Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 463 posts

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#421

Post by rglullis »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #398
rglullis wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they don't, they will be put out of business. Do you think if Walmart says "I will only buy from you if I am able to audit you and prove that your shrinkage is less than X%" they are just going to say "Opposite, sorry we can't do that."? Or if Amazon ever starts a blockchain-based certification system to crack down on counterfeit products, the legit distributors are not going to push down on all their suppliers? O…

This thinking belies a very simplistic view of a very complex supply chain. Brands like Nike often don't touch their products after they produce the design. Manufacturing, distribution, shipping, warehousing, sales are all handled by a massive web of smaller entities with long term contracts. Most of these businesses use very very old tech, and will actively resist change. Its a chicken or egg problem too, since havi…

> I've studied this pretty extensively and honestly don't think it'll ever happen. At least unless the current paradigm of supply changes massively.

"I don't think we will see any changes in the industry, unless the industry changes." Kind of tautological, no?

> Most of these businesses use very very old tech, and will actively resist change.

I don't think we are disagreeing. Maybe we are just thinking in different timescales.

I don't doubt current business will resist change. What I am saying is that there will be a point where adopting the technology will be such an obvious advantage for the large players that the existing business will either be forced to adopt or be disrupted by some new business.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#422

Post by cutemonster »

jetzzz wrote: post #377
koonsolo wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would think, but in all scammer cases that I heard, they are able to get their money out. I really don't get it, because I have to provide my ID every year or so for verification. I really don't get how these scammer can get away with that, but obviously every time.

They can use an account registered for a homeless person who has happily provided an ID in exchange for a small amount of money.

What's the next step, after the stolen money has landed in the homeless persons account?

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#423

Post by rsync »

jessaustin wrote: post #142
AaronFriel wrote: post #5

Fantastic story and analogy to Liu Cixin's novel. Writing bug-free code is hard enough, but this adversarial environment is fascinating and takes it to another level.

I thought the biggest flaw in 3BP was that none of the characters and none of the unknown assailants seemed to do any temporal discounting. A species that might be a threat in a billion years is not worth worrying about now. Resources should be used for immediate survival, not for eventually-it-might-be-nice extermination. It made the story seem more like a fantasy of contending royals than speculative fiction of sci…

"A species that might be a threat in a billion years is not worth worrying about now. Resources should be used for immediate survival, not for eventually-it-might-be-nice extermination."

In the third book we are treated to some pseudo-dialog between an attacker and their supervisor(s) deciding whether to preemptively attack an area of space (trying not to spoil here) and the options on the table - a tiny kinetic strike at near light speed vs. the "flattening" that they eventually decide upon are both presented as nearly zero-cost...

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#424

Post by DennisP »

sukilot wrote: post #411
DennisP wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We never guaranteed there were no vulnerabilities. My point is just that there are simple ways to defend against front-running in particular, and it's common practice to do those things.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#425

Post by kbenson »

taneq wrote: post #382
kbenson wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this, I think it also matters how people view the car, the class of car, and the cost of waiting or goi g somewhere else. If you're buying a cheap car to get you from point a to point b and you don't care about amenities, what does it matter? Will that civic the next town over make you much happier than the corolla in front of you (or vice versa, or whatever)? Some people just don't care about cars, or at least n…

True, if you really don't care at all then just buy the closest one. But in my (limited) experience with buying cars, once you figure out what will meet your needs, there's usually a significant value difference between the available vehicles and it seems silly to give up several thousand dollars worth of vehicle for the sake of one slightly longer journey.

Sometimes. For middle-of-the road needs and reliability, it's hard to go wrong with Honda or Toyota, and at the lowest level of vehicle that only leaves you a couple choices. If I was in that position and didn't know a lot about cars, I might just go to whichever dealership was closest that had one, test drive what they had, and if nothing really negative jumped out, buy it.

The more money you're willing to spend the more good choices there are at that level though, so this becomes harder to do when not operating at the lowest cost tier of cars.

This does change a did if people are willing to consider less traditional choices, like smart cars.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#426

Post by siberianbear »

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?

I travel a lot, and sometimes often to "emerging economies". Cash is always king, especially when your American bank puts yet another suspected fraud alert on your card...

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#427

Post by siberianbear »

boring_twenties wrote: post #319
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.

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.

Fidelity outsources their debit card servicing. A Fidelity rep told me that the cap is set per customer, and the withdrawal limit is set depending on the account balance and history with that customer. They told me that I could request a higher withdrawal limit if I wished to do so, and they may or may not approve it.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#428

Post by Paradigma11 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #108
bpodgursky wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing I'll note is that Ethereum has committed to moving to Proof of Stake, albeit at a glacial pace, which * should * mostly remove the environmental destruction. The leadership does seem committed, although the rollout is slow. Not really a fan of crypto overall (although I own some eth as a hedge in case it takes off), not contesting your other points.

Is PoS actually proven to work, the way PoW is? I keep revisiting this topic every now and then, and I always see it in the stage of "we think it should work, but we kind of don't have a mathematical proof just yet". From which I conclude it will most likely be eventually proven to not work at all, and we'll still be stuck with PoW.

There area several currencies out there in the wild based on PoS like Tezos.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#429

Post by literallycancer »

lmeyerov wrote: post #242
literallycancer wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you check for front running? What if your checker tells you that you can't fix it just by changing your own code?

I'm unclear what level you're asking this at. -- Modeling: You start with basics like using the small universe assumption to bound checking to X transactions. I'd expect most front running to show up as small cycles here, so the typical case is a super small X. Later, you might get into a time cost semantics to better tune what you consider interesting, but almost no one in the crypto space is at the level of modelin…

In the article the attacker simply pays a higher fee to have their call executed first. How does verification help you in this case?

It sounds a bit like it would just tell you that your design sucks and you need to change it, but that's not really helpful if it does that for all designs you can come up with.

I'm not convinced you can spend 500k and make the problem go away. If it turns out the problem can only be fixed by changing the underlying platform, rather than your contracts, you will spend years talking to stakeholders and advocating for the necessary changes. Which you still have to come up with yourself. Unless your solver somehow finds the correct solution?

Another reason why that budget is suspect is that you'd have to develop most of that from scratch. There certainly isn't an existing set of mature tools like there might be for verifying properties of C++ code.

Unless you make the problem go away, you are not going to be better off hiring people. Front runners let one know there is a problem just as well as a verification consultant.

Proving that an attack is unavoidable might at least save some time. Proving that a specific solution doesn't work doesn't really help you find the correct one (?)

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#430

Post by Shorel »

dimmke wrote: post #145

The environment described in this article is horrifying and definitely sounds worse than our current financial system. That person just lost $12k to fraud and has no recourse at all. I agree with the other comments on here. Blockchain/crypto has always made me uncomfortable. I think it's a mix of the slimy get rich quick aspect of it that draws a lot of people and the cyberpunk/dystopian rhetoric around it. I also th…

Yes but actually no.

The problems described in the article are very particular to the Ethereum cryptocurrency and its implementation of smart contracts.

So, you "feel uncomfortable". I too, felt bad about the described situation, and that's a reason not to use Ethereum's smart contracts.

But cryptocurrencies are already useful outside smart contracts, and IMO it is a mistake to confuse both.

Post reply on HN