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The collapse of the IRON stable coin

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Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#351

Post by ArcticCelt »

w4 wrote: post #256
tfang17 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Code is law. Law is law, code is code. They're two very different things. Code can't prevent someone from using violence to force you to overturn a smart contract's decision. The law can because it's enforced by the state. You could certainly choose to build a system of law that uses code, but code by itself cannot substitute for law. > only interpretable by lawyers who charge $600/hr. What do you think the going h…

>Code can't prevent someone from using violence to force you to overturn a smart contract's decision.

You can hit the developers and the computer has much has you want but no amount of violence will fix the "_share_price > 0".

Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#352

Post by fomine3 »

meowface wrote: post #177
bruce343434 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doesn't matter if you do or don't publish the verified source code; if you do, no one will look at it, and if you don't, no one will notice/care that you didn't before investing their life savings in it. As someone who doesn't know much at all about crypto, it seems insane that apparently coins can be closed source? But how? How does the chain know what code to execute?

The Ethereum interpreter bytecode is stored on the blockchain, but the source code isn't. (It'd be inefficient both for storage and CPU cycle reasons.) Basically like storing a Python .pyc or Java .class file. There's pretty much a rule of thumb that tokens should always be open source, in part because it's much easier to hide a backdoor if you don't publish the source, and also because cryptocurrency communities gen…

Generally is it reproducible build?

Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#353

Post by ac29 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #339
ac29 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that Circle is based in the US and subject to US court rulings, more likely they would need to freeze and hold those assets pending any potential lawsuits to recover funds.

If there’s a statute of limitations, they’d eventually be free and clear, no?

In other situations where a company is unable to return a customer's money or property to them, they don't magically get to keep it, statute of limitations or no. Where I live, they would have to give the money to the state office of unclaimed property, eventually.

However, I'm not a lawyer and I imagine this is likely more complicated than that.

Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#354

Post by lalaland1125 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #279
tornato7 wrote: post #226

I think Circle is the real winner here. If there are 200 million USDC locked up permanently in some contract, then Circle can safely spend $200m of it's collateral knowing it will never be withdrawn. Or, if they were generous, they could return it to the community that invested in IRON (seems unlikely)

So, as a thought experiment, because of the nature of the bug that $272M is locked until such time as TITAN becomes worth > 0. And TITAN is printed by the system itself, whenever IRON is Outside of abusing the oracle, that seems like a pretty pickle.

Yep. It's a self collapsing system.

Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#355

Post by perl4ever »

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?

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

To make this more than just a rhetorical question, one could take a poll - who took Adam Neumann seriously, because he seems to me like the epitome of a "charismatic" who walked away stupendously wealthy from a fiasco (WeWork) without serious penalties.

I don't think I'm smarter than everyone else, but I also don't think Neumann and WeWork were anywhere near something that made sense to me.

Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#356

Post by lmm »

bob33212 wrote: post #280
lmilcin wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is how ALL of Crypto works. A decentralized ledger means that you cannot call the CEO or CFO of the ledger and have a clearly fraudulent transfer revoked. That is the tradeoff.

Except when you can, e.g. the Ethereum DAO. Turns out crypto is just exchanging one shady cabal for an even shadier one.

Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#357

Post by jkhdigital »

worik wrote: post #298
bob33212 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how ALL of Crypto works. A decentralized ledger means that you cannot call the CEO or CFO of the ledger and have a clearly fraudulent transfer revoked. That is the tradeoff.

Yes. Trading off hundreds of years of experience and judicial tradition and precedent for a brand new shiny (just trust us programmers) system. If the former system were to be irretrievably corrupt, teetering on the edge of collapse, and the proposed replacement were capable of replacing it then it would be worthwhile. The existing international financial system is corrupt, the judiciary in most of our world is compl…

> has no support from cryptographers

I am a PhD student in cryptography, and judging by the papers I've read there is plenty of support from cryptographers, many of whom are directly involved in research and development. Silvio Micali is practically a founder of modern cryptography (and Turing Award winner), and he co-created the blockchain Algorand. There is also plenty of opposition, as the subject elicits strong opinions, but the assertion that cryptocurrency has no support from cryptographers is just false.

Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#358

Post by jMyles »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #52
jMyles wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm saying the legal system takes authority. A smart contract doesn't avoid or override that authority. On a blockchain, this is absolutely false. The nodes interpret smart contracts. The "legal system" needs to be applied by some kind of oracle or by force to a node operator. Smart contracts are authoritative in their native environment.

> The "legal system" needs to be applied by some kind of oracle or by force to a node operator. Yes, this is usually how it's done. Business logic is not a legal authority.

This is a strange statement. It's like saying that a forloop isn't authoritative because it hasn't been approved by a court.

"Legal authority" isn't a well-defined object in the evaluation of smart contracts. It is certainly not an authority in the sense that the EVM (or, for other blockchains, corresponding VM) code is.

Is this really a surprise? Nodes don't evaluate common law, they evaluate smart contracts.

That's one of the reasons for enthusiasm for blockchain tech. Not everyone believes in the legitimacy of the state, let alone that the legal system is somehow the proper authority for evaluation of disambigous source code.

Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#359

Post by _9omd »

meowface wrote: post #336
_9omd wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but shuffling units around is the starting point of a new financial system. I like to say that DeFi is speed running the creation of a financial system from scratch. Storing value, trading currencies, borrowing/lending, derivatives, insurance, etc. are some of the building blocks of a financial system and all are currently live in the Ethereum ecosystem. I think some people got sold on this false premise that c…

True. Part of it is just a personal problem of mine; I like Ethereum, smart contracts, dapps, DAOs, and decentralization, but I hate finance. (Of any kind.)

I think this is actually common, and one of the reasons HN hates crypto so much. I think most engineers hate finance, but fail to realize how much power it has in the world. If you spend some time learning about the history of finance, you begin to see it as the engine that powers innovation, rather that just a way for gamblers to speculate. Obviously it attracts gamblers, scammers, etc, but that's just a function of the potential money to be made.

At the heart of it though, finance allows efficient allocation of capital, which allows innovators to have the resources they need to perform R&D and bring new products/services to the market. If you consider money a proxy for energy, it makes sense that we need ways to store it, move it, and concentrate it, so it can fuel the engines of innovation.

Re: The collapse of the IRON stable coin

#360

Post by lmm »

andrepd wrote: post #250
toomuchtodo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your counterparty being able to contest a contract in court could very well be a "bad" thing for you. Evading the law (whether the court or a regulatory body such as the SEC [civil] or DOJ [criminal]) is typically a "bad thing" for the person or people intending to or successfully doing so. https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/cybersecurity-enforcement-acti... (SEC Cyber Enforcement Actions, control-f "blockchain" | "cryp…

> Evading the law (whether the court or a regulatory body such as the SEC [civil] or DOJ [criminal]) is typically a "bad thing" for the person or people intending to or successfully doing so. Oh wow. If only this were true. If only they were so diligent in punishing other kinds of things. Here's something I read recently, from the aftermath of the Libor scandal: https://www.sec.gov/news/statement/stein-waivers-grante…

Nonsense. There's severe punishment for acts that demonstrate clear malice (e.g. violence, possession of substances well-known to be illegal) and light punishment for ambiguous cases (making a subjective judgement call in a particular way), at every level of society. If anything the error is in the other direction - legislation that requires people to make subjective noisy judgments and get them right is futile and absurd.
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