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A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

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Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of smart contracts is that lawyers' (and judges) opinions are not relevant. As soon as you need them and they have some power to make the thing go one way or the other the whole smart contract concept has failed.

This is adorably naive hacker thinking.

No, the adorable naive hacker thinking is that one could actually write a contract that has no room for interpretation (see DAO). There is a very good reason we have judges and lawyers, which is that being 100% un-ambiguous is impossible, and smart contracts are no exception to this rule, only there every ambiguity will allow either one of the contracting parties or an outsider to make off with the loot.

So for now nobody appears to be willing to stand by 'the code is the law'.

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your Whig history of an ever progressing political system is not accurate in my opinion. I've written this comment before, and I'll repeat it as it's relevant to your comment: Societies have gradually grown more unfair as the political system has strained under their growing complexity. According to political scientists, the average voter has an extremely limited understanding of what their government is doing. The t…

>Societies have gradually grown more unfair as the political system has strained under their growing complexity. Since when? Since the 60's? Perhaps. Since the rest of history? No. Every argument you make in the rest of your comment other than pure scope of surveillance doesn't apply if you aren't comparing in the short term, i.e. 1-2 generations. In 1903, the average voter didn't know what the government was doing.…

> Since the 60's? Perhaps. Since the rest of history? No.

The thing he's experiencing which makes him say that we are growing more and more unfair, that's exactly what you're experiencing when you say that we've grown more unfair than 60's.

But let's really see how things are today, in the 60s, there was no Internet, so majority of the opinions were dominated by what was in the mass media, so that served as a Schelling point of opinions. Today because of free exchange of ideas on the Internet, people are just holding more precise and wider set of opinions.

Back in the day for a conservative to say that we should shut down the Dept of Education, would have met by resistance by most people around them and this opinion would be shut down. But now, you can just find people who believe exactly like you on the Internet. You can find a blogger who would talk about how eliminating DoE would work, and nurture this idea in your head, and once you have enough people, you can get politicians (who are playing a game of prisoner's dilemma) who are willing to represent your opinion in order to get an edge on their opponent.

Similarly, it would and should be unimaginable and unfeasible for someone in the 60s to hold an opinion like an average Tumblr SJW holds, but today it's perfectly feasible. But is society really more unfair than 1960s? What about 1980s? What about 1990s? When you look from the perspective of minorities, it clearly isn't.

However, a lot of young people have economic conditions in mind (which people on the left describe as 'rising economic inequality' and people on the right describe as "America losing it's place in the world"), but both these things are essentially the effect of increased globalization, observed differently, which has resulted in immense amount of prosperity for the poor people in the rest of the world. Now since the gates are open, an average American has to compete with a Chinese worker or an Indian software engineer, the true place of an American is being realized. Being the largest business in America is definitely worse than being the largest business in the world. If Facebook wasn't able to operate all over the world, then clearly Zuckerberg would be less richer than now.

But at the end of the day, the world is moving towards a more fair place. Is China more fair now? Yes, but if you believe that the role of Chinese party is to facilitate the arrival of Communism via maintenance of Socialism then you would obviously think that China is growing more unfair.

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#264

As an Ethereum investor, this hack has shaken my belief in Ethereum ever making sense as an ecosystem. Smart contracts which will always be fallible plus irreversible blockchain transactions seems like a peanut butter and tuna fish sandwich. I moved my money out of Ethereum for now.

Makes note that it takes two occurrences to achieve this result.

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your Whig history of an ever progressing political system is not accurate in my opinion. I've written this comment before, and I'll repeat it as it's relevant to your comment: Societies have gradually grown more unfair as the political system has strained under their growing complexity. According to political scientists, the average voter has an extremely limited understanding of what their government is doing. The t…

>Societies have gradually grown more unfair as the political system has strained under their growing complexity. Since when? Since the 60's? Perhaps. Since the rest of history? No. Every argument you make in the rest of your comment other than pure scope of surveillance doesn't apply if you aren't comparing in the short term, i.e. 1-2 generations. In 1903, the average voter didn't know what the government was doing.…

I'm curious, how do you know what the average voter knew about the government in 1903?

