Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

by HugoMelo • 8 years ago

127 105 8 years ago

40acres• 8 years ago

Wow, great write up. Excellent example of computer science fundamentals being used to tackle a novel problem.

I recently had to use the concept of table doubling to improve a system where rough estimation was being used to determine the size of a data structure. It certainly felt good to recall the concept of table doubling and design a system using it's concepts.

zmitton3• 8 years ago

Thanks, I basically did a brain dump on the README. I plan do do many more bounties like it in the future. Really glad it's made some traction.

robertAngst• 8 years ago

The flaws of ETH seem to show daily. The fact that this is a necessity to keep ETH flowing is a bad sign of things to come.

Bitcoin not blockchain.

arcticbull10• 8 years ago

Or neither Bitcoin nor Blockchain. The thing is, inflation is actually what keeps the entire economy moving. Deflationary currencies actively dissuade investment and lending. What would a loan even look like denominated in a deflationary currency? Lenders are incentivized not to give you the one, as their cash reserves appreciate risk-free.

Oh, and also, why trust this random ad-hoc group of self-appointed economists (the core dev team) over a selected group of professional economists with degrees an arms-length away from politics (the federal reserve)? None of it makes sense. If the core team wants to create more bitcoin they can. Just like the fed.

Inflation is not a bad thing - it's solely a regular haircut for unproductive capital. Nobody should be hoarding cash. They should invest. Salaries are indexed for inflation so they don't go down. This isn't rocket science.

zmitton3• 8 years ago

Your economics are all wrong. Ever heard of the Cantillon Effect? https://www.aier.org/article/sound-money-project/cantillon-e...

topmonk4• 8 years ago

If the core team wants to create more bitcoin they can.

If you believe this, you lack a fundamental understanding of btc.

amingilani• 8 years ago

I don't understand how the fact that the author solved a novel problem and then posted a bounty points to "flaws of ETH". Could you elaborate?

Also, what do you mean by "Bitcoin not blockchain"?

tree_of_item• 8 years ago

The fact that what is a necessity? New data structures? Why wouldn't you expect new data structures in absolutely any new environment?

joshschreuder• 8 years ago

What about open-mindedness, not maximalism

seibelj• 8 years ago

Cryptocurrencies, and especially Ethereum, are truly novel innovations in computer science that cross many academic disciplines. The linked example is a great write-up. It’s sad that there is a vocal group, especially on HN, that knee-jerk hates everything blockchain related and wishes with their entire being for it to fail.

However, I think smart contracts are fascinating and wish more people would keep an open mind.

tdb7893• 8 years ago

I personally thought I had an open mind about it but it keeps over promising and under delivering (the most extreme example is the rhetoric surrounding the DAO on the ethereum platform). It's undoubtedly a cool technology but at a certain point it's hard to muster any excitement anymore.

nowarninglabel• 8 years ago

That's true of just about any technological innovation though. Even look at recent examples with space, self-driving cars, etc. I'd posture that we are currently somewhere in the Trough of Disillusionment [0] and that it'll another year or two before there's more mass use/adoption.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle

elvinyung• 8 years ago

I definitely agree with you about the anti-blockchain bubble that's formed, but I think that there are a few unanswered questions about non-technological factors (shameless self-promotion: [1]) that will unfortunately limit them to be little more than interesting technologies for now.

[1] https://www.notion.so/Yet-Another-Rant-About-Blockchains-ece...

empath75• 8 years ago

I think it’s more a reaction to the con artists that infested the whole industry than the technology itself.

Marazan• 8 years ago

No, it is a reaction against the terrible technology.

LeoPanthera• 8 years ago

I don't want to be anti-blockchain, but I have yet to come across any problems that are solved better with a blockchain than with any other traditional technology - except for the original one, a distributed electronic currency.

pmiller22• 8 years ago

USD is already a mostly electronic currency. I’ve done some reading, and I have yet to come across a compelling advantage for cryptocurrency cum currency for the purposes of legitimate transactions.

erikpukinskis3• 8 years ago

I don’t understand why you would be anti- something so new at all. To me it’s preposterous that you would evaluate a new technology based on how many problems it and only it can solve. Don’t you get that new technology has an incubation period where its fundamental challenges must be overcome?

What problem could early steam powered cars solve that horses couldn’t solve better? I doubt the earliest ones performed better than the animal based solutions for ANY specific use.

Yet writing off automobiles at that stage would’ve been a mistake only obvious in retrospect.

Especially for something as truly bizarre as Ethereum, why write it off at this early stage?

erikpukinskis3• 8 years ago

From another thread:

“Code bounties are a great use-case for cryptocurrency.”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18226000

nosuchthing2• 8 years ago

The term “Smart contracts” (Ethereum/EOS/hyperledger) is often used with wild claims for supply chains and cross border business deals, but why would any real business want to use a public blockchain?

Smart contracts can’t even do anything interesting without a trusted source of data input. The threat model and legal questions of smart contracts are another huge deterrent for most businesses.

Latency, throughput, security threats, and cost are all fairly understood with normal databases, yet with blockchain software all of these are measurably worse.

Where are the completed successful smart contracts deployed?

Why would any person or business want/need to use an existing blockchain when some bug or mining operator might cause a catastrophe of that system, who would they sue for damages?

A single user who spent less than $5000 crashed the entire market for Ethereum last summer. Most of the supply of ETH, XMR, BTC and other crypto tokens are owned by a very small population of crypto-oligarchs.

It all seems like a marketing scheme to sell cyber beanie babies to people who are unfamiliar with the engineering flaws in distributing computing and the marketing lies from “investors” who need to pump the price on their magic beans.

bonestamp23• 8 years ago

why would any real business want to use a public blockchain?

