4 ms·

This is why absolute anonymous crypto-currencies will never catch on. Too much trust must be put into the hands of the developers. How do we know this vurnerabi

by candl 9y ago

This is why absolute anonymous crypto-currencies will never catch on. Too much trust must be put into the hands of the developers. How do we know this vurnerability (and maybe others yet to be discovered) were not exploited for months? They didn't even share the methodology and tools they used to check the blockchain for this particular exploit. I can understand their assurance that everything is fine, because otherwise any coin on this list gets basically useless overnight, but that's not how it should be handled.

StavrosK 9y ago
> This is why absolute anonymous crypto-currencies will never catch on. What, because of vulnerabilities? How are anonymous cryptocurrencies any different from literally any other piece of software in this regard?
- candl 9y ago
  Yes, because of the potential pitfalls of undiscovered vurnerabilities like the one in this post, where an attacker could have generated an unlimited supply of coins and remain undetectable. This is in contrast to Bitcoin and other coins whose transactions are public on the blockchain and can be openly analyzed. The other aspect is ethical. Did the people involved in discovery of this vurnerability took advantage of it and made themselves rich by exploiting other cryptonote based coins? Little risk, high reward which is tempting.
  - 45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
    its a signing bug. There have been incidents of 'accidental inflation' of fully-anonymous cryptocurrencies (as opposed to 'semi-anonymous' [sender/receiver anonymous] and pseudonymous bitcoin). Zerocoin had a 1/4 inflation from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13672117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13672117 I wouldn't go so far as to say this is will prevent this technology from ever being secure. Its early days. Don't play with what you can't lose. The great monero team did notify other CryptoNote based currencies, it seems that the granddaddy Bytecoin didn't fix it before the notification period. There is no evidence that they exploited this. They even came up with a method for detecting if it had been exploited...
indolering 9y ago
Secret inflation is just one way to grief a cryptocurrency, there are a lot of things that could cause the value to drop. Can you really trust Ethereum as a platform given the DAO debacle? I do, but only because I seriously doubt there will ever be a massive hardfork like that again.
- 45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
  Until the next 100 million dollar loss. "The die has been cast"

by candl 9y ago

StavrosK 9y ago

> This is why absolute anonymous crypto-currencies will never catch on. What, because of vulnerabilities? How are anonymous cryptocurrencies any different from literally any other piece of software in this regard?

candl 9y ago
Yes, because of the potential pitfalls of undiscovered vurnerabilities like the one in this post, where an attacker could have generated an unlimited supply of coins and remain undetectable. This is in contrast to Bitcoin and other coins whose transactions are public on the blockchain and can be openly analyzed. The other aspect is ethical. Did the people involved in discovery of this vurnerability took advantage of it and made themselves rich by exploiting other cryptonote based coins? Little risk, high reward which is tempting.
- 45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
  its a signing bug. There have been incidents of 'accidental inflation' of fully-anonymous cryptocurrencies (as opposed to 'semi-anonymous' [sender/receiver anonymous] and pseudonymous bitcoin). Zerocoin had a 1/4 inflation from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13672117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13672117 I wouldn't go so far as to say this is will prevent this technology from ever being secure. Its early days. Don't play with what you can't lose. The great monero team did notify other CryptoNote based currencies, it seems that the granddaddy Bytecoin didn't fix it before the notification period. There is no evidence that they exploited this. They even came up with a method for detecting if it had been exploited...

indolering 9y ago

Secret inflation is just one way to grief a cryptocurrency, there are a lot of things that could cause the value to drop. Can you really trust Ethereum as a platform given the DAO debacle? I do, but only because I seriously doubt there will ever be a massive hardfork like that again.

45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
Until the next 100 million dollar loss. "The die has been cast"