Privacy Coin Forks and Hacks
Verge got hacked! Yesterday, somebody found a way to attack the Verge blockchain, and spent at least 13 hours mining one block per second. As the maximalists say, “this is good for Bitcoin”.
Verge belongs to a group of tokens that seem excessively overvalued to me. I owned a little for a month or so before I realized I hated the wallet and felt my money was better put towards a more serious project. I missed the huge pump (about two weeks after I sold, natch). Such is the life of a cryptocurrency enthusiast.
My takeaway (which I say at risk of ending up on r/buttcoin...again…) is that was a good thing.
Why?
Because we need to discover which systems actually work and which don’t. That’s much better now with a total cryptocurrency market cap below $300 billion than when it is 10 or 20 times that, and major business is done on the blockchain.
Monero Fork
Apparently the Monero fork to prevent ASICS from dominating hash power resulted in four competing projects. It's probably best to avoid touching any of these new chains unless you know how to move your coins without being susceptible to a replay attack on the main chain. In case you've never heard that term, the concept is this: let's say you want to sell those "extra" tokens that you got because of a fork. If you make a mistake, your main chain coins are at risk for being stolen by somebody with not a lot of work. I'm not exactly sure how it would work on the Monero chain, since transactions are shielded, but "wait and see" is the best attitude.
If you absolutely must sell your forked Monero coins, realize you may lose everything if you screw it up.
Other Minority Positions
Many Steemians are (rightfully) angry about certain posters who shamelessly upvote their own posts, often making thousands of dollars a day in rewards that violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the Steem blockchain. Are they stealing? Not exactly...but they do lower the value of rewards to the rest of us...even if individual losses are in the order of pennies.
Some have called for these people to be blocked by the witnesses. I tend to disagree with this. I look at these self promoters as canaries in the Steem goldmine; if we believe that censorship resistance is good (with the obvious caveats against breaking the law), then these sorts of people should be ridiculed, but not censored on the blockchain.
It’s a fact that there are those who will outright abuse any system they’re a part of. Decentralized blockchains try to address this, but it’s impossible to avoid it. Human beings are sinful creatures who are going to act irrationally (in an economic sense) at times. The best tonic to this is to create strong communities based on similar values, which becomes an analog to city states created in ancient times that were designed to protect from bandits and invaders.
Yes-Steem communities are the prototypes of internet city states. We’ll see how this unwinds over the next few years/decades, but I expect this all to be far more interesting than any of our wildest imaginations.
-Jeff
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All I have is STEEM, so as long as it's secure (which I've heard it's not the most secure compared to others, but I have no idea why), then I'm okay. Even as I write this, I'm getting another 504 Gateway timeout error to my wallet. :)
The third part of your post, regarding the 'takers' from the reward pool. On a system with little governance and rules, it's actually amazing to see just how many ways there are to interpret non-existent rules. I wish I knew what the answer was, aside from putting it into code, but then the golden opportunity to be our own master would be lost.
I came here to earn rewards for my writing. I found out that I should also comment and curate, not only to earn rewards on that, too, but to help foster and build community. Make genuine connections. That meant I signed up for more than I bargained for, and that's before we throw in any of the number of dramas playing out.
I'm still here, and I'm still posting, commenting and curating, and entering community discussions when I feel competent to do so. I readily admit, I don't have any idea about the minutiae or details required to make things better. I just know what I can affect some small amount of change through sticking to my own principles and acting accordingly.
Everyone else does that, I think things start to shake out for the better.
I share your sentiments about the abusers in Steemit. I've seen Steemit called the "anarchy of social media" and if the witnesses started targeting certain people for restrictions, who's to say there wouldn't be additional measures in the future, until all the freedom was gone.
Now if the witnesses or developers (or whoever) wanted to make changes along the lines of preventing people from making over x amount through self upvotes, I think that's a little better.
I'd be ok with a community push for something like that, although it would be easily bypassed by people creating a second account. So you'd have to reduce the upvote amount on ALL votes to make any difference.
I don't think people want that...yet. We'll see.
Oh, I'd forgotten about that possibility.
That leaves resolution in the hands of the people, and I've been watching the flag war and attempts to rally the minnows LOTR style to collectively take down a whale, from the sidelines...what are your thoughts on that?
My thoughts are a bit "wait and see". There is no perfect product. If brigading becomes a real thing on Steemit we could see people with unpopular opinions become targets, and I don't necessarily want to see that.
