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Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

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Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#171

Post by xur17 »

xondono wrote: post #124
vvpan wrote: post #66

Perhaps due to a certain naivete I enjoy almost all discussions on HN. There are few exceptions and discussions under blockchain-related posts are the a prime example. I will disclose right away that I wholeheartedly think that blockchains are here to stay and to solve many problems. The general sentiment on HN, and this thread so far is an example, seems to be animosity toward the idea in general lightly veiled by p…

I won’t dare to speak for anyone but me, but personally the issue I have with blockchain is that is a solution looking for a problem. If you’ve ever done any business (sales/purchasing), you’ll soon see that trust is not really a problem . Trust is only a problem in single-transaction deals (two entities trade once and expect to never trade again), which is pretty rare. Even in that weird case, branding and reputatio…

> If you’ve ever done any business (sales/purchasing), you’ll soon see that trust is not really a problem. Trust is only a problem in single-transaction deals (two entities trade once and expect to never trade again), which is pretty rare. Even in that weird case, branding and reputation are actually quite good ways of providing trust.

It absolutely is a problem in business, but maybe not in the businesses you have experience in. For example - try selling gift cards online for payment. Your only real option is credit cards, which is ripe with fraud, and involves hefty fees (2-3%). Cash for the internet (which is one thing "blockchain" enables), solves both of these problems.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#172

Post by Taek »

dimmke wrote: post #145

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 th…

> 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.

Did you know that the Neural Network has been around since 1958 [1]? Machine learning is not a technology that is just 6 years old. The latest AI trend is also not the first or second time that AI has been through a massive hype cycle.

The problem with the cryptocurrency space is that it's financial innovation. And just like financial innovation on Wall Street, this tends to draw out the slimiest people in society, because if you get someone to believe in your product they may well leverage their mortgage and throw their life savings at you. It's crushing to see people do this, especially because pretty much only the malicious projects get hyped up that much.

But that doesn't mean that there isn't any truly groundbreaking innovation out there. Cryptocurrency changes the fundamental scalability of society. A key bottleneck for human society is trust - at some point a system gets large and corrupt, and it becomes difficult to keep bad actors from imparting a large amount of negative influence. But cryptocurrency allows us to design systems that don't require any trust at all. They _cant'_ be corrupted, because a combination of incentives and cryptography keep everyone safe.

As this blog post shows, there are still a lot of rough edges out there, but the technology is innovating rapidly. I do think the hype is probably 5-10 years ahead of the technology, but in the grand scheme of technology (think of how long it too Arpanet to mature, or Neural Networks to mature) that is not much time at all!

[1]: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2591759/artificial-neu...

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#173

Post by iSnow »

mangecoeur wrote: post #59

I have rarely seen so much effort and intellect expended for something so wildly pointless... conspicuously missing from these whole shenanigans: anyone doing anything that a normal person could recognise as being of practical use.

Whereas coding webshops, advertisement algos or mobile games are so much more relevant.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#175

Post by bondarchuk »

dimmke wrote: post #145

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 th…

>That person just lost $12k to fraud and has no recourse at all.

The original person lost $12k by a mistake of their own, namely sending it to the wrong place. I wouldn't call that fraud. That this money is then in a weird unintended limbo and can be picked up by anyone who noticed, and someone tried to whitehat get it and give it back, and they failed, does still not make it fraud IMO.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#176

Post by cesarb »

sickygnar wrote: post #14

The whole thing is a complicated, wacky game. The DeFi stuff is especially fun right now. Opportunities (and danger) abound. There is so much money locked up in DeFi. It's not necessarily always good for the bots either. They can be exploited and tricked as well.

> There is so much money locked up in DeFi.

Is the money really "locked up"? No money actually enters these systems; whenever someone buys a token with money, there was someone else selling that token for money, and the money went from the buyer to the seller, who is free to do anything with that money.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#177

Post by Sniffnoy »

Twisell wrote: post #91

Nothing in this article seem to make any sense, does the gibberish pseudo-code actually mean something for anyone? I feel like the dumbest of all (and maybe it's normal it's far away from my area of expertise). But seriously this sound more like a sci-fi plot that actual engineering.

There's no pseudocode in the article. There's Solidity (what the contracts are written in) and there's Javascript (what the rescue script is written in).

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#178

Post by AnthonyMouse »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #155
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because that's what real-world security ultimately boils down to: men with guns, ready to drag you where the law tells them to. But that's assuming the judge knows who the thief is. One of the main characteristics of cryptocurrency is that you can hold it without giving anyone your social security number. In that respect it's much the same as cash -- if you get away with it you keep the money, but if you get arrest…

> But that's assuming the judge knows who the thief is. One of the main characteristics of cryptocurrency is that you can hold it without giving anyone your social security number. You can, but AFAIK it's harder to do that when you're trying to cash out your cryptocoins in fiat (though arguably, this becomes less of a problem for criminals with the growing numbers of goods and services you can pay for with crypto). S…

> You can, but AFAIK it's harder to do that when you're trying to cash out your cryptocoins in fiat (though arguably, this becomes less of a problem for criminals with the growing numbers of goods and services you can pay for with crypto).

It also becomes less of a problem if any of the things you can buy for cryptocurrency can then be resold for fiat, which is already the case.

> Still, I think if governments ever allow for a mainstream, sanctioned adoption of digital currency, they won't let it keep this level of anonymity.

But that's the problem. If you can get it from cryptocurrency then it's available, so the only consideration is whether it's available from the system that isn't built on environmental destruction, thereby removing the demand from the system that is. It would be better if we'd admit that and get on with it.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#179

Post by Sargos »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #168
Sargos wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof of Work is on its way out already. Ethereum will be running on Proof of Stake soon which uses very little power. I'm not sure the traditional financial system would ever out-compete the cryptocurrency ecosystem even if you removed the KYC etc as crypto is permissionless which is a breeding ground for innovation and efficiency. It would be impossible for the banks to keep up.

"Breeding ground for innovation and efficiency" also means breeding ground for various scams. The traditional banks have a good value proposition here, should they choose to take it: they can copy the innovations that work, bolt them on top of their product, and offer something that is both innovative and is secured by men with guns.

Yes there are scams. There are scams with any new technology and people have dealt with them in various ways for hundreds of years. I don't think that will ever change but our ability to point them out and protect ourselves from them will.

>they can copy the innovations that work, bolt them on top of their product, and offer something that is both innovative and is secured by men with guns

I don't think this has ever worked. By the time they have cut all of the red tape and finished bolting this feature onto their enormous enterprisey stack the world will have already moved on and the Ethereum ecosystem will be on The Feature 2.0. Also, if your security is provided by men with guns then those same men with guns can change the rules on you or the bank which makes your money much less secure. I'd take "mathematically impossible to cheat" over "men with guns might be angry if someone cheats" any day.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#180

Post by nodesocket »

ballenf wrote: post #102

Have a friend who lost more than $12k in the process of buying a house. Scammers sent the wiring instructions a few hours before the legit closing attorney sent the real instructions. The email looked exactly right except for a minor change to the domain name from address. After one hour, wire transfers sent in error are no more recoverable than crypto. How the thieves knew so much about the process and timing is sup…

I am closing on a house, and this is quite terrifying. How in the world did the scammers know all the exact details of the house? I am guessing the $12k was good faith money? In my case, I was able to write a plain old check for my good faith money.
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