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> My self hosted apps run on immutable infrastructure and are replicated and load balanced What? Assuming you live in the US, the government can swoop in at an

> My self hosted apps run on immutable infrastructure and are replicated and load balanced What? Assuming you live in the US, the government can swoop in at any time (provided they have a legal reason to do so) and demand that AWS or whoever's hosting your servers shuts them down. If you're hosting them yourself, they can raid the physical locations where you host them. If you're not in the US, I'm sure your country has equivalent security forces that would be more than capable of doing the same should the government find a reason to. Good luck raiding every single Ethereum node in the world to take down a smart contract. Also, you didn't address code immutability guarantees. You can change your server code at any time and your users would be none the wiser. The darknet markets, once compromised by federal agents, did exactly this, and stopped actually encrypting user messages with PGP while continuing to pretend to do so. A smart contract, unless it has upgradeability built in, offers just this sort of guarantee to its users. Oh, and if your app deals with finance, and the US government (or your own) wants you to stop letting John Doe use your app because they just placed new sanctions on Mr. Doe? You'd better code that compliance feature up real quick or see yourself getting heavily fined or even imprisoned. Tough luck doing that sort of censorship on the blockchain -- as long as a single miner is willing to include that user's transaction, they're basically in.

jjnoakes 5y ago
> You can change your server code at any time and your users would be none the wiser. I'm my only user, that's why I'm discussing self-hosted apps here...
- selestify 5y ago
  Ah, natural language. I'd interpreted you as meaning that you host the apps yourself rather than let someone do it for you (hence "self-hosting"), and you host these apps for others to use. I mean, yes, but if your use case is only yourself as the sole user, that's quite different from the majority of businesses out there who need to service many users. This is truly like comparing apples and oranges.
withinboredom 5y ago
> Good luck raiding every single Ethereum node I’m just waiting for the day when governments decide that all this crypto is hurting the environment more than necessary for no real gain and forces ISPs to block this traffic. Similar to how many ISPs block serving DNS or SMTP from residential IPs.
- selestify 5y ago
  Then that'll be the day proof of stake cryptos rise to the occasion. Also, just use a friggin VPN.
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    IMHO, VPNs scare me more than ISPs spying on me. I ran a small ISP (<100 subscribers) and the sheer amount of data you could collect on a single person was mind boggling. This was pre-https-all-the-things, so I’m sure it’s better these days. Still, do I really want my traffic to go through some unregulated entity? Not really…
    - selestify 5y ago
      Hah! That's fair. I'm just saying, if you still wanted access to your crypto assets after the ban, they should likely still be quite accessible.
  - omarfarooq 5y ago
    How would proof of stake mitigate ISP blocks? These still communicate with other nodes over TCP/IP.
    - hammyhavoc 5y ago
      The fantasy of the block being rolled back because now they're doing something different.
    - selestify 5y ago
      Given the comment I was responding to, I was assuming that only a ban would be attempted on the environmentally unfriendly cryptos. How would you propose to ban all cryptos? We haven't even been able to ban torrents.
uncomputation 5y ago
> code immutability guarantees Phrased another way, “bug immortality guarantees.” What is the use case for completely immutable software? Even Ethereum smart contracts do not actually guarantee the compiled byte code matches the supposed source of the contract, so while it might be immutable, it is not free. I think the bigger concern is not that the code will update - updates are good, especially ones for bug fixes like the log4j vulnerability recently - but that the code they say is running, is not actually running. And let’s assume that we need to update our code. You need to pay to deploy an entirely new contract and then have some sort of “pointer”/gateway that redirects all your users to the new patched contract, and then we’re right back where we started where this gateway can be forced by law to not direct people to your contract much like Google can be DMCA’d to not show copyright violations.
- selestify 5y ago
  > Even Ethereum smart contracts do not actually guarantee the compiled byte code matches the supposed source of the contract What? You don't have to publish your smart contract code for the public to verify, but you absolutely can. And once you do, the public can absolutely verify that the smart contract code you provided does in fact compile to the byte code deployed to the blockchain. > and then we’re right back where we started where this gateway can be forced by law to not direct people to your contract much like Google can be DMCA’d to not show copyright violations. You don't have to include that upgrade functionality in your smart contracts. Or if you do include upgrade functionality, you can limit what sort of functionality can be upgraded. Otherwise, yes, it's no different than just running your own server and changing the code all of a sudden with the users being none the wiser. Question is, if you don't limit your upgrade functionality, are your users going to trust you not to rugpull?
  - uncomputation 5y ago
    Given that you can deploy smart contracts as binaries (without source) and you can design the contracts to be upgradeable if needed, I don’t see any advantages of this system. Sure, the contract can be immutable but the only advantage is for the archivist who now has a permanent record of the software history. Other than a public change log, this doesn’t have much utility.
vintermann 5y ago
> Good luck raiding every single Ethereum node in the world to take down a smart contract. They won't have to. It's like putting absurd security on your door yet leaving the windows as open as always. If you ever want to move value out of your virtual economy and into the real, they can and will be there waiting for you, with all their unreasonable demands.
- selestify 5y ago
  That introduces more friction into the process, but incentives will always find a way. We haven't been able to stop a billion dollar drug trade, what makes you think banning a trillion dollar crypto market will cause it to disappear entirely? It might have a huge collapse in value and finally drive away all the dumb money pouring in, but it will still be there.

