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How to Learn Solidity: The Ultimate Ethereum Coding Guide

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Re: How to Learn Solidity: The Ultimate Ethereum Coding Guide

#31

Post by splintercell »

kej wrote: post #10
flomble wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your Solidity contracts can run on Ethereum Classic, which you can be confident won't be forked since its users tend to believe in the principle of the immutability of the code.

The classic branch is still susceptible to the same problem, though. They didn't fork because of the DAO, but who's to say they won't fork because they don't like the result of a different contract? If I'm going to trust the enforceability of my contract to some group of people, I trust the established legal system--warts and all--much more than the mob rule of the Ethereum crowd.

> The classic branch is still susceptible to the same problem, though.

So is bitcoin.

Re: How to Learn Solidity: The Ultimate Ethereum Coding Guide

#32

Post by SirensOfTitan »

kefka wrote: post #3

And remember, that there's a special function called VIP() . This is an implied function that wraps around your full code. This is instantiated if/when core founders are losing money on a function that possibly had a bug in it. This function returns the wrapped function, under the guise of a new blockchain, with invalidations applied to all 'unintentional' side effects of bad or buggy code. It happened with the DAO,…

The whole idea around proof-of-work based chains isn't immutability, it's that the longest chain always wins. If the majority of CPU power 'votes' for a particular chain that chain sits as the de-facto chain. For most chains this means >50% wins, as requiring anything higher for consensus increases the potential for network deadlock.

With that, are there any trust algorithms that aren't susceptible to 51% attacks? Ideally power (stake or hash in this case) is distributed amongst actors as much as possible. Cryptocurrency doesn't take us from centralized -> decentralized currency: it moves us from almost wholly centralized currency to more decentralized currency. The move is welcome but idealistically seeing the options as completely centralized or completely decentralized seems a bit misguided to me.

Re: How to Learn Solidity: The Ultimate Ethereum Coding Guide

#33

Post by veeberz »

kefka wrote: post #3

And remember, that there's a special function called VIP() . This is an implied function that wraps around your full code. This is instantiated if/when core founders are losing money on a function that possibly had a bug in it. This function returns the wrapped function, under the guise of a new blockchain, with invalidations applied to all 'unintentional' side effects of bad or buggy code. It happened with the DAO,…

Citation? I have tried Googling it, but came up short.

Re: How to Learn Solidity: The Ultimate Ethereum Coding Guide

#34

Post by jjnoakes »

PetrolMan wrote: post #8
jameskegel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, this turns me off to the entire tech, no matter how stupid and kneejerk that sounds. If the biggest draw to get me using your technology (immutable contracts) is actually not true, then I'm less inclined to give it a shot outside of novelty value.

Maybe the immutability is not 100% now, but it will be when the technology is finalized, which will take a few more years. The fork to save DAO funds was a good thing, because otherwise too much ETH would have been in the hands of an attacker. The ETH distribution would have been skewed. That's all.

Can you really call the person an attacker when they simply used the contact as-written?

I think that's spinning things a bit to fit a narrative.

Re: How to Learn Solidity: The Ultimate Ethereum Coding Guide

#35

Post by Jabanga »

kefka wrote: post #3

And remember, that there's a special function called VIP() . This is an implied function that wraps around your full code. This is instantiated if/when core founders are losing money on a function that possibly had a bug in it. This function returns the wrapped function, under the guise of a new blockchain, with invalidations applied to all 'unintentional' side effects of bad or buggy code. It happened with the DAO,…

The Core founders invested very little in the DAO, and pushing for a decision that went against the interests of the network would have hurt them far more through reducing the value of the portion of their holdings they still held, than helped by rescueing the portion they put in the DAO.

In short, you're mischaracterizing the motives of the lead developers who supported the HF.

Re: How to Learn Solidity: The Ultimate Ethereum Coding Guide

#36

Post by Jabanga »

jameskegel wrote: post #6
kefka wrote: post #3

And remember, that there's a special function called VIP() . This is an implied function that wraps around your full code. This is instantiated if/when core founders are losing money on a function that possibly had a bug in it. This function returns the wrapped function, under the guise of a new blockchain, with invalidations applied to all 'unintentional' side effects of bad or buggy code. It happened with the DAO,…

To me, this turns me off to the entire tech, no matter how stupid and kneejerk that sounds. If the biggest draw to get me using your technology (immutable contracts) is actually not true, then I'm less inclined to give it a shot outside of novelty value.

