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$625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

roninblockchain.substack.com

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Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#611

Post by sumedh »

neffy wrote: post #318
thawaya3113 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shifting of the goalposts is incredible. Yes, there are flaws in the real world financial system as well. Yet, we’ve heard of more of these scams in years of crypto than in decades and centuries of banking. And no one has still provided an explanation of why crypto is better than the established working system other than “it’s decentralized” except as we find repeatedly, it’s not decentralized.

I wouldn't go with "centuries" of banking on that one. Truth to tell the early days of banking, which is most of the 19th century for the US, were replete with exactly the kinds of frauds and cons that crypto is now replete with. Which is what has led to the regulation and supervision that crypto is in de facto rebellion against. Of course, the best way to find out why something is not done a certain way, is to try d…

> Which is what has led to the regulation and supervision that crypto is in de facto rebellion against.

Who supervises the supervisors?

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#612

Post by tornato7 »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #522
thinkmassive wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of it IS the individual block size though. Individual blocks might seem small, but there's a lot more of them. Ethereum dApps store a LOT of state directly on the base chain. The other scalability disaster is making every node validate every instruction of a Turing-complete scripting language, which results in insane "gas fees" (or loss of fees when you didn't supply quite enough for the script to fully execute)…

> (or loss of fees when you didn't supply quite enough for the script to fully execute). Are they planning to address this in any of the updates on their timeline? This turned me off from ETH completely, just feels like a house-always-wins situation skimming money from users.

In addition to what 3np said, you can use Flashbots as your RPC node, and your transaction won't be submitted if it's going to fail.

Minor note, the reason for charging for failed transactions is to prevent abuse of network resources, don't want someone submitting millions of bogus transactions to DOS the network.

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#613

Post by biaachmonkie »

em_te wrote: post #603
virtualritz wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> encryption has many, many actually useful and productive applications > So does crypto [...] I'd wager that this is a lie. Please name one. These systems are self referential. Great if all to do is speculate with value changes inside the system. Other use cases? In short: no one has come up with any solution to the oracle problem. As soon as you want to exchange anything crypto with anything but crypto (e.g. USD o…

>> So does crypto [...] > I'd wager that this is a lie. Please name one. Alibaba ran a Foreign Exchange service on top of crypto. I don't know if it is still running or not. It functioned like Western Union. Customers sent local currency to Alibaba, Alibaba bought crypto with that local currency and in another country sold that crypto for foreign currency and then deposited it into the foreign currency account.

So, they replicated Western Union only less efficiently?

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#614

Post by tornato7 »

acdha wrote: post #468
tornato7 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most hacks are discovered within minutes or hours, not having the systems in place to know within seconds if your wallet is being drained is unbelievably bad for someone custodying half a billion.

> Most hacks are discovered within minutes or hours Really? The figures I’ve seen have typically put it in days to weeks unless you’re talking only about the most obvious things like DoS attacks or defacing someone’s homepage.

Sorry, I mean crypto hacks specifically. Most crypto traders/companies/firms have apps and monitoring tools set up to report any suspicious activity on their wallets or contracts. Unfortunately it's sometimes too late at that point, but sometimes not[1].

1. https://ihodl.com/topnews/2021-07-19/white-hacker-helps-meta...

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#615

Post by ryukoposting »

aeturnum wrote: post #384
Reubachi wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entire world in late 1920s, Iceland in 2008,Russia currently. Of course my examples are a bit tongue in cheek, much more nuanced and not as "Bank bad" as I paint them to be. But It's entirely possible for a bank run/economic downturn to wipe out a currency overnight. Does that mean crypto is the solution? It sure doesn't seem to be given cases like this (NFT/ETH being rugpulled from/by videogame devs). But I think th…

> I think that creating "better banks" can only mean "more government oversight" I mean, a bank is just a financial business. Why wouldn't it be possible to improve "banks" but it would be possible to improve cryptocurrency companies (also financial businesses). What is the quality that gives you optimism that these new entities will be able to avoid the problems that you are worried about? Like, I get that the techn…

I suppose the other commenter doesn't really leave out the argument that "better cryptocurrencies" can only mean "more government oversight."

I'm not really sure what a secure, generalized zero-trust system really looks like, from an algorithmic standpoint or a political standpoint. ETH is arguably the first large-scale attempt to answer that question, but so far it has unequivocally failed to do that.

> but if the plan is to run an illegal business that's hard to shut down...you do not need blockchain to do that?

