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Did I just lose half a million dollars?

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Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#651

Post by nailer »

fortran77 wrote: post #519
hedora wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I can tell, the underlying issue is that everything is spaghetti code written in a dynamically typed language. Ignoring that, it's nuts that the best practice is "send a little money, and see if it works". Apparently they don't even have a working transaction simulator that just runs the relevant logic on your laptop so you can see what it will do.

> From what I can tell, the underlying issue is that everything is spaghetti code written in a dynamically typed language. We need to re-write this in Rust before there can be universal acceptance!

Already done and it’s already processed more transactions than ethereum and bitcoin have in their entire history combined, as well as having more developers.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30135054

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#652

Post by 0x64 »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #454
0x64 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you count as earnings; Ethereum did $9.9b in transaction fees and tips alone last year. [1] https://stark.mirror.xyz/q3OnsK7mvfGtTQ72nfoxLyEV5lfYOqUfJIo...

That's the cost the network pays to miners/core devs. So EBITDA comes out very negative

The cost highlighted there does not include new issuance, as in block rewards which are paid by the network protocol. The entirety of that $9.9b are fees paid by users in the form of gas and tips. Since EIP-1559 was implemented in August, the majority component of the transaction fees is burnt, and only the tips go to the miners. Core devs do not receive transaction fees or tips, or anything really.

If you were to include block rewards as a negative cash flow, then Ethereum would have indeed done a negative EBITDA of around $3b. That will change with PoS, which drops issuance signficantly.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#653

Post by vmception »

hughrr wrote: post #26
ssiddharth wrote: post #5

In case you’re wondering what happened, from the thread: He sent ETH to the WETH contract, received WETH as expected. Then he wanted to do the reverse and sent WETH, but will not receive anything, because you're supposed to swap your WETH to ETH in exchanges like Uniswap, or call the "withdraw" function in the contract. For contracts that want to only work with ERC-20 tokens, you use WETH, which comes from a contract…

The problem with crypto is despite your explanation, I have no idea what any of your post means. Not any of it.

Then learn. There is standardized education available now.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#654

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

ssiddharth wrote: post #5

In case you’re wondering what happened, from the thread: He sent ETH to the WETH contract, received WETH as expected. Then he wanted to do the reverse and sent WETH, but will not receive anything, because you're supposed to swap your WETH to ETH in exchanges like Uniswap, or call the "withdraw" function in the contract. For contracts that want to only work with ERC-20 tokens, you use WETH, which comes from a contract…

Why was this person experimenting with $500k? Even with traditional ACH I send a $1 test transaction before any significant sum. I also use the “don’t fuck with paste” browser extension to ensure there are no typeos in the routing or account number, but just the same I still want to see a transfer work before I send a significant amount. With crypto where everything is much more complicated, there are no do-overs, and no bank to step in and undo a mistake, I’m even more cautious.

I think this more a story of poor risk management.

But they are in good company. I was on the Bear Stearns trading floor when they went bankrupt and I saw a hundred people loose their entire life savings and all their kid’s college money in a few hours. Those were licensed financial experts that were fully knowledgeable and practiced in a variety of risk mitigation techniques - which they failed to apply to their personal portfolios. The company was bought by JPMorganChase and a year later everyone that came over from Bear was gone - JPMC really just wanted the client list and their midtown office tower.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#655

Post by ALittleLight »

noduerme wrote: post #41
ssiddharth wrote: post #5

In case you’re wondering what happened, from the thread: He sent ETH to the WETH contract, received WETH as expected. Then he wanted to do the reverse and sent WETH, but will not receive anything, because you're supposed to swap your WETH to ETH in exchanges like Uniswap, or call the "withdraw" function in the contract. For contracts that want to only work with ERC-20 tokens, you use WETH, which comes from a contract…

Wait. I'm not letting anyone off the hook for not knowing the above if they put $5 into something, let alone $500k. But even as a coder and someone who was deeply involved in crypto at one point (2011) I find it hard to make heads or tails of wtf this means. All I hear are a lot of acronyms and bizarre edge cases upon edge cases. It sounds like those arguments you'd hear between kids in junior high over magic cards o…

This is one thing that really confuses me about crypto. Whenever I've worked on a website there is an underlying idea that things need to be simple and intuitive because users aren't going to struggle to figure out how to use your site - they'll just bounce.