Ahaaa, I knew there was a reason the flag war was making me uneasy, but I couldn't put my finger on the cause. Targeting people for their opinions is exactly what chased me off other sites, and I wouldn't want to see it here either. :(
Yeah, unfortunately it's a short distance from "Flag for abuse" to Abusing the flag feature.
Imho, the Monero, ETH and Bitcoin forks have exposed a kind of flaw/loophole in blockchain systems. The forked asset doesn't have the same security or user base loyalty as the original chain, but the lure of "free money" pulls in a lot of users from the original chain to sell/trade their coins, which in turn creates value for the forked chain!
You're dead on. Many of these forks become a tax on stupidity and greed, if people let their main coins get attacked after trying to access the forks. At the same time, not every fork is garbage, and a "wait and see" attitude can often bring some profits.
Another interesting outcome of the Monero hardfork:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/8aoxhp/bye_bye_asics/
The hash rate has dropped massively. Was that due to ASICs dominating the hash rate, or some other reason?
I think ASICs were dominating it. Good opportunity for those who want to mine Monero now.
I hear alot about the upvoting in the last few days of a post. There are many people here that help plankton and minnows, and I think they out number the self promoters. I still enjoy posting here, and as long as that is the case, I will return everyday. Glad to hear you got a paid writing gig. Good job. 😎
Thanks-and to be clear, I upvote my posts, with the exception of my Steepshot posts (the food ones). You can actually see how much somebody upvotes their posts vs upvoting others' on steemworld.com, and my upvote percentage is under 3%.
We're all here to create, comment, and upvote quality content, whether it's ours or others. One day I hope to be able to upvote my own posts and comments, but when I can only upvote 10 times a day, and my vote is worth so little, I choose to upvote others. 😎
I don't have any Verge. I agree that it's better or it to happen while the value is low so that not as much is lost. If it's not a project that will be able to protect itself, then it's better for the losses to happen now.
I don't know what the solution is to the issues here on the Steem blockchain. One solution could be that anyone with SP over 50 that has been active for over a month gets a delegation from Steemit of 500 SP or something. (I know it's not a foolproof idea, so please just take it as brainstorming.) By having established accounts (not just noobs) get the bonus, then you don't have too much advantage to alt accounts, but you do dilute the value of Steem a bit because more people will have access to more voting power. This will reduce the power of the individuals who self-vote like that.
It's probably not the most elegant of solutions, but it's an idea. I hate seeing people who are so short-sighted that they'll devalue the asset they hold just so they can make money now. The reason Steem has value is because people want the tokens. If they don't enjoy the Steeming experience, they leave and the demand goes down. Or they leave and stop producing content which adds value. I think it's important not to censor, but since Steem is still in its infancy and needs a hand getting going, Steemit might need to take more drastic measures.
Eh, I think the 500 SP idea would encourage a ton of alts, and we'd see abuse. If you can abuse it, people will.
Best to focus on getting upvotes to those with great content.
Not if they implement the idea within a week of announcing. That's why there's the 1 month old requirement. Like I said though, it's not a solution, just an idea.
Like you said, focus on the content. :)
You say Verge got hacked for 46,800 blocks but they haven't experienced a flash crash or anything like that. Is all that money untraceable and impossible to ban? How much is that actually going to hurt Verge?
I don't know enough about Verge to answer your questions, unfortunately. I think it should hurt Verge, unless they figure out how to reverse the hack (or hard fork up to right before it). It's a bad time to be a Verge dev. :-P
You highlighted some important points and in my opinion self voting is not bad when you are newbie or you are getting lack of support but in my opinion if i am getting so much money on daily basis and still i am self voting knowingly that it can effect the rewards of others then somewhere it's not sounding good and instead they are taking away the interest of the platform from the newbies because they get demotivated at times because there is an huge gap and i think this gap has to be filled. And in my opinion nowadays hacking attacks really increased and i personally think that the attack on Blockchain is not an good news and the security of Blockchain System is in question and one question can raised here how an Decentralised Platform is hacked. Let's hope that everything will be fine. Thanks for sharing and wishing you an great day. Stay blessed. 🙂
Great info here i had no idea Verge got hacked , i put some big money there 6 months ago and now i'm really wonder what should i do with it
Good luck! I hope you don't get hosed by this.
Good to read your posts again . you did not post anything for a while ..
i resteem that one to share it with my followers as well dear :)
Thank you-I've been doing some paid writing, and time was limited.