
Software bug causes YAM cryptocurrency to implode two days after launch - seanhunter
https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/13/yam_cryptocurrency_bug_governance/
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carterklein13
I keep seeing the rhetoric that it was just an experiment and that it was
expected to implode. Sure, okay, maybe it was - but in that case, the hype
built around it was completely inexcusable.

From its creator to shills on Twitter, I hadn't seen such fervent shilling
(obviously, they were all in a prisoner's dilemma with it, but still).

~~~
goblin89
All cryptocurrencies live or die by “shilling”. Like with any software, it’s
not terribly likely that any single one of them is entirely bug-free, but the
loyalty of invested early adopters is what hides mishaps from the public and
persists the hype.

~~~
carterklein13
The problem is, this was technically a financial instrument (it falls under
DeFi - decentralized finance) that was completely unaudited, and could've been
released in stages, on a testnet, etc. To use an analogy, this was essentially
pushed directly to prod, not even to master... unless I'm missing something.

It just seemed so reckless to me.

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langitbiru
It's very interesting to see what happened on Ethereum this week. After YAM
fiasco, there is another drama. Someone front-runned the official project by
launching the code first on Ethereum.

[https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1294088489118715905](https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1294088489118715905)

~~~
flarex
They probably shouldn't have published their admin (public) keys in advance.
That way it would have been impossible to "front-run".

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netsectoday
I probably wouldn't trust someone 2-years out of college to manage my money
(YAM creator's capital management firm).

I sure as hell wouldn't invest in their home-grown crypto currency.

Story Headline: Recent college grad doesn't know what they are doing and it
ended as expected.

~~~
blackflame7000
I think the moral of the story is to focus less on making the business work
and more on finding suckers to solicit investments from. Just like WeWork.

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teknopurge
To be fair YAM was an experiment, always communicated as-such, and was
intended at-best to implode.

~~~
jjoonathan
People threw real money at something that was intended at-best to implode? Did
that intention make it into the sales pitch?

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mcherm
Yes... (I suppose it depends on which "sales pitch" you listened to).

Sometimes people are just crazy and stupid.

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henriquez
> “If the funding goal is reached, upon the completion of the audit, we plan
> to support the launch of YAM 2.0 via migration contract from YAM.”

Shit happens. At least they’re undeterred. Couldn’t this just be fixed with an
immediate hard fork? They’re new enough that probably nobody would protest.

~~~
ryebit
It wasn't a separate block chain, just a smart contract running on Ethereum.
And it was an experiment the creator advertised at the start as crazy and
untested...

So the odds of walking the Ethereum chain back are about like a penny stock
convincing the NYSE and all traders in world to walk back all their trades for
the last two days.

~~~
wtracy
In this case, I imagine that a "hard fork" would entail starting a new smart
contract and copying over the old balances.

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syllable_studio
I found that these two articles provide some good context about YAM and yield
farming. It seems like there is some messy, but really interesting
experimentation happening in DeFi right now.

[https://www.coindesk.com/defi-degens-gaming-ethereum-
money-l...](https://www.coindesk.com/defi-degens-gaming-ethereum-money-legos)

[https://www.coindesk.com/defi-yield-farming-comp-token-
expla...](https://www.coindesk.com/defi-yield-farming-comp-token-explained)

~~~
mtnGoat
If you look into the backgrounds of a number of there big proponents of defi,
it gets scarier.

~~~
dgellow
What do you mean?

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johnwheeler
I guess they didn’t see any reason to fix it

[https://github.com/yam-finance/yam-
protocol/blob/master/cont...](https://github.com/yam-finance/yam-
protocol/blob/master/contracts/token/YAM.sol#L340)

------
_ink_
Why did it become half a billion dollar worth in one day? What is special
about YAM?

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dtech
That figure was the market cap, the price at which a token was sold multiplied
by the number of tokens on the market.

If a billion tokens are available, the market cap is $0.5B if you sell a
single token for $0.5. That's what happened yesterday more or less. You won't
be able sell all tokens for $0.5B, so saying they are worth $0.5B is
misleading for such a volatile and young project.

The metric works much better (but not perfect) for established shares,
financial products or contracts for physical objects.

~~~
eru
Yes. To give an example: many bitcoins are lost (ie deleted private key), or
in accounts that presumably will never trade, so you should remove those when
calculating bitcoin total market capitalisation.

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9nGQluzmnq3M
Except that it's literally impossible to distinguish between a "lost" bitcoin
(no private key) and one sitting in a cold wallet (private key exists
offline).

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Scoundreller
Lots of things are impossible to calculate 100% precisely, but that doesn’t
stop anyone from building models anyway.

Just like “How much US$ is out there in paper currency?”. Impossible to know,
especially as it’s never been demonetized, but models exist and are used.

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nautilus12
It seems like software defined scarcity in this case almost defeats the point
of the currency because if it's not based on anything hard and immovable it
can be bypassed. It's almost as though you need some non digital impossible to
fake process to back your currency. Like maybe digging in the ground and
pulling out precious metals?

