Because the cryptocurrency space attracts only the brightest minds.
You've done this repeatedly, it lowers the quality of discussion, and we're hoping for better than that here. If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do.
the work being done on public blockchains is unlike anything else done before. You don't have he luxury of keeping your db behind a vpn running on a vm platform secured and maintained by the worlds largest companies. These engineers put themselves out there, waaaaaaaay out there to try and make shit happen. And they mostly do good work. But if banks and major retailers who have huge budgets can get hacked, of course we can too.
They did put themselves way out there, and that takes ambition, but also hubris. I wish they were able to figure out which one was driving them at certain points a bit better, as while some of these problems are because they are doing new and interesting things, some are old as dirt for computing, and there's little defense.
If some company tried to tout a new language with all the pitfalls of C, but none of the benefits of being really inter-operable and known the same way, I'd like to think we could recognize that as having some very bad design choices given what we've learned from C, and at little benefit other than being different. Ignoring decades of research and experience on the topic through ignorance is not laudable, even if you've put yourself out there. I can't help but feel we have a similar scenario going on here.
I've written a book on this (hit upload five minutes ago! release Monday!) which hammers on this point (and all the stuff surrounding this issue). I think Solidity is actually designed with worse is better in mind, because Ethereum is the first smart contract platform that anyone actually used. Some tried doing them in Bitcoin, but Ethereum's the first that gets lots of action. And so many other blockchains lift the smart contract functionality straight from Ethereum.
As far as I can remember, the EVM has never failed, just programmers.
The register globals issue could have been avoided at very little cost, if any cost at all, to the popularity and spread of the language and many millions of dollars and much personal information would have been saved.
Here's the thing: banks and major retailers can't get hacked. At least, not in the sense you're using "hacked".
When Target's credit card systems were compromised, resulting in the CEO resigning and and about $300M in costs to the company to deal with the breach, not one customer lost a penny.
When $171M from Union Bank of India was fraudulently wired via NYC to two Cambodian banks and one Thai one, they got all the money wired back within a day.
The traditional banking system is designed to be unhackable, because the numbers on computers are not authoritative. They're a cache, and they're periodically reconciled, but humans (and other computers!) will look at the cache during reconciliation for obvious attacks like these. A bank can call up another bank, or a retailer can call up a credit card company, or whatever, and say, "Hey, these transactions were fraudulent, please reverse them," and it'll happen. Target did that. Union Bank did that. A hacker can get to some bank's MySQL database? Sure, whatever, it's not what matters. Definitely it's a greater headache than if they got to the bank's website, but at the end of the day it's exactly as fixable as hackers getting to the website.
There are a lot of bright people trying very hard and putting honest work into a problem that simply doesn't need to be solved and shouldn't be solved: making the computers authoritative. When you do that, you're suddenly hackable. When you do that, of course $16M gets actually stolen irrevocably from time to time, no matter how bright you are or how honest your work is.
If cryptocurrencies think that they can provide this service for substantially cheaper than 2-3% (note that this is an additional service on top of simply making the transfer happen, so mining fees aren't the right thing to compare), that sounds awesome, but also I'd like to understand why it's possible.
If so, this seems terrifying, what if I had accepted stolen ETH to sell physical goods?
I.e. if you accept counterfeit money, it's on you, but your money should not become counterfeit overnight.
However, whatever financial risk you would like to tolerate, you should make sure you're pursuing goals that do in fact match that financial risk, and that you're not concluding that something more or less risky than it is because you are uninformed. Also, if you are tolerating increased risk, you should do so because there is a purpose for it (e.g, better potential upside), not because high financial risk seems inherently cool. It isn't, and I will certainly defend that point, but it's just a lemma on the way to my actual point.
Arguing that it's okay that cryptocurrencies are hackable because the traditional financial system is hackable is simply factually incorrect: it's a misunderstanding of why the existing financial system looks the way it does, and why its risk tolerances are built the way it is (not a lot done to secure transactions, but a lot done to be able to reverse transactions if needed).
If you really want a simple point out of me, I think G. K. Chesterton made it in 1929:
> In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."
If you do not understand the existing financial system, you cannot honestly claim that your new one is better. First figure out how it works and why, and get that right, then you can describe how your changes are improvements.
If it's important, you need to be good. If it's very important, you need to be good and sure.
But yeah I admit, cryprocurrencies are good toy projects on which to learn real crypto, that's true. But then it's time to move on. And not to pour millions of dollars into that
The Ethereum developers sold a vision of smart contracts, where the code is the contract. However, their hubris lead to them attempting to implement a complex language, instead of starting the endeavor with a small, simple, verifiable language. Similarly, their belief in their own infallibility lead them to write code that is not tested, and to create capabilities that are literally untestable.
This was bound to result in multiple massive failures. The dao was one. This is another. There will be more, because it's an overly complex implementation.
It doesn't matter, though. Only dumb-fuck crypto futurist suckers have ether exposure, so it won't matter that they get zero'd out once a competent team enters the space. That said, the space attracts incompetence like lights attract moths, so it'll take a while to find a team that is technically competent and also has the marketing chops to get traction.
It would be nice to see some sort of casual hawala-type federated micropayments system based on real national currency, with instant settlement, low fees, and no fake money value store. But, that would be a pre-9/11 idea. Nowadays that's basically illegal and useless.
Paypal is more or less good enough, and hopefully regulators and market forces will control the fees and abuses.
Thats the vision- a somalia like decline, but society moves on, with schools back uped to youtube, with contracts backed up to the block chain, with the currency back uped to bitcoin. I find the ideals of crypto-anarchy laughable (those guys would be gunned down on the first corner, in a real anarchic world), and yet, i can agree to the path we taken. Cellphones and facebook, to have a culture of shame, that fights wild mobs and public hysteria, because the internet does not forget your lowest point. Anyone in power in fear of getting caught in public, for the world to see as just another corrupt, well fed monkey?
Yes, that is something to work towards.
And in this Somalia 2.0 future of yours, how will the computers and networks be powered?
This space doesn't atract incompetence, it atracts everyone. When you have tech thats so transparent and accessible, degrees and diplomas don't get to decide who can or cannot work on it. Plus, the world most experience blockchain developer has at most, 9 years of experience. That's not a lot of time to work out the kinks.