4 ms·

> Nobody is asking that. The source code is public, read it and decide for yourself. Good luck doing that at your local bank. There are plenty of stablecoins, y

by e9 5y ago

> Nobody is asking that. The source code is public, read it and decide for yourself. Good luck doing that at your local bank. There are plenty of stablecoins, you don't have to take on crypto exposure. Most people are not advanced coders and will never be. So most people still have to trust a random coder (be it close friend or someone on the news or online). If something happens to your money because someone took advantage of you in the code then good luck getting anything back. At least with banks there are laws around this stuff and you can actually get your money back. For average person this is still the way to go.

acdha 5y ago
There's also a massive unregulated conflict of interest here: reviewing the source code will require experience which someone is unlikely to have without also having a financial interest in expanded use of cryptocurrencies. As we've seen so many times over from all of the cryptocurrency boosters who talked up code or services until a major problem occurred, this can cloud someone's judgement even if they're not intentionally scamming you.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Isn’t this argument also true of anyone in a position to wield government power? Politicians aren’t really renowned for their honesty, for example.
  - acdha 5y ago
    That’s not what we’re talking about: if I hire a lawyer to review a contract, they’re not making decisions based on a need to boost USD to protect their ability to find a buyer. Similarly, while they’re both fiat currencies the USD is orders of magnitude stronger (inordinately more use, links to durable value, etc.) which means that my hypothetical lawyer’s ability to shift the value is extremely small. Even actual government officials have relatively little power this way: there are many of them and the need to get re-elected means they’re far less likely to try the kind of pump and dump scams which are routine in the cryptocurrency world, especially given the likelihood of scrutiny and punishment.
    - rglullis 5y ago
      > government officials No need for pump and dump when they are raking in their money by trading on insider knowledge, getting favors from lobbyists and by getting their cushy board seats at banks after they leave office.
  - bb88 5y ago
    The reason we know politicians are corrupt is because they got exposed by the media or prosecutors. Autocratic politicians are perfect because they can't be exposed.
tshaddox 5y ago
There’s a difference between choosing to trust the claims of someone who you believe has expertise that would be expensive or impossible for you to develop yourself, and having no option but to “trust” a certain party in order to perform certain actions. I think when most people talk about “trustlessness” in the context of decentralized systems they’re not saying you would never trust a surgeon, or a pilot, or a YouTuber who reviews smartphones, or an audit of a computer system.
darawk 5y ago
> Most people are not advanced coders and will never be. So most people still have to trust a random coder (be it close friend or someone on the news or online). If something happens to your money because someone took advantage of you in the code then good luck getting anything back. At least with banks there are laws around this stuff and you can actually get your money back. For average person this is still the way to go. That's certainly true. However, you have the option to learn, and the option to review it yourself. You also have the option to choose which experts to delegate your trust to. Whether or not this system is better than the system of just trusting big banks a lot with no ability to verify personally is up to you. It is, however, a novel trust model, and one that it's clear that some people prefer. I think it's also clear that this model has advantages over the other. The traditional model has advantages as well. Neither is strictly better in all dimensions. Almost no technology is strictly better than its predecessor in all dimensions, though.
- bb88 5y ago
  So this is like the "Software Lawyer" argument I stated above. If I hire a lawyer to review a contract in finance, I expect him to put his greed aside while he's working for me. This is well regulated, and while isn't perfect, keeps most lawyers honest. With software there is no regulation. What happens when the software expert finds a bug in a smart contract? Is it illegal to sell the exploit? Can he exploit it for his own good? The smart contract is the contract after all. Who defines what "conflict of interest" means? The software guy who wrote the smart contract or is it in the smart contract itself? How would I know if there's a backdoor in the smart contract if greed is the primary motivation for a software engineer, and every other software engineer I hire to look at that contract?
  - darawk 5y ago
    Yes, those are problems. Just like the existing textual contract system has problems, so does this new system. The new system is, obviously, much newer. The practices around the modern textual legal system have grown up over hundreds and thousands of years of refining practice. The fact that the crypto ecosystem is not yet as developed in terms of questions like that is unsurprising. What is true is that crypto enables a new mechanism for doing something vaguely analogous to parts of the existing legal system. This new mechanism has disadvantages to be sure, but it also has advantages (for instance, it is border and jurisdiction neutral, the code runs the same everywhere, no matter what). I am certainly not arguing that crypto is strictly better than the existing legal system. It's not. It is just an alternative that is useful in some situations, and worse in others. Over time, I think the domains in which it is useful are likely to expand. They are unlikely to replace the entirety of the existing legal system, of course. But I think the existence of a border neutral code layer for asset transfer and custody is a useful thing for certain applications.
bb88 5y ago
Really what is worse is that it will create "Software Lawyers", which are like lawyers but worse because they won't be members of a bar association, and might not have your best interest at heart.
nyolfen 5y ago
you don't have to trust anyone or examine the code -- simply watch what happens. btc as a protocol has gone a decade without any security flaws discovered or exploited. shitty smart contracts get exploited.

