Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Solend seized $170M of user funds

old.reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 221 posts

Re: Solend seized $170M of user funds

#181

Post by cyanydeez »

3a2d29 wrote: post #25
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #7

One of the themes in pro-crypto writings has been the idea that as long as you “do your own research” then the bad things won’t happen on your chosen cryptocurrency. The prevailing idea (among pro-crypto spaces) is that bad things only happen to other people who deserve them because they didn’t do the right research. Recently we’re seeing the bad things happen in more and more mainstream chains. Even famous NFT propo…

Not to be super “arm chair psychologist” about this, but I always thought the whole “you deserve it if you got scammed” mentality comes from the people that believe crypto will replace all modern finance. For crypto to replace modern finance, it needs to be better in every way (so it’s a total replacement). Decentralized currency is better for some things, worse for things like preventing scams. If modern finance pre…

Crypto doesn't exist without centralization. Sorry.

Re: Solend seized $170M of user funds

#182

Post by throw123123123 »

chii wrote: post #163
throw123123123 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If modern finance prevents scams better, Its better at preventing a type of scam, but significantly worse at legal scam -> how much is an 8% inflation of the dollar on dozens of trillions of USD denominated financial instruments? And there is also plenty of equity scams that are sanctioned by government - the kind that suppresses the ability of people to invest or get funded, to give special permissions to those th…

> legal scam ... calling inflation a legal scam is borderline on the conspiracy fence. > if people were given the choice to participate in both systems, which one will thrive? Well, crypto has been around for about 10 years. There's been plenty of choice, and yet what do you see today?

> conspiracy fence.

What do you mean conspiracy? It's the official purpose of the Fed to maintain inflation low, it has failed, it has cost a devaluation of the assets of everyone holding dollars or dollar-linked financial instruments, and it's gone significantly down in value.

> Well, crypto has been around for about 10 years. There's been plenty of choice, and yet what do you see today?

A thriving crypto market big enough to be acknowledged as a threat by the head of the federal reserve, the head of the central european bank, and several other high ranking officials.

Re: Solend seized $170M of user funds

#183

Post by jimmydorry »

fny wrote: post #141
3a2d29 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be super “arm chair psychologist” about this, but I always thought the whole “you deserve it if you got scammed” mentality comes from the people that believe crypto will replace all modern finance. For crypto to replace modern finance, it needs to be better in every way (so it’s a total replacement). Decentralized currency is better for some things, worse for things like preventing scams. If modern finance pre…

Modern finance is much better at handling fraud. Insurance exists, and recourse also exists since anonymity is not a requirement. Decentralized finance has thus far been demonstrably worse than everything in modern finance. It's illiquid, transaction costs are higher, full of scams, buggy, and recourseless. The whole space needs to grow up fast.

Try wiring someone money and see how helpful your bank will be at reversing that transaction.

The vast majority of people losing money in the crypto world are the equivalent of people installing sketchy extensions in the early days of the internet that perform attacks on unsecured online banking portals. That this doesn't happen more often against banks is largely a function of the gated-ness of browsers and that targetting banking infrastructure (and national-level infrastructure for that matter) is the hot ticket that guarentees getting the undivided attention of three letter agencies.

Re: Solend seized $170M of user funds

#184

Post by zomglings »

Zaskoda wrote: post #20

I've been working on a game for Ethereum for a while. In recent times, "I" has become "we" and we're getting a fair bit more serious about it. In the last year, we watched a bunch of local startups with relatively weak game concepts get heavily funded to build with Solana. It made me sad and, admittedly, a bit jealous at the time. In retrospect, I couldn't be more happy that we're still building for the Ethereum virt…

What’s the game? My team has been playing a lot of conquest.eth recently and we’re ramping up on darkforest, too, now. Would love to check it out of there’s anything available for us to try.

Re: Solend seized $170M of user funds

#185

Post by mscarborough »

rvz wrote: post #28

Solend. Not Solana. Nice try though. Time to put the pitch forks down and is no different to the DAO hack for Ethereum. Next time, just read beyond the headline, titles rather than quickly spreading outrage everywhere in the comments section. It really doesn't help. Especially if the source is... ...Reddit.

> and is no different to the DAO hack for Ethereum.

yikes!

the system has had material downtime 7 times in the last year. how is that OK?

Re: Solend seized $170M of user funds

#186

Post by SilasX »

UncleEntity wrote: post #179
SilasX wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they wanted to do that, they would have deposited stablecoins and borrowed Solana.

