Conversations with Junior Blockchain Developer Part III
A: Hi! We meet again! People love your content so much, thank you for taking time to come
B: My pleasure
A: News from today, CreamdotFinance got hacked, 130 mln USD got hacked
B: Where they insured by anybody, e.g. Nexus Mutual?
A: No I don’t think so, what’s Nexus Mutual?
B: Smart Contract insurer
A: Sounds like a good idea, if a user gets hacked they get money back
B: It is pretty good idea indeed but there are issues
A: Like?
B: Nexus Mutual or any insured can also be hacked
A: No kidding
B: Well actually I am serious, Nexus Mutual got hacked for 8 mln
A: 8 mln USD is not much…or?
B: It was in 2020, now would be more. Actually this problem is known in IT as well
A: Explain?
B: Back when I was very junior developer in a web2 company a Tech Lead back in the days asked a question to himself while coding… hm… but who will test my unit tests?
A: So an insurer would need another insurer, where does it stop?
B: Well this is how it works in a centralised world right, insurers also have some group insurance
A: We are still early but isn’t there another way?
B: There is, insurer could actually show how things should be done and invest in property based testing, smart contract audits or even formal verification
A: We are early and Nexus Mutual probably took their lesson
B: Why do have to users pay for lessons of web3 companies?
A: I will reflect now, it looks really grim actually, we look left and right and each day almost stuff gets hacked all the time, this must stop for some serious adoption
B: Without any shadow of doubt, we all need to work together and stop this mindset of move fast and break things at the expense of the user
A: Isn’t that PolkaDot found a solution to this problem?
B: What you mean?
A: I think Gavin Wood designed it in such a way that a group of people can print DOT on special occasions.
B: A yes indeed he / they did, Parity Hack on multisig wallets cost them way too much, they want to have a backdoor in case something like this happens again that they can simply re-issue DOT
A: This is how it is said beautifully today: “re-issue”, you don’t say print?
B: Double speech :). Yes, plane didn’t crash, it had an uncontrolled contact with the ground, a CEO was not fired, he is resting and seeking another challenges while he takes a career break :)
A: You are cruel…
B: I was way too long in a corporate job, you soak with this shit (double speech)
A: Back to Gavin… do you think this is a solution, that foundation or some group of folks can issue tokens upon a hack?
B: No, of course not
A: Why not?
B: Well it is assuming that people won’t press print button…
A: What if Gavin is a good guy and their folks will never do this?
B: DOT is 30% controlled by VCs… and our politicians have a print button and they use it all the time
A: Very true but they have good intentions, so people don’t get fired and stuff
B: You believe this?
A: Well some of them, the others probably do this due to Cantillon Effect so they or their friends get cheaper credit
B: Exactly, road to hell is paved with good intentions.
road to hell is paved with good intentions.
A: So how to solve this issue in your opinion?
B: In my opinion it should be via property based testing (see interview II) and formal verifications + insurance via companies like Nexus Mutual and on top of that consortium — another smart contracts where companies like Nexus Mutual are together part of
A: WOW, advanced, expensive
B: Remember, we are still early to web3, we need maturity yes
A: In our last interview said that nobody does actually formal proofs and even less people do property based testing
B: I never said no-one I said a few, very few
A: Who does it?
B: For instance IOHK, in their Djed whitepaper and implementation.
A: Come one, heavy math, I won’t read this
B: There is an easy digestible version
A: Link please?
B: There you go…
A: Holy f… there are mathematical proofs there
B: Yes, this is real but it took years to get it done
A: WOW!
B: Yes, Charles Hoskinson started this whole thing back in the Bitshare days
A: Bitshare, what is this even?
B: It’s a cryptocurrency, may still be around, one of Dan Larimer baby
A: EOS guy?
A: Yes, oh please don’t remind me, that was a f…up
B: I know, hard to know for sure if this was scamming or bad skills, I wouldn’t tell for sure
A: Crypto is a risky business or?
B: Very, and addictive
A: Tell me is Djed the only sensible stable coin on the market?
B: No, I think UST has potential
A: The one from Terra Luna blockchain?
B: Yes, there are other issues while I don’t personally invest in Terra Luna but UST could be solid stuff
A: What issues?
B: VCs, too many, Sillicon Valley crypto is not my thing but I have respect for the work they are doing
A: Back to Polkadot… Did you know that Polkadot committee burns 5% of funds when a project which pitched for funds from their treasury system doesn’t get it. This sounds crazy doesn’t?
B: Quite crazy I agree, this is the way for them to incentive good proposals
A: But a proposal could be good and they would reject this because this committee doesn’t need it now or they don’t like that a CEO is a woman or whatever prejudice there?
B: They accept proposals with women as CEOs, I know it was just an example of yours but yes this looks quite dodgy, strange game theory in my opinion
A: But investors are happy because DOT tokens are burned and value of Polkadot goes up?
