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Then why are we building it? To fleece people who are not as smart? All this just seems insane to me.

AgentME 5y ago
It's a super massive stretch to imagine this invalidates Ethereum. Only some specific types of contracts are vulnerable to front-running issues and there are workarounds. The article is about the difficulty of being the first to take from a contract offering free money. This isn't an issue about regular contracts being unsafe to use. I think the title misportrays the issue as being much more general than it is. For some reason I see the article brought up often in Twitter conversations by people who don't understand Ethereum and are trying to argue as if regular transactions are vulnerable to theft.
- spicybright 5y ago
  It's not just contracts that are the issue. You need to be an expert in cyber security just to not to get robbed. The general recommendations I've heard go like this: - Have a dedicated machine just for transferring money - Only boot from a read only flash drive to interact with the network - Store credentials in a separate place, maybe on paper in a very hidden spot - Transfer a small amount of money before large transfers and wait 24 hours to make sure it works ok - Spread your money between many accounts so it can't be stolen all at once Does that not seem at least a little insane to anyone? No one is going to be able to practically use the network without some expert user as a proxy. And I don't see that changing any time soon with how terribly designed the protocol is at controlling these issues.
  - aqme28 5y ago
    > - Have a dedicated machine just for transferring money - Only boot from a read only flash drive to interact with the network - Store credentials in a separate place, maybe on paper in a very hidden spot You're overstating the problem. Companies like Ledger make "hardware" wallets as you're describing and they're not complicated to use. If you're using crypto in small amounts and not as long-term storage, I think a phone wallet or desktop wallet is fine.
    - v0idzer0 5y ago
      I think you’re understating the problem. Imagine having your entire life savings on a flash drive. It’s a disaster. Crypto has no chance of replacing fiat until that and many other issues are resolved.
spicybright 5y ago
The only reason it's popular is the low bar of entry, stealing large sums of money, and (to an extent) the promise of some utopia of truly free wealth transfer and algorithmic mechanisms around it. But IMO etherium is not that by a long shot. From the protocol, to all existing contracts, and the user experience resulting from those, etherium is fucking amateur hour.
nostrademons 5y ago
Why did we build nuclear weapons? Even knowing that they could potentially annihilate humanity - indeed, that was the point. Because if we didn't, Nazi Germany would've, and then we would've been the ones annihilated. History has a shape, and that shape is largely dictated by science, technology, and game theory. Whenever a technology gets discovered that gives its controllers a significant advantage over others, and its discovery is obvious enough that it could likely have been discovered elsewhere, you have to adopt it. Otherwise, others will, and gain enough of an advantage over you to threaten your existence. There's a reason that the permanent members of the UN Security Council are the U.S, Russia, China, Britain, and France, and that Germany and Japan are not on it. Similar dynamics are why we still have arms races; climate change; lying & exaggeration; corruption; profiteering; and privatization. For more thoughts on this, you might want to check out this SlateStarCodex blogpost: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ It's tempting to look at a situation as a whole and say "This is bad for everyone. Why are we doing it?" without looking at the incentives and levers of control for each of the individual actors. Sometimes, these people even resolve to not engage in the bad behavior themselves, not realizing that not engaging in the bad behavior is marginalizing themselves out of the discourse, and that's why bad behavior persists.
- ufo 5y ago
  So by the analogy, the reason to develop Ethereum is so that we can fleece people before the nazis can fleece them?
  - nostrademons 5y ago
    Pretty much. I was gonna say that Nazis might be a strong term for people who just wanna get rich in today's day and age, but a lot of the people who have gotten rich off crypto are literally being called Nazis by those who oppose them.
    - piva00 5y ago
      > but a lot of the people who have gotten rich off crypto are literally being called Nazis by those who oppose them. Bullshit, show me where this is happening...

It's a super massive stretch to imagine this invalidates Ethereum. Only some specific types of contracts are vulnerable to front-running issues and there are workarounds. The article is about the difficulty of being the first to take from a contract offering free money. This isn't an issue about regular contracts being unsafe to use. I think the title misportrays the issue as being much more general than it is. For some reason I see the article brought up often in Twitter conversations by people who don't understand Ethereum and are trying to argue as if regular transactions are vulnerable to theft.

spicybright 5y ago
It's not just contracts that are the issue. You need to be an expert in cyber security just to not to get robbed. The general recommendations I've heard go like this: - Have a dedicated machine just for transferring money - Only boot from a read only flash drive to interact with the network - Store credentials in a separate place, maybe on paper in a very hidden spot - Transfer a small amount of money before large transfers and wait 24 hours to make sure it works ok - Spread your money between many accounts so it can't be stolen all at once Does that not seem at least a little insane to anyone? No one is going to be able to practically use the network without some expert user as a proxy. And I don't see that changing any time soon with how terribly designed the protocol is at controlling these issues.
- aqme28 5y ago
  > - Have a dedicated machine just for transferring money - Only boot from a read only flash drive to interact with the network - Store credentials in a separate place, maybe on paper in a very hidden spot You're overstating the problem. Companies like Ledger make "hardware" wallets as you're describing and they're not complicated to use. If you're using crypto in small amounts and not as long-term storage, I think a phone wallet or desktop wallet is fine.
  - v0idzer0 5y ago
    I think you’re understating the problem. Imagine having your entire life savings on a flash drive. It’s a disaster. Crypto has no chance of replacing fiat until that and many other issues are resolved.

spicybright 5y ago

The only reason it's popular is the low bar of entry, stealing large sums of money, and (to an extent) the promise of some utopia of truly free wealth transfer and algorithmic mechanisms around it. But IMO etherium is not that by a long shot. From the protocol, to all existing contracts, and the user experience resulting from those, etherium is fucking amateur hour.

nostrademons 5y ago

Why did we build nuclear weapons? Even knowing that they could potentially annihilate humanity - indeed, that was the point. Because if we didn't, Nazi Germany would've, and then we would've been the ones annihilated. History has a shape, and that shape is largely dictated by science, technology, and game theory. Whenever a technology gets discovered that gives its controllers a significant advantage over others, and its discovery is obvious enough that it could likely have been discovered elsewhere, you have to adopt it. Otherwise, others will, and gain enough of an advantage over you to threaten your existence. There's a reason that the permanent members of the UN Security Council are the U.S, Russia, China, Britain, and France, and that Germany and Japan are not on it. Similar dynamics are why we still have arms races; climate change; lying & exaggeration; corruption; profiteering; and privatization. For more thoughts on this, you might want to check out this SlateStarCodex blogpost: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ It's tempting to look at a situation as a whole and say "This is bad for everyone. Why are we doing it?" without looking at the incentives and levers of control for each of the individual actors. Sometimes, these people even resolve to not engage in the bad behavior themselves, not realizing that not engaging in the bad behavior is marginalizing themselves out of the discourse, and that's why bad behavior persists.

ufo 5y ago
So by the analogy, the reason to develop Ethereum is so that we can fleece people before the nazis can fleece them?
- nostrademons 5y ago
  Pretty much. I was gonna say that Nazis might be a strong term for people who just wanna get rich in today's day and age, but a lot of the people who have gotten rich off crypto are literally being called Nazis by those who oppose them.
  - piva00 5y ago
    > but a lot of the people who have gotten rich off crypto are literally being called Nazis by those who oppose them. Bullshit, show me where this is happening...