Escaping the Dark Forest • Hacker News Board

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#111

Post by vvpan » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 6:42 AM UTC

daanavitch wrote: post #108

pavlov wrote: post #40

Nice work, but honestly I'm not sure why they bother. The article states that the purpose of these smart contracts is: "Stake your tokens with us and you could be the next cryptocurrency millionaire" That's an obvious scam. Anyone who gave real money to such a cause has already lost it. So why is the author giving away his time to help the scammers?

'Yield farming' has been very popular the past few months. Compound Finance was the first to kick off the hype by giving away their governance tokens to people that used their platform. You can compare it to Facebook giving you some of their stock by being an active user. The end game of those governance tokens is for them to control the whole platform, so absolutely no changes can be made to the platform without bei…

Half a billion daily you mean, hehe.

Glad to see informed comments, BTW.

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#112

Post by vvpan » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 6:54 AM UTC

strogonoff wrote: post #101

seibelj wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gave you everything you needed to know! Uniswap airdrop! $500k profits! The rules of the airdrop are published! If none of this makes sense to you then you aren’t even remotely in the crypto space. Uniswap is the biggest dex in the world! Do 20 minutes of googling

I believe I already know everything I need to know here. I am concerned not about myself but those susceptible to being persuaded by statements a la “my friend made 6 figures” with no further substantiation, especially in these troubled times.

His friend didn't "make" the money. The token was airdropped to every account that ever used the exchange or has provided liquidity. I had two accounts with a couple of transactions each - bam a nice surprise of a few thousand USD worth of value. It's very odd and unexpected. I never make money off of crypto but perhaps it just pays to be in something new. Right time and right place as they say.

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#113

Post by gambiting » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 7:02 AM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #40

Nice work, but honestly I'm not sure why they bother. The article states that the purpose of these smart contracts is: "Stake your tokens with us and you could be the next cryptocurrency millionaire" That's an obvious scam. Anyone who gave real money to such a cause has already lost it. So why is the author giving away his time to help the scammers?

I just don't understand the entire article - who is this guy? What is he doing? Why is he doing it? What are the dozens of different acronyms in this article and what do they mean? Who owns the 9.6M dollars and where was it at the risk of going?

Maybe this is a good article for someone deep into crypto, but for myself, as a casual morning read - I have no idea what happened.

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#114

Post by gambiting » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 7:06 AM UTC

vvpan wrote: post #112

strogonoff wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe I already know everything I need to know here. I am concerned not about myself but those susceptible to being persuaded by statements a la “my friend made 6 figures” with no further substantiation, especially in these troubled times.

His friend didn't "make" the money. The token was airdropped to every account that ever used the exchange or has provided liquidity. I had two accounts with a couple of transactions each - bam a nice surprise of a few thousand USD worth of value. It's very odd and unexpected. I never make money off of crypto but perhaps it just pays to be in something new. Right time and right place as they say.

I just don't understand - where is that money coming from? You said you suddenly and unexpectedly got a few thousand USD - that sounds to me like someone on the other end, somewhere, just got scammed out of few thousand USD? It can't be just investor money being randomly deposited into accounts "for the lulz"?

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#115

Post by superjan » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 7:41 AM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #113

pavlov wrote: post #40

Nice work, but honestly I'm not sure why they bother. The article states that the purpose of these smart contracts is: "Stake your tokens with us and you could be the next cryptocurrency millionaire" That's an obvious scam. Anyone who gave real money to such a cause has already lost it. So why is the author giving away his time to help the scammers?

I just don't understand the entire article - who is this guy? What is he doing? Why is he doing it? What are the dozens of different acronyms in this article and what do they mean? Who owns the 9.6M dollars and where was it at the risk of going? Maybe this is a good article for someone deep into crypto, but for myself, as a casual morning read - I have no idea what happened.

