In simple words, he should have done what everyone else does and used Uniswap or Zapper or Sushi or ANY exchange and swapped WETH for ETH that way.
This is just a dumbass user doing dumbass things. This is basic-level stuff right here. Don't interact with contracts directly unless you 100% know what you're doing.
But people are allowed to interact with smart contracts. To obtain the WETH he needed to do that. This is a "why do we even have that lever" kind of situation. If my brokerage had a "permanently burn all of your money" button then it wouldn't be reasonable to just say "well, people shouldn't push that button."
We can even see this with the criticism of wire fraud. Wire fraud is a huge fucking mess that occasionally costs people their life savings. The entire setup is rightly criticized (heck, even by the crypto community) for having users interact with a highly error-prone system with huge consequences.
People are allowed to login as root and delete their systems too. Yes, today's software doesn't make it easy - and the same can be said about this wallet/token; this was a complex sequence of steps in the wrong direction, not a missclick.
And a lot of ink is spilled about systems to make this very difficult, with people continuing to work to improve things. We didn't simply say "well, just don't type those characters" and move on with our lives.
The set of people running a service with a revenue of 500k on a personal device must be minuscule and the people doing it almost certainly know it’s stupid.
This is qualitatively different from crypto that allows you to burn your money on accident, while the people who build the infrastructure for this tell you is a smart, safe place to put your money.
Interesting how your example has just completely changed.
But also, wiring money is a thing that laypeople almost never do. It’s nerve wracking to wire money. But the equivalent in cryptocurrency is just how it’s done. Every transaction is just a fuckup with no recourse waiting to happen.
What's so interesting? I already told you this wasn't a simple missclick. No need to reiterate.
You can dump money into a pit just as easy with the classic banking system. Where I live (EU), wiring money is the primary way of payments and money transfers. People don't use anything else.
> I already told you this wasn't a simple missclick.
Seems like it essentially was. He exchanged ETH for WETH in exactly the same way. Assuming that the reverse would work (as opposed to destroying the money) was not an unreasonable step. He still screwed up, but a design that allows this is user hostile and stupid.
> You can dump money into a pit just as easy with the classic banking system. Where I live (EU), wiring money…
In the US at least, you can get your money back through the legal system. Accidentally dropping your money into someone else’s account does not give them a right to it and for substantial amounts of money people can and do get their money back.
For this amount of money I’d consider pursuing legal avenues against the developers of Etherium. This design seems borderline negligent and Etherium has modified the code at least once already to force a refund.
Consumer wallet software gives you a warning that this is probably not what you want.
> In the US at least, you can get your money back through the legal system. Accidentally dropping your money into someone else’s account does not give them a right to it and for substantial amounts of money people can and do get their money back.
I doubt this is true in the case of uncooperative out-of-country second party - yeah they have no right to the money, but they don't care and the legal system won't do much for you.
If this guy didn't get a warning, they're using power-user software (likely CLI-based).
Of course one shitty design doesn't justify another, but the point is not justification but a reply to all the people saying "this is way worse than and would never happen with the traditional banking" that they are wrong. I agree that better UX is needed.
Regarding your point about legal action against Ethereum designers, well... That'd be like pursuing legal action against the designers of your web browser because it allows you to open phishing sites. Nonsense IMHO.
This is just a dumbass user doing dumbass things. This is basic-level stuff right here. Don't interact with contracts directly unless you 100% know what you're doing.