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Having watched cryptocurrency from a distance via HN etc. for over a decade, I thought I had a general understanding, but this made me realize I wasn’t aware of

Having watched cryptocurrency from a distance via HN etc. for over a decade, I thought I had a general understanding, but this made me realize I wasn’t aware of what smart contracts really were (just looked up solidity today and details of The DAO hack). The potential for irreversible losses, fraud and security holes are much bigger than I realized. This also lead me to this video which will now be my ‘go to’ recommendation for anyone asking about crypto and NFTs - it’s a general critique and social commentary of the issues with crypto - not specifically about this case, but I thought excellent, and the first time I think I’ve watched a 2hr vid on YouTube ‘Line goes up’ - https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g

richardburton 5y ago
- noduerme 5y ago
  What could be more of a rat's nest than the crypto scams? As soon as it became possible for anyone to create a token it just became a race to the bottom. It's the ultimate recepticle for scammers.
  - rvz 5y ago
    > As soon as it became possible for anyone to create a token it just became a race to the bottom. Exactly. All enabled and caused by Ethereum. First the ICOs, then anyone can create their own scam ERC-20 tokens, The DAO (which got hacked and hard forked to reverse the funds), NFTs (which have nothing to do with ownership), which once you scale up all of that it basically becomes unusable due to the 'gas fees' for every operation. Spend $200 to swap $1 worth of tokens using dapps like Uniswap. One can go as far as to say that the Ethereum logo is literally a pyramid. Now what does that tell us? A pyramid scheme? who knows. From the start, they are probably trying to tell us that they know it is a scam. At this point, everyone will eventually jump on the scheme itself anyway even when everyone knows it is a scam.
    - noduerme 5y ago
      I'd go back further and say that the first wave - when Dogecoin and about 100 other cryptos popped up all running essentially Bitcoin networks - that was right when it went to shit. At that time you had to still know how to compile something to start your own blockchain, but if you did you'd be a billionaire now. Ripple and other riders on the original blockchain would be the second wave of scams. That's when large scale investors started to get involved. Ethereum is really the third wave scam where it got so easy that people who couldn't code were able to scale it out to people who couldn't even think. It was upscale retail selling to schmucks. That would make NFTs and smart contracts the 4th wave of ponzi. The part where knockoffs of knockoffs become cheaper than a Louis Vuitton bag on Canal Street, and everyone's mother is buying crypto, and they're running ads for it on the home shopping network.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  Wait, you're actually comparing crypto to a symphony? Is the orchestra a bunch of first graders who have never played an instrument? =)
masklinn 5y ago
> this made me realize I wasn’t aware of what smart contracts really were (just looked up solidity today and details of The DAO hack). The potential for irreversible losses, fraud and security holes are much bigger than I realized. That seemed obvious from the first time I read the expression "code is law". If code is law, any bug (whether in the contract itself or in the way the contract is called) fucks you irredeemably and with no recourse. I would expect any dev to shit their pants at the idea, even more so upon realising that the code in question is a half-assed brain damaged cousin of javascript, of all thing.
- jrimbault 5y ago
  Especially in that real law is left for judges to interpret, and that's a deliberate feature to allow "wiggle" room.
  - Jenk 5y ago
    Juries are the ultimate arbiter of law application. For this very reason.
    - oblio 5y ago
      In jurisdictions with juries. It's judges, otherwise.
- danjac 5y ago
  When I saw the phrase "code is law" I immediately thought of all the code I've written in my life, and I'm not even the very worst coder out there...
- Earw0rm 5y ago
  It also cannot be a legal basis for anything, because the law doesn't treat the right or ability to enter in to contracts as an absolute. Think minors, wards, power of attorney. Contract law is one of the more mechanistic parts of the legal system, but only up to a point. There are good reasons the legal profession - even corporate law - tends to attract a different set of personality traits to software development.
noduerme 5y ago
- needed to remove this. sorry.
- virgildotcodes 5y ago
  Any chance of making those logs public some day?
  - noduerme 5y ago
    Dead man's switch baby.
mhitza 5y ago
I was quite interested in the cryptocurrency ecosystem around 2017/2018, precisely because of the talks around smart contracts. I see these smart contracts to be just (in my opinion), confusing, error prone addressable state machines. Writing smart contracts (at least for Ethereum) has so many gotchas, that it's almost equivalent to rolling your own cryptography. I'm not sure if issues around smart contracts are just the tooling, or developers are just rushing to push something out there; but the UX and DX is bad. I was hoping that Cardano would be a blockchain/cryptocurrency pairing that would make me interested again in this space, but their Plutus smart contracts[1] are something I wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. On the upside, at least testing Plutus smart contracts with QuickCheck seems to have brought improvements to QuickCheck itself[2] [1] https://playground.plutus.iohkdev.io/ https://playground.plutus.iohkdev.io/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9_14jjJiuQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9_14jjJiuQ a fun little watch for those that like Haskell
dylkil 5y ago
your whole comment reads like an ad for that video
- StringyBob 5y ago
  I’d say ‘recommendation’ not ‘ad’ :) This was the related section https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g?t=4637s https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g?t=4637s that lead me down the rabbit hole of watching the whole thing I have no connection other than stumbling across it after seeing this story today and thought the critique tied in well.
  - xmaayy 5y ago
    I also stumbled across his channel recently (that video seems to have gained a lot of traction) and would recommend most of his content! Very thorough.

