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Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

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Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#101

Post by jkhdigital »

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…

> The crypto tax software, of course, doesn't know what to do with it

I’m still trying to calculate proper basis and gains on transactions from 2018… tens of thousands of trades in various complex hedges across 7-8 different exchanges. I just aggregated everything in a single line item on my original return but of course I got audited T_T

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#102

Post by baby »

mattdesl wrote: post #59
jrochkind1 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I just spent 20min to look for that debate between some of the big players:

* the optimistic side: https://medium.com/offchainlabs/optimistic-rollups-the-prese...

* the zk side: https://blog.polygon.technology/zk-and-the-future-of-ethereu...

On one hand you have a complicated protocol that doesn't really use cryptography and that has the user (you) monitor the blockchain for a week to make sure their transfer was processed correctly (otherwise my understanding is that you have to create a fraud proof, send it to the chain, otherwise you will lose your funds).

On the other hand you have a cryptographic proof of a few kilobyte that proves that some program correctly validated and applied the state transition of thousands of transactions.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#103

Post by scyclow »

simias wrote: post #87
iskander wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll try to engage without pulling us into familiar debates. I have found, in a year of intensive use and research around the Ethereum ecosystem, here are a few things I like that wouldn't really work without an underlying immutable distributed ledger: 1) Creating limited editions of generative art. 2) "Forever" art like on-chain pixel and ASCII art. 3) Frankenstein-like adaptations of traditional fintech constructs…

>1) Creating limited editions of generative art. I personally think that it's not really an interesting feature. Creating scarcity out of something that ought not to be scarce is just a way to infiltrate capitalism in every aspect of our lives. Hacker culture historically went completely against that (phreaking, breaking DRM etc...) but I concede that it's more of a philosophical/political argument than a technical o…

With respect to point 1, I'm sympathetic to your response, but I don't see things quite as bleakly for a few reasons:

- NFTs create a scarcity of ownership, but they don't create a scarcity of enjoyment or experience. In fact, the entire NFT generative art community is based around the idea of viewing and enjoying pieces that you don't personally own.

- I don't think scarcity of ownership is necessarily a bad thing. Having put some skin in the game for that specific piece, the owner sort of becomes that piece's biggest advocate. And this allows many collectors to form a much stronger relationship to the piece than they would have if they saved a copy of an image they found on instagram.

- A generative algorithm can theoretically produce an infinite number of outputs, and I think there are valid artistic reasons to want to limit the set to a specific size. For example, maybe the algorithm no longer produces unique results after 500 or so iterations, and the artist wants to cap the collection at that size to allow people to become familiar with that amount of outputs. Managing this with NFTs allows the artist to create a canonical collection limited to the desired size along with the proof that they all derive from the same algorithm.

- Blockchains are still fairly new as an artistic medium, and I think many artists will find ways to create interesting projects without leaning as much on scarcity. Some projects do open editions, which we may see more of in the future. Scarcity is simply a tool at the artist's disposal.

(Disclaimer: I'm an artist who makes a lot of generative NFTs, so I'm heavily biased)

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#104

Post by miracle2k »

BoorishBears wrote: post #94
rawtxapp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it? Bitcoin is bigger than ever before. It's far more valuable, it has far more users, processes hundreds of thousands of transactions moving billions of dollars worth of value every day on-chain alone, has very healthy L2 layer growth (1ml.com), has hundreds of exchanges worldwide, it ticks every 10 minutes and will keep ticking for the foreseeable future. We have a small country that adopted it as a legal tende…

Does that answer anything I brought up? You know, the whole "relatively stable store of value paying for productive output rather than speculation and fraud?" We moved off the gold standard for a reason (and it's not all geopolitics...)

Bitcoin's volatility is not because of the fixed supply. If nothing else, new Bitcoins are still being issued. It is of course true that inflation encourages spending etc., but the difference between -2% and 2% does not cause 50% daily price movements.

Bitcoin cannot be stable relative to other currencies as long as 90% of its forex volume is speculation. If there are businesses having long-term obligations and trade denominated in Bitcoin, providing for a large base of regular demand and supply that outweighs the speculation, it will stabilise.

This is obviously really really though to achieve, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the "tech" (which is essentially a spreadsheet). This makes the debate around the volatility and whether its qualifies as a "currency" rather boring. It will happen, or it won't, and we can try to predict the future, but it is not really about Bitcoin at all, just marketplace behavior.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#105

Post by fleddr »

simias wrote: post #68
rawtxapp wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sch…

Yeah I'm an opponent and I feel the same. The talking points have been exhausted half a decade ago. On top of that as cryptocurrencies get more and more mainstream we have to deal with less sophisticated people who make it very hard to have a decent discussion in the first place, because you basically have to start by taking 20 minutes to explain to them what the basics even are. NFTs are really pushing this situatio…

I would consider myself an informed skeptic that is selectively pro-crypto.