What I pieced together from the referenced “dark forest” article, ethereum cryptocurrency allows you to upload programs (smart contracts) that specify under what conditions cryptocurrency changes hands. If there are bugs in these programs, the money can be stolen. Fixing the bugs after the fact is only possible with new contracts, and there are bad actors constantly scanning the newly uploaded contracts, copy them while making themselves the beneficiary. This is fully automated. To bypass this they gave the contract directly to a miner, so it is only publicly visible after it is run/completed. I can imagine the appeal of working on this, it is really a specialized type of unpaid white hat security researcher.

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#116

Post by strogonoff » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 7:46 AM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #114

vvpan wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His friend didn't "make" the money. The token was airdropped to every account that ever used the exchange or has provided liquidity. I had two accounts with a couple of transactions each - bam a nice surprise of a few thousand USD worth of value. It's very odd and unexpected. I never make money off of crypto but perhaps it just pays to be in something new. Right time and right place as they say.

I just don't understand - where is that money coming from? You said you suddenly and unexpectedly got a few thousand USD - that sounds to me like someone on the other end, somewhere, just got scammed out of few thousand USD? It can't be just investor money being randomly deposited into accounts "for the lulz"?

The USD figure is more akin to valuation of a company than that amount of USD in hard currency. Probably not inclusive of expenses and risks associated with converting it into cash.

How that value is earned and calculated are interesting questions.

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#117

Post by askmike » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 7:48 AM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #75

3np wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an unfair representation of what actually unfolded.

Unfair enough that you can articulate why?

> (which would be like, the regulators responsible for the computer)

no one is responsible, that's the whole point. The thing runs by itself and game theory keeps it afloat - not a group of people. Else it's just like a company.

That said, the protocol isn't finished and you have people involved in maintaining and upgrading the protocol. Which is in no way forced down upon everyone: once they have an update everyone is free to choose to run it or not.

These people have influence (you could argue too much) about the future of the protocol.

> if your arbitrage trade takes away too much money from an account belong the core devs

This is not why these decisions were made at all, because some core dev instested in the DAO.

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#118

Post by mlang23 » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 7:52 AM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #72

SiempreViernes wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the glory? Because even chumps deserve justice? Because someone needs to defend the reputation of digicoins?

Two things: if digicoins have a deservedly bad reputation, maybe it shouldn't be defended. And: if this is defending their reputation I'd hate to see what attacking it looks like. I have never wanted less to be involved in cryptocurrency or been more skeptical of it's future than now having finished reading this article.

Same here. Having read this article, I know why I never wanted to have anything to do with cryptocurrency. Its a scam all over the place.

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#119

Post by strogonoff » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 7:52 AM UTC

vvpan wrote: post #112

strogonoff wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe I already know everything I need to know here. I am concerned not about myself but those susceptible to being persuaded by statements a la “my friend made 6 figures” with no further substantiation, especially in these troubled times.

His friend didn't "make" the money. The token was airdropped to every account that ever used the exchange or has provided liquidity. I had two accounts with a couple of transactions each - bam a nice surprise of a few thousand USD worth of value. It's very odd and unexpected. I never make money off of crypto but perhaps it just pays to be in something new. Right time and right place as they say.

Handout instead of profit, few thousand instead of half a million USD value—we are moving into a more realistic territory.

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#120

Post by vvpan » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 7:57 AM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #114

vvpan wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His friend didn't "make" the money. The token was airdropped to every account that ever used the exchange or has provided liquidity. I had two accounts with a couple of transactions each - bam a nice surprise of a few thousand USD worth of value. It's very odd and unexpected. I never make money off of crypto but perhaps it just pays to be in something new. Right time and right place as they say.

I just don't understand - where is that money coming from? You said you suddenly and unexpectedly got a few thousand USD - that sounds to me like someone on the other end, somewhere, just got scammed out of few thousand USD? It can't be just investor money being randomly deposited into accounts "for the lulz"?

Nobody got scammed. It's pretty much like an IPO. The project distributed tokens, not dollars. Coinbase and a few other exchanges listed them and trading started with the tokens fetching a certain price. I sold some on Coinbase, got money - that's it. The token is a "governance token" and I, personally, don't see much value in it but I do not follow this too closely. In theory the token gives the holder a future say in the direction of the projects and maybe a cut of the profits.