Author Topic: Problem solved !  (Read 14449 times)

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Offline arhag

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I'm not claiming its flawed, but maybe you're comment was a general one.

Yeah, sorry, I meant it generally and didn't mean to imply that you are suggesting the current design is flawed.

I was merely suggesting that beyond the quick fix, its a useful time to consider whether there is an improved way of handling this aspect of shorts, as we should do from time to time with all aspects of bitAssets.

By the way, I have some additional thoughts that I will post shortly on your BitCurrency thread. Actually, on second thought, I decided that the various corner cases made the new approach that I was thinking of more complicated for users to understand than our current BitAsset system. So nevermind, I still hold the position that the current BitAsset design is the best I've seen so far.
« Last Edit: March 22, 2015, 04:17:45 am by arhag »

Offline starspirit

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Why is it necessary for shorts to compete on both interest and price? If we set the price as always equal to the feed price, wouldn't the interest rate suffice to queue shorts? Then the 50% order would be at the front of the queue and easily get taken out on small volume, and interest would normalise after that.

If you force shorts to always short at the feed price, then in a bear market they will self-short and just sell the BitUSD at a higher BTS/BitAsset price in the free BitUSD : BTS market. Allowing shorts to match above the price feed just takes this two-step process and makes it a one-step process for the shorts.

The BitAsset design isn't flawed. This is simply a bug in the implementation of the design. And that bug should be fixed as soon as possible. Let's not pretend this is some flaw in the design that requires us to rethink the whole thing. It is just an unfortunate coding mistake.

I'm not claiming its flawed, but maybe you're comment was a general one. In this case I agree with you that it looks like a coding fix. I was merely suggesting that beyond the coding fix, its a useful time to consider whether there is an improved way of handling this aspect of shorts, as we should do from time to time with all aspects of bitAssets.
« Last Edit: March 22, 2015, 02:08:40 am by starspirit »

Offline arhag

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I am slightly shocked how much the developers ignore the severity of this bug.

How are they ignoring it?

If you want a safe quick fix, reduce the 50% max APR to something like 5%. This is one single variable and surely can not break anything else.

And what happens if that safe quick fix somehow breaks consensus. There is a process in place now to prevent bigger problems from occurring due to a fix being rushed. The last time a fix was rushed for an even bigger bug, the "fix" ending up forking the blockchain and the real fix required rolling back many hours worth of blocks (thankfully there were apparently no double spend issues). Let's avoid having a situation where the cure is worse than the disease, and follow proper testing procedure.

The devs are taking it seriously, it seems that there is already a patch being prepared, however these things still need to be properly reviewed and tested before release.

By the way, to the people with shorts expiring in the next few days (which is actually not a lot of money by the way), you do know you can sell your spare BTS (which you should always have if you are shorting) for BTC and then use the BTC to buy BitUSD via an outside exchange or a bridge like metaexchange, and then use the BitUSD to cover the short, right? That does add some fees due to the various spreads, but I bet it is much less than 10%. Just something that might be worth looking into.
« Last Edit: March 22, 2015, 01:46:35 am by arhag »

Offline Markus

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I am slightly shocked how much the developers ignore the severity of this bug.

The asset market is BitShares' most important feature. If we were only to worry about funds not being stolen we could just stay with Bitcoin, right?

With shorting broken and the 10% penalty for expiry still in place (is it?) this will dry up the asset market, break the peg (they will be trading at 110% if at all) and piss off those few who are willing to still short in this bear market damaging liquidity for the next weeks/months.

If you want a safe quick fix, reduce the 50% max APR to something like 5%. This is one single variable and surely can not break anything else.

Offline vikram

I remember having seen some people that were upset that they had to pay the 10% increase when their shorts ended, maybe just last week or 2 weeks ago. Maybe, hopefully, it changed in 0.7.
Obviously, stolen funds is way worse (I didn't know there was such a bug). But losing money because of some coding error that is not taken seriously is also quite infuriating, and all shorters are at risk.

We are taking the problem very seriously. It takes some time to develop a patch for the live market. We need to be careful that we do not introduce other bad issues, which has happened in the past with emergency fixes. We will have it fixed as soon as we can.

Offline inarizushi

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"Nobody can short." How is that not an absolute emergency ? If nobody took advantage of the bug until now, that's fine, but now, it's over. Nobody can short. When shorters will have to cover, they will have to buy at the price someone is willing to sell, or lose the 10%. I don't understand how the market peg can hold.

I'm just saying it's a matter of perspective. It is a serious bug that should be fixed as soon as possible. But shorts not working and even the market peg breaking is not as bad as actually having your funds stolen.

