Re:A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what ...
by kerkeslager on Friday July 21, 2017 @10:48AM
(#14820942)
The hope for cryptocurrencies was that they removed the need for centralized trust entirely. As long as no entity can perform a 51% attack on the block chain, you don't need to trust anyone. This is why the successful 51% attack on the Ethereum block chain which was performed by the DAO should be viewed as a fundamental failure.
The underlying cause is a generally shoddy design of the contract language: when you're writing code where it's imperative that it have no security flaws, writing it in a JavaScript-like language which provides so few protections is absurd.
The Ethereum community is run by profiteering speculators rather than revolutionaries, however, so to them, performing a 51% attack on their own blockchain whenever they don't like how a contract turns out is an okay solution.
The underlying cause is a generally shoddy design of the contract language: when you're writing code where it's imperative that it have no security flaws, writing it in a JavaScript-like language which provides so few protections is absurd.
The Ethereum community is run by profiteering speculators rather than revolutionaries, however, so to them, performing a 51% attack on their own blockchain whenever they don't like how a contract turns out is an okay solution.