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

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

#461

Post by jMyles »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #321
lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #164

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?

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…

> The stablecoins that succeed aren't very interesting because they're simply blockchain representations of actual funds held elsewhere.

Now do MakerDAO.

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

#462

Post by jMyles »

chizhik-pyzhik wrote: post #108

The fact that this is trending on HN shows how little hacker news knows about the cryptocurrency space. A relatively unknown, recently launched stablecoin collapsing is not big news in crypto. Now if dai, usdc or usdt had failed, that would be a big deal.

Don't get gaslit - this comment is on-point.

(Though I think it's obvious that USDT is a scam.)

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

#463

Post by derefr »

jtbayly wrote: post #157
derefr wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more than one "law." Each fiat ecosystem is its own system of financial law, each mutually-incompatible with any other fiat ecosystem. Cryptocurrency gives an alternative arbitrator that allows for these mutually-incompatible systems of law to be bridged. Also, to be clear, in the example I mentioned, the government of the US does not forbid trading with Nigeria/Liberia/etc. Traditional money-transfer servic…

Wait, so BitCoin's benefit now is that it's too hard to use? lol edit: And that's why it can't be used for scams! Oh my. I'm not sure what universe you live in, but it's different from mine.

Crypto is too hard to use — or more specifically, requires too much financial and technical acumen to understand — to make it profitable for someone to operationalize a mass-market "volume" scam (a scam involving stealing small amounts of money from a large number of people) based on it.

"Volume" scams are the really successful scams — the ones that fly under the radar for years/decades because no individual person is ever out for enough money to make large institutions upset to the point of pursuing them. Tons of "volume" scammers get their start every day.

The opposite kind — the scams where large sums are stolen from relatively small numbers of people — are flashy, but ultimately futile, as high-value scammers almost always get caught, and quickly.

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

#464

Post by acjohnson55 »

ekir wrote: post #365
unholiness wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's so much worse than that, right? Bugs in a smart contract are immutable. Those are just the terms everyone agreed to. There's simply no path to deploying a fix that every good actor agrees is beneficial.

It's fairly common to deploy a proxy contract, which allows for a sort of updating. Basically you deploy a new contract and have the proxy point to that new contract instead of the old one. There are definitely some limitations and it's not fully standardized yet. There's a tentative standard here https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/1538 and OpenZeppelin also has their own implementation. Although neither of thes…

The problem there is that it allows people with deploy privileges to unilaterally change the rules. So you lose "code is law". Hypothetically, you want to custody of assets in an immutable contract with the minimal amount of privileges, and use proxy contracts for higher level on-chain functionality. But it's not so clear to me that it's possible to achieve a perfect factoring, in general.

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

#465

Post by Retric »

rawtxapp wrote: post #431
Retric wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Major bugs in smart contracts can cause the system to stop working rather than handing anyone billions. As such people can discover such issues without disclosing them in much the way infrastructure can be vulnerable without people damaging it.

Even being able to grind a smart contract to a halt would be very profitable if you shorted it right beforehand.

Even then you are limited things to people who are willing to break the law and have a giant sign pointing them as a likely culprit.

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

#466

Post by imtringued »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #331
ayngg wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this is the kind of story that cryptocurrency detractors love, and that aligns with the general sentiment towards cryptocurrencies on HN.

Odd: HN is made up of the people closest to cutting-edge technology on the planet, and yet sentiment is negative on cryptocurrency. Hmmm...

Cutting edge black market currencies? Most people aren't interested in that.

People come with their Argentina and Venezuela inflation and capital control stories and I fully agree with them but it feels like that is in no way justifying the hype around cryptocurrencies. Average people just want the MLM fueled number go up speculation and that is about it.

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

#467

Post by ineedasername »

rawtxapp wrote: post #289
intrasight wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I think about it in those terms... Why not fund bug bounties that way?

They are called ransomwares and people aren't very happy with that method.

And oddly ineffective at actually prompting action on closing out those bugs.

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

#468

Post by Budabellly »

Hallucinaut wrote: post #432
rawtxapp wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't 1$ for every 1USDT, they said so themselves. It will eventually fail != "USDT failed a LONG time ago". If you truly believe what you say, then you should definitely consider shorting it, if you're right you'll make a lot of money.

The failure spoken of is clearly the breach of the promise (and associated changing of literature) to back each by one USD. However I'm very interested in the idea of shorting a "stable"coin. Who would possibly enter into this contract for an asset that has an upside of zero and a (potential, long-term, depending on your bearishness) downside of 100%? In any case, with the strong likelihood Tether themselves are effe…

I bookmarked this comment from a few months ago on how one might make such a trade: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26174690

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

#469

Post by ineedasername »

chizhik-pyzhik wrote: post #108

The fact that this is trending on HN shows how little hacker news knows about the cryptocurrency space. A relatively unknown, recently launched stablecoin collapsing is not big news in crypto. Now if dai, usdc or usdt had failed, that would be a big deal.

HN is a social news site subsidized by a company that incubates the latest technologies, including DeFi.

If there are any appropriate places on the internet for news about a new collapsed piece of DeFi tech, HN is unquestionably on that list.

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

#470

Post by imtringued »

saalweachter wrote: post #212
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, it's not about wealth concentration, be rich, that's fine. It's about whether your wealth was gathered by contributing useful work, or by parasitizing it. I imagine a proof of work system where there's a community work queue, and "mining" is completing tasks in the queue, borderlands-style (though hopefully without the violence). The mined tokens can be resolved to nft's which stay attached to the wallet of…

The difficulty is that once you move from things like my joke solution to earnest attempts like yours you start involving the real world in your model, and you end up with something that is more like a social solution than a technological one. Once you start talking social solutions you start looking more like a business or a commune or a community and less like a technology. You don't just have algorithms and widget…

To be fair there is some residual demand for a sort of "law of physics" namely a basic mechanism that forcibly applies to everyone. We use paper notes to signify that we owe the holder of the paper note work. The paper note follows the law of physics in the sense that it is a physical object that can be transferred from person to person.

The issuance of paper notes is still a social problem but the act of exchanging them at a shop is not.

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