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Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

saurik.com

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Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#21

Post by idiotsecant »

rawtxapp wrote: post #12
sschueller wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the whole lightning network for bitcoin also L2?

It's L2, but you can have different types of L2s. With lightning network, you're opening and closing channels with a counterparty using on-chain transactions, so each channel can be tied back to an on-chain transaction. Before someone points out that it would require tons of on-chain transactions to onboard everyone onto it, you can batch thousands of channel open/closes into a single transaction with new protocol up…

That's not even the most fundamental issue with LN though, it's not a fully thought out system. As LN node count increases the routing complexity increases exponentially, which is the classic problem of routing issues on large graphs that literally every networked system has. The internet solves this with some degree of human intervention to tip the scales to particular routes, which is something that the LN inherently can't (and shouldn't) do. There is some amount of optimization that could take place using common graph routing algorithms like OLSR or others but those represent foundational changes to the protocol which historically LN is allergic to for whatever reason and wouldn't entirely solve the problem in any case.

Simply put - it can't scale to that kind of throughput for a combination of cultural and technical reasons.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#22

Post by rawtxapp »

idiotsecant wrote: post #21
rawtxapp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's L2, but you can have different types of L2s. With lightning network, you're opening and closing channels with a counterparty using on-chain transactions, so each channel can be tied back to an on-chain transaction. Before someone points out that it would require tons of on-chain transactions to onboard everyone onto it, you can batch thousands of channel open/closes into a single transaction with new protocol up…

That's not even the most fundamental issue with LN though, it's not a fully thought out system. As LN node count increases the routing complexity increases exponentially, which is the classic problem of routing issues on large graphs that literally every networked system has. The internet solves this with some degree of human intervention to tip the scales to particular routes, which is something that the LN inherent…

Most end-users won't be acting as payment gateways, they'll all have private channels, so they won't appear in the routing graphs. The number of routing nodes would be many magnitude smaller than total number of LN users. It's working fine for now with growing adoption (1ml.com) and I believe it'll only get better with time.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#23

Post by vmception »

seibelj wrote: post #20
vmception wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether they paid in ETH priced in USD, or a stablecoin, or a USD wire to your bank account, many people aren't aware that getting paid in this space is that lucrative and that liquid and that simple.

saurik is pretty famous, I would estimate that most serious players in this space know the money is here. What is good about this post and the fact it's on top of HN is that maybe the average HN reader will be curious and help shift the crypto narrative on HN from negativity to at least neutrality.

Yeah it would be great and more on brand for this forum to have neutrality

The actual communities for most projects and general crypto are obnoxious, and probably what has helped push or keep this community to negativity, i could see it flipping to neutral though, judging by the emails I get there are plenty builders and educated proponents here

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#24

Post by leppr »

SilasX wrote: post #17
iskander wrote: post #5

This is a concerning aspect of Ethereum's strategy to push scaling to layer-2 networks: Ethereum is a heavily audited and tested protocol that runs an extremely decentralized network of diverse clients. L2s can be...an AWS instance running arbitrary buggy code. Much of the confidence in the "base layer" that people using Ethereum currently experience will be significantly undermined if mundane transactions wend in an…

Yes! I got burned by Optimism in another way. They tell you to point your applications at etherscan.io for transaction data/history, but then, on November 11 last year, the pushed an update that deletes all transaction history up to that point, which you need for taxes! They swore they'd have the history restored on Etherscan by Nov 18th, but they still haven't. Only recently they pushed a workaround that lets you do…

If the history is completely gone, your government won't be able to find it either, so you can just fill in whatever you want to explain how balance A became balance B.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#25

Post by suikadayo »

soco wrote: post #13
iskander wrote: post #5

This is a concerning aspect of Ethereum's strategy to push scaling to layer-2 networks: Ethereum is a heavily audited and tested protocol that runs an extremely decentralized network of diverse clients. L2s can be...an AWS instance running arbitrary buggy code. Much of the confidence in the "base layer" that people using Ethereum currently experience will be significantly undermined if mundane transactions wend in an…

Correct me if I'm wrong, but with those L2 tricks the plusvalue of Ethereum gets kinda diluted... and there's already a heavy discussion on the "why should I use it at all".