I would first clear the air by saying this: yes, making money is an important use case of the current crypto industry, if not THE use case. I find it puzzling how people frown upon that. Making money (or at least getting paid) is the number one activity the average person spends a lifetime doing. Many in bullshit jobs that add no value.

You can have all kinds of opinions on how this money is made (speculative), but the crypto community doesn't care. It's their money, not yours. I would personally not touch 95% of crypto with my money, but take no issue with people that go all-in. Live and let live.

As for NFTs, it's funny how you say some discussion participants simplify it too much (just right-click) and then come to sweeping simplistic conclusions yourself: bored apes and crypto people failing to deliver anything new.

This suggests you're keeping track. If so, can you tell me about recent trading volume? The top 10 projects? Which celebrities, artists, musicians and sport teams released popular ones? On which platform? Which are hot upcoming releases? Out of the many issues with NFTs (no infinite storage, copyright acknowledgement, mint duping, etc), which teams are working to address these issues, and what are the solutions? Do you know which non-JPEG NFTs got traction, like unique physical access and lifelong memberships? Which gaming companies are experimenting with NFTs, and I'm talking AAA titles?

I could make that list a whole lot longer. I suspect you don't know the answers, but that's not a personal attack. The point is that the space is vast and extremely fast. This idea that nothing has happened in crypto in 10 years is because you're not looking.

The discussion is not advancing because people don't spent a second learning about crypto or keeping track.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#106

Post by miracle2k »

vmception wrote: post #67
antocv wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To me, this is Exhibit A of the oddly incoherent nature of discussions that appear here. What you wrote is a random mixture of ideology, misinterpretation of what happened, and the wrong forum for it. Where would one even start? US Govt hasn't returned the bitcoin to Bitfinex. Bitfinex has stated they would apply for getting it returned. This is the process these things take. All that has occurred is a DOJ/FBI seizur…

This is a popular line of thinking among reputable crypto critics: https://twitter.com/alexhern/status/1491449689656360961

I agree its incoherent, but I struggle to understand of how it makes sense to them.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#107

Post by Ar-Curunir »

baby wrote: post #102
mattdesl wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I just spent 20min to look for that debate between some of the big players: * the optimistic side: https://medium.com/offchainlabs/optimistic-rollups-the-prese... * the zk side: https://blog.polygon.technology/zk-and-the-future-of-ethereu... On one hand you have a complicated protocol that doesn't really use cryptography and that has the user (you) monitor the blockchain for a week to make sure their transfer was pro…

As a zkSNARK cryptographer, efficient cryptographic proofs are incredibly complex pieces of technology that still have a ways to go before they can match the speed of native execution. Both approaches have pros and cons.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#108

Post by iskander »

simias wrote: post #87
iskander wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll try to engage without pulling us into familiar debates. I have found, in a year of intensive use and research around the Ethereum ecosystem, here are a few things I like that wouldn't really work without an underlying immutable distributed ledger: 1) Creating limited editions of generative art. 2) "Forever" art like on-chain pixel and ASCII art. 3) Frankenstein-like adaptations of traditional fintech constructs…

>1) Creating limited editions of generative art. I personally think that it's not really an interesting feature. Creating scarcity out of something that ought not to be scarce is just a way to infiltrate capitalism in every aspect of our lives. Hacker culture historically went completely against that (phreaking, breaking DRM etc...) but I concede that it's more of a philosophical/political argument than a technical o…

Re: limited editions, I'm not talking about monetization. As someone currently working on a big generative art collaboration, I think knowing that the output will have a finite set that is considered canonical is an essential artistic constraint.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#110

Post by rvz »

iskander wrote: post #75
HashBasher wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> extremely decentralized network Can you provide source for this claim? I thought that infura was the dominant infrastructure provider for eth and if it gets taken down, a majority of the apps goes down too.

Infura is a single RPC endpoint, the underlying network it talks with has 5k-6k clients: https://www.ethernodes.org/?synced=1 You can choose one of ~20 different free RPC endpoints: https://ethereumnodes.com/ This doesn't include private or paid RPCs or just running your own.

Well on the same site ethernodes.org, the majority of Ethereum nodes are running on AWS at 45% [0]. Due to this announcement from AWS [1], it is going to become even more centralized.

So the claim of 'extremely decentralized network' is somewhat of a myth and a falsehood.

[0] https://ethernodes.org/networkType/Hosting

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2021/03/announcin...

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