Are we sure that the expired cover orders will buy up to 10% higher than the BTS/BitAsset price feed or not? I haven't seen a conclusive answer to this. But if it is true, I wonder if shorts and forced covers can be temporarily shut down by the delegates not publishing price feeds? If so, I think it would make sense to do that to buy shorts time until this bug is fixed.

Or actually, the delegates could offset the price feeds by 10% so that the expired cover order is limited to the real price feed. The call price being at a slightly lower BTS/BitAsset price temporarily is not a big deal, and shorts can't short now anyway.

I remember having seen some people that were upset that they had to pay the 10% increase when their shorts ended, maybe just last week or 2 weeks ago. Maybe, hopefully, it changed in 0.7.
Obviously, stolen funds is way worse (I didn't know there was such a bug). But losing money because of some coding error that is not taken seriously is also quite infuriating, and all shorters are at risk.
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Offline arhag

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Why is it necessary for shorts to compete on both interest and price? If we set the price as always equal to the feed price, wouldn't the interest rate suffice to queue shorts? Then the 50% order would be at the front of the queue and easily get taken out on small volume, and interest would normalise after that.

If you force shorts to always short at the feed price, then in a bear market they will self-short and just sell the BitUSD at a higher BTS/BitAsset price in the free BitUSD : BTS market. Allowing shorts to match above the price feed just takes this two-step process and makes it a one-step process for the shorts.

The BitAsset design isn't flawed. This is simply a bug in the implementation of the design. And that bug should be fixed as soon as possible. Let's not pretend this is some flaw in the design that requires us to rethink the whole thing. It is just an unfortunate coding mistake.

Offline arhag

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"Nobody can short." How is that not an absolute emergency ? If nobody took advantage of the bug until now, that's fine, but now, it's over. Nobody can short. When shorters will have to cover, they will have to buy at the price someone is willing to sell, or lose the 10%. I don't understand how the market peg can hold.

I'm just saying it's a matter of perspective. It is a serious bug that should be fixed as soon as possible. But shorts not working and even the market peg breaking is not as bad as actually having your funds stolen.

Are we sure that the expired cover orders will buy up to 10% higher than the BTS/BitAsset price feed or not? I haven't seen a conclusive answer to this. But if it is true, I wonder if shorts and forced covers can be temporarily shut down by the delegates not publishing price feeds? If so, I think it would make sense to do that to buy shorts time until this bug is fixed.

Or actually, the delegates could offset the price feeds by 10% so that the expired cover order is limited to the real price feed. The call price being at a slightly lower BTS/BitAsset price temporarily is not a big deal, and shorts can't short now anyway.
« Last Edit: March 21, 2015, 08:42:53 pm by arhag »

Offline inarizushi

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So... nobody seems to really care. Crazy.

I mean it is a serious bug, but I think "absolute emergency" is an over-exaggeration. The worst case with this bug is that shorts are suspended and anyone who already has a short position is unable to roll over their shorts. So it sucks if you are forced to exit your short position (either by buying BitUSD to cover or by others buying up your expired cover order at the price feed) when you did not intend to, but as far as money-related bugs go this is fairly tame IMO. It isn't as bad as the previous transaction malleability bug that would allow someone to nearly empty out your balance if you transferred a small fraction of your balance to them.

"Nobody can short." How is that not an absolute emergency ? If nobody took advantage of the bug until now, that's fine, but now, it's over. Nobody can short. When shorters will have to cover, they will have to buy at the price someone is willing to sell, or lose the 10%. I don't understand how the market peg can hold.
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Offline starspirit

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Why is it necessary for shorts to compete on both interest and price? If we set the price as always equal to the feed price, wouldn't the interest rate suffice to queue shorts? Then the 50% order would be at the front of the queue and easily get taken out on small volume, and interest would normalise after that.

Offline arhag

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So... nobody seems to really care. Crazy.

I mean it is a serious bug, but I think "absolute emergency" is an over-exaggeration. The worst case with this bug is that shorts are suspended and anyone who already has a short position is unable to roll over their shorts. So it sucks if you are forced to exit your short position (either by buying BitUSD to cover or by others buying up your expired cover order at the price feed) when you did not intend to, but as far as money-related bugs go this is fairly tame IMO. It isn't as bad as the previous transaction malleability bug that would allow someone to nearly empty out your balance if you transferred a small fraction of your balance to them.

Offline vikram

It turns out this problem has been there for a very long time. We are aware of it and currently working on a solution.

Offline vlight

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Offline inarizushi

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So... nobody seems to really care. Crazy.
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