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Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

medium.com

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Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#21

Post by hombre_fatal »

Igelau wrote: post #8
andybak wrote: post #6

This was as much fun to read as some of the classic Eve Online war stories. Thank God it's just a game.

I see I'm not the only one. Most blockchain stuff seems like an incredibly dull game of Fantasy Stock Exchange, but this was more like Eve Online.

They have nothing on the current financial system, like banks being able to block you because you sell adult sex toys or someone being able to pull money from your account whenever they want because you once gave them your card details to buy a $5 sandwich or having to find a merchant relationship just for people to send you money. These are nonstarters that would get laughed out of the room if pitched today.

You're just used to the stupidity, so it's easier to scrutinize the new things. But there are people out there who take those downsides seriously. And sure, you're always trading old problems for new, different problems, but it's nice to have the choice between those trade-offs for once.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#22

Post by zdkl »

I have dabbled extensively in the "traditional" *coin scene, but always shied from eth and the associated ecosystem. Stories like this are the reason why.

While I could articulate -and genuinely believe in- a raison d'être for the alt-finance tools created by blockchain systems, the premise and concrete value of the exceedingly sophisticated mechanisms in ethereum continue to elude me.

Given the primitives of account & transactions through distributed ledgers, one can construct a wide variety of services and use cases that interface with the real world on the user side and on the 3rd party service side.

Are there any services and use cases in ethereum-land that are actually oriented towards users? Because it seems to me that the only group getting measurable value beyond education are actors seeking to extract profit from "legitimate" value store or flow.

And I thought getting away from them was the entire point of Bitcoin et al. for the ordinary man.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#23

Post by sickygnar »

est31 wrote: post #20

I wonder how these bots perform the shorting. Do they take the modified instruction and increase miner reward to make it more prioritized than the original transaction? Such a bot would be hard to counter as if you set some reward value, even if it's extremely high, it would take it and increase it by 1. Even if you saw that value yourself and increased it yourself, they could counter your counter by inceasing again,…

Well, gas prices are insane right now so no doubt bots are bidding them up. Gas prices hit 250 gwei or so 2 weeks ago. $150 fees for some of these contracts and arbitrage aren't abnormal.

Here is a $188 transaction fee - looks like they were trying to "mine" compound from a $5 million flash loan? https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0d5def630cd20a1a24389982e99801e011...

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#25

Post by recursive »

lisper wrote: post #11
pstrateman wrote: post #4

That's a lot of words to say "this system is insanely complicated for what it does (ie doesn't do)".

Oh, but the details in this case are absolutely fascinating! Well worth all the words IMHO.

For me, there weren't enough words to actually make any sense of it. What I got is approximately "if you try to do ethereum stuff, bots will somehow do the same thing but earlier, and you'll lose your money".

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#28

Post by weego »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #21
Igelau wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see I'm not the only one. Most blockchain stuff seems like an incredibly dull game of Fantasy Stock Exchange, but this was more like Eve Online.

They have nothing on the current financial system, like banks being able to block you because you sell adult sex toys or someone being able to pull money from your account whenever they want because you once gave them your card details to buy a $5 sandwich or having to find a merchant relationship just for people to send you money. These are nonstarters that would get laughed out of the room if pitched today. You're…

You can as easily blame the previous generations of sex toy sellers for their shady practices as you can banks for responding to it by separating those industries for special treatment. Higher processing fees or outright blocking is just a response to risk.

It's not some moral pillar that crypto is taking a stand against at all, it's just removing all the processes that protect both sides of transactions and distributing those trust mechanisms to those parties instead.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#29

Post by atarian »

michaelsbradley wrote: post #16
atarian wrote: post #7

Does anyone else think that Solidity is far too low-level for the purpose it serves? I really don't think connecting to ports (as an example) should be something in a financial contract.

What do you mean by "connecting to ports"? https://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/v0.7.0/search.html?q=port

That was a wrong example. I just skimmed the code at the end of the article, which turns out is not Solidity.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#30

Post by lazzlazzlazz »

recursive wrote: post #25
lisper wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, but the details in this case are absolutely fascinating! Well worth all the words IMHO.

For me, there weren't enough words to actually make any sense of it. What I got is approximately "if you try to do ethereum stuff, bots will somehow do the same thing but earlier, and you'll lose your money".

You don't lose your money — you may lose the arbitrage opportunity or free lunch you think you spotted.
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