bter hacked and lost 50m nxt

[madalieninvader]

Well then it looks like we still have a way to go. Because if this is how it should be "by design", it's not decentralized at all, not even close

Then what you are asking for is impossible. At some point, coders make choices on what they implement that has an impact on the protocol and the network. Furthermore, it is practically impossible to pretend that you can prevent people from arbitrarily choosing to point their clients to another blockchain. Forks will happen because of bugs, developer intervention, and even because a user has decided to make his own personal fork for whatever reason. There's always a game going on about how many people are going to join a given fork.

The only truely "decentralised" system is the universe. You can not roll back anything, time passes and the laws of physics take care of executing themselves with no possible changes on the "blockchain". No coin that is decentralised in that sense can exist. Cryptocoins are simulations of a universe, but humans are one level on top of it, and the protocol can not reach out and prevent somebody from fiddling with the controls. It would be like sort of Skynet world playing God with its own creators.

What he's asking sounds difficult, but I'm not going to say impossible, yet.

There are also laws of human nature, economics, technology, etc.

For example we could use credibility in the human nature economics department, where at a coin launch they simply say "NonDisappearingCoin will have no roll backs". If they did have rollbacks they'd lose brand and credibility and be something other than NonDisappearingCoin. Maybe there can be help from the tech solutions too. I don't know but I'm not giving up till I have irreversible transactions.

[Nautica]

What I'm taking about is stopping the ability of transaction getting erased from a ledger, when EVERYONE KNOWS THE TRANSACTION happened.

That's already how it works. What it depends on is which ledger you are referring to. Do you get what I mean?

For example we could use credibility in the human nature economics department, where at a coin launch they simply say "NonDisappearingCoin will have no roll backs". If they did have rollbacks they'd lose brand and credibility and be something other than NonDisappearingCoin. Maybe there can be help from the tech solutions too. I don't know but I'm not giving up till I have irreversible transactions.

Fair enough, but then you'll still face the usual problems around this issue. I can still fork the blockchain, convince all my friends that we should use this one, and the staff at "NonDisappearingCoin" will have zero recourse against us if we manage to build enough consensus around us.

[TwinWinNerD]

[Este Nuno]

I think blame for the hack falls squarely on you for posting all your NXT AMA's all over the internet and drawing all this attention to NXT.

[TwinWinNerD]

I think blame for the hack falls squarely on you for posting all your NXT AMA's all over the internet and drawing all this attention to NXT.

Damn, well, instant karma for me then! Lost a goooood chunk of cheese on BTER.

Silly arbitrage!

[Nautica]

The only truely "decentralised" system is the universe. You can not roll back anything, time passes and the laws of physics take care of executing themselves with no possible changes on the "blockchain". No coin that is decentralised in that sense can exist. Cryptocoins are simulations of a universe, but humans are one level on top of it, and the protocol can not reach out and prevent somebody from fiddling with the controls.

This is a good quote!

I'll try to remember to link to this when this issue inevitably comes up again.

Thank you! Feel free to "steal" it instead and repeat it to your satisfaction! The only desired outcome is for more people to think about the blockchain and realise what it is and isn't. I feel like every day I realise something new about it and my mind is blown even more. Regardless, I think this is a great thread and many new and interesting perspectives were opened for me. Definitely something to file in the "stuff everybody interested in crypto should read through" pile.

[JR77]

Nxt pass-phrase security system is not working well ?  Hacking really hurts.I think this incident will harm the reputation of the coin.

[TwinWinNerD]

Nxt pass-phrase security system is not working well ?  Hacking really hurts.I think this incident will harm the reputation of the coin.

This had nothing to do with NXT at all. Those guys had a server without 2FA and used the NXT password also for other things

[josephliton]

I am sad and worried and nothing else I can say at this moment.

[josephliton]

Nxt pass-phrase security system is not working well ?  Hacking really hurts.I think this incident will harm the reputation of the coin.

Its better if you first read and then answer. question.

[Este Nuno]

Nxt pass-phrase security system is not working well ?  Hacking really hurts.I think this incident will harm the reputation of the coin.

No, in this case it had nothing to do with NXT itself. BTER's security was lax.

[bitcool]

Nxt pass-phrase security system is not working well ?  Hacking really hurts.I think this incident will harm the reputation of the coin.

No, in this case it had nothing to do with NXT itself. BTER's security was lax.

Any detail on how it was stolen? The idea that an exchange can rollback a cryptocoin "blockchain" is very damaging to the confidence -- that's not something anyone should fiddle with.

[devphp]

The idea that an exchange can rollback a cryptocoin "blockchain" is very damaging to the confidence -- that's not something anyone should fiddle with.

An exchange can't rollback anything in NXT. Only forgers can attempt to do that, if they amass 51% of forging power to create a longer chain. Same is true for any other coin. In the future, when Transparent Forging is implemented, forgers would have to amass 90% of forging power to be able to rewrite history. Judging by reaction of forgers to today's incident, this is not gonna happen, ever. Most forgers are for irreversability of transactions, which is one of the main ideas of crypto currencies.

[fran2k]

Thats a *lot* of coins.

[smoothie]

Now we will see if NXT is decentralized or not


rollback = centralized

This ^.

I think it is so funny how coins like Vericoin and now NXT tout themselves as a "DECENTRALIZED" currency. But when a large hack occurs ... "oops can we just roll back the chain this one time?"

lol

Except that you're not listening.....NXT is not going to do a rollback on this, the power to make the decision lies with the community. not the devs.
The timeframe for a partial rollback is going to be over soon, so we can then move on to chasing the thief in the old-fashioned way.....

