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Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

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Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#61

If R2-D2 used Ethereum. C-3PO: He made a perfectly legal move. Han: Let him have it. It’s not wise to upset a Wookiee (The Ethereum founders). C-3PO: But sir. Nobody worries about upsetting a droid (a regular contract user without influence). Han: That’s cause a droid (regular contract user) don’t pull people’s arms out of their sockets (hard fork the entire crypto currency and call you a thief) when they lose. Wooki…

There are no perfect rules nor there is perfect law. The hard fork was simply an abandonment of an obviously unjust law, a revolution really. The people voted with their feet, and the current market cap is an indicator of where those votes went.

People don't like to get screwed over.

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#62
post #58

If R2-D2 used Ethereum. C-3PO: He made a perfectly legal move. Han: Let him have it. It’s not wise to upset a Wookiee (The Ethereum founders). C-3PO: But sir. Nobody worries about upsetting a droid (a regular contract user without influence). Han: That’s cause a droid (regular contract user) don’t pull people’s arms out of their sockets (hard fork the entire crypto currency and call you a thief) when they lose. Wooki…

isn't it a bit disingenuous to say it was just the position of Ethereum founders? People wanted their money back. It's almost as if some recourse for actions done in bad faith is a useful tool to have as a society...

That's not what says https://www.ethereum.org/

> Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference.

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#63
post #59

Thief? He strictly followed the terms of a contract by people who were very clear that "code is law" and who did not want institutions were the result is decided by human judgement.

It's always been like this. Be smug and aggressive when it goes right and cry for help when something goes wrong. The housing crisis was the same. Claim you got the thing that makes everybody rich and when everything went inevitably downhill, ask the "enemy" aka the regulator/government/police to bail you out.

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#64
post #57
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are categorically wrong about this. Ponzi schemes are financial frauds where, under the promise of high profits, users put their money, recovering their investment and interests only if enough users after them continue to invest money. Further to this, its qualatively provable, as you can look at the contracts and actually class the type of Ponzi scheme they are. * https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/06/01/2189634/i…

You're quoting from the Birch-Kaminska circle, which has been bashing cryptocurrency since 2012. A ponzi scheme is where people pay a fee to join a scheme where members are guaranteed a payment that comes out of the membership fees paid by members that join after them. No token sale has given out payments, let alone guaranteed one. A speculative price gain is not a "ponzi scheme".

So tell me, what is the goal of an ICO? And by extension, how do you ensure an ICO is successful?

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#65
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's primarily because Ethereum is pure amateur hour. When Bitcoin had built in checksums on addresses, Eth Dev's just said "watch where you send money". They ended up having to later add in a capitalization scheme to serve as a hash. I have no clue how they managed to fool so many people with poor and shoddy work. But they have so far. And they've fooled everyone that this is a 'hack' even after saying time and ag…

The 't' vs 'T' has _nothing_ to do with checksums. `Transfer` and `transfer` are two different functions, one creating an "event" (think a signal on the blockchain) and the other actually transfering tokens. The true flaw lies in the reentrant attack on `.send()`

jesus christ, who the fuck would make two identical symbols differentiated by only capitalisation? (Other than these guys obviously)

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#66
post #24
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Said "hacker" could even take Ethereum to a civil court and win a trial for changing the DAO's code: Ethereum long claimed that transactions were unrevokable and only contracts had value, causing tort to the hacker when rules were reversed... Given the number of people involved, it could even be juged as organized crime against one person...

hmm true. Maybe smart contracts also need a good old fashioned terms & conditions signed. At least that protects against unknown bugs and exploits?

The term "smart contracts" is highly misleading. It is feeding the hype and deeply confusing people. "Smart contracts" are neither smart nor contracts. They are instead very limited scripts triggered by blockchain events.

All the use cases I've seen depend on external input to be even moderately useful. But once you depend on unverifiable and potentially fraudulent external input, the supposed unique value of these scripts is lost. The notion of "oracles" just moves the problem elsewhere so it can be dismissed.

When and if we see profitable uses of these block-chain scripts then I would be glad to revisit this assessment. Until then it looks to me like a classic case of a technology looking for a problem.

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#67
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 't' vs 'T' has _nothing_ to do with checksums. `Transfer` and `transfer` are two different functions, one creating an "event" (think a signal on the blockchain) and the other actually transfering tokens. The true flaw lies in the reentrant attack on `.send()`

jesus christ, who the fuck would make two identical symbols differentiated by only capitalisation? (Other than these guys obviously)

What, you mean apart from every Unix ever?

(All right, all right, excluding Mac OS X. But it's weird.)

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#68
post #64
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're quoting from the Birch-Kaminska circle, which has been bashing cryptocurrency since 2012. A ponzi scheme is where people pay a fee to join a scheme where members are guaranteed a payment that comes out of the membership fees paid by members that join after them. No token sale has given out payments, let alone guaranteed one. A speculative price gain is not a "ponzi scheme".

So tell me, what is the goal of an ICO? And by extension, how do you ensure an ICO is successful?

Whatever the goal, unless they guarantee you a payment and fund that payment with membership fees paid by later entrants, it's not a ponzi scheme.

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#69
post #61

If R2-D2 used Ethereum. C-3PO: He made a perfectly legal move. Han: Let him have it. It’s not wise to upset a Wookiee (The Ethereum founders). C-3PO: But sir. Nobody worries about upsetting a droid (a regular contract user without influence). Han: That’s cause a droid (regular contract user) don’t pull people’s arms out of their sockets (hard fork the entire crypto currency and call you a thief) when they lose. Wooki…

There are no perfect rules nor there is perfect law. The hard fork was simply an abandonment of an obviously unjust law, a revolution really. The people voted with their feet, and the current market cap is an indicator of where those votes went. People don't like to get screwed over.

In that case, why not just use current contract law with centuries of jurisprudence? Without, "code is the contract", Ethereum is a pointless, buggy, leaky abstraction of current contract law.

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#70
post #67
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

jesus christ, who the fuck would make two identical symbols differentiated by only capitalisation? (Other than these guys obviously)

What, you mean apart from every Unix ever? (All right, all right, excluding Mac OS X. But it's weird.)

There's a big difference between being and actually making use of such anti-patterns. Especially on such a scale.
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