I'm So Irrational!: Why Did I Reveal A Social Engineering Vulnerability/Hack? - Rational Actors Will Hack #steemit

 

 Edit: I no longer espouse the anti-whale views expressed in this article, and am keeping this post because I think it was fairly well written.

 

Note: My tone is slightly sarcastic, to prove a point.

I honestly must be one of the most irrational actors in the ecosystem.

Yesterday, I revealed a fairly trivial easy way to execute a Social Engineering vulnerability that risks to net thousands from non-diligent users.

I have become attached to this network enough, that I would  be emotionally uncomfortable with executing this scam that surely carries positive expected value.

But I'm irrational! Only thing I gained was feeling OK about myself for not taking users' money.

What will happen when a rational actor who isn't as emotionally invested as I am decides to make decisions purely based on the projected expectation from making these decisions (i.e. expected value he expects to extract from making said decisions)?

Surely the only thing that would  prevent such an actor from executing the attack is if the expectation from not performing the attack is greater than that for performing it?

Because of the very rational preference of the network for lighter (I don't mean this in a derogatory way at all) pieces, the attacker has no reason to expect to extract much from not performing the attack.

Even if we assume a continuous uniform random distribution of Steem power (assuming that within any time interval each user has the same chance of being voted up by a whale which would carry positive expectation).

Why would he subject himself to variance in expected payout, when he can guarantee several thousand by successfully performing the hack?

After reading @team-leibniz's post I am convinced that Steemit's incentives are well designed to promote the stability of the cryptocurrency - which I believe is most important. 

But certainly not to  reveal vulnerabilities!

 #steemit #hack #money #security