Arbitrum Froze $70M From North Korea? Griff Green on the Decision + Miguel Morel on the Hack
KelpDAO’s hackers left telltale signs pointing to one culprit, North Korea. Then, in a surprise move, the Arbitrum Security Council decided to fight back.
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In this episode about the hack on KelpDAO that had a broad impact across all of DeFi, Miguel Morel of Arkham, explains what digital fingerprints made it clear North Korea was the likely hacker, plus how it is that Arkham’s users are using the platform to figure out how to get their bad debt out of Aave and when.
Then Griff Green, a member of the Arbitrum Security Council, explains some of the reasoning that went into the decision to freeze $71 million of the funds stolen by DPRK, how the surprise move worked technically, and why blockchains are immutable only by social consensus — and how even Bitcoin could be changed by social consensus.
Host:
Laura Shin, Host / Unchained
Guests:
Miguel Morel, CEO of Arkham Intelligence
Griff Green, Arbitrum Security Council Member, Leader of the DAO Security Fund, Co-founder of Giveth
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Should Arbitrum Have Frozen North Korea's Funds? Griff Green vs. Gabe Shapiro
The Arbitrum Security Council just made one of the most controversial decisions in DeFi history — freezing $70M in ETH stolen by North Korean hackers from the KelpDAO bridge exploit. But was it the right move?
And what does it say about the systems we're building?
Griff Green (Giveth Co-Founder and Arbitrum Security Council member) and Gabe Shapiro / Lex_node (crypto lawyer, MetaLex founder, ZK Sync Guardian Council) go head-to-head on the decisions, the precedent it sets, and the hard questions the DeFi ecosystem can no longer avoid.
They debate:Was freezing North Korea's funds the right call?
Do Stage 1 rollups like Arbitrum have too much centralized power?
How does the Arbitrum Security Council compare to PayPal, Bitcoin miners, and Ethereum validators?
What would real accountability look like for security councils?
What's the path to Stage 2 — and how long will it take?This is one of the most important conversations in DeFi right now. Don't miss it.
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The DAO’s Unclaimed ETH Becomes a $220M Ethereum Security Fund
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In this exclusive Unchained interview, Griff Green, one of the original DAO curators and a member of the White Hat Group that helped recover funds after the 2016 DAO hack, reveals how tens of thousands of unclaimed ETH are being transformed into a long-term security fund for the Ethereum ecosystem.
Nearly ten years after the most infamous exploit in crypto history, the community is repurposing its leftovers, not to rewrite history, but to prevent it from repeating itself.
The new DAO Security Fund will deploy grants for Ethereum security research, infrastructure, incident response, and user protection, while also reviving DAO-based governance experiments that have fallen out of favor.
Griff explains how the fund will work, why the Ethereum Foundation is involved, how staking will generate sustainable funding, and why, despite Ethereum’s strength, crypto still isn't safe enough for everyday users.
Guests:
Griff Green, Co-Founder at Giveth, q/acc & Unicorn.eth
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The Black Swan Event That Could Cause a Fork in Ethereum (Again) - Ep. 600
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Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.
This week a major potential risk to Ethereum was highlighted by a bug that surfaced in Nethermind, a minority execution client. While the bug was fixed quickly, it raised the question of what would happen to the blockchain if Geth, which is used by more than two-thirds of validators and so is considered a “supermajority client,” had a bug. The situation could potentially result in a catastrophic fork of Ethereum.
Ethereum developer Lefteris Karapetsas joined Unchained to discuss the different scenarios of what could happen, the potential impact of a supermajority client issue on staking services such as Lido, why he feels the incentive system is poorly designed, and what other solutions are out there to address the lack of client diversity.
Show highlights:
What a consensus issue is in Ethereum and what happened with Nethermind last weekend
Why it would be a big problem if a supermajority client had a bug
The potential impact on staking services such as Lido
Why Lefteris feels like he is reliving the historic Ethereum DAO hack all over again
Whether the largest entities running nodes will start pursuing client diversity
How the data on the prevalence of specific Ethereum execution clients is not verifiable or programmatic, making it less transparent and difficult to analyze
Why Lefteris believes that the incentive system is not designed to achieve client diversity
Whether there are developments in the works to try to solve the lack of client diversity
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Guest
Lefteris Karapetsas, Founder of Rotkiapp
Previous appearance on Unchained: Is Code Law? Should the Hacker Be Punished? The DAO Creators Disagree
Links
Unchained:
Most Ethereum Staking Pools Are Using Just One Execution Client, Potentially Increasing Risks to the Network
The Chopping Block: Data Availability & Why It’s Important
CoinDesk: Bug That Took Down 8% of Ethereum's Validators Sparks Worries About Even Bigger Outage
The Defiant: Ethereum Software Client Centralization Sparks Concern
Crypto.news: Nethermind rolls out urgent fix for block processing bug in Ethereum client
Lukasz Rosmej’s tweet that minority client Nethermind had a consensus issue
Lefteris’ tweet on a supermajority Ethereum client bug
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's tweet on what he’d do in a censorship resistance request scenario
Run the majority client at your own peril! by Dankrad Feist
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Is Code Law? Should the Hacker Be Punished? The DAO Creators Disagree - Ep.325
During my research for The Cryptopians, I found information that I believe identifies the perpetrator behind The DAO hack on Ethereum. Three founding members of The DAO and Slock.it (Christoph Jentzsch, Lefteris Karapetsas, Griff Green) discuss how and why they created The DAO, how they helped save the funds being siphoned off by black hat hackers, their personal feelings about The DAO, along with their reaction to the news about who I believe was The DAO attacker. Show topics:
Part 1: Background on The DAO
Christoph, Lefteris, and Griff’s background and how they came to Slock.it
what Slock.it was and why the Slock.it team decided to create The DAO
what The DAO has to do with venture capital funding
why the Slock.it team did not cap The DAO sale
what made The DAO such a popular investment vehicle
why The DAO developers were scared at the amount of money they raised
Part 2:
what Christoph, Lefteris, and Griff’s initial reaction to The DAO was
saving funds from The DAO via a hard fork versus white hat hacking
whether they thought Ethereum Classic would survive a hard fork
how the Ethereum community has treated Christoph, Griff, and Lefteris in the wake of The DAO attack
Part 3:
why they disagree on whether code is law
their reaction to my naming Toby Hoenisch as The DAO attacker
which actor would play them in a movie about The DAO attack
Come to My In-Person Book Signings and Events!
