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A comment on Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later. Parent comment

Re:Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later by jotakami on Sunday November 24, 2019 @08:28AM (#21620277)
I don’t think you understand. The arbitrage bots aren’t exploiting poorly written contracts, they are capturing free value that users of a dApp have opened up. This free value is available to miners as well, and could be used to subsidize an otherwise-unprofitable double spend attack.

But more to the point: allowing smart contracts in a blockchain introduces all of the complexity of trying to make any other piece of software secure. Except... now it’s on a blockchain where the code is open source and mistakes can allow adversaries to steal money, not just data. How is this an improvement?

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Re:Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later by hanniabu on Sunday November 24, 2019 @12:08PM (#21621700)
I do understand. I work in the industry, specifically with decentralized exchanges. Both the order book and the order matching should be P2P with 0 conf transactions and client side verification. The fees paid by the user should be top off fees for the contract balance rather than pay to play fees.
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Re:Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later by semiotagonal on Sunday November 24, 2019 @10:59AM (#21621151)
I did about 0.1% of the amount of research you did a few years ago and was really struck by the irreversibility of mistakes. Other engineering domains can have irreversible (e.g. fatal) mistakes as well, but they don't have as many enthusiasts jumping in to the field.
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Re:Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later by alanfalcon on Sunday November 24, 2019 @11:18AM (#21621308)
Our CTO likens developing a smart contract to civil engineering. Our CTO also remembers what it was like to ship your software in its final form on a floppy disk!

I think it’s great that more and more people are jumping in and learning what it’s like to develop in such an unforgiving domain (no point here, I just think it’s great!)

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Re:Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later by exdsq on Sunday November 24, 2019 @01:14PM (#21622184)
I completely agree! It's sparked an interest in formal methods and learning more about how engineering takes place in other disciplines to improve their product quality.
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Re:Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later by semiotagonal on Sunday November 24, 2019 @12:05PM (#21621673)
Learning on the job in an unforgiving domain can be costly.
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Re:Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later by alanfalcon on Sunday November 24, 2019 @02:46PM (#21622815)
The blockchain is indeed fraught with peril. Code review, audits, and bug bounties are an absolute necessity when it comes to smart contracts! Learning in a high stakes situation seems pretty good as long as you have a robust support structure.
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