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

roninblockchain.substack.com

361–370 of 761 posts

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

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do you think this studio was a no government no authorities crowd? I meant the general web3/cryptobro crowd

Then maybe just ignore those people and let the people running businesses just do what they need to do, like issue empty PR damage control statements like any hacked organization will do Lets make fun of them just like we were making fun of Okta’s response over Lapsus No need to project your own cognitive dissonance

> No need to project your own cognitive dissonance

Not sure why you felt the need to insult me but that won't lead to useful discussions...

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

#362

This is the kind of pain that comes from trusting scammers and nincompoops about unworkable blockchain "scalability" fixes. Here's the sequence. Those dumb enough to ignore it are doomed to repeat the pattern. I'm probably getting some details wrong in this Rube Goldberg scheme, so feel free to correct. 1. Citing "Ethereum network congestion," Axie Infinity announces an ethereum side chain, Ronin.[1] 2. Ronin was a c…

That's exactly the situation in Bitcoin second layer now. There are a few centralized servers (lnbig etc) handling almost all transactions. Get out and stay out.

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

#363
post #47

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 crypt…

The ethereum network has been rolled back before, so what you say is not correct.

Hence Ethereum Cassic, which didn't roll back.

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

#364
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't always reverse the transaction in regular financial world. It is typically possible if all parties involved act in good faith, and often possible in other cases too, if you act fast, or the bad faith actor is less than competent. However, this is not always the case. Imagine the following scenario: bank A sends $100M to bank B, which then sends it to bank C. By "reversing" the A->B transaction, all you're d…

Reversing erroneous transactions is a useful feature of regular financial system. Yes. A friend of mine is a branch manager for a major bank. She's one of the people who has to deal with unhappy customers victimized by scams. Recently, she had a customer who wanted to send a significant amount of money to a country in Southeast Asia. That's not unusual for a California bank. Then the customer showed up at the branch…

I'd imagine "customer suddenly initiates an international wire transfer for a large amount, with no previous history of doing so" is a pretty reliable signal.

I've certainly had banks call me and explain the nature of wires, in an attempt to prevent me from financially foot-gunning.

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

#365

This is the kind of pain that comes from trusting scammers and nincompoops about unworkable blockchain "scalability" fixes. Here's the sequence. Those dumb enough to ignore it are doomed to repeat the pattern. I'm probably getting some details wrong in this Rube Goldberg scheme, so feel free to correct. 1. Citing "Ethereum network congestion," Axie Infinity announces an ethereum side chain, Ronin.[1] 2. Ronin was a c…

Right now they're immature, but I'm hopeful that advancements in ZK-tech will allow practical ZK-rollups. ZKSync already has a zk-evm testnet running (which I believe is based on zk-llvm), so we're close. Currently all the big rollups have master keys which can be used to steal all the money deposited by them, but there's no reason in principle they have to have this. Polygon has permissionless rollups, so I'm quite…

The nice thing about zkrollups is that users have a cryptographic guarantee of being able to withdraw their money. The rolled-up transactions are posted on chain in compressed form, and a contract on chain verifies a concise proof that all the rules were followed, including that all transactions had valid signatures.

So if this is done correctly, any master keys shouldn't be able to steal user funds. The key holders would be the ones authorized to post the data, but the worst they could do is censor transactions.

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

#366
post #31

I'm out of the loop and trying to understand - people lent over half a billion dollars of their 'real' fake money (ETH) to a game studio so they could transact on the studio's sidechain because gas fees are prohibitively expensive on ETH, and then the game studio got hacked and lost it all? How was this ever going to end any other way? Imagine how preposterous the idea of storing $650mm in USD in a random game studio…

Here's another preposterous offering: 20% APY "risk free" from owning crypto.

Everybody thinks they can time their exit before the Ponzi reveals itself.

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

#367
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there are people in the world who can wake up and have lost all money they had deposited in a bank. There are people who have to pay 20% transfer fees to move money overseas. There are people who don't have the ability to open a bank account. There are people who can lose all their banked money if their government doesn't like them. The first world doesn't have these problems. Crypto is a bigger play than 'ge…

Where in the world is it common to lose all money deposited in a bank? And, why not just create better banks?

Venezuela, Greece, Russia, Argentina, Mexico. All of these had government bank withdrawal locks at some point to prevent "bank runs".

The general population who had their money in the corresponding currency got f*ed because they could not exchange from their local currency to something better.

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

#368
post #47

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 crypt…

Consider yourself lucky. You don't live in places like Russia, China or Canada, where your credit cards and bank account can be frozen or even confiscated without due process. For some living under these regimes, crypto is the only wealth they've been able to retain.

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

#369
post #119

Echoes of Mt Gox: when something meant to be a much smaller operation (such as a place to trade Magic:The Gathering cards) suddenly finds itself playing a much bigger game. It's like you agreed to temporarily store the Fort Knox gold reserves in your spare room, but still have the same ordinary lock on the front door.

> Fort Knox gold reserves in your spare room What do you mean a wooden safe isn't good enough?! Joke aside. This is the reality we live in. Almost makes heist movies pale in comparison. The failed Die Hard heist was planned in order to steal $640M. I wonder how long until Hollywood will start making movies about these hacks.

There is a whole genre of teen thriller movies that play out entirely in the medium of messages sent back and forth on phone screens. It's exactly as exciting as you can imagine.

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

#370
post #119

Echoes of Mt Gox: when something meant to be a much smaller operation (such as a place to trade Magic:The Gathering cards) suddenly finds itself playing a much bigger game. It's like you agreed to temporarily store the Fort Knox gold reserves in your spare room, but still have the same ordinary lock on the front door.

> Fort Knox gold reserves in your spare room What do you mean a wooden safe isn't good enough?! Joke aside. This is the reality we live in. Almost makes heist movies pale in comparison. The failed Die Hard heist was planned in order to steal $640M. I wonder how long until Hollywood will start making movies about these hacks.

There is a whole genre of teen thriller movies that play out entirely in the medium of messages sent back and forth on phone screens. It's exactly as exciting as it sounds.
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