News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds by caymanjim on Monday May 23, 2022 @04:01PM (#31484152)
Forget about the exploit itself. Why are people trusting two young nobodies (Day and Kellar of Indexed Finance) with so much money in the first place? Ok, so Day has some decent academic credentials, but he's just one person. Who was doing risk analysis? Which independent experts analyzed their algorithms? Which accounting firm audited them? Where's the oversight? These two guys whipped something up, threw it out in the wild, and the masses fed tens or hundreds of millions of dollars into it without a care in the world.

This is how crypto operates. Buyer beware.

Re:The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds by xur17 on Monday May 23, 2022 @04:27PM (#31484409)
Because people want to and decided the risk was worth it to them? If a consenting adult wants to deposit their money into a system that they have full visibility into, why should we stop them?

> This is how crypto operates. Buyer beware.

This statement rings very true for me, and perhaps is the bit we agree on. With crypto there is no "oversight" that blocks you from depositing your funds into unsafe contracts, etc. It's up to you as the user to do your own research before depositing funds.

There are many projects within crypto that ARE well built, and have been carefully tested, analyzed, slowly released to the public, etc. I like having the ability to make this choice myself instead of relying on some gatekeeper to decide what I can do with my money (cough "accredited investor rules").

Re:The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds by rootusrootus on Monday May 23, 2022 @06:22PM (#31485576)
> If a consenting adult wants to deposit their money into a system that they have full visibility into, why should we stop them?

We already do exactly that, e.g. Accredited Investor.

Re:The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds by why_only_15 on Monday May 23, 2022 @06:50PM (#31485835)
Yes but should we do it? Those rules prevent most people from e.g. investing into startups.
Re:The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds by thethimble on Monday May 23, 2022 @07:58PM (#31486351)
To state it directly, the vast majority of the population doesn’t have the capability of assessing risk in speculative investments and is disproportionately susceptible to fraud. You give the example of “investing in startups” without also describing that most startups fail.
Re:The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds by dropnerd on Monday May 23, 2022 @08:04PM (#31486392)
i understand why we might want to dissuade speculative investments, byt why is it the state's role to prevent citizens from speculating?
Re:The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds by thethimble on Monday May 23, 2022 @11:26PM (#31487668)
It’s not a perfect analogy but it’s the same reason we have laws that require seatbelts. In theory this impinges on the liberty of adults, but in practice the it obviously saves lives.

When people commit harm to themselves out of ignorance, I think it’s reasonable for a government to step in.

Note that I think it’s reasonable to fundamentally disagree from a libertarian standpoint but I don’t see many reasonable people arguing against seatbelt laws.

Re:The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds by rootusrootus on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @05:47PM (#31497878)
> It’s not a perfect analogy but it’s the same reason we have laws that require seatbelts. In theory this impinges on the liberty of adults, but in practice the it obviously saves lives.

At the risk of going off-topic, I think that seatbelts isn't a good analogy because I don't think we require seat belts to protect people from themselves. It is to protect other people. When you are unbelted, it is far more difficult to maintain control of your vehicle when things start to get even a little bit exciting. You can't worry much about car control when you're getting tossed out of your seat.

I would say helmet laws are a closer analogy, because AFAICT that is almost entirely about protecting people from themselves.

Re:The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds by dropnerd on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @01:55AM (#31488485)
even from a utilitarian stance, the tradeoff for making the system "safer" is that investors miss opportunities that they see but can't take.

something is wrong when you can only buy virgin galactic, not spacex, because of burdensome regulations. the gap between the haves and have nots widen as you must be an accredited investor to buy the biggest winners this decade.

something is wrong when you can buy penny stocks, but experimental defi products exclude the us market because of regulatory concerns. the latter is much more transparent than the former.

Re:The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds by rootusrootus on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @05:49PM (#31497901)
Personally, I think we should allow individuals to take a short, inexpensive (free would be nice) class that would grant them Accredited Investor status.
Re:The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds by pohl on Monday May 23, 2022 @04:18PM (#31484315)
Haven't people who are attracted to crypto, for the most part, already decided that oversight is bad because something something decentralization?
Re:The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds by Red_Leaves_Flyy on Monday May 23, 2022 @04:24PM (#31484390)
It’s the Libertarian fantasy. Crypto bros, many VCs, angels, and other mini napoleons think they can solve the world’s problems without addressing any of their personal problems, studying history, taking responsibility for their actions, engaging in community building, or hiring people with spines. Which is why crypto and ilk keep reinventing every scam and repeating the mistakes of the past that directly led to regulation.
Re:The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds by fron on Monday May 23, 2022 @06:30PM (#31485654)
"Libertarians are like house cats: absolutely convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don't appreciate or understand."

No idea who said this originally but it continues to be true. Abandon the system, and they find it was there for a reason.

Re:The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds by im3w1l on Monday May 23, 2022 @08:06PM (#31486405)
> two young nobodies

It's this very attitude, that omly the annointed elite should be allowed to do anything, that draw people to crypto. Now personally I would avoid this scheme like the plague for other reasons. Smart contracts are hard to get right, and especially the ones that rely on very complicated game theorethical considerations for correct operation. And further an index fund of tokens whether manually or automatically managed sounds like a bad idea since I don't believe in the underlying tokens.