Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ethereum is a dark forest (2020)

paradigm.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 32 posts

Re: Ethereum is a dark forest (2020)

#11

Post by goatsi »

urthor wrote: post #4
nefitty wrote: post #3

Is the benefit of Ethereum really larger than the value these intelligent people could be creating in non-crypto industries? I see the allure. They're super hard, super high-stakes problems. Is there really no other industry that provides this level of flow and excitement for these researchers?

It's kind of the opposite. Highly intelligent people are most productive when they are tackling problems they enjoy. You cannot just order them around and tell them to go tackle climate change or whatever. As long as they enjoy tackling crypto shaped problems, they will keep jumping in until enough crypto shaped problems are solved that only really frustrating ones are left. If you want to change how things work, you…

You don't need to change the environment, you need to change the compensation. Do you think that for the last 15 years highly intelligent people have found the most enjoyment in developing advertising software? Or found the most enjoyment in investment banking in the years before that?

Re: Ethereum is a dark forest (2020)

#12

Post by CuriousCosmic »

I'm curious whether you could eliminate or at least mitigate this "dark forest" environment with privacy preserving transactions?

There are privacy preserving smart contract schemes (see https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/543 for one example) however to my knowledge few if any have ever been implemented/utilised at scale.

At least in theory this should eliminate or at least greatly mitigate the opportunity for MEV since the actions taken and the results are opaque. In reality however I'm not sure and I am absolutely not qualified to answer.

Re: Ethereum is a dark forest (2020)

#13

Post by cowlby »

Ethereum does to coding what wagering real money does to a friendly game of Poker

Expected value (EV) changes behavior significantly.

I'm skeptical too but didn't let that keep me from learning Solidity and the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). This dark forest is like having a red team looking at your code 24/7. I feel like I learned some novel things from it.

Re: Ethereum is a dark forest (2020)

#15

Post by spicybright »

AgentME wrote: post #6
thejohnconway wrote: post #5

Then why are we building it? To fleece people who are not as smart? All this just seems insane to me.

It's a super massive stretch to imagine this invalidates Ethereum. Only some specific types of contracts are vulnerable to front-running issues and there are workarounds. The article is about the difficulty of being the first to take from a contract offering free money. This isn't an issue about regular contracts being unsafe to use. I think the title misportrays the issue as being much more general than it is. For s…

It's not just contracts that are the issue. You need to be an expert in cyber security just to not to get robbed.

The general recommendations I've heard go like this:

- Have a dedicated machine just for transferring money

- Only boot from a read only flash drive to interact with the network

- Store credentials in a separate place, maybe on paper in a very hidden spot

- Transfer a small amount of money before large transfers and wait 24 hours to make sure it works ok

- Spread your money between many accounts so it can't be stolen all at once

Does that not seem at least a little insane to anyone? No one is going to be able to practically use the network without some expert user as a proxy. And I don't see that changing any time soon with how terribly designed the protocol is at controlling these issues.

Re: Ethereum is a dark forest (2020)

#16

Post by xmly »

smoldesu wrote: post #10
xmly wrote: post #8

Ethereum Layer1 should be only for storing meta data and provide trust and arbitration when necessary.

I don't really understand this take, and I hear it a lot. What's the point of using a blockchain if you're going to abstract everything away to a centralized ledger? The whole "gas is expensive" shtick doesn't warrant centralizing your ledger and doing all of the important stuff off-chain. Am I missing something here, or are layer 2 protocols really that wishy-washy?

Blockchains are just tools. We should focus use cases to choose different types of blockchains. Layer1, Layer 2, sidechains, private chains can be combined together to solve the problem.

Re: Ethereum is a dark forest (2020)

#17

Post by astrange »

smoldesu wrote: post #10
xmly wrote: post #8

Ethereum Layer1 should be only for storing meta data and provide trust and arbitration when necessary.

I don't really understand this take, and I hear it a lot. What's the point of using a blockchain if you're going to abstract everything away to a centralized ledger? The whole "gas is expensive" shtick doesn't warrant centralizing your ledger and doing all of the important stuff off-chain. Am I missing something here, or are layer 2 protocols really that wishy-washy?

Telling investors you need to invent something new called an "L2 protocol" lets you ask for more money.

It might cause you to fix the insurmountable problems with a blockchain, insofar as it's just moving back to regular databases. But also it's now just something else you have to trust.

Re: Ethereum is a dark forest (2020)

#18

Post by hn-sucks »

urthor wrote: post #4
nefitty wrote: post #3

Is the benefit of Ethereum really larger than the value these intelligent people could be creating in non-crypto industries? I see the allure. They're super hard, super high-stakes problems. Is there really no other industry that provides this level of flow and excitement for these researchers?

It's kind of the opposite. Highly intelligent people are most productive when they are tackling problems they enjoy. You cannot just order them around and tell them to go tackle climate change or whatever. As long as they enjoy tackling crypto shaped problems, they will keep jumping in until enough crypto shaped problems are solved that only really frustrating ones are left. If you want to change how things work, you…

No post body was provided.

Re: Ethereum is a dark forest (2020)

#19

Post by aqme28 »

spicybright wrote: post #15
AgentME wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a super massive stretch to imagine this invalidates Ethereum. Only some specific types of contracts are vulnerable to front-running issues and there are workarounds. The article is about the difficulty of being the first to take from a contract offering free money. This isn't an issue about regular contracts being unsafe to use. I think the title misportrays the issue as being much more general than it is. For s…

It's not just contracts that are the issue. You need to be an expert in cyber security just to not to get robbed. The general recommendations I've heard go like this: - Have a dedicated machine just for transferring money - Only boot from a read only flash drive to interact with the network - Store credentials in a separate place, maybe on paper in a very hidden spot - Transfer a small amount of money before large tr…

> - Have a dedicated machine just for transferring money - Only boot from a read only flash drive to interact with the network - Store credentials in a separate place, maybe on paper in a very hidden spot

You're overstating the problem. Companies like Ledger make "hardware" wallets as you're describing and they're not complicated to use. If you're using crypto in small amounts and not as long-term storage, I think a phone wallet or desktop wallet is fine.

Re: Ethereum is a dark forest (2020)

#20

Post by nostrademons »

thejohnconway wrote: post #5

Then why are we building it? To fleece people who are not as smart? All this just seems insane to me.

Why did we build nuclear weapons? Even knowing that they could potentially annihilate humanity - indeed, that was the point. Because if we didn't, Nazi Germany would've, and then we would've been the ones annihilated.

History has a shape, and that shape is largely dictated by science, technology, and game theory. Whenever a technology gets discovered that gives its controllers a significant advantage over others, and its discovery is obvious enough that it could likely have been discovered elsewhere, you have to adopt it. Otherwise, others will, and gain enough of an advantage over you to threaten your existence. There's a reason that the permanent members of the UN Security Council are the U.S, Russia, China, Britain, and France, and that Germany and Japan are not on it.

Similar dynamics are why we still have arms races; climate change; lying & exaggeration; corruption; profiteering; and privatization. For more thoughts on this, you might want to check out this SlateStarCodex blogpost:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

It's tempting to look at a situation as a whole and say "This is bad for everyone. Why are we doing it?" without looking at the incentives and levers of control for each of the individual actors. Sometimes, these people even resolve to not engage in the bad behavior themselves, not realizing that not engaging in the bad behavior is marginalizing themselves out of the discourse, and that's why bad behavior persists.

Post reply on HN