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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

#681

Post by spyder »

lolinder wrote: post #142
whatshisface wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrency theft is illegal and the US government does investigate and prosecute it. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/feb/14/us-bitcoin-case-...

That's all well and good when the thieves are in the US or a country that will extradite them. What happens when the thieves are operating out of a country without an extradition treaty? In the regular financial world you can at least reverse the transaction. With crypto, is there anything you can do?

The same thing can happen with regular financial hacks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Bank_robbery

They investigate and try to recover the money they can, but it's not always successful.

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

#682

Post by Dagonfly »

woah wrote: post #646
phphphphp wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most cryptocurrency dunking is because of exactly what you describe: the technology, in its purest form, can avoid a certain category of problems... but those problems are rarely relevant and instead the "cryptocurrency" industry is just a bunch of people chanting the word "blockchain" over and over again as they code their way into a plate of spaghetti. Axie Infinity is one of the shining stars of the cryptocurrency…

> the fact that they use a side chain with centralised validators is immaterial. The hack happened because private keys were stolen, which is just as much of a vulnerability if this happened entirely on the main ethereum chain where acquiring the various private keys required to create a legitimate multi-signature is just as possible. No, you're wrong. The number of unique validators is at the heart of this hack, sin…

I consider myself crypto sceptic. Sceptic in the sense that a community behind a technology should be eager to label flawed projects and claims as such, and seek to improve.

In crypto/web3 a diverse landscape of projects gets thrown into a single pot and then evaluated by both sides as if they all had the same properties. See "decentralization": It feels like any project in crypto can just benefit from claiming to be decentralized.

Axie's Ronan Network is demonstrably not decentralized. Tether, USDC are not decentralized. Any cross-chain bridge is not decentralized. CEX are not decentralized. Close to all NFT projects are not decentralized. I'd say that any smart contract implementing ERC20Burnable, Mint, or Ownable are not decentralized without extra measures, same goes for upgradable tokens.

If your are not decentralized, you also can't claim to be censorship proof or trustless.

If a decentralized community wants to iterate on a project, at some point it will have to make decisions that are not unanimously approved by the community. Chain protocols handle this by letting forks battle it out. Smart Contracts reach for DAOs, but most (all?) projects have a community leadership that are Owner and perform the upgrade. You could instead have the DAO contract own the main contract and autonomously upgrade once a majority is reached. Are any projects doing this?

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

#683

Post by bamboozled »

saboot wrote: post #458
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 neglecting to mention the great upsides in crypto currency. * Giving criminals and scammers the ability to exchange goods and services anonymously. * Providing a source of funding North Korea's nuclear weapons program * Allowing nation states to engage in global commerce despite sanctions because they won't stop killing innocent people * Convincing older and gullible people to give their money to someone they…

I don't know if people are victims of misinformation campaigns or something but the way people blame blockchain for everything is just so ridiculous.

Like as if it's the reason North Korea has a nuclear missile program, give me a break?

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

#684

Post by bartread »

malermeister wrote: post #680
ls15 wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Evacuating money from war or authocratic leadership in a brain wallet, without running into the risk of getting it stolen at checkpoints. Of course that works best for those who already have crypto before that door closes. * Paying for VPN anonymously with Monero. * Sending money for living to relatives that reside in countries that are sanctioned. What's more important? Knowing that your family is not hungry or fo…

In a democratic society, with an elected principal, it's not only not valuable, but anti-democratic and antisocial. We all agreed on the rules as a society, if somebody wants to empower themselves above them than that's not cool imo. Of course, in authoritarian governments your point stands, but then the trade-off is undermining democracies as collateral damage.

> We all agreed on the rules as a society

Actually we didn't. None of us chose to be here. None of us has a choice over when or where we're born. We all arrive and grow up in societies structured and governed in ways that we've had no say over, and over which very few of us will have meaningful influence during our lifetimes. Some of this is OK, some of it isn't. Some places are more or less OK than others. But don't act like we should all simply accept everything about systems we've had no agency in building purely because we might live in a democracy.