Unless they had a plan that only worked by doing it the way they did it. People don’t really make crazy profits by following the herd, they see something everyone else misses and bet big.

What is that replying to? What I suggested isn’t “following the herd”, and does attempt to profit off of something others didn’t notice. And unlike the plan the parent gave, this one actually results in a short position in SOL and which allows you to dump the SOL on the market at a time of your choosing, rather than whether it happens to fall far enough and the interest has accumulated enough.

The position of the whale, under the parent’s plan, is a clumsier version of what I described because it leaves an unknown lag before the SOL gets dumped.

> Unless they had a plan that only worked by doing it the way they did it.

I don’t know many short gambles that actually take a long, and which deliberately introduce uncertainty in when an asset is dumped on the market. And if this is your best defense of its merits (“maybe this is the only way it would work”), you’re offering nothing but unbacked speculation (that mistakenly read me as suggesting they “follow the herd”, no less).

Re: Solend seized $170M of user funds

#187

Post by dubswithus »

michaelt wrote: post #94
3a2d29 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be super “arm chair psychologist” about this, but I always thought the whole “you deserve it if you got scammed” mentality comes from the people that believe crypto will replace all modern finance. For crypto to replace modern finance, it needs to be better in every way (so it’s a total replacement). Decentralized currency is better for some things, worse for things like preventing scams. If modern finance pre…

To be fair, "you deserve it if you got scammed" also plays well with the anti-crypto crowd. A person pays the price of a house for NFTs of pictures of apes, gets tricked into giving them away to scammers, then buys them back from the scammers? Ha, what a fuckin' idiot.

People get off on criticizing crypto. It makes them feel better about themselves.

Re: Solend seized $170M of user funds

#188

Post by saurik »

55555 wrote: post #9

Sorry, I've read this again and now I think this has little to do with Solana and entirely to do with Solend, and I think they're separate. Maybe someone who knows more about the space can clarify things. I now presume the funds needed to be deposited in Solend's smart contract in order for the trader to borrow the funds against his collateral, and Solend is pushing a patch in order to modify the code so they can sei…

The holders of the governance token had to vote on whether to seize the funds. Something being "decentralized" is different from something lacking any means whatsoever to evolve.

Some of these DAOs are really dumb, and at the end of the day there is a team just asking for "straw poll" in a very real sense of the community before taking unilateral action, but there is no reason to invoke that here: the contract might simply be delegated to another contract on chain that allows an on chain vote to update the code to another version.

To me the damning thing here is that they have a 1% quorum and it was barely met and it seems like a large amount of that 1% might have been one large holder and so much like how democracy is certainly decentralized and yet in some countries (such as mine) no one votes and it gets awkward how decisions are made, that's also the state of decentralized organizations :(.

Re: Solend seized $170M of user funds

#189

Post by ReptileMan »

robocat wrote: post #159
ReptileMan wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you have to convert the crypto into fiat to procure goods and services and the state will just control the border. There will be cases in which a weak state economy can become bitcoinized the same way some have become dolarizesld, but for strong states it is easy to make the border between the currencies as tight as they want it.

> into fiat to procure goods and services and the state will just control the border. Regurgitated “fiat” meme. Counter-example 1: buying services over the internet. What fiat and where is the relevant border? Counter-example 2: go overseas and use services. What fiat and where is the relevant border? Arguments about fiat and borders are often silly. However, a jurisdiction can make crypto illegal or risky.

By border I meant the point in which you have to convert the bitcoin to obtain something. The moment when you have to buy local currency to pay taxes, utility bills, food, fuel, clothes, pay toll taxes on the roads etc ...

A government can make it arbitrarily hard or illegal to do that.

Re: Solend seized $170M of user funds

#190

Post by [deleted] »

michaelt wrote: post #94
3a2d29 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be super “arm chair psychologist” about this, but I always thought the whole “you deserve it if you got scammed” mentality comes from the people that believe crypto will replace all modern finance. For crypto to replace modern finance, it needs to be better in every way (so it’s a total replacement). Decentralized currency is better for some things, worse for things like preventing scams. If modern finance pre…

To be fair, "you deserve it if you got scammed" also plays well with the anti-crypto crowd. A person pays the price of a house for NFTs of pictures of apes, gets tricked into giving them away to scammers, then buys them back from the scammers? Ha, what a fuckin' idiot.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN