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Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

vitalik.ca

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Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#231

Post by qrbLPHiKpiux »

jkhdigital wrote: post #15

I literally spent the past week reading a couple dozen papers on cryptocurrency attacks, in service of a term paper which should hopefully turn into a master's thesis (and possibly more during my PhD campaign). I'm pretty damn pessimistic as a result. Smart contracts basically throw all of your consensus guarantees out the window because they can cause arbitrary exchanges of value in the application layer, which can…

Whether you disagree or not, sometimes the best solution is analog, or paper.

Everything scales too easily and massively when you digitize things. Especially money and voting.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#232

Post by hannasanarion »

jstanley wrote: post #192
arcticbull wrote: post #141

None of these are the actual hard problems in cryptocurrency and the fact this is the focus speaks volumes. The real hard problems are: 1. How do we stop using more power than Switzerland to process 4 transactions per second (lol) 2. How do we stop payments to international terrorists and rogue states. 3. How do we stop money laundering. 4. How do we stop price manipulation by fraudulent actors. 5. How do we allow pe…

Points 2, 3, and 5 are essentially "how do we give the government the authority to block or reverse payments even when the sender possesses the relevant private key, or send payments even without the relevant private key". I'm not saying that's not a fine thing to want, but if that is what you want, then you don't want cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is purposefully antithetical to that goal.

Chargebacks? Reversing accidental payments? Theft? Fraud? These are all pretty important parts of the currency system, and people aren't going to give them up just for the sake of some nebulous idea of decentralization for decentralization's sake.

Do you always log into every machine as root? Do you want everyone to have admin powers on HN and every other social media/chat/forum you use? Authorities exist for a reason.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#233

Post by rmtech »

acdha wrote: post #223
cdiddy2 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are problems that aren't fixed in traditional money either. Money still gets to terrorists and still gets laundered through our biggest banks.

Yes, but note that there are laws and policies around it rather than people saying the question should be unasked.

I willingly concede that legacy/fiat money is better at stopping bad people/criminals/terrorists etc from having access to money.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#234

Post by hannasanarion »

mhluongo wrote: post #161
arcticbull wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily there are efforts being made to stop it, and fines paid and systems put in place. Are they perfect yet? No. It is still orders of magnitude better than pretending the problem doesnt exist or outwardly encouraging and abetting it.

Those banks are all still in business after billions in proven conspiracies to launder money. You might want to consider why that is.

Because once those conspiracies are discovered, the people involved are banned from banking. Can you ban people from bitcoin?

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#235

Post by hannasanarion »

rmtech wrote: post #172
arcticbull wrote: post #141

None of these are the actual hard problems in cryptocurrency and the fact this is the focus speaks volumes. The real hard problems are: 1. How do we stop using more power than Switzerland to process 4 transactions per second (lol) 2. How do we stop payments to international terrorists and rogue states. 3. How do we stop money laundering. 4. How do we stop price manipulation by fraudulent actors. 5. How do we allow pe…

> You know, the “currency” problems and not the “crypto” problems. You seem to be looking for fiat currency, that already exists. The point of cryptocurrency is that not everyone wants fiat, some people place more of a priority on certain things and less on certain other things.

I don't think you know what the word "fiat" means. Crypto is fiat currency. It's backed by nothing but wasted electricity and a lucky guess. You can't trade it in for anything of value.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#236

Post by alanfalcon »

semiotagonal wrote: post #228
jotakami wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you understand. The arbitrage bots aren’t exploiting poorly written contracts, they are capturing free value that users of a dApp have opened up. This free value is available to miners as well, and could be used to subsidize an otherwise-unprofitable double spend attack. But more to the point: allowing smart contracts in a blockchain introduces all of the complexity of trying to make any other piece of…

I did about 0.1% of the amount of research you did a few years ago and was really struck by the irreversibility of mistakes. Other engineering domains can have irreversible (e.g. fatal) mistakes as well, but they don't have as many enthusiasts jumping in to the field.

Our CTO likens developing a smart contract to civil engineering. Our CTO also remembers what it was like to ship your software in its final form on a floppy disk!

I think it’s great that more and more people are jumping in and learning what it’s like to develop in such an unforgiving domain (no point here, I just think it’s great!)

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#237

Post by sincerely »

BLanen wrote: post #81
sincerely wrote: post #7

In a space absolutely filled with hucksters and scam artists, vitalik is legit. Good read.

This is the guy that thought you could do Shor's algorithm by emulating a quantum computer and having it be faster than a classical solution.

Wasn't he literally in high school at the time?

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#238

Post by dorgo »

green1 wrote: post #115
lawn wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 1.7 billion adults in the world who are unbanked. 420 million of them have internet access. You can find them in countries all over the world. For example USA have 18 million and France have 3 million who don't have a bank account. It's not just poor people in countries without banks who have these problems. Even rich porn stars have had their bank accounts closed (for being porn stars) and people in the ma…

From that page: > There is no KYC process. How does an unbanked put their paper money into their cryptocurrency account without a KYC process? (Please don't say trust a random third party stranger in a pub offering cryptocurrency at an exorbitant markup.) > There are no fees for opening or having an account I've never paid a fee to open or have a bank account, but how does an unbanked put their paper money into their…

>How does an unbanked get their paper money into their cryptocurrency account without trusting a third party?

Mining perhaps?

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#239

Post by Nextgrid »

Hendrikto wrote: post #160
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I really dislike about owning crypto long term as a store of value. It's a cat-and-mouse game with hardware and software development, and there's a lot of faith in maintainers to stay ahead of the threats.

I‘d rather put my trust in an open source community than in centralized banks.

Just wondering, unless you’re doing something illegal or are targeted by the government and your money is at risk of seizure, why would you keep it in crypto with all its associated risks instead of in a bank? Banks are highly regulated and so can’t just run away with your money.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#240

Post by rmtech »

hannasanarion wrote: post #235
rmtech wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know, the “currency” problems and not the “crypto” problems. You seem to be looking for fiat currency, that already exists. The point of cryptocurrency is that not everyone wants fiat, some people place more of a priority on certain things and less on certain other things.

I don't think you know what the word "fiat" means. Crypto is fiat currency. It's backed by nothing but wasted electricity and a lucky guess. You can't trade it in for anything of value.

I do know what fiat means, and my meaning in this context is government-issued fiat such as dollars, pounds, euros, etc, though I think that was pretty clear to everyone else!
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