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The collapse of the IRON stable coin

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Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#301

Post by krapp »

api wrote: post #297
tluyben2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I get older, I do not understand how known scammers, especially the ones that raise millions over and over, get support time and time again. If not in jail, why do they still get jobs. I know some who just told me in my face that they were scammers of millions (or simply were happy screwing people even with viable ways out) and they raise money again, screw people again etc. People do use Google right? Due diligen…

They have charisma. Charisma is mind control. I'm pretty convinced that charisma can literally override the rational mind. I've seen some pretty amazing examples of charismatic people spewing absolute nonsense with the audience hanging on every word like they are a genius. Put far more interesting ideas in the mouth of someone with no charisma and they are ignored. Humans are merely clever. We are not truly intellige…

Do you consider yourself intelligent, or merely clever?

Are you a slack-jawed puppet of the charismatics, or is it just everyone else?

Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#302

Post by api »

krapp wrote: post #301
api wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have charisma. Charisma is mind control. I'm pretty convinced that charisma can literally override the rational mind. I've seen some pretty amazing examples of charismatic people spewing absolute nonsense with the audience hanging on every word like they are a genius. Put far more interesting ideas in the mouth of someone with no charisma and they are ignored. Humans are merely clever. We are not truly intellige…

Do you consider yourself intelligent, or merely clever? Are you a slack-jawed puppet of the charismatics, or is it just everyone else?

Honestly? I think I'm occasionally intelligent but usually just clever.

I was being a bit hyperbolic for effect.

Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#303

Post by senjin »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #274
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's enough time for most people to exit during normal circumstances. Most people don't monitor the finer details of their investments 24/7. 12 hours is better than nothing, but it's unrealistic to expect everyone to stay tapped into news feeds about their crypto at minimum twice a day.

People doing esoteric DeFi are tapped in much more often than that. I'd agree in a broad general use case it's not enough time, but for DeFi as it is today, it's plenty.

But we're not watching contract changes. We're relying on that from 2nd and 3rd hand sources that might not be available in a 12 hour window.

Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#304

Post by jessriedel »

jboy55 wrote: post #244
jessriedel wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, of course the reality and usefulness of this particular mechanism has now been legally acknowledged and incorporated into the law in some (but not all) places. But mechanisms like this arise organically and are put to use long before they are officially recognized. I expect similar things to happen with smart contracts. In other words: things you might call "evading the law" in fact can be useful and then shape…

Strange emphasis on 'now'. From wiki, "Mechanic's liens in their modern form were first conceived by Thomas Jefferson, to encourage construction in the new capital city of Washington. They were established by the Maryland General Assembly, of which the city of Washington was then a part.[1] However, it is not likely that Jefferson single-handedly dreamed up the idea. At the time Jefferson promoted the law, a lien-lik…

It's not strange at all because "now" does not assert "in the past few years" or something. It's just in contrast to when the technique was first developed.

Like, do you think there was a long-standing issue with people not paying their bills because the liens weren't enshrined in law, and a bunch of clever legislators got the brilliant idea to introduce it? No! It's been happening since before laws were written down, and the formal laws were crafted to fit this existing custom.

Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#305

Post by lupire »

lmilcin wrote: post #265
thebean11 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no court or lawyer who can interpret the spirit of the contract. That's obviously the point, though. You are trading one set of risks for a completely different set of risks that might suit your use case much better; your counterparty being able to contest a contract in court could very well be a "bad" thing for you.

> That's obviously the point, though. You are trading one set of risks for a completely different set of risks. But that's exactly the point. People are not able to interpret "smart" contracts. For normal contracts most people can understand the contract and if there is a dispute you have laws and courts who can interpret in every case. In case of "smart" contracts even the contract developers more often than not see…

eh, for a regular financial contract you need lawyers and judges. There is plenty of counterintuitive law that burns people.

For this one you need programmers and computers.

On both cases, if you go in blind or wing it you might get burned.

Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#306

Post by enlyth »

tfang17 wrote: post #228
georgyo wrote: post #5

This has always been the problem with smart contracts. They are infact dumb contacts. To program one you need to think about all the edge cases. The programmers here likely did want >0 here. The possibility that the thing feeding price data return zero incorrectly was higher than the price legitimately being zero in their minds. There is no court or lawyer who can interpret the spirit of the contract.

That's the whole point. Code is law. The alternative is our current, arcane legal system - only interpretable by lawyers who charge $600/hr.

What about the crowbar attack? A couple of thugs show up at your house and tell you to hand over your private keys, or they'll beat you until you will. Code can't account for all the nuances of real life or being human

Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#307

Post by Daishiman »

tluyben2 wrote: post #58
ceejayoz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is more that if you owe $200M to someone, a court is unlikely to accept "it's irreversibly stuck in a smart contract" as an out.

I am against smart contracts because we do not know how to write software in that way. I like how they sparked a formal verification Renaissance of sorts but that did not help much either unfortunately (if the premise is wrong, no amount of proof will save you anyway). However, if you let all parties review the smart contract (the source is on the chain, you can check it) and agree with it's workings and sign a 'huma…

> but we are adults here: if you agree to put money in smart contracts, you should have verified the code. And if you think the code is flawed, do not put money: otherwise do not complain afterwards. It is not that hard.

That's not how it works. Courts generally operate by ambiguous standard of what reasonable people and reasonable experts can actually do given the state of technology.

No reasonable software engineer can tell you that a piece of code is flawless. I don't think courts will agree on a system that has been shown through evidence to be highly flawed.

Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#308

Post by lupire »

SiliconAlley wrote: post #202
ceejayoz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some cases, perhaps, but not all. Fraud, for example, isn't legal even if you have a cleverly crafted contract that uses wording tricks to technically be true. I would expect a court to take a dim view of a smart contract that has an obfuscated, non-obvious mechanism for someone to siphon off all the money in an undisclosed fashion. "Code is law", but so's "you can't defraud people".

Where’s the part where anybody defrauded anybody? This was clearly incompetence that benefited nobody (certainly the developers would rather not have TITAN implode and all of this USDC locked in a contract...). Embarrassing yes. Fraud? Pretty clearly no

How can it be "locked"? Can't they deploy a protocol update to the members of the compute pool?

Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#310

Post by lupire »

bombcar wrote: post #55

> Non-collateralized stablecoins require continual growth to be successful. In the event of a price crash, there is no collateral to liquidate the coin back into, and the holder’s money would be lost, as seen with many past projects trying to utilize such design [sic]. Isn’t that just a Ponzi scheme?

Isn't that how USD works too? It only holds value if people keep wanting it.
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