary. It's darwinian. It's expected that participants shall beware, and inept ones will be injured.

It may not be for you, and it may not be for society writ large, but it is an excellent and very important idea. Removing human judgement is exactly the point. Whether this thrills or horrifies you is, I think, a personality trait.

Re: Miners Aren’t Friends

#143

Post by xg15 »

floatrock wrote: post #112
shadowfiend wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full disclosure: tech lead on Keep (the project whose blog this is posted to), and the post is by one of our advisors. You're right that this particular example has other downsides. The goal was to present the simplest examples of some attacks and issues that are easy to miss when doing blockchain programming. As I mentioned in another comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16144892 ), the important thing is…

So in the same way a competent web programmer understands CSRF and XSS, a competent backend programmer understands SQL injection, and a competent node programmer understands concurrency vs. parallelism, there's a whole new set of paradigms (and interview questions!) that competent blockchain programmers will need to know. The is-blockchain-hype-or-here-to-stay debate will unambiguously be settled if OWASP ever publis…

> ...there's a whole new set of paradigms (and interview questions!) that competent blockchain programmers will need to know.

Yes, "paradigms" in the sense that broken bones and multiresistent germ infections are technically both "injuries" and can be fixed by "healing".

I think securing code against random accidents or even against specific, well-known vulnerabilities is something entirely different than writing a program for a processor that actively works against you.

We're realizing this right now in the context of adversarial code with Meltdown/Spectre and Rowhammer. I think this is a similar but even worse situation.

Re: Miners Aren’t Friends

#144

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Tepix wrote: post #106
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the chances of simultaneous transactions? (That's a question, not a snarky statement).

There aren't any. That's what the article was about: The order of the transactions in a block.

Sorry I shouldn't perhaps have said transactions - the parent asks what to do with simultaneous requests for to reserve a unique unduplicable good, it was the simultaneity of identical requests I was asking about rather than the impossible simultaneity of processing the blockchain transactions.

Re: Miners Aren’t Friends

#145

Post by scott_karana »

rhaps0dy wrote: post #120

The title of the piece is "Miners aren't your friends", implying that the interests of miners and the reader differ. However, the title of the HN submission is "Miners aren't friends", which implies that the interests of two separate miners diverge. We should probably change the title to match the original one.

Agreed, I was frustrated at that too.

Re: Miners Aren’t Friends

#146

Post by epistasis »

dcow wrote: post #141
epistasis wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, "code is law" is a silly thing to aim for, and by ignoring that saying for the DAO incident proves that Ethereum is more valuable than it would be otherwise. The "code is law" is just hype about how amazing and new and unprecedented this thing is, but it's a truly bad idea. The reversibility of bugs is a good thing. In human law, there are exceptions, and appeals, etc. Aiming for a completely mechanical system…

I'm a little lost. What does ETH provide society if it's just another system for allowing 51% of people to screw over the 49% that dissent?

It's not 51% of people, it's 51% of computing power, or 51% of stake if Ethereum ever switches to proof of stake. Ethereum runs by capitalistic power, not democratic power.

I don't know if there's any alternative to that; any such system is going to have some means of enforcing truth and power, and means of gaining or losing it.

Cryptocurrencies are not a way of escaping that fundamental fact. They shift where the power is. Having that alternative to current ledger and contract systems can be valuable to people in certain situations.

Thinking that Ethereum or Bitcoin or any blockchain tech escapes these fundamental power relationships is exactly the type of inanity that makes the tech seem unserious. It's a hype train, it's not true, but there is still the potential for value.

Re: Miners Aren’t Friends

#147

Post by epistasis »

psyc wrote: post #142
epistasis wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, "code is law" is a silly thing to aim for, and by ignoring that saying for the DAO incident proves that Ethereum is more valuable than it would be otherwise. The "code is law" is just hype about how amazing and new and unprecedented this thing is, but it's a truly bad idea. The reversibility of bugs is a good thing. In human law, there are exceptions, and appeals, etc. Aiming for a completely mechanical system…

I think it's just the wrong forum, and fundamentally incompatible with "popularity". In crypto-anarchist mythos, hackers interact via deterministic, mechanical intermediary. It's darwinian. It's expected that participants shall beware, and inept ones will be injured. It may not be for you, and it may not be for society writ large, but it is an excellent and very important idea. Removing human judgement is exactly the…

> Removing human judgement is exactly the point. Whether this thrills or horrifies you is, I think, a personality trait.

I attach neither horror nor thrill to that idea, I find it laughable. We all have our abstract ideals, and these abstract ideals eventually meet the reality of human interaction. There is no possibility of removing human judgement, as long as humans are in control of the machines. Humans may temporarily agree to go with whatever the machines say, but that is only a temporary status, as whoever controls the machines has ultimate control.

Re: Miners Aren’t Friends

#148

Post by comex »

xucheng wrote: post #60
runeks wrote: post #11

> Again, let’s design a simple smart contract. This time Alice wants to play a guessing game. Alice puts 5 Ether in her contract. That ETH goes to the person that guesses closest to the number she’s thinking of. Alice calls commit with the hash of the number, so she can’t change her mind. Anyone else can call guess to submit a guess. After 2 blocks Alice calls reveal to tell everyone what the number is. This scheme i…

> Alice’s commit transaction needs to specify some block height after which further guesses are ignored, and then publish the “reveal” message some (safe) number of blocks after this. I think this is unsafe as well. Noted that since everyone can verify the real answer, there is no point for Alice to reveal it. As a result, as soon as anyone submits the correct answer, the miners can cheat and replace the answer as th…

If the commitment uses a salt, it won’t be possible for anyone to verify guesses before Alice publishes the reveal message (which would include the salt).

In any case, the blog post has Alice rewarding whoever comes closest, not whoever guesses the exact value. For a sufficiently large range of numbers (e.g. 128 bits), you wouldn’t really need a salt since the probability of anyone guessing the exact value would be negligible.

Re: Miners Aren’t Friends

#149

Post by madeofpalk »

epistasis wrote: post #146
dcow wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little lost. What does ETH provide society if it's just another system for allowing 51% of people to screw over the 49% that dissent?

It's not 51% of people, it's 51% of computing power, or 51% of stake if Ethereum ever switches to proof of stake. Ethereum runs by capitalistic power, not democratic power. I don't know if there's any alternative to that; any such system is going to have some means of enforcing truth and power, and means of gaining or losing it. Cryptocurrencies are not a way of escaping that fundamental fact. They shift where the po…

> It's not 51% of people, it's 51% of computing power,

Cool, so in reality a lot less than 51% of people can screw over every else.

Again, what is it that ETH provides society that's new and useful?

Re: Miners Aren’t Friends

#150

Post by andybak »

deft wrote: post #134
andybak wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Classic capitalist view I would consider myself center-left and I think you're confusing "capitalism" with "realism". Any political system that requires altruism towards strangers is doomed. Altruism grows out of community - and requires consequences for "bad" behaviour to some degree. Tragedy of the Commons and all that.

Capitalism demands constant growth. His usage fits perfectly. Center-left means you are a capitalism supporter and makes no difference. Claiming the capitalist mode of production is "realism" is really you trying to say capitalism is natural.

Before I answer that, could you clarify your definition of "capitalism"?

(Genuine question)

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