Ethereum Is a Dark Forest • Hacker News Board

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#141

Post by rglullis » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 9:43 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #61

Analemma_ wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And let's be honest, the competition is still "Oops, I accidentally sent $900M to the wrong party." [1] The counterargument there is that Citibank is currently pursuing a resolution in the courts to that issue, and if they win they will get their $900M back. If you flub a DeFi transaction, you're shit outta luck.

And of course, if cryptocurrencies ever become anything more than Internet play money (and environmental disaster), the legal systems of countries worldwide will make sure the same protections apply. So yes, your newest cryptoanarchist token may have totally irreversible transactions (cross my heart, here's the math proof!), but the court can still order the thief to send back the money they stole in a separate trans…

In two to three years, Ethereum 2.0 will be using a Proof-of-Stake system and environmental concerns will be no more.

> the court can still order the thief to send back the money.

What if the court can not find the thief? What if the thief is from another nation? What if the thief is another nation?

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#142

Post by jessaustin » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC

AaronFriel wrote: post #5

Fantastic story and analogy to Liu Cixin's novel. Writing bug-free code is hard enough, but this adversarial environment is fascinating and takes it to another level.

I thought the biggest flaw in 3BP was that none of the characters and none of the unknown assailants seemed to do any temporal discounting. A species that might be a threat in a billion years is not worth worrying about now. Resources should be used for immediate survival, not for eventually-it-might-be-nice extermination. It made the story seem more like a fantasy of contending royals than speculative fiction of scientists and soldiers. Of course, it probably seems natural to those who have different priors than I have. It's funny to see it cited in this context; I'm sure everyone on Ethereum knows about temporal discounting.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#143

Post by spir » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #128

spir wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spend a lot of time on Ethereum and wanted to respond to your points. 1) Yes, proof of work is terrible long-term, mainly because its cost scales with the market cap of the cryptocurrencies it secures. Ethereum is switching to proof of stake, which uses a normal amount of electricity and forever solves this issue 2) There are also a lot of excellent ideas and projects. For example, Gitcoin, quadratic funding, quadr…

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I'll preface with saying that I listed my points as a contributors to the source of feelings I have about the crypto space - they're observations subject to selection bias. RE 1. I keep hearing this for years now; I'll believe in PoS when I see it actually working. RE 2., I just tend to keep finding (or being approached with) really bad ones. Last time I got excited was with Fil…

Thanks for your reply!

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#144

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC

spir wrote: post #143

TeMPOraL wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I'll preface with saying that I listed my points as a contributors to the source of feelings I have about the crypto space - they're observations subject to selection bias. RE 1. I keep hearing this for years now; I'll believe in PoS when I see it actually working. RE 2., I just tend to keep finding (or being approached with) really bad ones. Last time I got excited was with Fil…

Thanks for your reply! You might be interested to check out https://medalla.launchpad.ethereum.org - this is a public testnet of Ethereum proof of stake https://beaconcha.in/ - this is an explorer for the proof of stake testnet. The proof of stake chain is called the "beacon chain". If you want to believe in PoS when you see it actually working, this site is actually that! The public testnet launched in the last mont…

Thank you! This looks like the significant development I was waiting for.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#145

Post by dimmke » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

The environment described in this article is horrifying and definitely sounds worse than our current financial system. That person just lost $12k to fraud and has no recourse at all.

I agree with the other comments on here. Blockchain/crypto has always made me uncomfortable. I think it's a mix of the slimy get rich quick aspect of it that draws a lot of people and the cyberpunk/dystopian rhetoric around it.

I also think it's telling that even though Blockchain has been this hyped thing for 6+ years at this point, we haven't really seen it actually be used for anything outside of cryptocurrency, which in and of itself isn't used for much outside of speculation. On the other hand, machine learning is used in everything now and makes a lot of stuff better.

It definitely sounds like there's an additional major innovation that needs to happen with this stuff before it's really usable.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#146

Post by trthomps » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

panarky wrote: post #88

marcus_holmes wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an outsider looking in, though, it seems that banks are getting better at this, while crypto is getting worse. There's a bajillion fintechs helping the banks sort out their UI issues and make it friendlier/better. Bitcoin is still basically unusable for everyday transactions, and the endless stream of wallet provider hacks is not convincing anyone that it's secure. As TFA says, the hazards for normal folks playing…

> basically unusable for everyday transactions Why is this the acid test? Buying a coffee is a solved problem so why is blockchain tech expected to address this use case? > the endless stream of wallet provider hacks is not convincing anyone that it's secure Does the endless stream of point-of-sale and credit card hacks make you question the security of dollars, euros and yen?

