<story><title>Attacking the DeFi ecosystem with flash loans for fun and profit (2020)</title><url>https://www.palkeo.com/en/projets/ethereum/bzx.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>EGreg</author><text>No, blockchains are not the future, they are really the reason why one transaction can happen at a time in the whole world. Even Ethereum 2.0 will have shards which will do away with this anomaly. The only reason flash loans even work with no collateral is because you can be sure nothing else is running on the “world computer” while your transaction runs, so you can roll it back with no risk except gas fees.&lt;p&gt;Vitalik himself acknowledges this, the guy is quite honest and straightforward about its limitations: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;thenextweb.com&amp;#x2F;hardfork&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;vitalik-buterin-ethereum-blockchain-almost-full-scalability&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;thenextweb.com&amp;#x2F;hardfork&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;vitalik-buterin-e...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Vitalik Buterin: Using Ethereum is expensive, and its blockchain is ‘almost full’
He also said blockchain&amp;#x27;s &amp;#x27;problem&amp;#x27; is that every computer verifies every transaction&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Actually blockchains are a first-generation technology that do global consensus for every block, which literally means all transactions in the world must go through one computer in the world (the miner) although it’s a different one each time. And the situation is actually worse, since you don’t know who would mine the next block in advance, every transaction must be sent to every potential miner! Imagine if BitTorrent had every computer store and seed every movie instead of using DHT.&lt;p&gt;The ability to send or loan arbitrarily large amounts for a fixed fee is a symptom of centralization. In a fully distributed network, transaction fees would have to be proportional to transaction size!&lt;p&gt;Almost every other protocol on the Internet does not have such bottlenecks in its design. No one asks how many emails or websites can be served per second. Blockchain is trying to secure every transaction using the entire network! That is why so much electricity is wasted just to do 7 transactions per second.&lt;p&gt;The next generation of crypto will actually be able to power payments using embarrasingly parallel architecture. Until then, we have blockchain.&lt;p&gt;Ethereum is nicknamed the “world computer” for a reason. Gas fees are super high for small transactions like paying for coffee or voting in a secure election. Just one app KryptoKitties can clog up the entire network.&lt;p&gt;We built Intercoin apps on top of Ethereum (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;intercoin.org&amp;#x2F;applications&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;intercoin.org&amp;#x2F;applications&lt;/a&gt;) but we are not going to wait around for Ethereum 2.0 - which is blockchain also. Kik Messenger and others have long gotten off.</text></item><item><author>v64</author><text>Flash loans are a great example of how blockchains enable new types of financial transactions that either aren&amp;#x27;t possible or are very difficult to do in a traditional financial setting.&lt;p&gt;If you identify an arbitrage opportunity in the market, you can atomically borrow a large sum of money to take advantage of the price difference. You also have the added assurance that if the arbitrage opportunity goes away before you can take advantage of it, the entire transaction fails and you only lose the Ethereum transaction fee. It&amp;#x27;s essentially risk-free arbitrage.&lt;p&gt;This paper [1] dives into detail about how these arbitrage mechanics play out on the blockchain, and how both arbitrageurs and miners manipulate transactions in order to make a profit.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arxiv.org&amp;#x2F;abs&amp;#x2F;1904.05234&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arxiv.org&amp;#x2F;abs&amp;#x2F;1904.05234&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>qqii</author><text>Sharding is simply not ready, as far as I know no project currently with smart contracts have non a blockchain structure.&lt;p&gt;That said currently ethereum has many L2 solutions (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ethereum.org&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;developers&amp;#x2F;docs&amp;#x2F;layer-2-scaling&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ethereum.org&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;developers&amp;#x2F;docs&amp;#x2F;layer-2-scaling&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;) that &amp;quot;run in parallel&amp;quot; and result in low gas fees.&lt;p&gt;So far I&amp;#x27;ve not seen any hint of an &amp;quot;embarrasingly parallel architecture&amp;quot; that can satisfy the safety requirements that a blockchain also does and run smart contracts. I&amp;#x27;d be happy to read up if you can point me to any research or projects that I&amp;#x27;ve missed.</text></comment>
<story><title>Attacking the DeFi ecosystem with flash loans for fun and profit (2020)</title><url>https://www.palkeo.com/en/projets/ethereum/bzx.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>EGreg</author><text>No, blockchains are not the future, they are really the reason why one transaction can happen at a time in the whole world. Even Ethereum 2.0 will have shards which will do away with this anomaly. The only reason flash loans even work with no collateral is because you can be sure nothing else is running on the “world computer” while your transaction runs, so you can roll it back with no risk except gas fees.&lt;p&gt;Vitalik himself acknowledges this, the guy is quite honest and straightforward about its limitations: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;thenextweb.com&amp;#x2F;hardfork&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;vitalik-buterin-ethereum-blockchain-almost-full-scalability&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;thenextweb.com&amp;#x2F;hardfork&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;vitalik-buterin-e...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Vitalik Buterin: Using Ethereum is expensive, and its blockchain is ‘almost full’
He also said blockchain&amp;#x27;s &amp;#x27;problem&amp;#x27; is that every computer verifies every transaction&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Actually blockchains are a first-generation technology that do global consensus for every block, which literally means all transactions in the world must go through one computer in the world (the miner) although it’s a different one each time. And the situation is actually worse, since you don’t know who would mine the next block in advance, every transaction must be sent to every potential miner! Imagine if BitTorrent had every computer store and seed every movie instead of using DHT.&lt;p&gt;The ability to send or loan arbitrarily large amounts for a fixed fee is a symptom of centralization. In a fully distributed network, transaction fees would have to be proportional to transaction size!&lt;p&gt;Almost every other protocol on the Internet does not have such bottlenecks in its design. No one asks how many emails or websites can be served per second. Blockchain is trying to secure every transaction using the entire network! That is why so much electricity is wasted just to do 7 transactions per second.&lt;p&gt;The next generation of crypto will actually be able to power payments using embarrasingly parallel architecture. Until then, we have blockchain.&lt;p&gt;Ethereum is nicknamed the “world computer” for a reason. Gas fees are super high for small transactions like paying for coffee or voting in a secure election. Just one app KryptoKitties can clog up the entire network.&lt;p&gt;We built Intercoin apps on top of Ethereum (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;intercoin.org&amp;#x2F;applications&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;intercoin.org&amp;#x2F;applications&lt;/a&gt;) but we are not going to wait around for Ethereum 2.0 - which is blockchain also. Kik Messenger and others have long gotten off.</text></item><item><author>v64</author><text>Flash loans are a great example of how blockchains enable new types of financial transactions that either aren&amp;#x27;t possible or are very difficult to do in a traditional financial setting.&lt;p&gt;If you identify an arbitrage opportunity in the market, you can atomically borrow a large sum of money to take advantage of the price difference. You also have the added assurance that if the arbitrage opportunity goes away before you can take advantage of it, the entire transaction fails and you only lose the Ethereum transaction fee. It&amp;#x27;s essentially risk-free arbitrage.&lt;p&gt;This paper [1] dives into detail about how these arbitrage mechanics play out on the blockchain, and how both arbitrageurs and miners manipulate transactions in order to make a profit.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arxiv.org&amp;#x2F;abs&amp;#x2F;1904.05234&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arxiv.org&amp;#x2F;abs&amp;#x2F;1904.05234&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hanniabu</author><text>So in other words you&amp;#x27;re shitting on Ethereum as a reason to shill your own coin since there&amp;#x27;d be no reason for your coin unless you make people believe Ethereum is garbage? Ethereum is moving to proof of stake and there&amp;#x27;s also L2 networks. There, problem solved.</text></comment>