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

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

roninblockchain.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 761 posts

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

#481

Post by mrmuagi »

warent wrote: post #451
cinntaile wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are building systems that are ruining peoples lives and making things worse for everyone. Don't invest more than you can afford to lose, it's the basis of any investment strategy. If someone puts enough money into highly risky, speculative assets such as these that it would ruin their life, then they only have themselves to blame if you ask me... People have to take responsibility for their own choices. Edit: -…

Hideous victim blaming mentality here.

I am torn. If someone is holding a "ruining peoples lives" chunk in their portfolio, it's not a diversified one -- and it leads to a good life lesson. And if ones all in the stock market and it crashes -- surely you should not victim blame, because there is a road to redemption (just weather the storm), and it's really not their fault. Nobody can predict wether the number goes up or down reliably in the short term, yada yada. However given the nature of crypto landscape wrt. scams, attacks, takeovers, thefts, I can't help but say "buyer beware" and "it's a wild wild west out here".

I mean, you must agree it is good advice in hindsight to not hold all your eggs in one basket in this case. I do.

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

#482

Post by tenuousemphasis »

uncletammy wrote: post #463
tenuousemphasis wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at all. The worst thing a centralized server can do in Lightning is refuse to route your transactions. Their peers have the keys and the pre-signed transactions necessary to unilaterally withdraw their funds from the channel.

> The worst thing a centralized server can do in Lightning is refuse to route your transactions. This is called censorship, the very thing Bitcoin was created to circumvent. It's an especially big problem given the fact that the vast majority of lightning payments are routed through lightning nodes operated by centralized cryptocurrency exchanges. Most of the remaining nodes on the lightning network are unreliable du…

>It's an especially big problem given the fact that the vast majority of lightning payments are routed through lightning nodes operated by centralized cryptocurrency exchanges.

I'd love to know how you came to believe this. Due to Lightning's design, there is no way to know how payments are routed, so it seems clear that you're either misinformed or lying.

> That's not even getting into the abysmal incentive structure node operators face.

Such as... getting paid for your capital by routing payments? Oh no, so abysmal!

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

#483

Post by mrmuagi »

cinntaile wrote: post #466
warent wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hideous victim blaming mentality here.

I'm not blaming someone for getting scammed, that's on the scammer. But I am blaming someone for ruining their own life if they put more money into a speculative, highly risky asset than they can lose. This isn't confined to crypto, it can also be regular stocks or other investments. I mean this in a general sense. I don't mean people taking advantage of people that aren't in the right state of mind (for whatever rea…

Not sure why you got such a negative reaction. This is basic 101 holding a investment portfolio (I hope I have it right [1]), the more all in the upper right (higher std dev) of this graph, the higher risk, the more bananas you'll lose in your basket if things go, proverbially, tits up. Diversifying is a tool/shield against this by minimizing risk against reward.

[1] https://youtu.be/8TJQhQ2GZ0Y?t=1640

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

#484

Post by lvs »

jonathan-adly wrote: post #286
Barrera wrote: post #225

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…

1. Can your "blockchain" be validated with regular hardware? 2. Does it use a secure consensus algorithm? 3. Is there a secure side channel through which low-value transactions can flow? The only blockchain with 3 yes is Bitcoin lol.

No post body was provided.

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

#485

Post by arthurcolle »

mtoner23 wrote: post #308
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like if they had a checking account with their bank credentials stored in ENV variables and someone got access to that server it would be the same outcome. The details of it being on a crypto-currency are interesting but when password/passphrase/private key security is poor it doesn't really matter the medium holding the money.

Yeah, banks dont let you move this money without multiple levels of identity verification by both parties.

Not always true: https://www.vice.com/en/article/ne8p9b/offshore-bank-targete...

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

#486

Post by acdha »

gen220 wrote: post #69

Question for the legal-minded folk here. Is this "theft" illegal in the criminal sense? It's exploiting an unintended hole in software, but it's technically following the smart contract faithfully, albeit against the better intentions of its author(s). Has a smart contract case like this been litigated before? It brings to mind comparable things that have happened in the financial services world, where one party insi…

Real world analogues can be useful for thinking about these situations: would the mob be able to steal your money and avoid charges because they got five of their guys hired by your bank to approve the deal? (Or redirected a phone line, faked letters, etc.?)

The answer is no because there’s a clear victim, and this wasn’t taking advantage of a mistake like e.g. a casino game which didn’t have the right formula but rather clearly subverting the safeguards built into the system. In the real world, no judge is going to look at that and say “well, that’s what the code did. Nothing we can do about it even though everyone knows it’s theft!” and a jury isn’t going to believe you “accidentally” broke separate safeguards on multiple systems.

That’s just the basic stuff which would have been true a century ago. In this case you’d also want to think about the relevant laws wherever they are based — for example, the U.S. CFAA bans use of a computer contrary to how the owner intends you to use it. Even if this wasn’t so clear cut, I’d expect them to successfully argue that knowingly subverting an oracle would meet that threshold since you clearly knew how the system was intended to work.

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

#487

Post by cesarb »

afpx wrote: post #164
calrain wrote: post #140

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?

We had something like that in the early 90s: in an attempt to combat hyperinflation, the government froze all the money above a certain small threshold on everyone's bank accounts (known as the "confisco da poupança", see the first bullet at https://pt.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Plano_Collor&oldi... for a bit more detail). Even today, rumors of something like that happening again are enough to make old people take money from the banks, even though the country's constitution was later patched to specifically forbid that kind of measure (constitutional amendment 32 which changed/added article 62 paragraph 1 item II, see http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/emendas/em... for the full text).

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

#488

Post by dheera »

itintheory wrote: post #322
dheera wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> and for most people it's safer to store large amounts of crypto on an exchange instead of a wallet for personal security reasons. This is the opposite of what is usually recommended.

Yep, I realize that, but having your own wallet means:

- Everyone can track your transactions and personal wealth on EtherScan or similar tools, whereas in an exchange it is significantly obfuscated by the exchange's own collection of wallets and databases.

- You could be robbed at gunpoint for your hardware wallet.

- You could lose your wallet in a fire or other natural disaster.

- While you can back up your wallet keys online, most people cannot remember the long passphrases, and end up writing them down on paper which isn't secure if someone were to break into your residence or office.

For most users the combination of these risks far exceed the risks of keeping money in an exchange.

But yeah, if you're a billionaire with a 24/7 personal security team and personal firefighter team, then yeah, by all means, keep your own wallets.

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

#489

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#490

Post by headmelted »

cinntaile wrote: post #437
spicymaki wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why crypto is such a disaster. Every week there is yet another scam where people losing their money. The feedback from crypto enthusiasts is well look at those idiots for putting their money into some scheme or you are not smart enough use this thing. Look "nobody" understands what you are talking about. These financial systems are inscrutable and the problem is getting worse. You are building systems…

> You are building systems that are ruining peoples lives and making things worse for everyone. Don't invest more than you can afford to lose, it's the basis of any investment strategy. If someone puts enough money into highly risky, speculative assets such as these that it would ruin their life, then they only have themselves to blame if you ask me... People have to take responsibility for their own choices. Edit: -…

Your response assumes the only victims are the people holding the bags, but its key feature is that it facilitates organised crime more effectively than anything in history.

Now with that said, someone may respond to mention that it’s key feature is actually [a store of value/decentralised digital money/new gold etc] and that person will be wrong.

Post reply on HN