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Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

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Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#311

Post by marcell »

iSnow wrote: post #212
sickygnar wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, gas prices are insane right now so no doubt bots are bidding them up. Gas prices hit 250 gwei or so 2 weeks ago. $150 fees for some of these contracts and arbitrage aren't abnormal. Here is a $188 transaction fee - looks like they were trying to "mine" compound from a $5 million flash loan? https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0d5def630cd20a1a24389982e99801e011...

They farmed $4140 before tx fees and interest, so they made about $4k. Not too shabby...

Curious, you seem pretty well informed about Ethereum, blockchain, etc. Do you work in the space?

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#312

Post by boring_twenties »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #150
emerged wrote: post #52

Writing this sort of bot seems like a legitimately fun and interesting thing to work on, but somehow I have less than zero interest in actually doing it. There's just something intrinsically repulsive about the entire blockchain world to me where I just don't want to touch it. I don't mean to offend people who do love blockchain tech, in many ways I don't blame you. But is this feeling I have somewhat common? I'm not…

I feel the same way. Storing everything forever perpetually on the blockchain just doesn’t seem like a feasible or good idea to me, and the wasted computation to do anything is annoying. The whole space seems filled with people who hold similar views about economics: all inflation is bad; all government and financial intervention in the economy is bad; all our money problems would be solved if people could just trade…

> whole space seems filled with people who hold similar views about economics: all inflation is bad

This can't be true since there are major cryptocurrencies that are inflationary, for instance Monero.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#313

Post by 3np »

sterlind wrote: post #221
Taek wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to be that guy but you are vastly underestimating the challenge of formally verifying these software systems. Blockchains are highly adversarial, open source, and doing a lot of innovation. Innovation which means that nobody has ever tried to verify that type of system before. Model checkers can tell you thinks like 'there are no underflows' and 'these two pieces of code are identical', but if you want to know…

There should actually be a big market for formal verification tools: malicious users can use them to find and exploit buggy contracts. I imagine this will happen after the low-hanging fruit (the front-runners described in this article) is gone. Providing formal security proofs may be forever out of reach, but if the tools get expressive eventually it'll be a battle of who can throw the most CPU at the solver, to the…

Runtime Verification (no affiliation, just know some people who have worked with or for them) are working on tools and providing services for things like this

https://runtimeverification.com/

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#314

Post by 3np »

spir wrote: post #104
TeMPOraL wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have it too. I'm not entirely sure where it comes from, but some significant factors are: 1) Proof-of-work systems are pure, unadulterated energy waste (and an ecological disaster as long as we depend on fossil fuels). They cannot, ever, be allowed to become significant in the economy, lest our future will be building a Dyson sphere around the Sun just to power everyone's ability to pay for a hot dog on their way t…

I spend a lot of time on Ethereum and wanted to respond to your points. 1) Yes, proof of work is terrible long-term, mainly because its cost scales with the market cap of the cryptocurrencies it secures. Ethereum is switching to proof of stake, which uses a normal amount of electricity and forever solves this issue 2) There are also a lot of excellent ideas and projects. For example, Gitcoin, quadratic funding, quadr…

> such as being top-ranked on coinmarketcap or backed by in-industry VCs, then there're hardly any scams at all

I have to disagree there. Looking at the top 20, I see

  3. XRP (Market cap hugely inflated, vaporware)
  8. Bitcoin SV (This is textbook)
  9. CRO (Not obvious today but time will tell)
  11. EOS
  15. TRON
  19. NEO (Depending on your definition of "scam" and maybe it was well-intentioned initially, but having tried implementing for it, it's nowhere near living up to what they claim the current state is)
Then there's Tether/USDT, which I know is a contentious one given their history.

I'm very much a long-term believer (10y+ until ready for mainstream, and even today an important hedge to mainstream finance and national economies) but we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking the majority of current volume is not what we'd like to believe it is. There's also the fact that you can have a big team of well-intentioned and intelligent people being orchestrated by a charismatic and convincing charlatan. There are multiple historical examples of this.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#315

Post by ivalm »

rglullis wrote: post #262
ivalm wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In total? Yes. As a fraction of total volume? Debatable.

