Flashbots • Hacker News Board

Re: Flashbots

#61

Post by siftrics » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 12:14 PM UTC

kmeisthax wrote: post #54

benreesman wrote: post #32

Semi-aside: the term “front running” is pretty overloaded and more than a little charged at this point. It gets applied to a whole spectrum of activities from the socially positive (racing to the inside with a post-only limit order to minimize the still positive price improvement) to the murky and probably kind of shady (MEV ecosystem) to outright fraud (an agency execution firm literally loading up before executing…

Another semi-aside: The term "censor transactions" needs to be abandoned, because it accepts the whole "money is speech" nonsense at face value. I'm willing to begrudgingly accept "money spent to effect speech is speech" but no further. The vast majority of crypto transactions do not fall within that narrow bucket, and using the word "censor" to refer to reversing them with a 51% attack is propaganda.

You're arguing against basic human rights.

Re: Flashbots

#62

Post by siftrics » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 12:20 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #23

Hm. Have the economics changed? In a proof of work system, you have to operate a mining farm, using hardware and power. In the new proof of stake system, you just have to operate a validator, which is cheap, and own lots of ETH. So, while there are advantages to front-running, there's not as much cost pressure to do it. The motivations of miners and HODLers are different.

>there's not as much cost pressure to do it

This is false. You never had to run a validator to watch the mempool and do MEV.

Re: Flashbots

#63

Post by Cameri » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 1:04 PM UTC

kmeisthax wrote: post #54

benreesman wrote: post #32

Semi-aside: the term “front running” is pretty overloaded and more than a little charged at this point. It gets applied to a whole spectrum of activities from the socially positive (racing to the inside with a post-only limit order to minimize the still positive price improvement) to the murky and probably kind of shady (MEV ecosystem) to outright fraud (an agency execution firm literally loading up before executing…

Another semi-aside: The term "censor transactions" needs to be abandoned, because it accepts the whole "money is speech" nonsense at face value. I'm willing to begrudgingly accept "money spent to effect speech is speech" but no further. The vast majority of crypto transactions do not fall within that narrow bucket, and using the word "censor" to refer to reversing them with a 51% attack is propaganda.

My understanding is that when people say Money is speech what they really mean is that it is a human right.

When an authority freezes your bank accounts (like Trudeau/Freeland did to the truckers) they infringe on your other rights (right to property, right to shelter, right to assembly , etc) demonstrating how much of a slave people are under these regimes.

When a payment processor cuts you off without recourse, they also infringe on your rights.

Money that most people know today is a terrible way to store value as it is also a tool for the state to control them.

Ethereum is now another government tool since a great percentage of transactions are validated within the US jurisdiction and are thus subject to the same draconian laws as federal bank issued money.

Re: Flashbots

#64

Post by giancarlostoro » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 1:20 PM UTC

danuker wrote: post #37

giancarlostoro wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On port 80 that makes sense, but is the actual relay on port 80? Or is it a web API? If the latter then I am not surprised they chose to put CloudFlare on top of it.

I see a JSON error straight on HTTPS. Must be an API directly. But HTTPS is 443, not 80. The fact that Cloudflare was privy to all Ethereum ecosystem communication with flashbots gives me the heebie jeebies.

Yeah had a bit of a brainfart there about port I really just meant presence on the web…

Re: Flashbots

#65

Post by giancarlostoro » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 1:21 PM UTC

moralestapia wrote: post #40

giancarlostoro wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On port 80 that makes sense, but is the actual relay on port 80? Or is it a web API? If the latter then I am not surprised they chose to put CloudFlare on top of it.

Domains resolve to the same IP disregarding port number.

Unless you have the really expensive TCP proxy from CloudFlare it is typically only used on web protocols.

Re: Flashbots

#66

Post by moralestapia » Sun, Sep 18, 2022, 4:17 AM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #65

moralestapia wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Domains resolve to the same IP disregarding port number.

Unless you have the really expensive TCP proxy from CloudFlare it is typically only used on web protocols.

Yeah, I kept thinking about it after writing my comment ...

"Well, but maybe if you ..."

But I've never seen it in the wild.

Re: Flashbots

#67

Post by nurettin » Sun, Sep 18, 2022, 4:43 AM UTC

benreesman wrote: post #60

nurettin wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just means detecting a transaction before it happens and executing it earlier for monetary benefit.

In a PoW cryptocurrency blockchain context, maybe? Though I think the much more precise term MEV captures that nicely. The etymology of the term "front-running" goes at least as far back as the name "Reuters" and the use of pigeons to be the microwave towers of the day: https://www.reuters.com/article/rpb-historyofspeed/the-long-... , and probably a great deal further. I imagine the actual origin of the term is lost…

It is used as a trading term in hedge funds. It is shady and heavily regulated by SEC unless you are crazy enough to trade crypto or fx where SEC can't regulate anything.