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White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

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341–350 of 354 posts

Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Do you think that a bank or a government would've handled fixing such a flaw as well has optimism did?" It's irrelevant. We don't use 'algorithms as ownership' in the real world. We use social agreements like contract law to undo problems. "All tokenization schemes are ponzi scams including USD, it's just that some use violence to stay relevant, and other use bug bounties." We use the law to maintain civil infrastru…

It can take years for contract law to get in front of a judge and be enforced, often the damage that can be done in that interval is significant. So I think they timeliness is indeed relevant. As for your murder comment, I'm not saying that violence is strictly unnecessary, just that the coincidence of "we have the guns" with "we issue the ponzi tokens" is probably not the only way to enforce the law.

> the coincidence of "we have the guns" with "we issue the ponzi tokens" is probably not the only way to enforce the law.

Not "the only way", perhaps, but AFAICS the only way that makes sense. Sure, "the law is an ass" and "the querns of law grind exceedingly slow" and all that... But still, it's the worst alternative except for having no law, right?

So if you want the rule of law, the law needs to have the biggest guns. And why would anyone want anyone but the law to issue the tokens of lawful commerce?

Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So no then? Over a decade later and I still cannot use any of them at the restaurant or without waiting in the queue for the transaction to settle and paying more for the fees than the goods itself.

It took 100 years for steam engines to start outperforming horses, why is it so damning that crypto isn't yet outperforming fiat after a decade and change?

Please stop using "crypto" and "fiat" as if they were opposites. "Crypto" is just as "fiat" as any Royal Mint; it's just that the fiat-ers[1] are different people. They just want to muscle in on the "make the tokens that everyone else's transactions are counted in" business niche, because they reckon the makers can always somehow skim a bit off the top.

___

[1]: lit. "makers": "Fiat" is Latin for "let there be made", a form of the verb "to make". It's a cognate of modern French "faire", Italian "fare", etc. (Related words are "fact" and "factory".)

Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#343
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name any examples of cryptocurrencies being used that are not scams, ponzi schemes or for speculative purposes? All I see are people holding coins and not using them at all for anything else other than 'I want coin to go up'.

Helium has practical uses - a cheaper alternative to cellular data for stuff like Lime scooters.

The only practical uses of Helium are for weather balloons and for making your voice hilariously squeaky.

Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#344
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was looking into Helium yesterday due to news coverage. "Proof of coverage" is a bunch of hot air, sorry. It's not resistant to Sybil attacks and GPS location is easily forged. Seems like a scheme to push hardware units that will topple once the token value runs out.

Sort of, Helium no longer sells hardware and the community votes on third party manufacturers to be approved for authorization on the Helium network. This has helped distributed hardware delivery more than any single organization was prepared to do, with the semiconductor and supply chain issues. There is definitely an opportunity to sell overpriced hardware into the community then. There are some other antenna-block…

> antenna-blockchain systems

And earlier:

>>> GPS

So is this the Charlie Stross blockchain scheme?

Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name any examples of cryptocurrencies being used that are not scams, ponzi schemes or for speculative purposes? All I see are people holding coins and not using them at all for anything else other than 'I want coin to go up'.

Speculative investment is not the same as a Ponzi scheme. Not so subtle goalpost moving there.

Isn't most speculative investment in the end a Ponzi scheme?

Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the bounty: "The Summary On 2/2/2022, I reported a critical security issue to Optimism—an "L2 scaling solution" for Ethereum—that would allow an attacker to replicate money on any chain using their "OVM 2.0" fork of go-ethereum (which they call l2geth)." No - sorry - ETH doesn't get a 'pass' on this. The 'Rest Of The World' is tired of the Crypto Scam Delusion masquerading as something reasonable and watching th…

By definition an "L2 scaling solution" is not the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum itself clearly is a secure blockchain given the fact that it has not been exploited directly ever , as far as I am aware. Smart contracts running in the EVM obviously have exploits galore, but that is different from Ethereum itself being vulnerable. Just like it is different when the Java Virtual Machine itself has an exploit (uncommon) v…

> Ethereum itself clearly is a secure blockchain given the fact that it has not been exploited directly ever, as far as I am aware.

Oh, so it can only be exploited indirectly. Yeah, wow, that makes it oh-so-secure.

Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and they can do it for whatever reason they want. One might argue therefore that ETH is centrally controlled, and with considerably less oversight and reasonable oversight than, for example, most central banks.

Anyone can fork ETH, and a fork is only successful if there's consensus.

Funny how that "consensus" seems to be defined as "among those who have the most". So how is that any more decentralised, any less of an oligarchy, than the old system?

Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#349
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think it speaks to the reality of a development process lead by humans in uncharted territory." Yes, exactly, and that's why we can't have distributed systems with 'no central authority' - if those systems are inherently and always faulty there needs to be intervention of some kind by an 'authority'. There is no such thing as a trestles system, the whole thing depends on webs of trust.

I guess we’ll find out Soon(TM). Trustless computation is the plan. Maybe it’s possible to build a system that’s correct/antifragile enough, when you restrict yourself to some hundreds of lines of code tops?

That could be true, but it doesn't matter until we find a real use case that transcends our regular systems.

Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, this can be done without using a blockchain. Just like all the other coins, the only use case is burning up the planet by using Ethereum, BTC, etc, racking up high fees and being used by speculators while everyone else who invests in the ponzi scheme lose their money when it all crashes. Nothing has changed.

>Again, this can be done without using a blockchain. How so? I won't bother with the rest of the post as it's your usual crypto bad spiel that has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion we're currently having and has absolutely nothing to back up its claims (as do the rest of your posts, which I'm surprised aren't flagged/dead yet considering their low quality, but I guess HN is ok with them since they're anti…

Yep, that's exactly what I thought.
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