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David Rosenthal on cryptocurrencies
I was asked at short notice to fill in for a speaker in Stanford's EE380 course who had to cancel. Below the fold is a hastily updated vers...
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 488 posts.
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Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism
On 2/2/2022, I reported a critical security issue to Optimism—an "L2 scaling solution" for Ethereum—that would allow an attacker to replicate money on any chain using their "OVM 2.0" fork of go-ethereum (which they call l2geth).
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Web3 doesn’t care about privacy
In web2, we are beholden to centralized entities that monopolize and profit off of our data. Web3 promises to release us from these shackles by enabling everyone to access data living on the blockchain. While it is certainly appealing that institutions no longer have the power to hold our data hostage, it is still…
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Bitcoin's fungibility graveyard
Where the pipe-dream of Bitcoin’s real-world fungibility goes to die.
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Facebook’s Libra is still dead – Diem to be sold off for spare parts
Maybe Libra was just very stupid. Because it was a blockchain project started by bitcoiners. Maybe it was always just dumb as hell.
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Surprises in the Bitcoin blockchain and how they are stored (2014)
Every Bitcoin transaction is stored in the distributed database known as the Bitcoin blockchain. However, people have found ways to hack ...
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Abuse and Harassment on the Blockchain
In the frenzy to attract venture capital funding and draw new users and investors into blockchain technologies, 'how will this technology be used to harass and abuse people?' is going unasked. While blockchain proponents speak about a 'future of the web' based around public ledgers, anonymity, and immutability, those…
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An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation
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It’s not still the early days of blockchain
When I speak about the inefficiency of popular blockchains, or mention that we seem to be hurtling towards a 'web3' so centralized it challenges big tech's firm grasp on today's web, or point out that somehow no one has managed to find a positive use for blockchains that wouldn't be better served by one of the many…
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Rewriting my toy blockchain in Rust
Made in Notion, the connected workspace where AI agents and teams organize docs, projects and knowledge together.
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Blockchain-based systems are not what they say they are
If you go out seeking to learn why blockchains and the systems built atop them are apparently the future of our web, you’ll begin to see some common themes. These fall apart under further scrutiny.
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Re: Moxie on Web3
On decentralization, servers and cryptography
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On Web3 Infrastructure
In recent months, there has been a resurgence in the usage of the term “web3”: a nebulous term that (like it or hate it) has suddenly become a banner for much of the innovation happening in the space of blockchain and distributed ledger technology. The term has been around for a while (since 2014 when Gavin Wood…
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In Response to My first impressions of Web3
This a response to Moxie Marlinspike’s “My First Impression of Web3” Both gave me a feeling for how the space works. To be clear, there is nothing particularly “distributed” about the apps themselves: they’re just normal react websites. The “distributedness” refers to where the state and the logic/
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Web 3 Doesn't Exist
Web3 has been a very fashionable term this year, mostly for the alt-finance cartoon characters and tech world’s ultrasophisticated twitter-thread authors.
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My First Impressions of Web3
Despite considering myself a cryptographer, I have not found myself particularly drawn to “crypto.” I don’t think I’ve ever actually said the words “get off my lawn,” but I’m much more likely to click on Pepperidge Farm Remembers flavored memes about how “crypto” used to mean “cryptography” than ...
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Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I dig into what's genuinely impressive about crypto (distributed trust, abuse prevention, true cloud computing) and what's deeply problematic: boundary interactions, governance concentration, transaction cost tradeoffs, and unclear incentives. My conclusion: crypto may only be useful for financial engineering, and…
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Real Problems That Web3 Solves, Part 1
Social recovery wallets introduces new ways to authenticated with our own owned identities.
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A not so gentle intro to web3
Pyramid schemes, scientology and Tamagotchi
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Web3 is centralized
I've long been interested in the decentralization of computing and communication in general, and of the web in particular. The trend of communication and information becoming more and more centralized in large corporations is worrying and worth fighting against, particularly from the perspective of systemic risk. I…
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Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?
Lately I'm paying more attention to the crypto currency and "DeFi" spaces, again. One discussion that comes up regularly: are miners to blame for the high GPU prices? To add some facts to this discussion, I’ve done a small analysis of GPU and crypto currency prices to determine if they are related.
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Satoshi leaked his Los Angeles IP address (2016)
Chapter 6 – California In the Jan of 2009 when Hal and Satoshi were working on Bitcoin Alpha version, Hal encountered an error with the software and he posted the debug log to the mailing lis…
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Why Web3?
Over the last month, there has been a ton of debate and conversation about web2 vs web3 with many leading voices raising doubts about web3. Debate and doubt are healthy. And web3 enthusiasts, particularly on Twitter, remind me of missionaries trying to recruit the unwashed to their belief system. Frankly, it is all…
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“Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs
In Bullshit Jobs: A Theory , David Graeber makes the case that a sizable chunk of the labour economy is essentially people performing useless work, as a sort of subconscious self-preservation instinct of the economic status quo. The book cites ample anecdotal evidence that people perceive their own jobs as completely…
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An NFT without a blockchain
This is a small proof-of-concept. It relies on PGP - but you could use Keybase, GPG, or any other hard-to-use encryption program. Background Suppose you want to support an artist and give them money. That's easy. Most artists take PayPal, bank transfer, or cash. But how can you prove that you've paid an artist for a…
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Is Web3 anything?
The term “web3” seems pretty fluid and is being used as a label for a bunch of disparate ideas. Given that it’s a decentralized group describing a decentralized movement, that lack of focus isn’t exactly surprising. Almost by definition it’s going to end up being different things to different people.
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The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme
With over $20b in assets under management Celsius Network is the biggest centralised lending platform in the crypto space.