New York:
Wednesday, March 2, at 7pm
At The Strand Bookstore
Moderated by CoinDesk’s Christine Lee
https://www.strandbooks.com/events/event403?title=laura_shin_the_cryptopians_idealism_greed_lies_and_the_making_of_the_first_big_cryptocurrency_craze
Bay Area:
Tuesday March 8, 6pm
San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club
Moderated by The Information’s Kate Clark
https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2022-03-08/laura-shin-inside-first-cryptocurrency-craze
Seattle:
Wednesday March 9, at 7:30pm
The Forum
Moderated by Steve Scher, of Town Hall Seattle.
https://townhallseattle.org/event/laura-shin/
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Episode Links
Guests
Christoph Jentzsch
https://twitter.com/ChrJentzsch
Griff Green
https://twitter.com/thegrifft
Lefteris Karapetsas
https://mobile.twitter.com/LefterisJP
DAO Hacker Reveal:
Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2022/02/22/exclusive-austrian-programmer-and-ex-crypto-ceo-likely-stole-11-billion-of-ether/
Unchained: https://unchainedpodcast.com/exclusive-cryptos-biggest-whodunnit-who-was-behind-the-2016-dao-attack-on-ethereum/
Medium: https://medium.com/@laurashin/who-hacked-the-dao-on-ethereum-heres-how-we-jumped-past-one-critical-step-60aec489a127
Bulletin: https://laurashin.bulletin.com/who-was-behind-the-2016-dao-attack-on-ethereum-the-backstory-to-my-investigation
Forbes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuICbAucfn0
Daily Tech News Show: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1306972988
The Cryptopians
http://bit.ly/cryptopians
On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cryptopians-Idealism-Greed-Making-Cryptocurrency/dp/1541763017/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1645037311&sr=8-2
On Barnes. &. Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-cryptopians-laura-shin/1138980345?ean=9781541763012
On Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/books/the-cryptopians-idealism-greed-lies-and-the-making-of-the-first-big-cryptocurrency-craze/9781541763012
Unchained: https://unchainedpodcast.com/how-writing-the-cryptopians-shaped-my-views-on-ethereum/
The DAO Hack
https://www.coindesk.com/learn/2016/06/25/understanding-the-dao-attack/
https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/the-dao-hack-makerdao
https://unchainedpodcast.com/how-matthew-leising-confronted-his-suspects-in-the-dao-attacks/
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Giveth's Griff Green: Super-Charging Public Goods and Charity With Crypto
Griff Green is one of the co-founders of Giveth, which aims to build the future of charity using the Ethereum blockchain. It wants to become the gateway for non-profit organizations into web3, giving them the tools to grow their own communities via DAOs and crypto. The primary source of revenue for any non-profit organization is donations, but relying on individuals giving voluntarily can limit their impact, Griff says. He argues a system that better aligns incentives can allow non-profits to have a much larger role in society, potentially even stepping in where local governments are failing. The big vision is for donors and volunteers to become akin to investors in an organization, and be rewarded for their participation too.
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Griff Green and the DAO | Layer Zero
Griff Green is a builder and community manager in the Ethereum space. He is also a hippie, a former chemical engineer, and Seattle Supersonics super-fan. A true individual, Griff opted out of society after becoming disillusioned with modern institutions, traveling in a van with gold and silver until he heard about Bitcoin.
Falling down the crypto rabbit hole led Griff to become a deep Ethereum community member, eventually launching The DAO. The story of the DAO's beginnings, hack, and eventual hard for are the stuff of Sci-Fi. Filled with countless stories, this episode follows the life and times of a deeply fascinating member of Layer Zero.
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------ Topics Covered:
0:00 Intro 4:00 Griff Green & the SuperSonics 13:34 Chemical Engineering 18:20 Bankless with Gold 21:51 Bitcoin & Traveling 29:44 Into the Crypto World 35:07 Crypto Masters Degree 38:00 Ethereum Arrives 44:43 Entering the Community 51:29 Culture vs Price 56:00 Early Ethereum Culture 1:02:43 The DAO 1:07:20 Coming up with the DAO 1:13:25 Exploits 1:16:46 The DAO Token Creation 1:23:20 Explosion & Speculation 1:27:29 The Hack & Hard Fork 1:36:00 Dark DAO and Ethereum Classic 1:40:12 Hard Fork & Edge Cases 1:46:58 Lessons Learned 1:49:24 The Next 4 Years & Giveth 2:02:10 Closing
------ Resources:
Griff on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegrifft?s=20
Giveth: https://giveth.io/
----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.
Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures