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Why? The contract is public, anyone trading this token can read it. This seems like "don't trade tokens you haven't audited".

• stepanhruda 6y ago
  Just because something is publicly documented doesn't make it legal. I can't put "our price says $5 but actually we will charge you $5,000" into terms onto a website and expect to get away with it. The only difference is there is no actual enforceability of anything on the blockchain outside of smart contract code itself.
  • tych0 6y ago
    This guy put up a sign that says "If you give me $100 I'll give you $10 back with an extra 0 handwritten on the bill", and people gave him $100. Put another way: I can't claim fraud just because I didn't understand/read/validate the contract language.
    • PeterisP 6y ago
      "I can't claim fraud just because I didn't understand/read/validate the contract language." is absolutely not true. If you create a contract with intent to mislead people and having them sign it with the expectation that they won't understand/read/validate the contract language, then the other party definitely can claim fraud afterwards and (depending on the circumstances and evidence) may win such a claim. Contract law is about intent above all, the actual contract language clarifies and documents that intent, but in circumstances where the contract language and intent clearly diverge, any adjudication must and will take intent into account. To be specific, "intent to deceive" is a key part of the limitations in contract law in pretty much every jurisdiction. Fraudulent misrepresentation, which explicitly includes withholding information as well, can invalidate the whole contract if you (for example) tricked someone into signing it i.e. 'fraud in inducement' and in such cases the harmed party definitely can claim fraud even if the contract language explicitly said that they will lose their money, if the other party mislead them into thinking otherwise.
      • tych0 6y ago
        > If you create a contract with intent to mislead people The guy didn't intend to mislead. He didn't even advertise the thing besides publishing it on the blockchain. People bought it from him without auditing it. I sincerely hope this would be a difficult fraud case to make. The part of contract law you're citing is used to prevent e.g. predatory lending. I understand that it exists and what the precedent means, and I disagree that this is the same thing.
• ajb 6y ago
  Because law isn't code, although it might look like it. The law is interpreted by human beings, aka judges, who might decide that this is an attempt to deceive, even though the deception is hiding in plain sight. But I'm not a lawyer, so I'd be interested on informed takes on that.
• andypants 6y ago
  Actually this contract is not public, its source was not published on etherscan. You can read its opcodes and try to run it through a decompiler, but you can't get its original source. That shouldn't really matter though. The contract was not advertised to the public, he could argue it was a private contract that could only be used by whitelisted addresses. Sandwich bots made the mistake of trying to interact with a random contract and assuming that it follows a particular kind of behaviour.