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The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

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Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#221
post #50

> But in our email exchanges, he argued that he'd executed a perfectly legal series of trades. In real finance, there is an understanding that technical loopholes can exist, since not every outcome can be foreseen when writing laws, but the legal system can frequently prosecute against a series of actions which are, individually, legal, but which together are taken in order to achieve something illegal. That is, mode…

Contracts are contracts and law is law. Law can overrule contracts. Smart contracts just let you have executable terms which allows greater composition and commoditization.

Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#222
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of an NFT is that the ownership is on the blockchain and guaranteed by said blockchain - if the courts can "force" return of the NFT than the NFT isn't actually synonymous with the ownership, and so then is kinda pointless.

But the NFT was actually stolen, she was phished for her seed phrase, and the criminal moved ownership of the nft to their wallet, and then sold that to the person who was interviewed on the podcast. It’s no different to a thief stealing your bike then selling it to someone else on a street corner. Just because that person is the current owner and thinks they legitimately purchased it doesn’t make it rightfully their…

An NFT exists purely in the realm of thought, and the owner is whoever knows the password.

Therefore phishing the seed phrase is not "actually stealing" it within the rules of NFT.

And outside the rules of NFT it's just a receipt; it's worthless. It's taking a picture of a picture of a bike, not stealing it.

Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#223
post #198
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A smart contract deployed on a public permissionless blockchain is not owned by anyone. Only the contract's logic determines how one can interact with it. This is a fact. It doesn't matter who can make the best argument in court. A good enough lawyer can convince a stupid enough jury of pretty much anything.

Let's say that I place a vending machine in a public space, such as a street or a park. The public is able to interact with it by inserting FIAT coins to purchase DRNK. Someone clever figures out a way to interact with the vending machine to extract DRNK at less than it's intended FIAT price. Two questions at this point: (a) Is this a theft from the person who placed the vending machine? Why or why not? (b) How is th…

I'll try to steelman the code-is-law argument (not really sure how I feel about it myself):

In the case of the smart contract, you don't own the vending machine. It doesn't have an owner, it just "is". If it did have an owner, that person is probably violating all sorts of securities laws in countless jurisdictions. That's at least part of the point of all this smart contract stuff.

To make the analogy a little more apt, let's say the smart autonomous vending machine 1) lets people buy DRNKs by inserting money, 2) incentivizes people to refill it with DRNK by spitting out money, 3) once a month spits out money to the amused landlord, and 4) was deposited by aliens who disappeared without trace.

Presumably the smart vending machine would continue on its merry way like this until it either broke down or someone figured out a way to jimmy the lock. Looks like the later happened. Though everyone is upset, it's not clear who has the right to prosecute.

Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#224
post #154
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is the premise of smart contracts. Sure, it doesn't excuse you from the law if your contract is to pay someone to shoot someone, but it's supposed to be the final word on the actual financial transactions that happen within the contract. Plenty of crypto hypers say the same. E.g. from a quick search of "Smart Contract advantages," the very first article, by a law firm: > Guaranteed Outcomes: Potentially the…

Smart contracts allow for guaranteed outcomes. Some commentary added by a random law firm does not mean that guaranteed outcomes == no need for litigation and courts. Just think of non-smart contract parallels. If a bank had an ATM, the premise is that this ATM will execute a series of commands and allow you to withdraw/deposit/transfer funds. If a nefarious back actor found a series of user input that allowed them t…

A true non-smart parallel is this. You and I agree on a sporting event between humans. Because I want to construct a fantasy, let's just say it's a three-point basketball contest between adolescents (under 13).

The observer will pay $100 dollars per blocked shot, and earn $1 per 3 point play made. All the games are played 1v1. To the untrained basketball player participants, this may seem to be a fair game. After all, it's quite rare in a real basketball game to see a 3 point shot blocked. So they sign the contract, fully agreeing to pay $100 per blocked shot and earn $1 per made 3 pointer.

To game this as a participant, I go to the ends of the earth ( I hear Sudan and the Netherlands are both nice this time of year ), and find a 6'8 ,215 lb boy and recruit him to play for me. He proceeds to block every single shot in every contest, winning hundreds of thousands of dollars and bankrupting the organizers. Just to further weight this, I also hire an opposing player who is only 4'3 to shoot as many 3 points as possible as quickly as possible.