B: That’s for sure
A: I heard foundation pays DOT also in case when slashing happened, this comes out of pocket of Polkadot treasury. This looks like a noble and kind of them or?
B: Well, it certainly is very kind but it is still quite stupid
A: Why? Come on?
B: Well, why do they have slashing in the first place? The took a lot of ideas from Cardano and IOHK, created B.A.B.E protocol
and GRANDPA and they couldn’t copy tech that doesn’t do slashing? IOHK doesn’t patent stuff, it is all available open source, public domain.
A: Sounds weird indeed, they should work on removing slashing and not rushing roadmap to Parachains now
B: Yes, you see this is the problem with VC founded coins I dislike, there is way too much pressure and everything has to be yesterday and yield yield yield
A: And then developers botch stuff?
B: I would not say botch, this is too strong, there is good stuff in the work they are doing and industry can benefit, I would more say developers have way too much pressure from VCs and they have to rush things and yeah it ends up with what it ends up
A: But Ethereum did the same, rushed roadmap right?
B: Yes it is way of thinking you see, certain mindset, I don’t have this one but I know a lot of people that do
A: Like?
B: Ajit Tripathi.
A: Who is this?
B: One of Aave guys, works there now
A: What has Ajit Tripathi got to do with Polkadot seriously?
B: A lot, let me explain, if you listen to the whole or parts of the interview you will get to know his opinions a bit..
A: Like what?
B: “There are many very smart people building in the industry but I think Polkadot has the biggest chance in the ETH killer space.”
A: This was back in Nov 2020, this is years in crypto years.
B: History doesn’t repeat but it rimes, now we have SOL, LUNA and AVAX pushing hard but let me finish, he says: “You have to focus on developers and this is what Gavin is doing right.”
A: You don’t agree, ETH focused on developers and look where they are!
B: Developers are very important indeed but you have to focus maybe even a little bit more on community building.
A: Why, if you have only bag holders and no developers who will build anything?
B: WOW, did you listen to the interview, you actually quoted him!!! Well I think there is quite a few people building on Cardano but of course it cannot be compared to VC chains or ETH. Cardano needs more dapp and infrastructure developers without any shadow of doubt.
A: How can it be done?
B: Developers attract developers… they need a few public figures in the community with credibility and less pretty ladies with staking pools and rich influences farming community
A: These influencers are not the worst, Binance multi pools are
B: Of course but I still wholeheartedly believe that some major influencers should support and fund some developers maybe even instead of staking and milking community out of ADA rewards.
A: People don’t move stake to pools with developers to support Gougen and infrastructure?
B: They do
A: So what is the problem?
B: Only when there is ISO token (Initial Stakepool Offering), there are tons of pools with developers without ISO.
A: But pools should just create blocks, wtf?
B: I disagree, pools should create blocks and support whatever is needed in Cardano ecosystem and now we need developer ecosystem like air, thinks like Blockfrost, Moralis / Ivan On Tech (from ETH world), DEXes, Oracles, Synthetics and ton of libraries.
A: Delegators need to wake up in Cardano
B: Big time, luckily there is project Catalyst but we need way more since it is slowly moving, funds are discharged slowly
A: Is there anywhere a list of pools which developers building on Cardano?
B: Yes, community portfolios on Adafolio: https://adafolio.com/community-portfolios
A: like?
B: Independent Developer SPOs, https://adafolio.com/portfolio/296334b6-c7b5-11eb-8dee-0242c0a87002
A: Cool, back to Ajit Tripathi. Is he referring to any particular project?
B: No but he could be alluding to Cardano, he wouldn’t be the first one
A: Cardano is a favourite kid in school to beat up?
B: Yeah but it was covertly alluding, many clowns on twitter are not covertly alluding.
A: Who else?
B: Mike Novogratz, calling Cardano holders anti-waxxers and it’s an identity token.
A: But it’s great it means you have a community!!!
B: Yes, they are not happy about this, they have ton of money, they can buy developers but they lack community
A: But Polkadot actually attracted pretty good developers I see, moreover I see read an article that Rust developers really like how Parachain / Substrate stuff works, it is really nice to work with.
B: This is true, it is well done but I would say these are amazing developers with products but without users. The thing is that what most people don’t get is that you don’t need just developers, you need users and developers
A: But everybody thinks that ETH had success because of the developers
B: This is totally wrong, ETH had and has success (albeit loosing market share) mainly because of USERS and developers.
A: So you need both, yeah
B: And Polkadot has like what 58k subscribers on Reddit, this sounds like a joke or?
A: Yeah
B: You know what is even more funny?
A: What?
B: They lost some community users because of shitty staking
A: Like who?
A: TradingWithPaul guy
A: Whatt?
B: He tried to stake with Polkadot and couldn’t, it wouldn’t work.
A: And he left to Cardano?
B: Yes, it simply works, no slashing, no lock ups
A: And now Polkadot does parachain auctions…
B: You get my point I see, they lost users along the way
A: Cardano is moving slow
B: Yes moving slow and working things.
