Quote: (10-28-2017 10:17 AM)semibaron Wrote:
SamuelBRoberts, please be so kind and stop posting crap all time long. Some hints regarding security issues in the software are valid concerns, but don't highlight every rumor/fud post from reddit or medium as the ultimate truth. Even more so when it just takes a look at the official IOTA channels to find an explanation/solution. At least then mention both sides of the argument.
Here is an explanation how to recover 0 balances and why it happened.
https://forum.helloiota.com/588/Help-My-...lance-v253
That is an amazing, amazing link. Every time I think I've hit the bottom of IOTA's horribleness, I look into it further and find out that it's even worse than I thought. This is truly an astonishing piece of software.
So here's how people lost access to their money:
1.) The IOTA database is so poorly designed that it needs to be manually "pruned" from time to time to keep from getting too big. This is called taking a snapshot.
2.) When a snapshot is taken, any transactions in progress will be immediately canceled. So you could be sending your buddy rent money and it just won't get there because the system decided it was snapshot day.
3.) But snapshot taking also destroys the link between your wallet and your actual money that's stored on the database. So when a snapshot is taken, you can no longer access your money.
4.) You can get it back, though, by manually re-entering every address your wallet has ever used. For most people, you only need to manually re-enter 12-24 addresses to get your money back, but if you've been actually using the wallet, you may need to enter over 150. So be prepared to spend an afternoon blindly copy/pasting numbers if you want to see your cash again. Hope you weren't planning on doing anything with that money any time soon.
Oh, but it gets worse! (With IOTA it always gets worse.)
Some users might find that spending a whole afternoon copy/pasting 150 addresses wasn't enough to get their money back. This is because
with IOTA, the creators can arbitrarily take your money at any time. I'm not clear if the creators simply deny you access to it, or if they physically move it into their control, but either way last week large amounts of the userbase suddenly found themselves with zero access to their cash. In the most recent case, there was a critical bug that could allow anyone who wanted to the ability to spend your money, so they decided it to "fix" the bug by taking the money. Now if you want it back you have to go fill out a form, and presumably you'll get it back.
Of course, how valuable your cryptocurrency is when the owners can press a button and instantly shut you off from your cash, well... that's something you'll have to decide.
semibaron, do you have any more links about IOTA? I've gotta admit this is becoming something of a mini-hobby of mine. I've been doing tech stuff all my life and I've never seen a project like this. Every time I think I've fully grasped how stupid it is, I look deeper and find out that I didn't really know anything at all.
Maybe some links about their plans for machine to machine micropayments? I haven't had time to look at those yet and I bet they're hilarious.