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Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

medium.com

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Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#411

Post by sukilot »

DennisP wrote: post #133
pjc50 wrote: post #3

As an elaborate real-money PVP system, Etherum is amazing. As a means of doing relatively normal business, being sniped, frontrun, or exploited is hugely off-putting.

True, but the article was about a situation in which they were retrieving money that was inadvertently available to anyone. That's not normal. Any well-written smart contract has protections against front-running. For about a year I audited them for a living, and front-running opportunities are definitely something we looked for.

Sure, well written software has no vulnerabilities.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#412

Post by sukilot »

jkepler wrote: post #282
pjc50 wrote: post #3

As an elaborate real-money PVP system, Etherum is amazing. As a means of doing relatively normal business, being sniped, frontrun, or exploited is hugely off-putting.

I thought Ethereum's primary aim was to be an unstoppable world computer that runs any code where the fas fee was paid, not money. Bitcoin aims to be peer-to-peer censorship-resistant electronic cash---and at this point its protocol has far higher levels of tested security.

How so? Ethereum requires a computer, and it's far cheaper to compute on your computer than compute has on your computer.

Ethereum is an unstoppable world chat room (ledger), maybe.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#413

Post by sukilot »

cortesoft wrote: post #154
panarky wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> basically unusable for everyday transactions Why is this the acid test? Buying a coffee is a solved problem so why is blockchain tech expected to address this use case? > the endless stream of wallet provider hacks is not convincing anyone that it's secure Does the endless stream of point-of-sale and credit card hacks make you question the security of dollars, euros and yen?

> Does the endless stream of point-of-sale and credit card hacks make you question the security of dollars, euros and yen? No, because my credit card company gives me my money back when there is fraud. Crypto promoters always paint the irreversibility of blockchains as a feature, but it always seems like a risk to me.

What about when someone creates a loan in your name or steals your tax refund or your real estate down payment?

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#414

Post by rsync »

martinko wrote: post #350
rsync wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to ask about that specific quotation: "Better yet, if you happen to know a miner (we didn’t), you could have them include the transaction directly in a block, skipping the mempool—and the monsters—entirely." In the bitcoin ecosystem, as far as I know, basically everyone can be a miner, right ? If you are running the bitcoin client you are mining and there is no particular barrier to entry to mining ... ju…

Its not different. The issue you run into in both systems is that unless you have a large amount of specialized hardware, you will not be able to mine a block in your lifetime. The number of blocks being mined is constant for the entire mining ecosystem, so you are basically competing with all the other miners to create a new block.

I see - so the protection one could gain from being a miner that the article alluded to would come not just from being a miner, but from successfully mining blocks.

That distinction is needed since, no matter how slow and painfully inefficient I am, if I am running the miner I am, indeed, a miner on the network ...

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#416

Post by sonicggg »

ballenf wrote: post #102

Have a friend who lost more than $12k in the process of buying a house. Scammers sent the wiring instructions a few hours before the legit closing attorney sent the real instructions. The email looked exactly right except for a minor change to the domain name from address. After one hour, wire transfers sent in error are no more recoverable than crypto. How the thieves knew so much about the process and timing is sup…

Whenever I send a wire, I have to prove the name of recipient, that being a company or a person. Why would I wire it to an unrecognised name?

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#417

Post by sonicggg »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #352
Taek wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This DeFi stuff is playing with fire because the products being released have significantly outpaced the state of the art in building safe smart contracts. To make an analogy, imagine that instead of DeFi, we were talking about skyscrapers. Imagine that thousands of engineers funded by millions of people who believed in them were building 25 kilometer tall towers using technology that they discovered in Isaac Arthur…

> Defi is insanely cool, insanely powerful, and it will dramatically change the landscape of society. As a person who has been around this tech since 2011, can you explain what exactly it is you find so fascinating about this other than the seemingly absurd amounts of money some people have made so far? This all just seems like a reshased version of the DAO to me and I have ignored it entirely.

We're told this is a global economy, and yet think about things that are still overly complicated and expensive nowadays with financial operations. Things like wiring money to people abroad, buy securities in other countries, and all other operations in the hands of a few large financial institutions. Now we throw much of that bureaucracy away.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#418

Post by cortesoft »

sukilot wrote: post #413
cortesoft wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does the endless stream of point-of-sale and credit card hacks make you question the security of dollars, euros and yen? No, because my credit card company gives me my money back when there is fraud. Crypto promoters always paint the irreversibility of blockchains as a feature, but it always seems like a risk to me.

What about when someone creates a loan in your name or steals your tax refund or your real estate down payment?

You can remedy all of those things in the current system.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#419

Post by cortesoft »

herbst wrote: post #381
cortesoft wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does the endless stream of point-of-sale and credit card hacks make you question the security of dollars, euros and yen? No, because my credit card company gives me my money back when there is fraud. Crypto promoters always paint the irreversibility of blockchains as a feature, but it always seems like a risk to me.

Mine doesnt. I can only block my card and sue. No chargebacks possible. For me any crypto is basically just as good, yet even more secure.

Or get a different credit card?

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#420

Post by rglullis »

ivalm wrote: post #409
rglullis wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are moving the goal posts. The point initially was to show that the current socio-political institutions are no better than "Wild-West" blockchain systems to avoid fraud and misappropriation of assets. You are now talking about how much of a "real economy" blockchain can handle, which is a different matter and a totally unfair comparison. Let's talk about a "real economy" when people are allowed to enter a work a…

Even without the real part I showed 44% is illegal activity, which is ore than 16%.

It is still unrelated to the point of comparing the percentage of funds taken from its owners or misappropriated in the blockchain vs fiat. The activity may be illegal, so what? They were still desired by both participants. Bringing that to the story is still goal-post moving.
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