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$625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

roninblockchain.substack.com

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Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#41

Post by cesaref »

bruce511 wrote: post #21
CydeWeys wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What meaningful distinction is drawn by using one of these words over the other? "Hacked" typically implies it happened over the net, whereas "stolen" typically implies it physically happened in person. The former is more appropriate here, no?

I'm not sure I agree. I mean secrets can be stolen. Apparently pirating music or movies is theft and so on. We've often seen the naritive of Big company stealing ideas etc from smaller companies. So stealing can extend beyond simple physical property, and could acceptably encompass IP as well.

It's a smart move by the entertainment industry to try to rebrand piracy as theft, as the public at large understand theft as a bad thing. Legally though I think it's 'copyright infringement' which sounds a lot less sexy.

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#42

Post by horsawlarway »

arcticbull wrote: post #32
RL_Quine wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your threshold? Who decided what is "not legitimate" activity? Clearly in this case the money was spent using the keys that were allocated to be able to control the money, what process overrides that?

I mean we have an answer to that, it's called the law, and its worked since 1750BC. [edit] This guy, Hammurabi - king of the First Babylonian Dynasty - faced a similar quandary, so there's some prior art. Disputes under the law are resolved in court.

No one in crypto typically wants to acknowledge this, but this is the clear and robust answer.

Your keys your coins is obviously a situation rife for unreconcilable fraud, and is not a functional solution for anyone who might - ya know, want to spend these things as a currency.

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#43

Post by dheera »

adtac wrote: post #22

This probably sounds like an insanely dumb idea to crypto people, but is it absolutely infeasible to reverse transactions when there's consensus that it's a hack? The TX fees need not be reversed (consider it to be a small price to pay for being hacked). A little bit of centralisation could make the whole network safer. Who is that centralised authority to decide what's a hack, I hear you ask. I don't know, but the a…

Maybe someone could invent the "FDIC" of crypto in smart contract form where everyone pays a periodic premium but if a hack occurs and there is consensus they get a payout.

Only problem is everyone would have to use their own wallets for it to work, and for most people it's safer to store large amounts of crypto on an exchange instead of a wallet for personal security reasons.

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#44

Post by zaroth »

arcticbull wrote: post #32
RL_Quine wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your threshold? Who decided what is "not legitimate" activity? Clearly in this case the money was spent using the keys that were allocated to be able to control the money, what process overrides that?

I mean we have an answer to that, it's called the law, and its worked since 1750BC. [edit] This guy, Hammurabi - king of the First Babylonian Dynasty - faced a similar quandary, so there's some prior art. Disputes under the law are resolved in court.

The only way to apply the court’s judgement (in the case of ETH) is to hark fork, because there is no governance contract in place.

A blockchain can in theory support such things, which would allow a majority vote to approve the court’s judgement, but not ETH as it currently stands.

Alternatively if you could get enough miners to just collectively agree to replay the blocks without that transaction you could let the owners move the funds, but it’s monumentally difficult as time goes on and the number of blocks to rewrite increases.

If it was detected in seconds, an emergency protocol does exist between certain large mining pools for this sort of thing.

Specifically, if you have contracts holding that kind of balance, if a transaction appears on the network which touches a percentage of the funds, you get blistering alarms ringing and someone can “break glass / pull lever” to lock the contract balance into an emergency cold vault. It freezes the DEX but better that then lose the funds. You partner with mining pools to pre-clear that TX and ensure your transaction gets priority in the next block, before the attacker’s transaction goes thru (making theirs the double-spend).

But they weren’t even watching. They didn’t even know until the next DAY.

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#45

Post by woodruffw »

adtac wrote: post #22

This probably sounds like an insanely dumb idea to crypto people, but is it absolutely infeasible to reverse transactions when there's consensus that it's a hack? The TX fees need not be reversed (consider it to be a small price to pay for being hacked). A little bit of centralisation could make the whole network safer. Who is that centralised authority to decide what's a hack, I hear you ask. I don't know, but the a…

I'm not a cryptocurrency person, but my understanding is that that's happened before: ETH effectively rolled back the DAO hack[1] in 2016. The end result was the "Ethereum Classic" split, which continues to this day. There are all kinds of financial ramifications to this kind of split, nearly all of which (to the best of my knowledge) remain unsolved.

The problem that you've correctly observed gets to the very root of why cryptocurrencies are a farce: if participants need the confidence of an ultimate human democratic process, you might as well kick the immutable public ledger to the curb, skip the tire burning, and use the financial system we already have.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization)

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#46

Post by jandrese »

jonathan-adly wrote: post #36
Dig1t wrote: post #20

So they now have this giant sum of money sitting in their wallet https://etherscan.io/address/0x098b716b8aaf21512996dc57eb061... what do they do next? How do criminals even use this money to do anything?

https://tornado.cash/ Probably can get $3-5m or so a year slowly. (which would take ~25 years or so).

Which is what that horrible cringe rapper lady was doing when she and her boyfriend were busted.

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#47

Post by mabbo »

In a system run by people, the transaction could be reversed, traced, and the culprits eventually brought to justice.

In a system run by algorithms, designed to avoid oversight by people (governments), there is no such powers. There's no reversal. There's no checking the name on the account the transfer was to. It's just gone.

I do not understand why people who have legal intentions would want to be part of the crypto economy. There's nothing but more risks with zero benefits.

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#49

Post by the_gastropod »

arcticbull wrote: post #32
RL_Quine wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your threshold? Who decided what is "not legitimate" activity? Clearly in this case the money was spent using the keys that were allocated to be able to control the money, what process overrides that?

I mean we have an answer to that, it's called the law, and its worked since 1750BC. [edit] This guy, Hammurabi - king of the First Babylonian Dynasty - faced a similar quandary, so there's some prior art. Disputes under the law are resolved in court.

No no no. Crypto enthusiasts reject the idea of the law, and the tyrannical governments that enforce them. Code is Law! Therefore, this is perfectly legal.

Conceding that this situation sounds absurd destroys the entire raison d'être of crypto.

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#50

Post by gonehome »

shakezula wrote: post #30
adtac wrote: post #22

This probably sounds like an insanely dumb idea to crypto people, but is it absolutely infeasible to reverse transactions when there's consensus that it's a hack? The TX fees need not be reversed (consider it to be a small price to pay for being hacked). A little bit of centralisation could make the whole network safer. Who is that centralised authority to decide what's a hack, I hear you ask. I don't know, but the a…

You’re describing a hard fork - exactly what created Ethereum and Ethereum Classic after the DAO hack. Even now it’s still considered a controversial move.

I think the majority sided with the move (which is why Ethereum soldiers on and EC is basically useless).

It's a good final social check on bad behavior. I think Vitalik as written about this (I'm pretty sure I read about it in one of his long form posts).

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