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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

#51

Post by jrochkind1 »

sophrocyne wrote: post #50
teempai wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum actually has almost no client diversity. The vast majority of nodes run the geth client (go). Regarding the security aspects of L2s: they will of course not be anywhere near as robust as ethereum itself, but over time they’ll get better. However, they also don’t need to be as robust as ethereum given they effectively benchmark against the ethereum chain so while things could go wrong, the amount of damage wi…

For those interested in data supporting diversity comment (~82% geth) - https://www.ethernodes.org/ Re: GP comment - From a "trust" perspective, there is a distinct difference to call out between the integrity of data on the platform, and the trustworthiness of the platform itself (i.e., the ability for centralized control of all data) In an instance where an L2 is compromised, the potential impact is limited to the…

What kinds of transactions do not demand absolute integrity, but still make sense to use a blockchain for? (I don't know much about these sorts of things, I'm actually asking for examples)

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#52

Post by kfichter »

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…

Heyo, chiming in from the Optimism team here. You should be able to get non-ETH token transfers (ERC20 or ERC721) via the Etherscan CSV export feature. You may have to make a dummy ERC20/ERC721 transaction to get the page to show up. If that isn't working for you, feel free to hit me up on Discord (I think we already have a thread together) and I can help get you whatever data you need.

See this random account for an example of exporting ERC20 transactions: https://optimistic.etherscan.io/address/0x9c1e0c67aa30c063f3...

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#53

Post by baxtr »

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…

Side note: that’s the first flame war free / nuanced thread on crypto that I have seen on HN so far. Thanks for starting it!

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#54

Post by k__ »

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".

Their proof ends up on L1 and they get cheaper the more people use them.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#55

Post by kristofferR »

baxtr wrote: post #53
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…

Side note: that’s the first flame war free / nuanced thread on crypto that I have seen on HN so far. Thanks for starting it!

The discussion here used to be way more thoughtful, it's only been bad the last year or so.

I think the degradation of crypto discourse here was mostly a knee-jerk reaction to NFTs. "NFTs are stupid, so all crypto is stupid, because NFTs are crypto" - that was likely the thought process behind all the toxicity seen here.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#56

Post by antocv »

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.

But the negativity is well deserved

Look at how the crypto-sphere reacted at FEDs returning "stolen" coins to Bitfinex like all praise and "justice served". Only HNers actually raised "hey guys why do you even crypto if FEDs will decide who owns what".

It all ends up being Government-coin and they like it.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#57

Post by rawtxapp »

kristofferR wrote: post #55
baxtr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Side note: that’s the first flame war free / nuanced thread on crypto that I have seen on HN so far. Thanks for starting it!

The discussion here used to be way more thoughtful, it's only been bad the last year or so. I think the degradation of crypto discourse here was mostly a knee-jerk reaction to NFTs. "NFTs are stupid, so all crypto is stupid, because NFTs are crypto" - that was likely the thought process behind all the toxicity seen here.

I would disagree, in my experience HN has been pretty anti-crypto for a long time, starting with Bitcoin's announcement thread [1].

Personally, I think people are just tired, as a proponent I'm tired of arguing the same stuff over and over again, I can imagine the other side of that too. At this point, time will decide who's right and wrong, I think that what anyone of us thinks doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#58

Post by kristofferR »

teempai wrote: post #46
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…

Ethereum actually has almost no client diversity. The vast majority of nodes run the geth client (go). Regarding the security aspects of L2s: they will of course not be anywhere near as robust as ethereum itself, but over time they’ll get better. However, they also don’t need to be as robust as ethereum given they effectively benchmark against the ethereum chain so while things could go wrong, the amount of damage wi…

> Ethereum actually has almost no client diversity.

I think that is slightly misleading, all the client diversity efforts is focused on Ethereum 2.0 now, as the old clients will be dead soon. [1]

This is the most updated stat I've found: https://twitter.com/sproulM_/status/1481109509544513539 (read the rest of the twitter thread too!)

Still not great though, but better at least.

[1] https://clientdiversity.org/

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#59

Post by mattdesl »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #51
sophrocyne wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those interested in data supporting diversity comment (~82% geth) - https://www.ethernodes.org/ Re: GP comment - From a "trust" perspective, there is a distinct difference to call out between the integrity of data on the platform, and the trustworthiness of the platform itself (i.e., the ability for centralized control of all data) In an instance where an L2 is compromised, the potential impact is limited to the…

What kinds of transactions do not demand absolute integrity, but still make sense to use a blockchain for? (I don't know much about these sorts of things, I'm actually asking for examples)

Security of zk rollups may be sufficient for a lot of activity - trading, DeFi, games, art, DAO/access tokens, escrow, crowdfunds, all the web3 stuff.

The L1 may eventually be a primary settlement layer for protocols like zkSync and StarkNet (and any other protocols and rollups built on Ethereum L1). At some point it may not be common for users to interact with L1—ie. users of Argent and Sequence wallets may only be holding assets on L2.

zkSTARK/SNARKs has pretty dramatically changed the L2 landscape and new direction seems to be moving away from optimistic rollups like in the OP. This is just my understanding, somebody please correct me if I’m wrong.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#60

Post by HashBasher »

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…

Exactly, CashApp/RobinHood/Coinbase/Kraken are all bitcoin L2. Centralized and trusted, but L2 nonetheless.
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