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This all reminds me of what happened to VeriCoin and the MintPal heist. A hacker stole millions in coins, but the devs of VeriCoin rolled it back and in one fel
by milesf 10y ago
This all reminds me of what happened to VeriCoin and the MintPal heist. A hacker stole millions in coins, but the devs of VeriCoin rolled it back and in one fell swoop stopped one theft but cut the floor out from under themselves.
What's needed is a cryptocurrency that cannot, under any circumstances, be rolled back. Otherwise crypto is a fiat currency just like all other modern currencies that can be manipulated.
- smallnamespace 10y ago> that cannot, under any circumstances, be rolled back But getting hacked is ok, right?
- pavel_lishin 10y agoCash transactions can't be rolled back either, and run the many risks, but they have advantages as well.
- slavik81 10y agoCountries have hard-forked cash to invalidate large thefts. > When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Iraqi dinar replaced the Kuwaiti dinar as the currency and large quantities of banknotes were stolen by the invading forces. After liberation, the Kuwaiti dinar was restored as the country's currency and a new banknote series was introduced, allowing the previous notes, including those stolen, to be demonetized. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwaiti_dinar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwaiti_dinar > the Central Bank of Kuwait (CBK) announced the withdrawal of Kuwaiti Dinar currency notes issued and placed in circulation up to August 1,1990, and the issue of currency notes of the new design against those notes withdrawn. The Bank also announced that they will not accept certain series of old Kuwaiti Dinar currency notes in different denominations in exchange of new currency notes so issued. The final date for the conversion into new design notes of valid old Kuwaiti Dinar currency notes, held abroad by individuals and banks was 30.09.91. http://www.island.lk/2001/10/11/busine02.html http://www.island.lk/2001/10/11/busine02.html
- pavel_lishin 10y agoOh yeah, that's a good point. Apparently something similar happened in Northern Ireland; the IRA stole enough money that the bank just printed new versions of the affected denominations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Bank_robbery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Bank_robbery
- robryk 10y agoI've once heard an argument that one of the desirable properties of the legal system is that its decisions, even if bad, are considered as final by everyone. This sounds kinda similarly.
- smallnamespace 10y agoOTOH, legal systems consider humans and their motivations to be first-class entities. The same is not true for a cryptocurrency system.
- milesf 10y agoGetting hacked is a different problem, but solving it with rollbacks means any future country would likely do the same if adopted.
- slavik81 10y ago> What's needed is a cryptocurrency that cannot, under any circumstances, be rolled back. That would be quite difficult, if not impossible. You can always just create a new currency and ask everyone to switch.
- milesf 10y agoWhich is why the "gold standard" is still gold. It has value because of limited supply and demand. You can't print more gold or "rollback" a heist.
- EdHominem 10y agoUltimately, there's no such thing. A blockchain is simply a data structure that keeps you from editing it in place by changing old entries. If we agree to rewrite it, we agree... And some forks are done simply by having the majority of the clients (or processing nodes at any rate) agree to make certain things invalid. Such as an attacker's loot address, etc. The chain is all there, unedited, but no longer has the same effective meaning. We really need a community that rejects these proposals the same way they'd reject photocopied money.