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For a technology that is supposedly comes from a privacy and security philosophy, blockchain evangelists and devs DO suffer from a lack of adversarial thinking.

For a technology that is supposedly comes from a privacy and security philosophy, blockchain evangelists and devs DO suffer from a lack of adversarial thinking. It has cornered the market in fraud and manipulation, just look at all of the pump and dump and phishing scams that are perfectly tailored to its design. Blockchain is built from the ground up to prevent exactly one type of security vulnerability: man in the middle attacks. It is absolutely abysmal at protecting against any other form of attack. Anything that involves, say: social engineering, is fair game. After all it is YOUR fault if YOU leak personal information that can be used to destroy YOUR life. If that ends up in the blockchain its not MY fault, I cant do anything... what do you want me to do? change it? punish someone? oops sorry I cant! Ultimately this form of thinking is the logical conclusion of "personal responsibility" arguments. Why criticize the system when you can instead pretend the problem is the individual? Crypto doesnt have philosophical issues, you are using the wrong wallet. It isnt MY fault that someone made an NFT containing your home address and bitcoin wallet ID, YOU trusted your information with the wrong service. The ultimate scapegoat is blaming the end-user. At some point you need to take the L and at least admit these are oversights. Blockchain tech has been around for over a decade and it's had plenty of time to solve these problems but instead it has dug its heels in and said "no all of this is by design and good actually"

epolanski 5y ago
At this point all of these companies building all of these services on the blockchain are really proving that people want trust based simple services. Two banks in Italy have launched a crypto buying and custodying services, the customers can't even access their crypto, nor they even want to. And it is doing well. Yet another proof no one cares about blockchain solutions and tgat the problems they solve do not exist.
miracle2k 5y ago
> Blockchain is built from the ground up to prevent exactly one type of security vulnerability: man in the middle attacks. It is absolutely abysmal at protecting against any other form of attack. I wonder where that Man in the Middle attack thing is coming from? Dan mentioned it in his recent video, so he must have picked it up somewhere. If you Google the term + blockchain, you'll mostly find some discussion about potential attack vectors regarding wallets. It's not a term used in academic blockchain literature as far as I aware. It's not used in the Bitcoin whitepaper. Man in the middle has a specific meaning, and I don't see how describing blockchain's main purpose as preventing this kind of attack makes a terrible amount of sense. Ultimately, what you critique is simply an inherent part of the system. These are not oversights. These are basic consequences of the whole approach. To say "blockchain evangelists suffer a deficiency in not addressing them" is merely saying "there should be no blockchain evangelists".
- breadbreadbread 5y ago
  MITM is a networking term for when an agent in a trust based communication system falsifies data in order to exploit the system. I don't think using a term that isn't directly used in a whitepaper is a flaw in my argument. Decentralization, in general, guards against MITM by using consensus mechanisms instead of trusting any individual link, so blockchains are theoretically resilient against individual agents breaking the rules. That is literally the basis of blockchain tech. What I am getting at is that there are still ways to exploit a system while technically operating "within the rules" and blockchain makes those easier to get away with. > Ultimately, what you critique is simply an inherent part of the system YES THATS THE PROBLEM. Systems arent immutable facts of the world. We can change them. Systems are built by people and people can be wrong or at the very least mislead.
- ShamelessC 5y ago
  > If you Google the term + blockchain You may want to re-run that search without "blockchain". It's an _extremely_ common phrase in information security. Like - NETSEC 101 sort of stuff. > It's not a term used in academic blockchain literature as far as I aware. It's not used in the Bitcoin whitepaper. I don't even...
  - miracle2k 5y ago
    Maybe it is possible to misunderstand my comment. I am saying the term seems unused in academic/technical papers around blockchain, which would support my assertion that it is non-sensical to claim that blockchains are supposed to protect against man in the middle attacks.
- wmf 5y ago
  I think it would be more accurate to say that crypto/blockchain solves Sybil attacks and the Byzantine agreement problem, both of which were discussed from the beginning. To say "blockchain evangelists suffer a deficiency in not addressing them" is merely saying "there should be no blockchain evangelists". Honestly... yes. If there are a bunch of problems preventing digital cash from working and you solve two of those problems then you haven't created digital cash; you've created an attractive nuisance.

epolanski 5y ago

At this point all of these companies building all of these services on the blockchain are really proving that people want trust based simple services. Two banks in Italy have launched a crypto buying and custodying services, the customers can't even access their crypto, nor they even want to. And it is doing well. Yet another proof no one cares about blockchain solutions and tgat the problems they solve do not exist.

miracle2k 5y ago

> Blockchain is built from the ground up to prevent exactly one type of security vulnerability: man in the middle attacks. It is absolutely abysmal at protecting against any other form of attack. I wonder where that Man in the Middle attack thing is coming from? Dan mentioned it in his recent video, so he must have picked it up somewhere. If you Google the term + blockchain, you'll mostly find some discussion about potential attack vectors regarding wallets. It's not a term used in academic blockchain literature as far as I aware. It's not used in the Bitcoin whitepaper. Man in the middle has a specific meaning, and I don't see how describing blockchain's main purpose as preventing this kind of attack makes a terrible amount of sense. Ultimately, what you critique is simply an inherent part of the system. These are not oversights. These are basic consequences of the whole approach. To say "blockchain evangelists suffer a deficiency in not addressing them" is merely saying "there should be no blockchain evangelists".

breadbreadbread 5y ago
MITM is a networking term for when an agent in a trust based communication system falsifies data in order to exploit the system. I don't think using a term that isn't directly used in a whitepaper is a flaw in my argument. Decentralization, in general, guards against MITM by using consensus mechanisms instead of trusting any individual link, so blockchains are theoretically resilient against individual agents breaking the rules. That is literally the basis of blockchain tech. What I am getting at is that there are still ways to exploit a system while technically operating "within the rules" and blockchain makes those easier to get away with. > Ultimately, what you critique is simply an inherent part of the system YES THATS THE PROBLEM. Systems arent immutable facts of the world. We can change them. Systems are built by people and people can be wrong or at the very least mislead.
ShamelessC 5y ago
> If you Google the term + blockchain You may want to re-run that search without "blockchain". It's an _extremely_ common phrase in information security. Like - NETSEC 101 sort of stuff. > It's not a term used in academic blockchain literature as far as I aware. It's not used in the Bitcoin whitepaper. I don't even...
- miracle2k 5y ago
  Maybe it is possible to misunderstand my comment. I am saying the term seems unused in academic/technical papers around blockchain, which would support my assertion that it is non-sensical to claim that blockchains are supposed to protect against man in the middle attacks.
wmf 5y ago
I think it would be more accurate to say that crypto/blockchain solves Sybil attacks and the Byzantine agreement problem, both of which were discussed from the beginning. To say "blockchain evangelists suffer a deficiency in not addressing them" is merely saying "there should be no blockchain evangelists". Honestly... yes. If there are a bunch of problems preventing digital cash from working and you solve two of those problems then you haven't created digital cash; you've created an attractive nuisance.