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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

#511

Post by Sargos »

allturtles wrote: post #509
mrmuagi wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>* Giving criminals and scammers the ability to exchange goods and services anonymously. I don't see how this is any different than the bog standard "encryption lets criminals and scammers the ability to exchange goods and services anonymously.". Should money/txns be fundamentally track-able/examinable/un-encrypted but your private data/messages not? Surely this contention is something you also consider -- care to ex…

> I don't see how this is any different than the bog standard "encryption lets criminals and scammers the ability to exchange goods and services anonymously." The obvious difference is that encryption has many, many actually useful and productive applications.

>encryption has many, many actually useful and productive applications

So does crypto but likewise opponents of encryption disregard the positives and focus on the negatives to align with their preformed ideas. The only way out of this trap is to have an open mind and internalize the fact that all technologies can be used for good and evil and thus are relatively neutral overall. Humanity must take the good and bad and see where the path goes in order to advance as a species.

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

#512

Post by thinkmassive »

freddiecoleman wrote: post #456
jonathan-adly wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually it's Chia. Bitcoin requires custom hardware. Chia does not - you can use an ordinary hard drive and run a full node on a Raspberry Pi.

Bitcoin MINING is only feasible with special purpose hardware, but that's not what was stated:

> 1. Can your "blockchain" be validated with regular hardware?

Bitcoin can be VALIDATED on practically any low end consumer computer, including an early Raspberry Pi.

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

#514

Post by easrng »

nwiswell wrote: post #501
easrng wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are misinformed. With most cryptocurrencies (except Monero) it is very easy to blacklist wallets, and since tx history is public you can't just move your coins to a new address to get around it either. You don't actually even need decentralized systems for private transactions, digicash with blind signatures would be private and vastly more efficient.

I think "very easy" is relative. How do you get the whole world to agree to participate in the blacklist (or even to be aware of it)? If you don't, then obviously it will remain possible to tumble/launder the coins. By comparison, if PayPal decides to freeze your account, that's it, the end, those funds are frozen unless and until you successfully run the corporate supplication gauntlet.

You don't need the whole world, just the exchanges. And and some ERC20 tokens can have addresses frozen by a central authority (ex. USDC and Circle, USDT and Tether, etc) which is why the attacker immediately sold the USDC for ETH on 1inch and Uniswap.

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

#515

Post by thinkmassive »

viksit wrote: post #505
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…

curious - “can your blockchain be validated with regular hardware” - why is this a point you call out? is it that specialized equipment is not easily accessible and thus not truly decentralized?

Exactly. If validating the ledger requires millions of dollars worth of hardware, only a few people will know what it actually says, and they can collude to impose whatever rules they want (basically like what happened in the article).

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

#516

Post by thinkmassive »

coconut08 wrote: post #478
uncletammy wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

they can't censor you. this is incorrect. all they can do is inconvenience you. ultimately you can close the channel with them at any time if you conclude they are a bad actor.

Beyond that, LN transactions use onion routing, which means you define the exact route for your payment to take through the network. You can actively avoid ever routing through a particular node if that's your desire.

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

#517

Post by Uehreka »

cinntaile wrote: post #507
Uehreka wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we raise concerns about crypto’s riskyness, people like you show up and say “investment involves risk” and frame crypto as a speculative investment. Then when you’re gone someone else will show up hyping Bitcoin/Ethereum as a currency that will change the world, which implies that it is or will be stable enough to use to pay for goods and services (as opposed to being a vehicle for speculation). Our frustration…

> Our frustration stems from our inability to get both of you in the same room to duke it out once and for all. If only the world were such a simple place where there is only one right and one wrong answer.

If folks are making the argument that risky speculative investments can be used as currency for day-to-day purchases, that’s an argument I’d hear out, but I feel like it would be a difficult argument to make.

And for the record, the argument I’m perceiving from you (“crypto is a speculative investment, invest carefully, enjoy it if you win”) is the closest to reality of all of these arguments IMO. But I do also believe that highly speculative things like this make for bad day-to-day currencies, and have not yet been convinced otherwise.

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

#518

Post by narrator »

acdha wrote: post #462
narrator wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Argentina, in 2002, they took everyone's dollars denominated accounts at the Argentinian banks, converted them to Pesos and devalued the peso by 75%. Everyone in the country now had 1/3 of the money they previously had. The country is arguably still recovering from that theft. Currently, people who left Ukraine are finding out that their Ukrainian credit cards no longer work. Some people who have bitcoin are still…

Okay, now think about what would happen if Argentinians used Bitcoin. The same government would use the same powers to make the same request. Any business which accepted or made transactions in unapproved currencies would be punished. Any person keeping their money in a local exchange - as almost all Bitcoin users do given how expensive it is to do it solo - would have the seizure done automatically. The blockchain w…

Everyone who had overseas bank accounts in 2002 Argentina did just fine. Bitcoin on a foreign exchange or in a self-custody wallet would also be just fine. Getting a foreign bank account is too expensive for your average Argentinian because you have to show up in person to set it up, but a self-custody wallet can be had on any minimal smart phone.

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

#519

Post by kemotep »

cinntaile wrote: post #464
ejb999 wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not really supposed to be an 'investment' - anymore than the dollar is an investment? If crypto wants to replace dollars, they are going to have to do better than this. Would you tell someone who's dollars are stolen 'don't have more dollars than you can afford to lose'?

I think Axie Infinity is some sort of NFT game? How is that going to replace the dollar?

The article covers that it was Ethereum that was stolen. On the surface it appears none of the Axie Infinity based tokens were touched.

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

#520

Post by thinkmassive »

headmelted wrote: post #490
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: -…

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.

> The majority of cryptocurrency is not used for criminal activity. According to an excerpt from Chainalysis’ 2021 report, in 2019, criminal activity represented 2.1% of all cryptocurrency transaction volume (roughly $21.4 billion worth of transfers). In 2020, the criminal share of all cryptocurrency activity fell to just 0.34% ($10.0 billion in transaction volume).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-fal...

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