jjnoakes 5y ago

> You can change your server code at any time and your users would be none the wiser. I'm my only user, that's why I'm discussing self-hosted apps here...

selestify 5y ago
Ah, natural language. I'd interpreted you as meaning that you host the apps yourself rather than let someone do it for you (hence "self-hosting"), and you host these apps for others to use. I mean, yes, but if your use case is only yourself as the sole user, that's quite different from the majority of businesses out there who need to service many users. This is truly like comparing apples and oranges.

withinboredom 5y ago

> Good luck raiding every single Ethereum node I’m just waiting for the day when governments decide that all this crypto is hurting the environment more than necessary for no real gain and forces ISPs to block this traffic. Similar to how many ISPs block serving DNS or SMTP from residential IPs.

selestify 5y ago
Then that'll be the day proof of stake cryptos rise to the occasion. Also, just use a friggin VPN.
- withinboredom 5y ago
  IMHO, VPNs scare me more than ISPs spying on me. I ran a small ISP (<100 subscribers) and the sheer amount of data you could collect on a single person was mind boggling. This was pre-https-all-the-things, so I’m sure it’s better these days. Still, do I really want my traffic to go through some unregulated entity? Not really…
  - selestify 5y ago
    Hah! That's fair. I'm just saying, if you still wanted access to your crypto assets after the ban, they should likely still be quite accessible.
- omarfarooq 5y ago
  How would proof of stake mitigate ISP blocks? These still communicate with other nodes over TCP/IP.
  - hammyhavoc 5y ago
    The fantasy of the block being rolled back because now they're doing something different.
  - selestify 5y ago
    Given the comment I was responding to, I was assuming that only a ban would be attempted on the environmentally unfriendly cryptos. How would you propose to ban all cryptos? We haven't even been able to ban torrents.

uncomputation 5y ago

> code immutability guarantees Phrased another way, “bug immortality guarantees.” What is the use case for completely immutable software? Even Ethereum smart contracts do not actually guarantee the compiled byte code matches the supposed source of the contract, so while it might be immutable, it is not free. I think the bigger concern is not that the code will update - updates are good, especially ones for bug fixes like the log4j vulnerability recently - but that the code they say is running, is not actually running. And let’s assume that we need to update our code. You need to pay to deploy an entirely new contract and then have some sort of “pointer”/gateway that redirects all your users to the new patched contract, and then we’re right back where we started where this gateway can be forced by law to not direct people to your contract much like Google can be DMCA’d to not show copyright violations.

selestify 5y ago
> Even Ethereum smart contracts do not actually guarantee the compiled byte code matches the supposed source of the contract What? You don't have to publish your smart contract code for the public to verify, but you absolutely can. And once you do, the public can absolutely verify that the smart contract code you provided does in fact compile to the byte code deployed to the blockchain. > and then we’re right back where we started where this gateway can be forced by law to not direct people to your contract much like Google can be DMCA’d to not show copyright violations. You don't have to include that upgrade functionality in your smart contracts. Or if you do include upgrade functionality, you can limit what sort of functionality can be upgraded. Otherwise, yes, it's no different than just running your own server and changing the code all of a sudden with the users being none the wiser. Question is, if you don't limit your upgrade functionality, are your users going to trust you not to rugpull?
- uncomputation 5y ago
  Given that you can deploy smart contracts as binaries (without source) and you can design the contracts to be upgradeable if needed, I don’t see any advantages of this system. Sure, the contract can be immutable but the only advantage is for the archivist who now has a permanent record of the software history. Other than a public change log, this doesn’t have much utility.

vintermann 5y ago

> Good luck raiding every single Ethereum node in the world to take down a smart contract. They won't have to. It's like putting absurd security on your door yet leaving the windows as open as always. If you ever want to move value out of your virtual economy and into the real, they can and will be there waiting for you, with all their unreasonable demands.

selestify 5y ago
That introduces more friction into the process, but incentives will always find a way. We haven't been able to stop a billion dollar drug trade, what makes you think banning a trillion dollar crypto market will cause it to disappear entirely? It might have a huge collapse in value and finally drive away all the dumb money pouring in, but it will still be there.