Cardano is moving slow and working things
A: It’s not proper English… moving slower and things work rather
B: I am playing with words
A: What about other VC chains, similar rushing stuff things
B: It’s not ideal but not as bad as Polkadot
A: Like?
B: Solana is scared to implement slashing and wants foundation to slash manually.
A: Will then they take time to figure it out manually or remove slashing?
B: Removing slashing will be hard because their protocol is Casper / Gasper based like ETH 2.0
A: Forever doomed?
B: They could do slashing via DAO or something or?
A: And other chains?
B: AVAX, a lot of good stuff there, horrible tokenomics of course (VCs own a lot) and they have bonding and lock-up
A: So you have to re-stake? Who will do this, lock ups suck man
B: I know, not ideal but not the end of the word
A: And slashing?
B: No it doesn’t have it
A: Look Vitalik himself answered!
B: Yeah, ETH community believes that slashing is absolutely necessary
A: It’s a feature not a bug? What do you think?
B: Yeah, I think they lack professors and proper researchers to be frank
A: But you are not frank you are B
B: You are in playful mood I see :)
A: Vitalik said in an interview with Lex Fridman that actually it is better to experiment and iterate, he is dubious about formal models and formal academic research, he said that models never verify 100% real world conditions…
B: He is right, of course they don’t but who said life has to be black and white, you can have hybrid systems, research academic rigour and research + real world verification
A: Hm… but it is for sure slower approach
B: This can be debatable, in blockchains it is hard to go back and fix fundamental issues you left behind
A: On the topic of Vitalik, what are your thoughts about EIP-1559, burning tokens…
B: Feature heavily requested by holders of ETH but it causes high token and ETH prices
A: Isn’t that enough people already complain, right?
B: This is not the worst
A: What is the worst?
B: He pissed off miners
A: There was no consultation or something?
B: Not that I am aware of and now miners trying weird things around, like their own tokens initiatives
A: At least they didn’t attack the network, it is PoW so such an attack by a larger pool is not impossible
B: Yes, ETH foundation and Vitalik are playing with fire
A: What would you suggest?
B: I would suggest to decentralise the governance
A: They object to this because they believe that whales will only control the network
B: The question is whether you believe that today Ethereum Foundation is a true foundation, with the emphasis on the word foundation without any external influences.
A: I wouldn’t know for sure, without any shadow of doubt many VCs are invested in Ethereum, we don’t know what happens behind closed doors
B: Exactly, like would you really implement burning, which ultimately will cause ETH price increase and ultimately gas increase by implementing EIP-1559 when your network is somehow struggling due to congestion?
A: Depends, if I want to capitalise on network effect, yes
B: And who normally capitalises on network effects?
A: Big companies, amazon, ebay.com, etc
B: Exactly!
A: Hm… but people really wanted this, ultra sound money you know??? Eth foundation was just listening to it’s people wishes, Bitcoiners always laughed at ETH that it is an inflationary asset…
B: This is true, greed^n, where n is a non negative number closer to infinity then 0 indeed.
A: They pissed off miners and got away with it
B: Lucky as f**k so far I would say but miners play experiments with tokens and exercise their right to do MEV
A: You mean Miner Extractable Value?
B: Yes
A: Yeah everyone knows this is shit
B: You know what’s something that many don’t know?
A: What?
B: This shit in normal finance is illegal, it is called front-running
A: Ok but you cannot fix it or?
B: You can
A: How?
B: Well you need to have a ledger with such a system that has a local state, not a global state and then it is not possible. You cannot have account based system like Ethereum, Avax, Solana, etc.
A: Who does have such a system, sorry?
B: For instance Bitcoin, Cardano, DigiByte to name a few
A: OK but come on, Cardano doesn’t even have smart contracts and other chains don’t even plan smart contracts
B: Cardano has smart contracts on an eUTxO ledger
A: What is this, looks like French
B: Extended UTxO model
A: A now I remember, since 12 September 2021 but wait it had some test net issues (MinSwap or something), solution doesn’t scale for DeFi or?
B: There are solutions to alpha version of DEX… we should see them on main-net soon…
A: And MEV shit is not possible on Cardano?
B: No way, in fact because it is not possible but it requires dapp developers to rethink how to do a proper decentralised DEX, it is not trivial but possible. It is possible that they will have to begin with quasi-decentralised solutions and then move to fully decentralised solutions, we have to wait and see.
A: Boy we need to wrap this up, it’s not our last time or? Any last words?
B: Yes I will give you last words… I am still here and still want to build web3 and why is that I welcome you to watch fully the following video.
A: You are funny, not just code monkeys?
B: Yes, from this video you can learn how shitty and greeeeeeeeedy web2 companies can be. I wonder what are your thoughts about this, we can follow up next time.
A: I cannot wait to watch thanks!
B: See ya next time.
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