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I thought the whole point of Bitcoin and similar cyber coins is a decentralized system. But it appears it is not the case. Still the infra is controlled by cert

by nps1 5y ago

I thought the whole point of Bitcoin and similar cyber coins is a decentralized system. But it appears it is not the case. Still the infra is controlled by certain large private corps. Some of them known to Public and some are not. What if this controlling entity which has access to the code commits purposefully did "exploit commit" and take the money out of the system or what not. All it took is couple of approvals to a pull request. This is centralized system to the core.

SkyMarshal 5y ago
> I thought the whole point of Bitcoin and similar cyber coins is a decentralized system. But it appears it is not the case. It's the case in Bitcoin, but not as much in Ethereum and other ecosystems. The latter have a track record of compromising on that principle to bail out thefts enabled by shoddy engineering practices (this, The DAO, etc).
vbuterin 5y ago
In this case it's the bridge that's fairly centralized. There wasn't any hard forks or other manipulation of the underlying blockchains (except for sending transactions on them).
- tcgv 5y ago
  Exactly. Vitalik Buterin even shared his concerns on the fundamental security limits of cross-chain bridges earlier this year: > For example, suppose that you have 100 ETH on Ethereum, and Ethereum gets 51% attacked, so some transactions get censored and/or reverted. No matter what happens, you still have your 100 ETH. Even a 51% attacker cannot propose a block that takes away your ETH, because such a block would violate the protocol rules and so it would get rejected by the network > Now, imaging what happens if you move 100 ETH onto a bridge on Solana to get 100 Solana-WETH, and then Ethereum gets 51% attacked. The attacker deposited a bunch of their own ETH into Solana-WETH and then reverted that transaction on the Ethereum side as soon as the Solana side confirmed it. The Solana-WETH contract is now no longer fully backed, and perhaps your 100 Solana-WETH is now only worth 60 ETH. Even if there's a perfect ZK-SNARK-based bridge that fully validates consensus, it's still vulnerable to theft through 51% attacks like this. [1] https://twitter.com/vitalikbuterin/status/1479501366192132099 https://twitter.com/vitalikbuterin/status/147950136619213209...
  - jude- 5y ago
    You just replied to him
    - baby 5y ago
      and... that's why I love HN :)
    - tcgv 5y ago
      Awesome! PS: I should pay more attention to HN's usernames lol
- ludamad 5y ago
  As well, even with decentralization, I don't see how the bridge updates wouldn't eventually propagate. The core of this is a smart contract issue
miracle2k 5y ago
The point is to be a /permissionless/ network. That includes permission to build dapps that require KYC and are managed by centralized institutions. It's very much like saying "I thought we had free speech in this country" when your post is being deleted from the New York Times comment section.
jscottmiller 5y ago
While I don’t mean to compare apples and oranges, I did get a chuckle remembering the message embedded in the genesis block: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"
kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
The mistake may be to assume Solana is similar to Bitcoin.
netheril96 5y ago
Crypto is not monolithic. Bitcoin is still by far the most decentralized token. Many new crypto currencies have more or less centralized characteristics. But in this case, the bridge is a smart contract. You too can create a smart contract with full power given to yourself. So being a smart contract does not say that it’s centralized or decentralized. A decentralized smart contract is called DAO, if we omit some details.

by nps1 5y ago

SkyMarshal 5y ago

> I thought the whole point of Bitcoin and similar cyber coins is a decentralized system. But it appears it is not the case. It's the case in Bitcoin, but not as much in Ethereum and other ecosystems. The latter have a track record of compromising on that principle to bail out thefts enabled by shoddy engineering practices (this, The DAO, etc).

vbuterin 5y ago

In this case it's the bridge that's fairly centralized. There wasn't any hard forks or other manipulation of the underlying blockchains (except for sending transactions on them).

tcgv 5y ago
Exactly. Vitalik Buterin even shared his concerns on the fundamental security limits of cross-chain bridges earlier this year: > For example, suppose that you have 100 ETH on Ethereum, and Ethereum gets 51% attacked, so some transactions get censored and/or reverted. No matter what happens, you still have your 100 ETH. Even a 51% attacker cannot propose a block that takes away your ETH, because such a block would violate the protocol rules and so it would get rejected by the network > Now, imaging what happens if you move 100 ETH onto a bridge on Solana to get 100 Solana-WETH, and then Ethereum gets 51% attacked. The attacker deposited a bunch of their own ETH into Solana-WETH and then reverted that transaction on the Ethereum side as soon as the Solana side confirmed it. The Solana-WETH contract is now no longer fully backed, and perhaps your 100 Solana-WETH is now only worth 60 ETH. Even if there's a perfect ZK-SNARK-based bridge that fully validates consensus, it's still vulnerable to theft through 51% attacks like this. [1] https://twitter.com/vitalikbuterin/status/1479501366192132099 https://twitter.com/vitalikbuterin/status/147950136619213209...
- jude- 5y ago
  You just replied to him
  - baby 5y ago
    and... that's why I love HN :)
  - tcgv 5y ago
    Awesome! PS: I should pay more attention to HN's usernames lol
ludamad 5y ago
As well, even with decentralization, I don't see how the bridge updates wouldn't eventually propagate. The core of this is a smart contract issue

miracle2k 5y ago

The point is to be a /permissionless/ network. That includes permission to build dapps that require KYC and are managed by centralized institutions. It's very much like saying "I thought we had free speech in this country" when your post is being deleted from the New York Times comment section.

jscottmiller 5y ago

While I don’t mean to compare apples and oranges, I did get a chuckle remembering the message embedded in the genesis block: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"

kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago

The mistake may be to assume Solana is similar to Bitcoin.

netheril96 5y ago

Crypto is not monolithic. Bitcoin is still by far the most decentralized token. Many new crypto currencies have more or less centralized characteristics. But in this case, the bridge is a smart contract. You too can create a smart contract with full power given to yourself. So being a smart contract does not say that it’s centralized or decentralized. A decentralized smart contract is called DAO, if we omit some details.