whatisweb3

7 ms·

1.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
Yes, of course this is my opinion. The transition has been years in the making and the amount of research and contributions to computing, distributed systems, and cryptography that this transition has created has been immense.
2.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
Sure? It was both an inefficient and wasteful mechanism to secure consensus. This is why developers have been actively researching and developing how to switch Eth to PoS for years.
3.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
Congrats to the devs. This is a historic moment for computing and distributed tech, and will pave the way for Ethereum’s next updates: scalability, privacy, stronger censorship resistance, easier UX and account abstraction.
4.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
Congrats to the devs. This is a historic moment for computing and distributed tech, and will pave the way for Ethereum’s next updates: scalability, privacy, stronger censorship resistance, easier UX and account abstraction.
5.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
This is how all tech works - trains, cars, power stations. We build things that are initially inefficient. We eventually transition to energy efficient tech. We celebrate. It’s rare the transition can reduce 99.95% of energy footprint the s
6.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
This very sanction is against a tech called “Tornado Cash” which is not an organization or person. If somebody forks the protocol and renames it, and everybody uses it in place of TC, it will probably be under scrutiny by US treasury.
7.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
You actually could publish “illegal code” because code is protected under 1st amendment, as free speech. Legal precedent has been set by Bernstein v US DoJ. There is an open question about whether publishing non custodial contract code on E
8.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
The open source software and cryptographic protocol is implicitly targeted with this order. You can see it in how private companies are now handling the Tornado Cash code and contributor accounts. If you create a similar privacy tool with z
9.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
25% of funds being illicit does not mean “pretty much everybody” is using it for illicit reasons. Your argument really falls apart here, but the sweeping generalizations don’t help. Monero and TC are equal parts useful for non-criminals who
10.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
There is no doubt known cyber criminals and enemies of the US are using this tool. The question I raised is: what percentage of illicit activity is acceptable? If the E2EE chat app Matrix facilitates 10-30%, should it also be considered a p
11.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
Sure. Then it is irrelevant how much money was funding whom, only that a non-zero amount of value was not strictly traceable through typical financial surveillance systems, and so the US automatically deems this activity illegal regardless
12.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
450m is a whopping 6% of all deposits on Tornado Cash[1]. The total percentage of illicit activity on the protocol is reported to be in the 10-30% range[2]. What percentage of activity in an E2EE chat application like Matrix is illicit? If
13.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
You did not answer my simple question. :) Sorry to be a broken record by comparing this to E2EE privacy protocols, but many commenters on HN only seem to think privacy is worthwhile when in the form of a chat app.
14.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
The sanctions apply directly to the protocol and it’s code, and this is the issue. It is not applying to persons, or criminal actions. It would be like sanctioning the Matrix protocol and it’s code because it has facilitated terrorist commu
15.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
One exists to facilitate privacy, the other exists to facilitate money laundering. Compare with E2EE Matrix protocol: it does not exist to facilitate criminal communication, but it does facilitate criminal communication. TC is also differen
16.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
The point is: the protocol encrypts a private key, a private key is an integer, or text hash. Saying that it is OK to build tools that encrypt text, like Matrix protocol, but it is not OK to build tools that encrypt private-keys-as-text is
17.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
Sure, we are in agreement then. It is a great thing as it will enable the blockchain to continue to scale for more users and more applications, and it is the opposite of the energy inefficiencies of the current PoW system.
18.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
Yes. Like putting a sanction on the open Matrix protocol, and blocking any user who has interacted with it.
19.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
Yes, like computers, the internet, electric trains. Computers used to take up a room and compute a few thousand cycles per second. Now they can fit in our pockets and compute billions of cycles per second. As hardware accelerated and parall
20.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
A private key is a 256 bit integer. > If someone built something that said "Launder your [256 bit integers] here" and it took in a bunch of [256 bit integers], and then [encrypted] it sans fees to hide where it came from... the
21.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
Matrix protocol’s sole purpose is to obscure usernames and messages and enable privacy. Tornado Cash’s sole purpose is to obscure blockchain addresses and enable privacy. Privacy is not a crime. Using Matrix to hire a hit-man would be a cri
22.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
The first time a developer of open source, non-custodial and autonomous smart contract code has been arrested comes days after the US sanctions the same smart contract. Probably just a coincidence.
23.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
There is still no legal precedent around a case like this as it relates to DAOs and autonomous smart contracts, so a law firm could not have told you anything except "we can neither confirm nor deny." If there is another US sancti
24.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
My comment from 2 days ago: > The US sanctioning Tornado Cash and the resulting repercussions is deeply concerning. Whether or not you like crypto, you should not be supporting this if you are a researcher, academic, technologist, crypto
25.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
By this logic every blockchain developer should be arrested. The TC developers are not collecting fees directly, but they probably did give themselves a large supply of tokens to maintain control over the protocol, since the tokens were des
26.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
By this logic, all E2EE and open source privacy tools should have their developers arrested. Matrix, Tor, PGP. The stated goals of TC was privacy. Privacy is not a crime.
27.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
US sanctions on mixers in the past have been associated with an individual, not a piece of code. This is the first sanction to target an open source and non-custodial mixer.
28.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
This is not a criminal hiring a contractor to work on Tornado Cash. It is an open source project on GitHub that many developers and researchers contributed to, in the interest of privacy. To use an analogy, see the open Matrix protocol, a t
29.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
The developer was not sanctioned or included in the sanction. Only "Tornado Cash" the open source project and some specific smart contract addresses.
30.
by whatisweb3 4y ago
Is anybody really calling git a blockchain? I have only seen this equivalence made by critics saying "we don't need blockchain, we already have git!"

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