Now, they signed the contract and agreed to it. They didn't have a clause for height, or any sort of caps, and now they have unlimited downside. How would the legal system handle this? Do you think they would release the participants liability? Perhaps, but not likely if they didn't sign the contract under duress. They fully agreed and had consideration ( the $1 per 3 point made ).

It's a contrived example, but it's useful to show that technicalities can be exploited in real world contracts just the same as smart contracts.

Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legal system has failure modes that are just as easily exploitable, but humans can intervene and reverse the failure, make people whole, etc. The problem with smart contracts isn't that there are bugs, but that buggy results are final with little to no recourse, by design, unless you get everyone to agree to hard fork the chain (rolling the "bad" transactions back and eplacing the buggy contract) and/or the imple…

I think a lot of the appeal of crypto/smart contracts is that they are final with little to no recourse, humans can't intervene and exploit failure modes which individuals using the so-called contracts can't defend against. Corporations and wealthy individuals with influence in the writing of this legal system, with massive amounts of financial resources, with negligible moral agency, and with limited criminal liabil…

I don't know what jurisprudence you live under, but under English common law (also America, Canada, etc) - which, I must say, I also always denounce and rarely defend - inequitable negotiating power between parties to a contract is considered by courts when adjudicating whether parties have broken it or can be awarded damages. We don't have a system where big powerful organizations can just dictate contracts to powerless individuals and then later enforce them.

Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#226
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legal system has failure modes that are just as easily exploitable, but humans can intervene and reverse the failure, make people whole, etc. The problem with smart contracts isn't that there are bugs, but that buggy results are final with little to no recourse, by design, unless you get everyone to agree to hard fork the chain (rolling the "bad" transactions back and eplacing the buggy contract) and/or the imple…

There was a wonderful summary of what smart contracts are. https://twitter.com/qrs/status/1395784294451265536 > Smart contracts should be considered self-funded bug-bounty platforms.

Mark the "should". It's just an opinion, not a fact.

Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The courts have found that a written description of the contract is legally binding even if the smart contract has a bug that allows things that were intended to be disallowed. Further the courts held the right to decide whether something was allowed or not allowed on their own judgement regardless of the smart contract, asserting the primacy of the law and jurisprudence over cryptonerd utopian fantasy.

Which cases and jurisdiction are you referring to?

I’ve long lost my references to the cases, I tried to Google around for a bit but didn’t turn it up. However I did find this analysis from Harvard law that says more or less the same thing, start with the section:

What is the “Final” Agreement Between the Parties?

https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/05/26/an-introduction-t...

Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legal system has failure modes that are just as easily exploitable, but humans can intervene and reverse the failure, make people whole, etc. The problem with smart contracts isn't that there are bugs, but that buggy results are final with little to no recourse, by design, unless you get everyone to agree to hard fork the chain (rolling the "bad" transactions back and eplacing the buggy contract) and/or the imple…

I think a lot of the appeal of crypto/smart contracts is that they are final with little to no recourse, humans can't intervene and exploit failure modes which individuals using the so-called contracts can't defend against. Corporations and wealthy individuals with influence in the writing of this legal system, with massive amounts of financial resources, with negligible moral agency, and with limited criminal liabil…

I want to know what kind of contracts people entered into before this where they thought they were being abused by a big corporation?

This seems like a noble endeavor, but not an entirely practical one. Both sides of a transaction have to agree to these smart contracts, so where is this an advantage (outside of internal crypto trading)?

Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#229
post #28
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA: > In their complaint, lawyers for Kellar and Day argued that two particular steps of the attack violated statutes against market manipulation and computer hacking. One was swapping almost all the UNI tokens out of the DEFI5 pool, the otherwise irrational trade that distorted the pricing such that Medjedovic could buy tokens out from under Indexed users, who were forced by the algorithm to sell. “The only purpose…

Isn't the intended purpose of this particular computer to part fools and their money in a non-regulated "code is law" ecosystem? It seems like it's working as designed, even if it's not the outcome its operators wanted.

The funny thing is, based on the architecture of these types of systems, they aren't the operators. Arguably the miners are the operators, otherwise only the users are the operators.

Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#230
post #117

I think of this like if you empty the 'take a penny, leave a penny' tray into your pocket. It's clearly allowed by the terms to take the pennies, but it's also clearly immoral.

Is it? Or is taking a penny allowed, but not taking all the pennies (which feels more code-is-lawish...)
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