It's hard to reconcile my experiences with trying to get users to understand and use relatively simple things with the inscrutable nature of the crypto space. Crypto is overflowing with unwieldy acronyms and punishing rakes to step on. And yet, people are putting massive amounts of money into this?

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#656

Post by vmception »

ssiddharth wrote: post #5

In case you’re wondering what happened, from the thread: He sent ETH to the WETH contract, received WETH as expected. Then he wanted to do the reverse and sent WETH, but will not receive anything, because you're supposed to swap your WETH to ETH in exchanges like Uniswap, or call the "withdraw" function in the contract. For contracts that want to only work with ERC-20 tokens, you use WETH, which comes from a contract…

Ive been thinking about this in my own smart contract designs: cant a contract have a approve and transfer method that can accept an erc20 contract hash and transfer method from its ABI? Allowing that contract access to the erc20 tokens sent/assigned to it?

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#657

Post by mlyle »

capableweb wrote: post #325
axiosgunnar wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is worried about sending funds to „foobar“. People are worried about sending funds to a syntactically valid address that no one has access to.

This is impossible to solve, in the cryptocurrency space or in the existing structures we have. When you send an email, you cannot know if someone actually has access to that account (maybe they forgot their password?), you can only know if the address is valid or not (by sending the email). Similarly, you don't know if the right person has access to the bank account you're sending funds to, unless you ask the person…

> This is impossible to solve,

Let's talk about putting safety rails around large drops.

They should never be necessary with careful use.

And they can't prevent everyone from falling to their death.

But they still prevent some harms, so we generally require them to be present.

Design to do everything with contracts through methods instead of transfers to contract addresses would make this particular type of failure impossible. There would still be other ways to screw up and lose money on accident, of course. But any way that can be reasonably eliminated and isn't, is a design flaw.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#658

Post by srcreigh »

capableweb wrote: post #228

Since no one seems to think about how this could have prevented, here is a simple way, which I've applied to lots of things in life, not just cryptocurrency transfers: - If you're making a transfer somewhere with a large amount, do a small transfer first and verify it's working. Confirm at the receiving end before moving big sums. - If you're calling a contract, try it with a small amount first. Verify the parameters…

Sounds great. I'm sure there's checks in place to ensure the smart contract can't have different logic for small amounts and large amounts. Right?

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#659

Post by vmception »

ab_testing wrote: post #7
ssiddharth wrote: post #5

In case you’re wondering what happened, from the thread: He sent ETH to the WETH contract, received WETH as expected. Then he wanted to do the reverse and sent WETH, but will not receive anything, because you're supposed to swap your WETH to ETH in exchanges like Uniswap, or call the "withdraw" function in the contract. For contracts that want to only work with ERC-20 tokens, you use WETH, which comes from a contract…

I think this is a problem with crypto that will forever prevent it from becoming mainstream. The average person understands the concept of money but understanding smart contracts is out of scope for a large part of the general population m

Its more analogous to being surprised that a VCR might occassionally eat up and destroy a VHS tape, and thinking “this will stop mainstream adoption”

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#660

Post by vmception »

ab_testing wrote: post #7
ssiddharth wrote: post #5

In case you’re wondering what happened, from the thread: He sent ETH to the WETH contract, received WETH as expected. Then he wanted to do the reverse and sent WETH, but will not receive anything, because you're supposed to swap your WETH to ETH in exchanges like Uniswap, or call the "withdraw" function in the contract. For contracts that want to only work with ERC-20 tokens, you use WETH, which comes from a contract…

I think this is a problem with crypto that will forever prevent it from becoming mainstream. The average person understands the concept of money but understanding smart contracts is out of scope for a large part of the general population m

Billions have been transferred through that contract with no problem. Its pretty much the worse example to bring up that copypasta.

This was an early adopter that just got around to experimenting and didnt even try to keep up with how things work now.

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