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

#685

Post by malermeister »

bartread wrote: post #684
malermeister wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a democratic society, with an elected principal, it's not only not valuable, but anti-democratic and antisocial. We all agreed on the rules as a society, if somebody wants to empower themselves above them than that's not cool imo. Of course, in authoritarian governments your point stands, but then the trade-off is undermining democracies as collateral damage.

> We all agreed on the rules as a society Actually we didn't. None of us chose to be here. None of us has a choice over when or where we're born. We all arrive and grow up in societies structured and governed in ways that we've had no say over, and over which very few of us will have meaningful influence during our lifetimes. Some of this is OK, some of it isn't. Some places are more or less OK than others. But don't…

I've moved countries four times in my life. You might not have chosen to be here, but others have. Speak for yourself.

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

#686

Post by ls15 »

malermeister wrote: post #680
ls15 wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Evacuating money from war or authocratic leadership in a brain wallet, without running into the risk of getting it stolen at checkpoints. Of course that works best for those who already have crypto before that door closes. * Paying for VPN anonymously with Monero. * Sending money for living to relatives that reside in countries that are sanctioned. What's more important? Knowing that your family is not hungry or fo…

In a democratic society, with an elected principal, it's not only not valuable, but anti-democratic and antisocial. We all agreed on the rules as a society, if somebody wants to empower themselves above them than that's not cool imo. Of course, in authoritarian governments your point stands, but then the trade-off is undermining democracies as collateral damage.

All my examples are defensive. Defending the freedoms that are guaranteed by the underlying social contracts (but commonly ignored by those in power, even in the most democratic societies that exist) is not antisocial at all. Unlike violence, crypto specifically is not empowerment above others, but personal empowerment for everyone. Everyone can be empowered at the same time.

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

#687

Post by [deleted] »

slaman wrote: post #675
CryptoPunk wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crypto part obviates the need for using international wire transfers and the powerful correspondent banks that make it possible.

Could an alternate means of settlement be used? Runescape gold or hawala? Potentially the involvement of those banks is a feature and provides value? Things to ponder...

[deleted]

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

#688

Post by CryptoPunk »

slaman wrote: post #675
CryptoPunk wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crypto part obviates the need for using international wire transfers and the powerful correspondent banks that make it possible.

Could an alternate means of settlement be used? Runescape gold or hawala? Potentially the involvement of those banks is a feature and provides value? Things to ponder...

Those alternate means are not very durable.

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

#689

Post by CryptoPunk »

jhugo wrote: post #674
CryptoPunk wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crypto part obviates the need for using international wire transfers and the powerful correspondent banks that make it possible.

Alibaba could already avoid that need for individual transactions by just holding balances in the different currencies, like e.g. Wise and many other retail forex providers do. They only need to deal with correspondent banks for balancing out those accounts in case more money flows in one direction than the other, and those transactions are large so the costs are not as much of a concern. In any case, your argument p…

>>Most people don't have that desire, they just want the money to go from A-B reasonably cheaply, and there are existing great solutions for that except at the fringes

Yes, it is for the fringes. One day Alibaba could find itself on the fringes, as collateral damage in some geopolitical dispute that locks it out of the centralized global financial system, as a result of which country it is based in.

I have no idea if this concern motivated Alibaba's reliance on crypto though.

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

#690

Post by ryan_lane »

throw_nbvc1234 wrote: post #423
cecilpl2 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like an argument for why companies should be allowed to sell unregulated drugs and use asbestos and lead paint. Individual consumers, who we all know are extremely knowledgeable and informed on all topics interacting with their lives, should weigh the increased risk of total loss against generally lower prices. And then in the event they unluck into in the total loss case, they should just shrug their sho…

Companies selling "unregulated drugs" could also mean people getting the covid vaccine in mid 2020 rather then waiting months and months for trials. People could have made that personal choice based on their own situation and risk factors. Also compare the regulation between "drugs" and "supplements" in the USA. I find it hard to argue that "asbestos and lead paint" are the same kind of individual choice as a bank or…

Yes, and it could have led to scammers selling fake vaccines that did nothing, or worse, killed people.
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