by e9 5y ago

acdha 5y ago

There's also a massive unregulated conflict of interest here: reviewing the source code will require experience which someone is unlikely to have without also having a financial interest in expanded use of cryptocurrencies. As we've seen so many times over from all of the cryptocurrency boosters who talked up code or services until a major problem occurred, this can cloud someone's judgement even if they're not intentionally scamming you.

tshaddox 5y ago
Isn’t this argument also true of anyone in a position to wield government power? Politicians aren’t really renowned for their honesty, for example.
- acdha 5y ago
  That’s not what we’re talking about: if I hire a lawyer to review a contract, they’re not making decisions based on a need to boost USD to protect their ability to find a buyer. Similarly, while they’re both fiat currencies the USD is orders of magnitude stronger (inordinately more use, links to durable value, etc.) which means that my hypothetical lawyer’s ability to shift the value is extremely small. Even actual government officials have relatively little power this way: there are many of them and the need to get re-elected means they’re far less likely to try the kind of pump and dump scams which are routine in the cryptocurrency world, especially given the likelihood of scrutiny and punishment.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    > government officials No need for pump and dump when they are raking in their money by trading on insider knowledge, getting favors from lobbyists and by getting their cushy board seats at banks after they leave office.
- bb88 5y ago
  The reason we know politicians are corrupt is because they got exposed by the media or prosecutors. Autocratic politicians are perfect because they can't be exposed.

tshaddox 5y ago

There’s a difference between choosing to trust the claims of someone who you believe has expertise that would be expensive or impossible for you to develop yourself, and having no option but to “trust” a certain party in order to perform certain actions. I think when most people talk about “trustlessness” in the context of decentralized systems they’re not saying you would never trust a surgeon, or a pilot, or a YouTuber who reviews smartphones, or an audit of a computer system.

darawk 5y ago

> Most people are not advanced coders and will never be. So most people still have to trust a random coder (be it close friend or someone on the news or online). If something happens to your money because someone took advantage of you in the code then good luck getting anything back. At least with banks there are laws around this stuff and you can actually get your money back. For average person this is still the way to go. That's certainly true. However, you have the option to learn, and the option to review it yourself. You also have the option to choose which experts to delegate your trust to. Whether or not this system is better than the system of just trusting big banks a lot with no ability to verify personally is up to you. It is, however, a novel trust model, and one that it's clear that some people prefer. I think it's also clear that this model has advantages over the other. The traditional model has advantages as well. Neither is strictly better in all dimensions. Almost no technology is strictly better than its predecessor in all dimensions, though.

bb88 5y ago
So this is like the "Software Lawyer" argument I stated above. If I hire a lawyer to review a contract in finance, I expect him to put his greed aside while he's working for me. This is well regulated, and while isn't perfect, keeps most lawyers honest. With software there is no regulation. What happens when the software expert finds a bug in a smart contract? Is it illegal to sell the exploit? Can he exploit it for his own good? The smart contract is the contract after all. Who defines what "conflict of interest" means? The software guy who wrote the smart contract or is it in the smart contract itself? How would I know if there's a backdoor in the smart contract if greed is the primary motivation for a software engineer, and every other software engineer I hire to look at that contract?
- darawk 5y ago
  Yes, those are problems. Just like the existing textual contract system has problems, so does this new system. The new system is, obviously, much newer. The practices around the modern textual legal system have grown up over hundreds and thousands of years of refining practice. The fact that the crypto ecosystem is not yet as developed in terms of questions like that is unsurprising. What is true is that crypto enables a new mechanism for doing something vaguely analogous to parts of the existing legal system. This new mechanism has disadvantages to be sure, but it also has advantages (for instance, it is border and jurisdiction neutral, the code runs the same everywhere, no matter what). I am certainly not arguing that crypto is strictly better than the existing legal system. It's not. It is just an alternative that is useful in some situations, and worse in others. Over time, I think the domains in which it is useful are likely to expand. They are unlikely to replace the entirety of the existing legal system, of course. But I think the existence of a border neutral code layer for asset transfer and custody is a useful thing for certain applications.

bb88 5y ago

Really what is worse is that it will create "Software Lawyers", which are like lawyers but worse because they won't be members of a bar association, and might not have your best interest at heart.

nyolfen 5y ago

you don't have to trust anyone or examine the code -- simply watch what happens. btc as a protocol has gone a decade without any security flaws discovered or exploited. shitty smart contracts get exploited.