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Did I just lose half a million dollars?

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Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#721

Post by rrrhys »

capableweb wrote: post #228

Since no one seems to think about how this could have prevented, here is a simple way, which I've applied to lots of things in life, not just cryptocurrency transfers: - If you're making a transfer somewhere with a large amount, do a small transfer first and verify it's working. Confirm at the receiving end before moving big sums. - If you're calling a contract, try it with a small amount first. Verify the parameters…

- If it's complex and not automated, make a checklist, print it, check it off line by line.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#722

Post by optimalsolver »

spookthesunset wrote: post #701
ljm wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do ethereum and smart contracts currently have excellent customer service, such that the guy in TFA can get his 500k back?

Why should this person get anything back? Code is law. And if code is law all bugs are also law. The half million was a fair and just transfer. Whoever is the recipient is fully deserving both morally and ethically of their new-found wealth. If I was on the receiving end of this transaction, I’d thank the sender for the money and move on with my life. Of course I’d never be in the position to receive the funds becaus…

Code wasn't law when Ethereum foundation insiders stood to lose a fortune in the DAO hack.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#723

Post by PeterisP »

u-rate wrote: post #199
repomies69 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is immutable, unless in some cases it is not. However of majority of us plebs it is practically immutable.

Isn‘t that exactly like the status quo with banks?

In the banking system every day there are reversals for many mistakes of different kinds even if the amounts are tiny and only ordinary people are involved, and if $500k is at stake, the legal system can be used to "convince" banks to do what's right even if they don't want to.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#724

Post by [deleted] »

ssiddharth wrote: post #5

In case you’re wondering what happened, from the thread: He sent ETH to the WETH contract, received WETH as expected. Then he wanted to do the reverse and sent WETH, but will not receive anything, because you're supposed to swap your WETH to ETH in exchanges like Uniswap, or call the "withdraw" function in the contract. For contracts that want to only work with ERC-20 tokens, you use WETH, which comes from a contract…

[deleted]

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#725

Post by PeterisP »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #395
kuhewa wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have you ever dealt with the insides of forex trading before? Why, is there a way to send currency directly and irrecoverably into a paper shredder on the inside?

If you real with trading, options and swaps without understanding them - yes, very much so

Well no, you can use options and swaps to accidentally "gift" your money to more proficient traders or to market-making institutions or just pay it away in fees, but in all those cases you're giving the money to someone, not shredding it.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#726

Post by capableweb »

warkdarrior wrote: post #707
capableweb wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I have no desire for cryptocurrency to get a wider adoption, I have no skin in the game, I'm just looking at the facts. I don't care if the space burns up or saves the world, for me is the same. This is not the case of a non-intuitive system screwing the user. This is the user purposefully avoiding using the intuitive systems setup for them, and interacting with something directly even though no one does that u…

> This is the user purposefully avoiding using the intuitive systems setup for them, and interacting with something directly even though no one does that unless you're a developer. Of course using the intuitive systems setup for the means that one has to trust some random people or companies, instead of going directly to the blockchain. What happened to trustless?

"Trustless" is referring to the consensus in the protocols, not to the entire ecosystem. This is a ecosystem built by and for humans, of course there will be trust involved.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#727

Post by capableweb »

leokennis wrote: post #714
capableweb wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So your definition for "valid action" is just that the eth network lets them do it? Yes, this is indeed the definition for "valid", that the protocol allows them to do it. It was a valid action, but not the action the user actually wanted to perform. There are two ways of avoiding these scenarios: A) use UIs and don't interact with the protocol without safeguards, as the UI will prevent you from making mistakes (th…

You know what happens when you transfer money to a non-existent/incorrect IBAN? Most likely your bank will reject the transaction and not even defund your account - as you mentioned, the IBAN itself is already designed to prevent human error. If by chance you “crafted” a technically MOD-97 valid but not existing IBAN and the money goes out to the other bank (PACS.008), the other bank cannot book it (as the account do…

You know what happens when you send Ether to a incorrect Ethereum address? The wallet will reject sending it. If you bypass the wallet and rewrite your own wallet to send it anyways, the validators reading from the mempool will reject it. If you rewrite your own validator to accept it anyways, no other validator will accept it and the transfer will never go through.

