ethereum and the $50m heist
TRANSCRIPT
Ethereum And
The $50m Heist
The peer to peer network gives us a distributed, censorship resistant platform
Cryptography gives us secure, tamper proof transactions
The blockchain gives us transparency,verifiable consistency and consensus
The Ethereum platform lets people who have no particular confidence in each other collaborate without having to go through a neutral central authority.
What is Ethereum ?Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that
run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference.
More general, not just a currency, though it has its own currency - Ether
Each node on the network has a virtual machine forming a planetary scale computer
Users send transactions to interact with the smart contract
How is Ethereum different from Bitcoin ?
Who is using Ethereum now ?
Decentralised Prediction Market Based on Ethereum
Autonomous bank & market maker
Decentralised Prediction Market
Digix - gold backed assets
DYNAMIS P2P Insurance
The DAO contains some kind of internal property that is valuable in some way, and it has the ability to use that property as a mechanism for rewarding certain activities.
● Outsiders can see the governance algorithm● It may use voting or prediction markets to choose policy
Decentralised Autonomous Organisations(DAO)
A Business organisation run according to rules specified in a smart contract
But…
A Call for a Temporary Moratorium on The DAO over security concernshttp://hackingdistributed.com/2016/05/27/dao-call-for-moratorium/
The DAO is being attacked.
It has been going on for 3-4 hours, it is draining ETH at a rapid rate.
This is not a drill…
Solutions ?
● Do nothing - the blockchain remains immutable
● Interfere - rollback the blockchain
Lessons
The blockchain is an unforgiving environment and
needs more rigorous coding and testing standards.
Build applications out of tried and tested components
Oxford Ethereum LinksEthereum Oxford Meetup
Oxford University Blockchain Society
We are looking for speakers and sponsors
Slack Team - email [email protected] for an invite