It sure as hell makes it easier. Think about NFTs for a moment - they have the perfect recipe for money laundering:

1. Subjective market value (examples: paintings, pokemon cards)

2. High market value.

3. Relatively-unregulated bookkeeping system (examples: other cryptos, any transaction in a tax haven)

4. Trivial mechanisms for layering as a result of (3).

5. Easy (not necessarily cheap) liquidation (examples: casinos)

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#616

Post by simonh »

KarlKemp wrote: post #536
at-fates-hands wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * Giving criminals and scammers the ability to exchange goods and services anonymously. Doesn't cash do the same thing?

Cash doesn't scale, doesn't work remotely and, in any case, cash is actually useful for legitimate purposes, like snorting cocaine.

> Cash doesn't scale

I refer the learned gentleman to, er, the global economy. How much more scaled up would you like?

Meanwhile crypto transactions have to go through a single common blockchain with pitiful throughput. Even the enhancements like lightning are laughably slow compared to the global banking system.

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#617

Post by SilasX »

ethbr0 wrote: post #364
Animats wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reversing erroneous transactions is a useful feature of regular financial system. Yes. A friend of mine is a branch manager for a major bank. She's one of the people who has to deal with unhappy customers victimized by scams. Recently, she had a customer who wanted to send a significant amount of money to a country in Southeast Asia. That's not unusual for a California bank. Then the customer showed up at the branch…

I'd imagine "customer suddenly initiates an international wire transfer for a large amount, with no previous history of doing so" is a pretty reliable signal. I've certainly had banks call me and explain the nature of wires, in an attempt to prevent me from financially foot-gunning.

In other words, the conventional financial system has footguns that you have to avoid too.

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#618

Post by mabbo »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #331
mabbo wrote: post #47

In a system run by people, the transaction could be reversed, traced, and the culprits eventually brought to justice. In a system run by algorithms, designed to avoid oversight by people (governments), there is no such powers. There's no reversal. There's no checking the name on the account the transfer was to. It's just gone. I do not understand why people who have legal intentions would want to be part of the crypt…

Not zero benefits. In your system run by people your money can be frozen or taken away without your consent. Recent example: peaceful protesters in Canada. There are also tons of examples, when scammers would reverse a good transaction after receiving the goods. Another benefit of some blockchains: incredibly low transaction fees. Another benefit: smart contracts. I don't understand why you need to straight up lie.

> Recent example: peaceful protesters in Canada

As a Canadian, and a former Ottawa resident, I can assure you those were not "peaceful protestors". I had friends and family who had to leave the city to escape the unending noise, the harrassment by the 'protestors'. There were arson attempts, assaults, threats, and general disregard for the law.

I've literally been a peaceful protestor in Ottawa (I was a student there after all). There's a serious difference between a daytime march for a cause and what those people did.

They're criminals, and were treated as such. I'm fully in favor of the government being able to seize the financial assets of criminals.

> Another benefit: smart contracts.

What benefit do such contracts hold over actual legal contracts? The biggest difference is that when legal costs have bugs, courts can resolve them.

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#619

Post by ChrisLomont »

tornato7 wrote: post #422
ChrisLomont wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to anywhere near the extent as they'd investigate and prosecute for $625M stolen from a normal bank.....

Do you have any sources to support that claim? You can see in the link above that a task force worked for years to catch that Bitcoin heist couple.

Sure. Google how many bank robbers got caught the past ten years. Do the same for BTC. Then look at what percent of BTC has been stolen. Look up what percent of USD has been stolen.

Conclusion? Far less effort spent on BTC cases and far less thefts resolved.

Re: $625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

#620

Post by thehappypm »

saboot wrote: post #458
spicymaki wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why crypto is such a disaster. Every week there is yet another scam where people losing their money. The feedback from crypto enthusiasts is well look at those idiots for putting their money into some scheme or you are not smart enough use this thing. Look "nobody" understands what you are talking about. These financial systems are inscrutable and the problem is getting worse. You are building systems…

You are neglecting to mention the great upsides in crypto currency. * Giving criminals and scammers the ability to exchange goods and services anonymously. * Providing a source of funding North Korea's nuclear weapons program * Allowing nation states to engage in global commerce despite sanctions because they won't stop killing innocent people * Convincing older and gullible people to give their money to someone they…

I still haven’t seen anyone actually buy anything with a cryptocurrency yet.
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