What happened here is more like you used IBAN to send to the correct account, the correct bank and everything was correct, but no one actually has access to the account but the bank doesn't know this.

Nothing has vanished or been removed.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#728

Post by capableweb »

Adrox wrote: post #606
capableweb wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is impossible to solve, in the cryptocurrency space or in the existing structures we have. When you send an email, you cannot know if someone actually has access to that account (maybe they forgot their password?), you can only know if the address is valid or not (by sending the email). Similarly, you don't know if the right person has access to the bank account you're sending funds to, unless you ask the person…

You can NEVER send a bank account transfer to a UNASSIGNED IBAN, the bank will just reject it after some days. If you sent a IBAN transfer someone will get the money. You transfer to someone else that gets the money and you could try to go to court. The money just doesn’t disappear like in crypto. The e-mail is a great example, the e-mail can be lost, thats why no bank ever made transfer over email! You loose the e-m…

Since this has already been answered multiple times in this submission already, I'll leave you with this:

> You know what happens when you send Ether to a incorrect Ethereum address? The wallet will reject sending it. If you bypass the wallet and rewrite your own wallet to send it anyways, the validators reading from the mempool will reject it. If you rewrite your own validator to accept it anyways, no other validator will accept it and the transfer will never go through.

> What happened here is more like you used IBAN to send to the correct account, the correct bank and everything was correct, but no one actually has access to the account but the bank doesn't know this.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#729

Post by dpark »

emteycz wrote: post #699
dpark wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The set of people running a service with a revenue of 500k on a personal device must be minuscule and the people doing it almost certainly know it’s stupid. This is qualitatively different from crypto that allows you to burn your money on accident, while the people who build the infrastructure for this tell you is a smart, safe place to put your money.

If you wire money to a Nigerian prince, it's gone too. Doesn't mean a bank is not a safe place where to put your money.

Interesting how your example has just completely changed.

But also, wiring money is a thing that laypeople almost never do. It’s nerve wracking to wire money. But the equivalent in cryptocurrency is just how it’s done. Every transaction is just a fuckup with no recourse waiting to happen.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#730

Post by capableweb »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #456
capableweb wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really edge bases, it's how contracts works, and how this contract works. There is nothing magical here. It's a bit like avoiding the checksums that IBAN has, and then complaining that IBAN is broken. Most people interact with WETH via UIs, but for some reason this user chose not to, and got severely burned because of it. Things that require expertise usually requires one to know acronyms and how things work…

The thing that gets overlooked here is this guy had to have an above average understanding of all this to even get into a position to make this mistake. Manually sending weth to a contract address is not a process a newbie would even conceive of doing. Or even having weth in the first place. This guy was pretty far over on the right side of the bell curve when it comes to Ethereum knowledge. It's still obviously a gi…

> The thing that gets overlooked here is this guy had to have an above average understanding of all this to even get into a position to make this mistake

You'd think so, but you'd be surprised.

> This guy was pretty far over on the right side of the bell curve when it comes to Ethereum knowledge.

No, that's not true. Even people at the beginning of the bell curve know that you don't send half a million worth of anything around without verifying first that what you're about to do, is correct. You first do that by reading through everything and double-checking. And after that, you do the thing you want to do, but with 1% of the value or less, and verify/double-check again. After that, you do what you actually wanted to do.

The ecosystem is very new, has bunch of sharp edges everywhere and there is no recourse if you do anything wrong, so going through this process is something you learn very early on.

> They fact that it happened to a guy who knew probably 95% of the esoterica he needed to know to complete the transaction successfully

This is obviously not true, as the person seems to not even have search for "How to convert X to Y" before performing something they know they might not be able to undo.

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