Any community willing to compromise rolling back transactions that happened since a supposed fuck up or hack of a exchange using NXT is not a community that is honest as it is putting one business' fuck up before people's honest transactions.

That should be made very clear of the implications of the rollback.

[EvilDave]

If I have learned anything in the world of crypto. It's just when you think nothing can get worse just when you think everythings at an all time low Mark Karpeles will walk his fat fucking ass into the room and spill a boiling hot frappucino all over your computer. Mark my words thinks are about to get worse.

Thanks, cryptopaths, way to cheer me up, mate  

Nxt pass-phrase security system is not working well ?  Hacking really hurts.I think this incident will harm the reputation of the coin.

No, in this case it had nothing to do with NXT itself. BTER's security was lax.

Any detail on how it was stolen? The idea that an exchange can rollback a cryptocoin "blockchain" is very damaging to the confidence -- that's not something anyone should fiddle with.

I think some people are just seeing the word rollback and reacting to that, so to set the record straight a little:

About 6 hours after the hack, the NXT devs created a modified client that would allow a majority of NXT nodes/forgers to reset the transaction record for the BTER account.
This was never going to be a full rollback, but just a reset on the one account. Hopefully no others would be affected.
The modifed client was made available, much arguing ensued, and in the end a small minority of NXT forgers chose to run with the blockchain mod (no more than 5-10%, I guess).
The remaining 95% of the NXT community/nodes/forgers stayed with the 'real' blockchain, and allowed the theft to continue to exist, accepting all the consequences of that decision.

(BTW: The remaining 5% are mostly back on the official line, I'm seeing almost no-one with the modded client anymore.)

So here we are: 45 million NXT poorer but at least we're honest (mostly)  
Anyone got some NXT for a cup of tea?

I'd also like to express my sympathies to BTER, and all the poor sods (including me) who had funds on there.
Lets carry on working on this, and with a bit of luck we should be able to recover some/all of the stolen NXT.

All NXT exchanges have been alerted to it, so its not really going anywhere.
Thats the joy of the blockchain.....you can see exactly where your stolen stuff is. Try that with dollars......

Anyway, my last words:

There is no rollback.......

[Este Nuno]

Now we will see if NXT is decentralized or not


rollback = centralized

This ^.

I think it is so funny how coins like Vericoin and now NXT tout themselves as a "DECENTRALIZED" currency. But when a large hack occurs ... "oops can we just roll back the chain this one time?"

lol

Except that you're not listening.....NXT is not going to do a rollback on this, the power to make the decision lies with the community. not the devs.
The timeframe for a partial rollback is going to be over soon, so we can then move on to chasing the thief in the old-fashioned way.....

Any community willing to compromise rolling back transactions that happened since a supposed fuck up or hack of a exchange using NXT is not a community that is honest as it is putting one business' fuck up before people's honest transactions.

That should be made very clear of the implications of the rollback.

There is no rollback and there is never going to be a rollback if you've been paying attention.

BTER wanted a rollback and the NXT community answered with an emphatic "NO!!!".

[smoothie]

Now we will see if NXT is decentralized or not


rollback = centralized

This ^.

I think it is so funny how coins like Vericoin and now NXT tout themselves as a "DECENTRALIZED" currency. But when a large hack occurs ... "oops can we just roll back the chain this one time?"

lol

Except that you're not listening.....NXT is not going to do a rollback on this, the power to make the decision lies with the community. not the devs.
The timeframe for a partial rollback is going to be over soon, so we can then move on to chasing the thief in the old-fashioned way.....

Any community willing to compromise rolling back transactions that happened since a supposed fuck up or hack of a exchange using NXT is not a community that is honest as it is putting one business' fuck up before people's honest transactions.

That should be made very clear of the implications of the rollback.

There is no rollback and there is never going to be a rollback if you've been paying attention.

BTER wanted a rollback and the NXT community answered with an emphatic "NO!!!".

Okay good to know. I never said that roll back was going to happen if you reread what I wrote. Please don be so presumptuous about what I am implying.

[Este Nuno]

Now we will see if NXT is decentralized or not


rollback = centralized

This ^.

I think it is so funny how coins like Vericoin and now NXT tout themselves as a "DECENTRALIZED" currency. But when a large hack occurs ... "oops can we just roll back the chain this one time?"

lol

Except that you're not listening.....NXT is not going to do a rollback on this, the power to make the decision lies with the community. not the devs.
The timeframe for a partial rollback is going to be over soon, so we can then move on to chasing the thief in the old-fashioned way.....

Any community willing to compromise rolling back transactions that happened since a supposed fuck up or hack of a exchange using NXT is not a community that is honest as it is putting one business' fuck up before people's honest transactions.

That should be made very clear of the implications of the rollback.

There is no rollback and there is never going to be a rollback if you've been paying attention.

BTER wanted a rollback and the NXT community answered with an emphatic "NO!!!".

Okay good to know. I never said that roll back was going to happen if you reread what I wrote. Please don be so presumptuous about what I am implying.

Sorry if I misunderstood your post.

[Benjig]

This proves once more that those exchanges doesnt use secure or even simple cold wallet for some alts as they advertise.. this and the vericoin hack on mintpal are bad things.. and then after they wanna fix it all with a rollback that surely damages the coin in a unreversible way.