News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The Ethereum merge is done by tornato7 on Thursday September 15, 2022 @03:55AM (#32848634)
Everything comes down to social consensus at the end of the day. But for 99.9999% of transactions you can count on immutability.
Re:The Ethereum merge is done by pjc50 on Thursday September 15, 2022 @04:46AM (#32849021)
"99% of the time it works every time"
Re:The Ethereum merge is done by Intermernet on Thursday September 15, 2022 @04:52AM (#32849052)
"One in a million chances come up nine times out of ten"
Re:The Ethereum merge is done by nisegami on Thursday September 15, 2022 @07:01AM (#32849946)
That's substantially higher than the legal system in any country
Re:The Ethereum merge is done by jollybean on Thursday September 15, 2022 @07:25AM (#32850127)
Except when you can't and you must undo a transaction, and if you can't, you can't use it.

Like for example in the world of finance, where you have to be able to backtrack.

Meaning such 'contracts' are least useful for things like, well, 'currency' and 'stores of value' ... hmm ...

Re:The Ethereum merge is done by syzygyhack on Thursday September 15, 2022 @07:37AM (#32850226)
Sounds like you haven't wrapped your head around the basics of smart contracts.

Yes, a blockchain gives you an (ideally) immutable foundation. No, that doesn't mean that every transaction that invokes a smart contract has to be immutable. If a smart contract for a particular use case needs to have the ability to "backtrack", so it can, there's nothing stopping it.

Re:The Ethereum merge is done by johnnymorgan on Thursday September 15, 2022 @09:21AM (#32851509)
Great reply, the rule for thumb of 'anything that can be done manually can be automated' applies here.

Needs backtrack, code it in, then everyone knows how the rules work and there isn't any side deals or exceptions.

Cheers!

Re:The Ethereum merge is done by bko on Thursday September 15, 2022 @08:42AM (#32850933)
The problem with exploitable systems is that the 0.00001% is not random. It's not like a random 1 in a million transactions is dropped.

I think the bigger issue is that the system is somewhat arbitrarily controlled by the large players. That could work out well in some cases (funds hacked are returned) but it could also be less optimal (e.g. you're thrown on some list and all of a sudden your transactions are not valid). We've already seen hackers and obviously malicious actors dinged, which is good. But this opens up an avenue for things like forcing participants to go through regular banking protocols that starts to affect more and more people (e.g. political dissidents). By then you just recreated the modern financial system with all its flaws and gatekeepers, except its less efficient.