The banking system deals with it by just reversing the transaction so the end user of the system, the consumer, doesn't care. This ends up screwing the merchant most of the time, causing the price to be paid by higher prices, but people don't seem to care.

And most people don't store value in currency long term, they typically store value in assets such as precious metals, securities, or real estate. Cash has a purpose of exchanging value in the modern economy, nothing more. It is manipulated by design to bring stability to the economy to allow for a more favorable business environment.

I think crypto has a place in the world... but it's not as a general purpose currency. Using anything but a fiat currency for commerce is way too unstable for long term sustainability.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#147

Post by iSnow » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

redahs wrote: post #122

emerged wrote: post #52

Writing this sort of bot seems like a legitimately fun and interesting thing to work on, but somehow I have less than zero interest in actually doing it. There's just something intrinsically repulsive about the entire blockchain world to me where I just don't want to touch it. I don't mean to offend people who do love blockchain tech, in many ways I don't blame you. But is this feeling I have somewhat common? I'm not…

The traditional american school of thought on money is that 1) the optimal supply of money is externally determined by the needs of commerce for liquidity, 2) new money can be created to meet the needs of commerce through public loans secured by real property pledged as collateral without any fixed artificial limits on supply 3) money may be circulated with an expiration date to discourage long term hoarding, 4) gene…

Blockchain started with the "better money" idea, but it has moved on and branched out into totally different fields:

- Document storage and attestation

- Supply chain and provenance

- making digital art non-fungible in the sense that copies exist but ownership of an original as well

- Resource allocation in IoT by creating M2M markets

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#148

Post by eddietejeda » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

emerged wrote: post #52

Writing this sort of bot seems like a legitimately fun and interesting thing to work on, but somehow I have less than zero interest in actually doing it. There's just something intrinsically repulsive about the entire blockchain world to me where I just don't want to touch it. I don't mean to offend people who do love blockchain tech, in many ways I don't blame you. But is this feeling I have somewhat common? I'm not…

I have it as well. But I recently started to think about it differently.

I think the reason people dislike blockchain so much is because the promise that blockchain will do DoEverythingBetter™ is not very convincing.

All things considered, this industry is pretty small... but it's an industry. It's already been around a decade and could easily last for many more.

In that time, people who work in the blockchain space will bring those ideas, concepts, and ideologies to other industries.

When you think of it that way, looking under the surface for interesting ideas does not seem so far fetched. I think this post did a great job telling a story about the new and fascinating concepts.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#149

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #141

TeMPOraL wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And of course, if cryptocurrencies ever become anything more than Internet play money (and environmental disaster), the legal systems of countries worldwide will make sure the same protections apply. So yes, your newest cryptoanarchist token may have totally irreversible transactions (cross my heart, here's the math proof!), but the court can still order the thief to send back the money they stole in a separate trans…

In two to three years, Ethereum 2.0 will be using a Proof-of-Stake system and environmental concerns will be no more. > the court can still order the thief to send back the money. What if the court can not find the thief? What if the thief is from another nation? What if the thief is another nation?

It will ultimately have to be handled the same way these problems are handled with fiat: through international treaties and multinationals subject to several jurisdictions simultaneously.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#150

Post by FridgeSeal » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

emerged wrote: post #52

Writing this sort of bot seems like a legitimately fun and interesting thing to work on, but somehow I have less than zero interest in actually doing it. There's just something intrinsically repulsive about the entire blockchain world to me where I just don't want to touch it. I don't mean to offend people who do love blockchain tech, in many ways I don't blame you. But is this feeling I have somewhat common? I'm not…

I feel the same way.

Storing everything forever perpetually on the blockchain just doesn’t seem like a feasible or good idea to me, and the wasted computation to do anything is annoying. The whole space seems filled with people who hold similar views about economics: all inflation is bad; all government and financial intervention in the economy is bad; all our money problems would be solved if people could just trade with each other, etc.

Also, pet peeve-many times I’ve heard blockchain enthusiasts talk about this idea that you can just put your data on the blockchain and pay a reasonable free and people will keep it there forever, you can move all your business computation to the blockchain by paying people who perform the computation. Nevermind how much of an outrageously poor idea that is: why on earth would I store my data on there, encrypted or otherwise? Why would I want random people carrying out business critical computation for me? Some of the chains are already pretty huge, can you imagine how big they’ll balloon out to within 6 months if businesses started lumping all their stuff on there, let alone 10 years. Storage being cheap is the “throw more hardware at it to make it go faster” off blockchains and is in no way a good fix, not is it in any way preferable to running your own machines.