51–60 of 577 posts
There is no such thing as a stablecoin, it's a made up term to try to lend legitimacy to new crypto scams. And I say this as someone who just bought some Ethereum in the hopes of making a profit :)
MakerDAO is not a scam, and the dollar peg survived the last crypto crash so it's pretty "stable".
These incidents really illustrate the main flaw of smart contracts: a single bug in your code can lead to incredible losses. I simply don't think it's possible for human beings to write good enough software for smart contracts.
I've seen them described as "self-funding bug bounties".
So what type of exploit is this? Is this a problem with smart contracts? Could this be a problem for other cryptocurrencies with smart contracts, like Ethereum?
These incidents really illustrate the main flaw of smart contracts: a single bug in your code can lead to incredible losses. I simply don't think it's possible for human beings to write good enough software for smart contracts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really. If owning a coin becomes illegal it can fall below zero where you are paying someone to take your coins. Something similar to oil happened a while ago when storage had become an issue so prices fell below 0$
Oil is physical; it takes up space, and needs special protections to not pollute the container it's stored in. Digital goods, meanwhile, can just be transferred permanently "into the void" (i.e. to an account without an associated key.)
These incidents really illustrate the main flaw of smart contracts: a single bug in your code can lead to incredible losses. I simply don't think it's possible for human beings to write good enough software for smart contracts.
So what type of exploit is this? Is this a problem with smart contracts? Could this be a problem for other cryptocurrencies with smart contracts, like Ethereum?
The problem of course, is that once these contracts are published onto the network to create your new cryptocurrency token, it's very difficult (perhaps impossible?) to update them. And of course, if someone finds a vulnerability in one of the contracts and exploits it, it's game over. There's no reversing the transfer of tokens.
So to give a more explicit answer to your question, it's not a problem with Ethereum, but a problem with the contracts people are writing on the Ethereum network.
These incidents really illustrate the main flaw of smart contracts: a single bug in your code can lead to incredible losses. I simply don't think it's possible for human beings to write good enough software for smart contracts.
I'm doing ICO next week, if anyone wants in.
Nonetheless, I feel bad both for the people who worked hard to create this failed cryptocurrency and for the victims who suffered these sudden losses.
It's hard to write bug-free code. One way to help prevent bugs is to make languages less powerful. In hindsight, it seems that Satoshi Nakamoto's decision not to make Bitcoin's scripting language Turing complete, making all sorts of bugs impossible, will prove to be a smart choice over time. It forces applications of Bitcoin that require control flow to be executed off the main chain.