The project was very young, and the community miniscule, at the time. It could be justified as a one-time beginner's incident. The network and ecosystem can be expected to behave very differently when it's mature, or even today, given how much larger the community is now, and how much more aware people are of the risks facing smart contracts (which means there is much less justification to rescue those who put money in a complex smart contract that gets hacked).

The project itself made mistakes early on by not sufficiently warning people of the risks of the DAO, which gave justification for the do-over. I think they can be excused given the DAO was the very first smart contract of its kind, and given how much was deposited in the DAO so quickly, which was totally unexpected.

So I think Ethereum can easily be forgiven for the DAO and subsequent hard fork to redo it. It was a highly experimental technology, that saw a major hack of a early-stage application that was only aiming to attract $500,000 of ETH, but had ended up having $150 million worth of ETH deposited in it, when the ecosystem and the state of the technology were not ready.

Re: How to Learn Solidity: The Ultimate Ethereum Coding Guide

#37

Post by woodandsteel »

Last year I was pretty excited about Ethereum for a few months. But then I got to thinking about the social problems I care about, like how factory and middle class jobs are being wiped out by robots and AI, and I couldn't think of how DAPS could fix those sorts of problems on a large scale.

Re: How to Learn Solidity: The Ultimate Ethereum Coding Guide

#38

Post by Jabanga »

jjnoakes wrote: post #34
PetrolMan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the immutability is not 100% now, but it will be when the technology is finalized, which will take a few more years. The fork to save DAO funds was a good thing, because otherwise too much ETH would have been in the hands of an attacker. The ETH distribution would have been skewed. That's all.

Can you really call the person an attacker when they simply used the contact as-written? I think that's spinning things a bit to fit a narrative.

Yes you can call the person an attacker. The rules of a mature Ethereum protocol should be neutral to the intentions of users, including those that one would reasonably characterize as hackers, but Ethereum was not a mature protocol at the time. It was effectively in early-stage beta. The DAO was the first smart contract of its kind, and was expecting $500,000 worth of ETH to be deposited in it. Instead $150 million worth was deposited.

I believe that a fork like the DAO rescue would be perceived as totally unjustified and impractical today, and Ethereum is still a very young and experimental project. I think in a few years, when the network and technology are mature, such an application-rescue HF would be unthinkable.

Re: How to Learn Solidity: The Ultimate Ethereum Coding Guide

#39

Post by Jabanga »

woodandsteel wrote: post #37

Last year I was pretty excited about Ethereum for a few months. But then I got to thinking about the social problems I care about, like how factory and middle class jobs are being wiped out by robots and AI, and I couldn't think of how DAPS could fix those sorts of problems on a large scale.

People are not meant to work in factories. They're meant to own parts of factories and other productive enterprises. Ethereum reduces the barriers to entry to becoming a stakeholder in value created by enterprises. The cost to exchange a token is 1000X less than the cost to exchange a security. This is an orders of magnitude reduction in barriers to entry and expansion of liquidity. It means the economy can grow in all directions and become more inclusive in its ownership structure.

We're still very early days, but this is what distributed smart contracts make possible. The second and third order consequences of this will be enormous.

Re: How to Learn Solidity: The Ultimate Ethereum Coding Guide

#40

Post by Jabanga »

kefka wrote: post #24
komaromy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2/3's of the total amount was owned by Ethdevs Source?

I was in the irc room during that time. It was the number batted around by ethdevs in freenode #ethereum. Regardless, the very people who build the protocol, application stack, and seed blockchain machines were also the ones who had massive stockpiles of eth from the auction... You do remember the auction, right? They had absolute fiduciary reason to undo their losses. Edit: And in all honesty, this would be compute-…

>I was in the irc room during that time. It was the number batted around by ethdevs in freenode #ethereum.

Let me guess, you don't have the logs. "I was in the irc room at the time" yeah okay that's credible. This is just hearsay FUD.

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