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Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

medium.com

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Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#281

Post by Sargos »

api wrote: post #112
bsenftner wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a logic trap: an intellectually complex toy with the promise of access to untold riches to those "smart enough". It's a trap.

It always makes me think of that STTNG episode where they destroy the Borg collective by injecting a fascinating but impossible geometry problem. Cryptocurrency basically did that to the hacker and startup spheres, wasting unfathomable amounts of money, resources, and brain power.

Do you honestly believe, and this is a real question, that all of these brilliant people who come from well known companies spend nearly a decade of their life working tirelessly on building an ecosystem that many thousands of other developers interact with daily, just haven't realized yet that it's completely useless?

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#282

Post by jkepler »

pjc50 wrote: post #3

As an elaborate real-money PVP system, Etherum is amazing. As a means of doing relatively normal business, being sniped, frontrun, or exploited is hugely off-putting.

I thought Ethereum's primary aim was to be an unstoppable world computer that runs any code where the fas fee was paid, not money. Bitcoin aims to be peer-to-peer censorship-resistant electronic cash---and at this point its protocol has far higher levels of tested security.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#283

Post by Sargos »

desdiv wrote: post #267

Why did they try rescuing the $12,000 pot on their very first attempt instead of planting a bunch of $10 dummies and rescuing those instead? Once they perfected how to rescue the dummies, then move onto the real target.

It says in the article that they ran out of time. Doing test runs would have required even more time.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#284

Post by pmarreck »

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 mean... this is the most literal definition of "man in the middle attack" you can get.

And we already know the solutions to that

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#285

Post by pmarreck »

api wrote: post #161
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…

Is it just me or is there fantastically more fraud these days than a decade or two ago? Any transaction feels like walking around in northern Canada during black fly season. I receive several cold scam calls per day and I’ve known people who have done things like purchase a home and been inundated by fake calls from “the underwriter” and other scams. Is there no mail and telemarketing fraud enforcement any more?

Imagine a world with way less wealth inequality

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#286

Post by lmm »

pas wrote: post #203
WalterSear wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By definition, if it can be regulated, it's no longer decentralized. And if it's not longer decentralized, blockchains have no benefits over regular databases. Blockchains solve a very specific problem - decentralized transactions. Unfortunately solving that problem for the world's organized criminals brought a massive amount of heretofore hidden financial activity to light. Consequently, people, most of which don't…

TLS issuance is decentralized too, yet Certificate Transparency provides accountability, and inclusion into Mozilla's trusted CA list is basically the vetting process that binds CAs to legal entities. In theory in crypto currency world "staking" is this process.

TLS is not decentralised, it's hierarchical. There are a fairly small number of root CAs, and an even smaller number of browser makers who define their trusted lists.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#287

Post by bawolff »

Waterluvian wrote: post #225
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 wanted it to be convenient and electronic transfer but my lawyer said I’m simply not allowed to. I had to get cheques from my banks and hand deliver them to the lawyer’s office. I’m not sure I fully understand, in retrospect, the desire to shave off inconvenient corners for large life events you do so rarely. I think there’s real wisdom in some of these things being so slow and old school.

What's so inconvinent about that? I assume you have to go into the lawyer's office anyways. A cheque is just a signed document telling your bank to transfer the money-if you're buying a house then a cheque is the least of the things you're going to have to sign. Was it just a normal cheque? (Not a certified cheque or money order, or anything special) if so many people will already have them on hand.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#288

Post by Sargos »

cesarb wrote: post #176
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.

You are confusing money with value. Value is what something is worth and is what people prize. Money is just a convenient way to transfer value. I think you got stuck on that one piece of money (USD) that went from buyer to seller but forgot that the value transferred between them as well.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#289

Post by Sargos »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #196
intotheabyss wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How has it failed? Seems to me that turing completeness has allowed Ethereum to flourish.

Yeah which is why I buy coffee in the morning with Ethereum right?

Thinking that buying coffee is an important use case for Ethereum is pretty ignorant. It's literally holding billions of dollars in value and building an ecosystem of companies that work together with a shared purpose. Just because you can't buy a coffee with Ethereum for some reason doesn't mean it's somehow failed.
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