6 ms·

I linked you to several sources for my definitions and you haven't commented on any of them, so no idea how you could reach that conclusion. I've explained to

I linked you to several sources for my definitions and you haven't commented on any of them, so no idea how you could reach that conclusion. I've explained to you that even with your restrictive definition, our paper covers analogous behavior in DEXes. Yes, it's very surprising, no, shocking, that people on Wall St. are reluctant to have behaviors like this called out publicly.... I am not Michael Lewis and cannot speak to the accuracy of his facts; our work is a scientific paper backed by a lot of data currently undergoing peer review. The views on HFT and market design in the paper are similarly informed by cited work that is quite extensive in its data analysis, and peer reviewed. I recommend you read it!

tptacek 8y ago
Help me understand what you're trying to say with that middle paragraph, about how "shocking" it is that people on Wall St. are reluctant to have behavior called out? To what behavior are you referring? I'll add: on Twitter you noted that virtually every HFT trader, lawyer, and quant pushed back (either to your definition or to your allusion to Lewis's unfortunate book). You seem to think that's added credibility for your argument. Isn't a near-universal rejection of that argument from subject matter experts sort of damning for the position you're trying to take?
scottlocklin 8y ago
You pointed out no such thing, and regardless; no such bona fide definition of "front running" exists. You got it wrong: admitting your error would be the honest thing to do. It's OK to be wrong; that's part of science and rational enquiry. It's not OK to not admit that you're wrong. FWIIW I'm not on Wall Street; I work in tech. Wrong again. Your results are both trivial and basically linkbait. Everyone who knows what a time priority order book is knows there are stale orders on DEX exchanges. The fact that people are arbing them is markets doing what they're supposed to do; creating one price across disconnected markets. Anyone who knows what they're doing and uses a DEX knows this; DEXes are for people who for whatever reason can't use central exchanges, or for smart contracts that are less concerned with getting the best price marked to the millisecond. In fact I pointed out the stale order issue to people who created the one of the more popular DEX protocols over lunch. They pointed out what DEXes are for. I guess nobody sent you the memo. It's OK to not know this; I didn't know. Personally I think they're bloody stupid, but you making their use out to be something sinister or poorly understood is ... well, a lot like Michael Lewis paranoid lunacy. I realize you're not Michael Lewis, but you're taking on the title of his execrable book to sell ... something much less science fictiony and exploitative than his tall tales, but still fairly off the mark.
- phildaian 8y ago
  Yes, the people who created DEXes do know about and advertise this issue, because this is work we've been doing since early 2017 and discussing with them even earlier. In fact, I advise a lot of those projects, and many consider me the SME on DEX frontrunning. I'm also the reason 0x e.g. released a bot to explicitly do this. To claim this is what they were designing for is just ignorance of the space though. None of them knew about or even anticipated this issue; just because it is obvious to you does not mean it was obvious to them. Just because DEXes are only for regulatory arbitrage (your words, not mine) doesn't mean that we should stand up crappy market designs. The majority of the paper is about the formalization of and data on PGAs and miner OO, which was also not known in the blockchain community until now. If you point me to a reference to the contrary, or that contains the same results as e.g. Sections 5-7 of our paper, I'll gladly cite this and reduce my claims of novelty. Otherwise, this is something I've been working on for years, I'm going to stick with it, and it's up to peer review in the scientific community to decide :). I hear what you are saying, but your preconceptions about Flash Boys being a bad book seem to be severely coloring your understanding of the work!
  - tptacek 8y ago
    They aren't "preconceptions". A preconception about the book would be if they hadn't read it, weren't familiar with it, and had opinions about it anyways. Flash Boys is a bad book. I'd argue that your desire to immunize the book, which is largely unrelated to your paper, from criticism is harming the case you're trying to make about distsys flaws in DEX's. The paper is good! The surrounding context you're trying to provide about how real-money markets work, perhaps not so much.
    - phildaian 8y ago
      I'm not saying he has preconceptions about the book, I'm saying his opinion of the book is creating unwarranted preconceptions about our work. The paper doesn't comment on money markets much at all, and cites pretty unambiguous peer reviewed work which is highly substantiated when it does.

tptacek 8y ago

Help me understand what you're trying to say with that middle paragraph, about how "shocking" it is that people on Wall St. are reluctant to have behavior called out? To what behavior are you referring? I'll add: on Twitter you noted that virtually every HFT trader, lawyer, and quant pushed back (either to your definition or to your allusion to Lewis's unfortunate book). You seem to think that's added credibility for your argument. Isn't a near-universal rejection of that argument from subject matter experts sort of damning for the position you're trying to take?

scottlocklin 8y ago

You pointed out no such thing, and regardless; no such bona fide definition of "front running" exists. You got it wrong: admitting your error would be the honest thing to do. It's OK to be wrong; that's part of science and rational enquiry. It's not OK to not admit that you're wrong. FWIIW I'm not on Wall Street; I work in tech. Wrong again. Your results are both trivial and basically linkbait. Everyone who knows what a time priority order book is knows there are stale orders on DEX exchanges. The fact that people are arbing them is markets doing what they're supposed to do; creating one price across disconnected markets. Anyone who knows what they're doing and uses a DEX knows this; DEXes are for people who for whatever reason can't use central exchanges, or for smart contracts that are less concerned with getting the best price marked to the millisecond. In fact I pointed out the stale order issue to people who created the one of the more popular DEX protocols over lunch. They pointed out what DEXes are for. I guess nobody sent you the memo. It's OK to not know this; I didn't know. Personally I think they're bloody stupid, but you making their use out to be something sinister or poorly understood is ... well, a lot like Michael Lewis paranoid lunacy. I realize you're not Michael Lewis, but you're taking on the title of his execrable book to sell ... something much less science fictiony and exploitative than his tall tales, but still fairly off the mark.

phildaian 8y ago
Yes, the people who created DEXes do know about and advertise this issue, because this is work we've been doing since early 2017 and discussing with them even earlier. In fact, I advise a lot of those projects, and many consider me the SME on DEX frontrunning. I'm also the reason 0x e.g. released a bot to explicitly do this. To claim this is what they were designing for is just ignorance of the space though. None of them knew about or even anticipated this issue; just because it is obvious to you does not mean it was obvious to them. Just because DEXes are only for regulatory arbitrage (your words, not mine) doesn't mean that we should stand up crappy market designs. The majority of the paper is about the formalization of and data on PGAs and miner OO, which was also not known in the blockchain community until now. If you point me to a reference to the contrary, or that contains the same results as e.g. Sections 5-7 of our paper, I'll gladly cite this and reduce my claims of novelty. Otherwise, this is something I've been working on for years, I'm going to stick with it, and it's up to peer review in the scientific community to decide :). I hear what you are saying, but your preconceptions about Flash Boys being a bad book seem to be severely coloring your understanding of the work!
- tptacek 8y ago
  They aren't "preconceptions". A preconception about the book would be if they hadn't read it, weren't familiar with it, and had opinions about it anyways. Flash Boys is a bad book. I'd argue that your desire to immunize the book, which is largely unrelated to your paper, from criticism is harming the case you're trying to make about distsys flaws in DEX's. The paper is good! The surrounding context you're trying to provide about how real-money markets work, perhaps not so much.
  - phildaian 8y ago
    I'm not saying he has preconceptions about the book, I'm saying his opinion of the book is creating unwarranted preconceptions about our work. The paper doesn't comment on money markets much at all, and cites pretty unambiguous peer reviewed work which is highly substantiated when it does.