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do get it. I just don't think that's realistic. What smart contracts should be according to you is mostly irrelevant to how the law will treat them.

It sounds like you're both in agreement that it doesn't seem realistic. What jacquesm is explaining is that the intention of "smart contracts" is to work entirely outside the existing legal system. There is no need for adjudication of any contract by a court because the contract is the law and the court. Put in X out comes Y,every time. No room for interpretation, just pure beautiful math. That was the idea anyway, f…

> it is not obvious that you can "haul some one before a real court" should they wrong you in some way... the laws of the crypto-systems are the extent of the laws they are operating under

Tell that to Ross Ulbricht. Anonymity is not a guarantee of immunity from the long arm and unforgiving memory of the law. Especially in the United States.

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#267

> Having sounded the alarm bells, a group of benevolent white-hat hackers from the Ethereum community rapidly organized. They analyzed the attack and realized that there was no way to reverse the thefts, yet many more wallets were vulnerable. Time was of the essence, so they saw only one available option: hack the remaining wallets before the attacker did. > By exploiting the same vulnerability, the white-hats hacked…

I haven't had much time to follow the story or look into ether so sorry if this is a naive question but I keep seeing this "white hat hacker robbing the remaining wallets" and haven't see yet anyone mentioning what are they going to do with what they stole?

This article says they are in the process of returning the funds to the original owners.

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#268

> Having sounded the alarm bells, a group of benevolent white-hat hackers from the Ethereum community rapidly organized. They analyzed the attack and realized that there was no way to reverse the thefts, yet many more wallets were vulnerable. Time was of the essence, so they saw only one available option: hack the remaining wallets before the attacker did. > By exploiting the same vulnerability, the white-hats hacked…

I haven't had much time to follow the story or look into ether so sorry if this is a naive question but I keep seeing this "white hat hacker robbing the remaining wallets" and haven't see yet anyone mentioning what are they going to do with what they stole?

This article says they are in the process of returning the funds to the original owners.

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> something is very wrong with your system To be clear, neither of the two situations is "more moral" than the other. In the end however, the question remains: who you trust. Governments have resolved the question long ago (by enforcing trust), cryptocurrencies are just now starting to face the same question. You are correct however that who you Trust remains the greatest issue behind creating a currency.

Look, no. One hundred times, no. Governments in the west are quite accountable, voted for and with a system of checks and balances that has evolved over time, through wars and revolutions. Some random benevolents overlords (white-hat hackers) that save you just because they are magnanimous was the only option only in the most primive societies. Thankfully we moved on from those times, don't you agree?

> Governments in the west are quite accountable, voted for and with a system of checks and balances

Hahahahahahahaahahahahahahaahahahahahahaahahahahahahaahahahahah

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#270

I'm sort of confused[1] that formal proofs are not mandatory tools in this space. There's some Herculean effort underway[2] to create verified HTTPS stack. The failure mode in that case is maybe, sort of data leakage or server control that might be worth something to someone. In the Etherium case, they just walk away with cash . It takes a sort of hubris (or is it foolishness?) to think you can just be very very care…

> that formal proofs are not mandatory tools in this space

The stakes are extraordinarily low relative to situations where formal proofs are mandatory. For references, the list price of a single new 737 runs in the 50 million range, and the cost of the software for the 737 is amortized across many thousands of planes.

1. That's actual hard money. Real US dollars you can use to buy yachts and houses and avocado toast. Given the level of hype and amount of speculation, the true value of all the ether in the world is obviously considerably less than Ethereum's market cap. The hacker stole $30M 'worth' of ether, not 30M actual dollars

2. The cost of a plane crash is easily 10x the price of the plane, and of course you can't put a price on the lost souls.

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