richardburton 5y ago

noduerme 5y ago
What could be more of a rat's nest than the crypto scams? As soon as it became possible for anyone to create a token it just became a race to the bottom. It's the ultimate recepticle for scammers.
- rvz 5y ago
  > As soon as it became possible for anyone to create a token it just became a race to the bottom. Exactly. All enabled and caused by Ethereum. First the ICOs, then anyone can create their own scam ERC-20 tokens, The DAO (which got hacked and hard forked to reverse the funds), NFTs (which have nothing to do with ownership), which once you scale up all of that it basically becomes unusable due to the 'gas fees' for every operation. Spend $200 to swap $1 worth of tokens using dapps like Uniswap. One can go as far as to say that the Ethereum logo is literally a pyramid. Now what does that tell us? A pyramid scheme? who knows. From the start, they are probably trying to tell us that they know it is a scam. At this point, everyone will eventually jump on the scheme itself anyway even when everyone knows it is a scam.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    I'd go back further and say that the first wave - when Dogecoin and about 100 other cryptos popped up all running essentially Bitcoin networks - that was right when it went to shit. At that time you had to still know how to compile something to start your own blockchain, but if you did you'd be a billionaire now. Ripple and other riders on the original blockchain would be the second wave of scams. That's when large scale investors started to get involved. Ethereum is really the third wave scam where it got so easy that people who couldn't code were able to scale it out to people who couldn't even think. It was upscale retail selling to schmucks. That would make NFTs and smart contracts the 4th wave of ponzi. The part where knockoffs of knockoffs become cheaper than a Louis Vuitton bag on Canal Street, and everyone's mother is buying crypto, and they're running ads for it on the home shopping network.
theshrike79 5y ago
Wait, you're actually comparing crypto to a symphony? Is the orchestra a bunch of first graders who have never played an instrument? =)

masklinn 5y ago

> this made me realize I wasn’t aware of what smart contracts really were (just looked up solidity today and details of The DAO hack). The potential for irreversible losses, fraud and security holes are much bigger than I realized. That seemed obvious from the first time I read the expression "code is law". If code is law, any bug (whether in the contract itself or in the way the contract is called) fucks you irredeemably and with no recourse. I would expect any dev to shit their pants at the idea, even more so upon realising that the code in question is a half-assed brain damaged cousin of javascript, of all thing.

jrimbault 5y ago
Especially in that real law is left for judges to interpret, and that's a deliberate feature to allow "wiggle" room.
- Jenk 5y ago
  Juries are the ultimate arbiter of law application. For this very reason.
  - oblio 5y ago
    In jurisdictions with juries. It's judges, otherwise.
danjac 5y ago
When I saw the phrase "code is law" I immediately thought of all the code I've written in my life, and I'm not even the very worst coder out there...
Earw0rm 5y ago
It also cannot be a legal basis for anything, because the law doesn't treat the right or ability to enter in to contracts as an absolute. Think minors, wards, power of attorney. Contract law is one of the more mechanistic parts of the legal system, but only up to a point. There are good reasons the legal profession - even corporate law - tends to attract a different set of personality traits to software development.

noduerme 5y ago

- needed to remove this. sorry.

virgildotcodes 5y ago
Any chance of making those logs public some day?
- noduerme 5y ago
  Dead man's switch baby.

mhitza 5y ago

I was quite interested in the cryptocurrency ecosystem around 2017/2018, precisely because of the talks around smart contracts. I see these smart contracts to be just (in my opinion), confusing, error prone addressable state machines. Writing smart contracts (at least for Ethereum) has so many gotchas, that it's almost equivalent to rolling your own cryptography. I'm not sure if issues around smart contracts are just the tooling, or developers are just rushing to push something out there; but the UX and DX is bad. I was hoping that Cardano would be a blockchain/cryptocurrency pairing that would make me interested again in this space, but their Plutus smart contracts[1] are something I wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. On the upside, at least testing Plutus smart contracts with QuickCheck seems to have brought improvements to QuickCheck itself[2] [1] https://playground.plutus.iohkdev.io/ https://playground.plutus.iohkdev.io/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9_14jjJiuQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9_14jjJiuQ a fun little watch for those that like Haskell

dylkil 5y ago

your whole comment reads like an ad for that video

StringyBob 5y ago
I’d say ‘recommendation’ not ‘ad’ :) This was the related section https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g?t=4637s https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g?t=4637s that lead me down the rabbit hole of watching the whole thing I have no connection other than stumbling across it after seeing this story today and thought the critique tied in well.
- xmaayy 5y ago
  I also stumbled across his channel recently (that video seems to have gained a lot of traction) and would recommend most of his content! Very thorough.