Most L2s will require users to pay transaction fees in ETH. Some will have fee abstraction where people can pay with tokens, but the rollup themselves will still end up paying ETH on L1.

Ethereum will essentially be a settlement layer for rollups, and everyone will be doing their DeFi, NFTs, etc on the rollups which are almost treated like their own chains.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#26

Post by idiotsecant »

rawtxapp wrote: post #22
idiotsecant wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not even the most fundamental issue with LN though, it's not a fully thought out system. As LN node count increases the routing complexity increases exponentially, which is the classic problem of routing issues on large graphs that literally every networked system has. The internet solves this with some degree of human intervention to tip the scales to particular routes, which is something that the LN inherent…

Most end-users won't be acting as payment gateways, they'll all have private channels, so they won't appear in the routing graphs. The number of routing nodes would be many magnitude smaller than total number of LN users. It's working fine for now with growing adoption (1ml.com) and I believe it'll only get better with time.

Sure, but in order to accommodate more users you need more routing nodes. Exponential scaling is a funny thing- systems work perfectly right up until they catastrophically fail. That's why it's important to understand these kinds of problems ahead of time, which LN is determined not to do.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#27

Post by stale2002 »

sschueller wrote: post #9
iskander wrote: post #5

This is a concerning aspect of Ethereum's strategy to push scaling to layer-2 networks: Ethereum is a heavily audited and tested protocol that runs an extremely decentralized network of diverse clients. L2s can be...an AWS instance running arbitrary buggy code. Much of the confidence in the "base layer" that people using Ethereum currently experience will be significantly undermined if mundane transactions wend in an…

Isn't the whole lightning network for bitcoin also L2?

It is yes, and even though the lightning network is considered one of the more secure/safe L2 networks, even it has had bugs (now solved) that potentially could have caused everyone to lose all their money, if those bugs had been taken advantage of.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#28

Post by 3np »

SilasX wrote: post #17
iskander wrote: post #5

This is a concerning aspect of Ethereum's strategy to push scaling to layer-2 networks: Ethereum is a heavily audited and tested protocol that runs an extremely decentralized network of diverse clients. L2s can be...an AWS instance running arbitrary buggy code. Much of the confidence in the "base layer" that people using Ethereum currently experience will be significantly undermined if mundane transactions wend in an…

Yes! I got burned by Optimism in another way. They tell you to point your applications at etherscan.io for transaction data/history, but then, on November 11 last year, the pushed an update that deletes all transaction history up to that point, which you need for taxes! They swore they'd have the history restored on Etherscan by Nov 18th, but they still haven't. Only recently they pushed a workaround that lets you do…

Let this be a lesson: Maintain local self-hosted copies of any necessary data, don’t rely on third-parties maintaining it and keeping it available. Should be standard practice for anyone doing anything serious with cryptocurrencies but unfortunately users seem complacent enough that easily accessible tooling is still lacking in many places and you may have to DIY scripts for some parts.

Your situation is unfortunate but it sounds like no fault on Optimism or Etherscan here.

(BTW just to be clear: you’re talking about off-chain data that was never part of on-chain txes, and this binary blob comes from some Optimism operator? If it’s on-chain data its just a matter of doing the right queries)

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#30

Post by keymone »

idiotsecant wrote: post #21
rawtxapp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's L2, but you can have different types of L2s. With lightning network, you're opening and closing channels with a counterparty using on-chain transactions, so each channel can be tied back to an on-chain transaction. Before someone points out that it would require tons of on-chain transactions to onboard everyone onto it, you can batch thousands of channel open/closes into a single transaction with new protocol up…

That's not even the most fundamental issue with LN though, it's not a fully thought out system. As LN node count increases the routing complexity increases exponentially, which is the classic problem of routing issues on large graphs that literally every networked system has. The internet solves this with some degree of human intervention to tip the scales to particular routes, which is something that the LN inherent…

Sigh. Quick, go tell UPS and DHL and others that they must file for bankruptcy because traveling salesman problem or whatever is hard to solve.

This is just nonsense because, for instance, each LN hub can configure how much processing it wants to take on by focusing on most profitable subgraph.

In the end, LN will be processing more and more payments and you will keep ignoring that fact and claiming that it can’t scale. This has been happening for years already.

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