I think it is only important for a business when public trust is important. For example, a news agency could publish its articles in a public blockchain so the original article and any updates to that article would forever be auditable from that blockchain.

extrapickles• 8 years ago

The "best" use of blockchain type technology I have seen is the NIST randomness beacon, though I can't think of many applications other than a lottery or where you need to formally prove you used random numbers to pick something.

[0] https://www.nist.gov/programs-projects/nist-randomness-beaco... [1]: https://beacon.nist.gov/home

xorcist2• 8 years ago

Smart contracts can’t even do anything interesting without a trusted source of data input

At least read the writings of Szabo before you decide what smart contracts are and aren't good for.

There are many several interesting applications here and now around trustless atomic swaps. Not necessarily between assets but cryptographic keys in general (for example DRM systems).

It all seems like a marketing scheme to sell cyber beanie babies

Well, if it has a marketing budget then it isn't really trustless as there is some central authority to market it. Be careful out there. Rapidly increasing valuations attract scammers like sugar to flies.

dexen2• 8 years ago

Smart contracts can’t even do anything interesting without a trusted source of data input. ...for a certain definition of "doing anything interesting", just as well as "trusted source"*.

As the locus of economy shifts more and more away from physical widgets and into information, the value of information goes up in relation to physical widgets. This makes Blockchain a practical, if not all-encompassing, tool for verification.

Compare a plain old car - the software onboard is a small fraction of its value - to any half-decent workstation, where the value of software can easily exceed the hardware's value several-fold.

Proving I had certain information at certain time point - e.g., a license for the software, or CAD design or other valuable file I've created - can easily provide a lot of value. And in this case "trusted source of information" is the mere fact of existence of a cryptographically secured license file naming me as the licensee at certain time point. Easily securable with the Blockchain.

Nursie• 8 years ago

What's sad is the spectacle that has arisen around this novel area over the last several years, the breathless enthusiasm, the handwaving away of concerns, the absolute mindless utopianism that has surrounded this stuff.

Are Smart Contracts interesting? Sure. But they don't address all areas of contract law very well, and they certainly seem like they could well be misused as a way to circumvent a lot of the protections we currently have in place.

Are cryptocurrencies interesting? Again yes, but they don't actually appear to be a very good fit for anything in particular, and they do seem to have a lot of poor economic ideas baked in.

So while blockchains are an interesting set of data structures, a lot of the hate and disparagement comes from the (almost 10) years of relentless hype coupled with the complete failure for any of the great promises to appear. Instead we see exactly what was predictable - hoarding and speculation, scams and fraud.

simias6• 8 years ago

You're making a strawman argument here. People who have speculated money in blockchains have a financial incentive to be vocal and overhype the technology while minimizing the many drawbacks it has. So I think a bit of "knee-jerk" skepticism is warranted around anything related to cryptocurrencies.

So maybe instead of building strawmen you could tell us what you find so fascinating about smart contracts? Who knows, you might end up convincing some of us haters. Not me though, I'm too busy wishing with my entire being for it to fail. It's better than running for cardio.

jsutton2• 8 years ago

How would you like useful, open source tools that can be deployed once and only once (for everyone), and used freely (minus processing fees) forever without having to worry about (a) deploying an instance of it on your own environment or (b) the service going down because the owner lost interest?

Because smart contracts can do that. Pretty neat, huh?

Fnoord3• 8 years ago

However, I think smart contracts are fascinating and wish more people would keep an open mind.

Does it occur to you someone might've had an open mind, and made up their mind?

Your comment assumes such isn't possible, yet your comment polarises the discussion (aka "flamebait") which isn't about the linked article at all. The amount of comments which are on-topic in this thread is zero with a large amount spawning from your initial post. Yet, the linked article is fascinating? Well, I'd love to read the on-topic discussion on it to read about it further.

tomp• 8 years ago

I love the idea behind blockchains and smart contracts, but:

1) I don't think smart contracts should be programmed in JavaScript,

2) it would be better if smart contracts were actually treated as law,

3) most problems that are currently being hyped/solved with blockchain would better be solved with a public signed git repository, and

4) blockchains, as currently implemented, are immensely wasteful (I'm hoping this changes with more research).

beefield• 8 years ago

It’s sad that there is a vocal group, especially on HN, that knee-jerk hates everything blockchain related and wishes with their entire being for it to fail.

Given the generally high level of comments here at HN, I wonder if it has ever crossed your mind that it might, just might, not actually be knee-jerk hate but you simply being wrong in the novelty and general awesomeness of cryptocurrencies?

zmitton3• 8 years ago

by the way. I deployed the same thing on the KOVAN test network at this address (if people want to test their exploits for free first): https://kovan.etherscan.io/address/0xfbc23099a8bd0ce4227920d...

runeks2• 8 years ago

[…] if people want to test their exploits for free first […]

This sounds like a bad idea, since it would allow other people to extract the script and put it inside a transaction that’s published on the real network, thus unfairly claiming the bounty.

nodesocket• 8 years ago

Code bounties are a great use-case for cryptocurrency. I wonder if gratipay[1] for example was built exclusively using BitCoin or Ethereum if it could have survived?

[1] https://gratipay.com

liorn• 8 years ago

If I were a malicious actor with a good way to attack this, I would wait until this was being used in real applications which deal with larger amounts of ETH, and then attack.

Why should I reveal my cards for $3K?

albinowax_• 8 years ago

Bug bounties aren't aimed at malicious actors, or an attempt to outbid the black market. There's a lot of non malicious people out there who are still competent hackers.

michaelt• 8 years ago

Because you know if you can find a given flaw, someone else can; and whoever attacks second gets nothing.

Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

Related Stories