Live data from Hacker News

SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

cryptoslate.com

391–400 of 577 posts

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#391

There are more than $100b of stablecoins — 285x year-over-year growth — with a variety of very interesting and high-quality stablecoins proliferating. And of course, Hacker News focuses on some garbage project nobody in the space even followed. How is there no discussion about FRAX, Maker's DAI, USDC, CRV's 3pool token, Liquity's LUSD, and so many other interesting projects?

Because there's nothing interesting about them. They're just another variation on the same ol' "we peg our value to the dollar(*)!" pitch. The interesting stuff happens when they fail.

I couldn't disagree more. All of the projects I listed have radically different mechanisms, failure conditions, capital efficiencies, and value capture abilities. It's a fascinating space that is in its infancy.

And you're missing projects that aren't pegged to the dollar, but instead have dampened volatility floating price targets — like Reflexer and OlympusDAO.

It's a rich, beautiful corner of a rapidly growing space.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#392

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 :)

This is uninformed. What do you call USDC, which is directly redeemable for US Dollars by anyone with a Coinbase account? Every USDC is backed by one USD of deposits in a US-based bank. USDC is a stablecoin, and there are plenty of others out there.

A stablecoin that hasn’t lost its peg yet.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#394

There are more than $100b of stablecoins — 285x year-over-year growth — with a variety of very interesting and high-quality stablecoins proliferating. And of course, Hacker News focuses on some garbage project nobody in the space even followed. How is there no discussion about FRAX, Maker's DAI, USDC, CRV's 3pool token, Liquity's LUSD, and so many other interesting projects?

Why is everyone talking about the condo that collapsed recently in Miami? There are so many condos still standing, but nobody cares!

There are larger, far more interesting collapses (and subsequent recoveries): Titan, Fei, Empty Set Dollar, and more.

Even going with your analogy, it makes no sense that this was #1 on HN. Unless it's also true that HN is just weirdly out of sync with crypto.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#395

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.

This is one of the biggest reasons I like Cardano. It's written in Haskell and its contract language is functional and heavily inspired - meaning that code gets many of the functional benefits: it is more concise, more readable, less prone to side effects, and more often than non-functional code won't run at all if mistakes are made.

The trade offs in functional languages seem to well suited for the world of smart contracts, that I almost think of smart contracts as the retro-active problem that functional programming solves. Granted, I appreciate functional programming and good code enough where I wish all code met the standards required for FP, but the real world is much messier; when large amounts of money are so directly on the line though I think its obvious the compromise is worth it.

Smart contracts are like launching a rocket - you don't optimize for development time. FP forces a bit more safety.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#396

Why not just have a version 1 smart contract, that inside of it has an amount check that, if passed, rewrites the smart contract (or issues a new one) - version 2 - that rectifies the problem? So people who "agree" with the change can just insta-exchange their cash, and those who don't can keep their cash on version 1. Then you don't have bugs like this as easily anymore. This whole thing will no go very far without…

What is the point of a smart contract that its owner might update on a whim? Just deploy an HTTP server.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#397
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or where you do the equivalent of stuffing cash under your mattress by hiding the password to your cryptowallet inside a safe, or using one of the various incantations of writing your password on a post-it note. Sure, the vast potential of reward justifies the added risk. But I'm also not in the US, I'm not rabidly anti-government, and I don't want to store my money under my floorboards. Good, old-fashioned, regulate…

> by hiding the password to your cryptowallet inside a safe, or using one of the various incantations of writing your password on a post-it note. This is the scariest bit about crypto by far and that I will not deny. This is why whilst I don't trust banks, they do have big safes with locked boxes in. Using these with shamir backups is what protects my assets, and worst case scenario my private key is also split in tw…

It's also why I think crypto is suffering a bit of the Dunning-Kruger syndrome. We've had well over 2000 years of banking and it's always the case that protecting your money then becomes a legit business-case. The business plan is ages-old and always the same: take the money under protection, ensure a certain percentage in reserve, and profit off the venture by using a percentage of funds for investment and speculation. Just, not so much that you can't pay people back.

The latter point is a stickler, so get regulation in there and ensure anyone doing banking is protected up to a certain sum. Any money beyond that... you put all your eggs in one basket, sorry. Other people need to be made whole, too.

Use the same regulation so that banks that embezzle protected customer funds can be prosecuted, too. This equally applies to insurance, credit cards, loans, and other industries that make money out of offering money.

You can't stop a run on the bank if everyone loses confidence at the same time, as we saw in 2008 (Northern Rock in the UK) or in 1929 (Wall Street). But as you say... that's when bigger shit is going on.

But now... to me crypto feels like a group of upstarts thinking they can reinvent millennia of economics and come up with something better. All I've seen so far is a skeuomorphism to a scarce resource, essentially treating silicon as if it were gold.

It's making a handful of people filthy rich, people who would have been well-off in the first place, but it's not changing the world for the better. It's siphoning another resource for a wealthy elite.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#398
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stablecoins that succeed aren't very interesting because they're simply blockchain representations of actual funds held elsewhere. Or at least funds that are claimed to be held somewhere. Those stablecoins are simply a redeemable, tradeable representation of money held somewhere else. These artificial stablecoins that attempt to get clever with algorithmic finance and smart contracts are interesting because they…

You say they are "simply" a representation of fiat money, basically a fiat mirror held in crypto, but they play an incredibly important role in the ecosystem: - In some countries, swapping crypto to stablecoin (another crypto) has no tax implications whilst swapping to fiat does have consequences. - For big account holders (not me), stablecoins are the only way to put gains on "dry land". If you win big on exchanges,…

Interesting there is this new series on Netflix, StartUp about this stuff. So the question really is "does it work?". Couldn't this be interesting for that it will force us to change the way we code? For sure the best paradigm will win over time. And the best coders. People are investing in the coders at this point like they do in a bank. Feels like this story isn't stopping anytime soon.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#399

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.

The problem here is really Ethereum and the language Solidity. Chuck full of gotchas and completely horrible to work with.

The mechanics of stable coins is really trivial and thusly should be trivial to implement and validate. Unfortunately it is not, and it is sad that the hype and investment rush inside the broader crypto field does not foster languages and platforms that actually are suitable for the few realworld use cases that exists inside crypto.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a fallacy of the inverse. Those contracts not being hacked yet is no proof that they are resistant to hacks.

It's not clear what fallacy you're thinking about because the fallacy of the inverse is not it. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusion_of_the_inverse : > Confusion of the inverse, also called the conditional probability fallacy or the inverse fallacy, is a logical fallacy whereupon a conditional probability is equated with its inverse; that is, given two events A and B, the probability of A happening given that…

The inverse of "any contract that has been hacked was insecure" is "any contract that hasn't been hacked must be secure".

I think this is what OP meant. If something has been around for a long time it does probably mean it's less likely there is a really obvious security flaw, but it doesn't necessarily mean it is 'rock-solid' as plenty of things that have been seen to be 'rock-solid' in the past have turned out to be insecure.

Post reply on HN