Some quick Google searches: - World GDP: 142 trillion USD. - Global cost of corruption: At least 5% of World's GDP according to WEF. [0] - Cost of violence: estimated to be 11% of GDP in 2012 [1] We are already at 16% and we are not even counting resources and parts of the world economy under the control of authoritarian regimes. [0]: https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/sc13493.doc.htm [1] https://www.researchgate.net/p…

Then for crypto you need to count what fraction of value is used for illicit activity. Here is a paper estimating its about 46% of transactions [0]. If you look at transactions that cause real economic activity (as opposed to speculation) I bet the fraction would be in the 90%+.

[0] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3102645

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#317

Post by siberianbear »

boring_twenties wrote: post #303
novok wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its easy to get fake ids that look very real (ask a local 20 year old). Also you often do not even need to take a picture of an ID to open an account online, just have the info of an identity that you steal. After that, you get an atm card, wear a covid mask, shades and hat, call to raise the limit and take it out asap.

Which banks allow non-trivial ATM withdraw limits? My experience with 4 different banks: 1. Limit of $500 cannot be changed 2. Limit raised to $1,100 over the phone; apparently if I show up at a branch and bring my first born, I can get it as high as $1,500. 3. Limit of $500 suddenly reduced to $200 (!) with the option to call in and raise it to $400. 4. Limit raised to $2,000. Some years later, suddenly reduced to $…

Fidelity Investments brokerage and cash management accounts have a limit of $1000 a day, and I have four of them, so I can get $4000.

I recently learned that some Chase Bank ATMs inside branches used with Chase ATM cards can get $3000 in one transaction. I did it the first time a few days ago.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#318

Post by lowdose »

siberianbear wrote: post #317
boring_twenties wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which banks allow non-trivial ATM withdraw limits? My experience with 4 different banks: 1. Limit of $500 cannot be changed 2. Limit raised to $1,100 over the phone; apparently if I show up at a branch and bring my first born, I can get it as high as $1,500. 3. Limit of $500 suddenly reduced to $200 (!) with the option to call in and raise it to $400. 4. Limit raised to $2,000. Some years later, suddenly reduced to $…

Fidelity Investments brokerage and cash management accounts have a limit of $1000 a day, and I have four of them, so I can get $4000. I recently learned that some Chase Bank ATMs inside branches used with Chase ATM cards can get $3000 in one transaction. I did it the first time a few days ago.

Any particular reason you need so much cash on hand?

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#319

Post by boring_twenties »

siberianbear wrote: post #317
boring_twenties wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which banks allow non-trivial ATM withdraw limits? My experience with 4 different banks: 1. Limit of $500 cannot be changed 2. Limit raised to $1,100 over the phone; apparently if I show up at a branch and bring my first born, I can get it as high as $1,500. 3. Limit of $500 suddenly reduced to $200 (!) with the option to call in and raise it to $400. 4. Limit raised to $2,000. Some years later, suddenly reduced to $…

Fidelity Investments brokerage and cash management accounts have a limit of $1000 a day, and I have four of them, so I can get $4000. I recently learned that some Chase Bank ATMs inside branches used with Chase ATM cards can get $3000 in one transaction. I did it the first time a few days ago.

Good to know, thanks. Fidelity is actually my example #1. I've been told multiple times on the phone it can't be changed from $500, but that was years ago. Will try again.

Back to the topic, we're up to $3-4k now which is more than I thought, but still not enough to pull off this $12k scam.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#320

Post by boring_twenties »

lowdose wrote: post #318
siberianbear wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fidelity Investments brokerage and cash management accounts have a limit of $1000 a day, and I have four of them, so I can get $4000. I recently learned that some Chase Bank ATMs inside branches used with Chase ATM cards can get $3000 in one transaction. I did it the first time a few days ago.

Any particular reason you need so much cash on hand?

You never know when a good poker game will break out.
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