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Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

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Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#291

Post by zaphar »

literallycancer wrote: post #234
lmeyerov wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For background, I've built verifiers for harder languages, reviewed papers for crypto systems, seen the inside of crypto operations & crypto security startups, and help build software for adversarial, investigative, & high performance scenarios. I'm not an expert in blockchain stuff, but I'm also not unfamiliar with the software challenges. * I would agree that paying consultants to audit contracts is prohibitively e…

How do you check for front running? What if your checker tells you that you can't fix it just by changing your own code?

If you can't fix it maybe you shouldn't deploy it. It's like knowing you have a bug that will result in a 50/50 chance of losing customers money. It would be irresponsible to deploy code like that.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#292

Post by Sargos »

finder83 wrote: post #174

Are these bots legal that are doing the sniping/etc? I know next to nothing about Ethereum, but the whole environment sounds questionable

It depends on your definition of illegal. It's not illegal in lots of places and is a gray area in most places. It's hard to know who would even handle the case since you're not sure who has jurisdiction, if anyone.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#293

Post by vmception »

> Because I’m a professional DeFi thought leader, I had never actually deployed a contract to Ethereum before.

As a developer that uses the EVM quite often, this had me laughing out loud!

That matches my experience with pretty much everyone!

And yet there are still the people doing things I could never think of doing and doing it very quickly. I want to get to that place.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#294

Post by jkepler »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #34
hombre_fatal wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As an outsider looking in, though, it seems that banks are getting better at this, while crypto is getting worse. There's a bajillion fintechs helping the banks sort out their UI issues and make it friendlier/better. Bitcoin is still basically unusable for everyday transactions, and the endless stream of wallet provider hacks is not convincing anyone that it's secure. As TFA says, the hazards for normal folks playing…

> the endless stream of wallet provider hacks is not convincing anyone that it's secure

Does the endless theft of money through central banks' intentionally inflating the money supply increase your faith that government fiat is secure? Hacks against centralized wallet providers don't count as security weaknesses in decentralized protocols such as bitcoin.

Perhaps the current danger with Ethereum-based DeFi is that its far too centralized, and typically (but not necessarily) contracts deployed on it are also far to centralized in their design, governance, and security reviews before deployment.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#295

Post by heavyset_go »

nodesocket wrote: post #180
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 am closing on a house, and this is quite terrifying. How in the world did the scammers know all the exact details of the house? I am guessing the $12k was good faith money? In my case, I was able to write a plain old check for my good faith money.

I could imagine a MiTM scam where the scammer relists the owner's property, and provides the mark with the scammer's email, phone number, mailing address etc.

Depending on how sophisticated the scammer is, the MiTM between communication can be transparent to the victim.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#296

Post by spopejoy »

josh2600 wrote: post #10

I really think that all of this DeFi stuff is playing with fire. If these tools scale large enough, it's easy to imagine breaking the right link in the system at the right time to cause catastrophic failures. Remember that all complex systems operate in a degraded state. If there's ever a way that only part of a complicated swap executes correctly the trade can get really far out of position. People in Ethereum land…

> I really think that all of this DeFi stuff is playing with fire. If these tools scale large enough, it's easy to imagine breaking the right link in the system at the right time to cause catastrophic failures.

We've already been through this with algorithmic trading in stocks: the flash crashes of 2010-12. Some were way bigger in terms of damage than the entire crypto market.

So yes "there will be blood" but you'll see all of the DEXs and other mechanisms eventually implement the same techniques that NASD and the stock market implemented to fight it: limits on price movement, kill switches (probably automated), market pauses etc.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#297

Post by nend »

creato wrote: post #269
Waterluvian wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This reasoning also (especially?) applies to voting. Trying to make voting "efficient" is not worth it when we do it rarely and we have not had a problem just getting people to count ballots manually.

This is a really bad comparison. Making it easier to vote has a big affect on how many people vote.

Requiring a hand delivered check vs wire transfer to buy house has a minimal effect on how many people buy a house.

Plus, the US has elections far more frequently than how frequently an average person buys a house.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#298

Post by kbenson »

taneq wrote: post #277
Waterluvian wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I’m not sure I fully understand, in retrospect, the desire to shave off inconvenient corners for large life events you do so rarely. Same. I’ve seen people but one car over another just because it was available nearby instead of a half hour bus ride away. How many times in your life do you buy a car that an extra half hour is significant?

For this, I think it also matters how people view the car, the class of car, and the cost of waiting or goi g somewhere else.

If you're buying a cheap car to get you from point a to point b and you don't care about amenities, what does it matter? Will that civic the next town over make you much happier than the corolla in front of you (or vice versa, or whatever)? Some people just don't care about cars, or at least not for the type of car they are buying for that use at that point in their life.

Nobody can care about everything all the time, and sometimes people just decide not to sweat the things other people think are vitally important because they have other stuff they care more about.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#299

Post by treis »

dheera wrote: post #258
nyanpasu64 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/05/homebuyers-are-falling-for-t... > Here’s how these scams usually go down: A thief hacks into a real estate or title company’s computer system and then studies the transactions, from the language used to the format of the wiring instructions. When the scammer strikes, he or she will often pose as someone from the real estate or titling company to instruct the buyer to wire funds to them…

Can't this be avoided simply by making sure the property owner gives you wiring instructions in person?

You aren't (usually) wiring the money to the property owner. It goes to the title or escrow company processing the transaction. They get the money, execute the paperwork, and then transfer the money to the owner after everything is squared away.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#300

Post by boring_twenties »

pkilgore wrote: post #264
Waterluvian wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interestingly, property is the slowest and old-schoolest of all the branches of law. Some systems of deeds and recorders have existed for hundreds of years. As an attorney I used to look at a lot of boilerplate skeptically but is a RE attorney told me I had to sign in the presence of a clergy, my mother and law, and three local stray dogs I'm marching my butt to a pet store and making some calls without a question.

As an attorney, you should know to read your contracts more carefully :) nothing in a pet store should qualify as a "stray dog," so is the whole thing null and void now?
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